The "Pardon Me" War

[evizaer]

Here's the basic set-up:

We're all on the same continent.
Egypt: Me. My west border is water.
Saladin: to my Southeast; 3rd place
Cyrus: to my Southwest; distant 4th place
China: to my Northeast; 2nd place

Saladin randomly declares war on me.
We duke it out for 10 turns. No one gets anywhere.
I pull china into the conflict on my side.
I get sick of wasting units/want to wait until i get catapults to continue my assaults (i had been harrassing and defending before).
China finally gets units to the front.
Cyrus captures a city (i don't know when he decided to declare war on Saladin).
I negotiate peace with Saladin.
China starts fighting Saladin in earnest.
Saladin asks for open borders with me. I accept.

Now i have two nations fighting a war solely by running units through my territory! This is great! They are both cautious towards me (actually, they are both either +1 or +2 overall). So neither will likely declare war on me soon.

Basically, i get to watch my enemy and my friend duke it out. I'll probably end up declaring war on Saladin when China has weakened him up and i'll just poach a few cities.

I love this game .

[Chronus9]

I'm glad you're enjoying the game but does this scenario strike anyone as really odd? You also saw this in Civ 3. Of course, I suppose you can close the borders but then you're eliminating a lot of those advantages. Is there a happy medium here somewhere where two friends (or neutrals) can have a war without necessarily closing your borders to them AND without the two of them stomping all over your land with their tanks?

It's like the U.S. letting Canada and Mexico duke it out on our own land. Then again, in this case, how much damage can really occur?

[evizaer]

Well, somehow i built up a +6 "You are brothers in the faith!" diplomacy bonus with Saladin, so he became Pleased with me and China started to dislike me beause they were Hindu (i'm jewish, and so was every nation besides china). I then sent 5 missionaries in to convert china's largest cities and they finally flopped over to Judaism just as Saladin founded Islam and i got Free Religion. This resulted in everyone being pleased with me on my continent. With the tech advantage that i got out of my two rivals beating on each other, i'm pretty sure i'll be able to cruise to a space race victory.

Very interesting game.