Getting to the front in score and winning

[=DrJambo=]

Over the last few weeks playing Civ IV I've come to the conclusion that the best way to manoeuvre yourself to the top of the score rankings and take the tech lead at Noble and Prince levels is simply to get the top AI civs into wars.

In Civ IV the AI really doesn't like warring and in fact will do almost anything to avoid prolonged "conquest" style wars with each other. In fact, for the majority of any game they prefer peace and appear reluctant to declare meaningful wars other than simple pillaging affairs. They often do not seem to have enough units available with which to really embark on anything other than a pillaging or "annoyance" type of war anyway.

Not only that, but the supposed "Aggressive" civs never seem to do very well. The Mongols and Japanese always seem to be propping up the table, whereas peace lovers like Gandhi always seem to be near the top.

So, it's either that the AI is bad at warring, or that warring in general in Civ IV is not productive. If I can't conquer and take out the tech or score leaders myself, then it does appear that simply manipulating a war with another AI civ does just as good a job at disabling them in the long run.

[vmxa1]

It looks that way to me. I find that they are seldom at war and it last for a short time, unless I am at war with one of them as well.

[Diadem]

And how exactly do you want to get them to war with eachother? If you control the religions in the game you can probably get them to hate eachother. But if they are peace loving hippies that won't be enough.

You can probably ask them to declare war. But does that work if you aren't at war yourself? I've never tried that. If you ask A to declare on B, and then sit at the sideline doing nothing yourself... That must give a major relationship penalty with both, right? I would consider it a major bug if you could do that without them getting angry.

[Dr,ape]

Originally posted by Diadem
You can probably ask them to declare war. But does that work if you aren't at war yourself? I've never tried that. If you ask A to declare on B, and then sit at the sideline doing nothing yourself... That must give a major relationship penalty with both, right? I would consider it a major bug if you could do that without them getting angry.

Yes, it does work. I've tried it. I asked Civ A to declare war on Civ B, for a mere price of a second tier tech. I was having OK relations with both, and they were among the score leaders. Civ B didn't have a clue, until Civ A start asking Civ C to join in -- then I got a -1 point in relations with Civ B for "having brought an ally into war with us" or something like that. Not too bad, considering the effectiveness of this strategy at delaying their progress.