Non-Combat Game - What went wrong?

[mrfinsky]

I recently completed a game (relatively easy level) in which I was victorious in the space race. The interesting feature was that at no point in the game did I ever engage any civ in combat and no one attacked me. I was in the middle of two AI civ's north of me and two south of me. Because of that, I decided to play nice and wait until I was quite superior in technology. I only had 6 cities until near the end when a few flipped due to culture. I checked out many of the cities near me and they all had 5-20 military units ready to roll. I had 4 to 6 units per city. I made a few attempts at conquering a city with bombers, artillery, and infantry, but always ended up with dozens of units attacking the defeated city. I returned back to an earlier save every time. I ended up doing a speedy spaceship and passed up my competitors using the Space Elevator and better technology.

What went wrong? Why didn't the computer civ's fight each other? I was third in power most of the game. Why didn't they come and get me? Did I choose a setting that ensured too much niceness?

Thanks for any help.

[Solver]

A combination of different factors, probably. First, the level - lower levels make the computer players nicer. Second, your power - generally, the AI civs tend to attack when they're reasonably sure they can do well in the war. If you had good tech and adequate numbers of units, the AIs wouldn't be sure about attacking - only some psycho AIs would attack at bad odds.