How to make friends and influence people

[Adagio]

I once had a funny game with diplomacy some time ago. I was on an island with 5 other civs. 3 of us had judaism. Malinese had the holy city) and judaism was spread around the world (though out of the 18 civs, only 5 had it as their state religion). Everybody was living in harmony (only few civs was annoyed at other civs). I did my best to destroy this harmony, conquering the civs without judism on my island didn't give me other civs who was annoyed with me. I took over the malinese, expecting the whole world to go against me, but no, they all still loved me. For each civ with judaism I took over, another civ converted (without me doing anything)
I ended up conquering all civs, but during the whole game not one civ was annoyed (or worse) with me, except after I attacked them

It was weird not getting all those "you attacked our friend" relationship penalities, even though everybody loved everybody else. I only got very few of those... I'm still not sure what happened. I didn't have any mods installed (and was playing on noble)

It was kinda like if you walk to to someone saying you just killed her 10 best friends, and get the response "I don't care, I still love you"

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Crossfire
I actually find it helpful to try to be buddies with my nearest and biggest neighbors.

I often do the opposite. I make friends with nations faraway while trying to not upset the neighbours. I bribe my friends to beat up my neighbours from time to time. When I am ready, I pick one of them to conquer while keeping the other one(s) busy with bribes to friends.

[CerberusIV]

Be careful about razing cities in the early game as the more cities you raze, the more red points you gain. In recent games razing one of Bismarck's cities wasn't too bad (-2 IIRC) and relations were repairable. However razing 3 of Elizabeth's cities got me -5 in relations and that was too much trouble to get back.

The moral is raze if you need to but don't expect to be friendly with that civ for the duration of the game.

[One_more_turn]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I often do the opposite. I make friends with nations faraway while trying to not upset the neighbours. I bribe my friends to beat up my neighbours from time to time. When I am ready, I pick one of them to conquer while keeping the other one(s) busy with bribes to friends.

That's the classic 远交近攻 strategy used by the Qin Kingdom.