Taking Advantage of Artificial Incompetence

[ducki]

If your intended ally is receiving gold per turn from your enemy, getting the gold per turn as part of the alliance deal can provide profit that would not be available in a separate deal after the alliance is signed (because your enemy stops paying when war is declared).

Don't you then run the risk of your new ally immediately breaking the deal and declaring war on you because he now can't pay the bills because your enemy stops paying?

[eris]

Many times, I follow the general strategy as given at the start of the thread. I have no reason to suspect that I have any strategic skill to offer this forum, but I have not seen mention of this detail that can be added:

I decide well ahead of time who will be the next victim. Current example is Carthage. I am buiding up an military strike force and look for places to establish attack points. This is going to take a while since my last task force is spread all over ex-Celtica. I sign up MPP with a couple likely looking candidates well ahead of the invasion. In fact, my goal is sign it around 10 turns ahead of the invasion. The turns pass. I launch the invasion, making sure that there is some weak unit extended beyond my blitz charge, which is usually immediately attacked in the counterstrike and triggers full entry into the war from my allies. Now, I have ten turns of MPP left. At the end of the ten turns, if the war is dragging along more than I want (Hey, I got the luxuries I wanted. I'm done!) then I let the MPP lapse. Then I sign peace, extorting what I can. With any luck my former allies continue harassing my now ex-victim, further distracting all their economies while I begin a bit of post-war build-up. I have even seen my allies get themselves into a Military Alliance or two, which I avoid, and then they are all entangled in some muddy mess for quite a while. Sometimes civs I never recruited get brought into the mix.

You are vulnerable to one of your allies declaring war before you do and messing up your carefully connived schedule, but that risk can be evaluated or just reacted to when necessary. It's a good way to take a previously stable world and plunge it into world war, then back out of the chaos. Much as I love chaos, I love it even more when it is happening to the other civs.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by ducki


Don't you then run the risk of your new ally immediately breaking the deal and declaring war on you because he now can't pay the bills because your enemy stops paying?

My presumption is that my ally can reduce its science slider setting if it has to in order to pay. So far, I haven't been proven wrong, but I haven't tried it a lot either.

[Arrian]

I used this last night, but for slightly different reasons.

I started a game as the Babs, my old favorites, on Monarch just to toy around with them. But I found that, despite some nice start terrain AND a free settler from a hut, the early game wasn't all that easy.

There were three primary reasons for this: 1) I had ZERO luxuries available via peaceful expansion (despite having quite a bit of room); 2) I was at the far end of a continent that had 4 AI civs who all met each other very quickly and traded like mad - leaving me with a large tech deficit; and 3) I had iron but no horses (not a big deal, I suppose).

The tech deficit was so bad, in fact, that when I tried to research Code of Laws and then Philo to get Republic as a free tech, something I've been able to do consisently on Monarch, I found I was not first to Philo. Oops.

Anyway, I was able to become powerful due to my nice land and the fact that my 2nd city was pump-capable (thought that took a little doing). I crushed my southern neighbors, the Germans (hey, they picked the fight, I just finished it) with swordsmen, and had very good RNG luck. I won just about every battle, and generated TWO MGLs (FP in Berlin, Army of 3x swords).

I still only had 1 luxury, however. The distribution on the continent was rather odd. The Spanish, for instance, were in the same boat I was w/regard to luxuries: their peaceful REX got them none at all (though they had 2 irons and 2 horse supplies within spittin' distance of Madrid, and frankly they SHOULD have gotten the dyes just to the west). The English had two luxuries, but no iron. The Russians also have 2 luxuries, IIRC. I can't see enough of their territory to be sure of resources.

The English went and built the Pyramids. So here we have a civ with 2 luxuries I don't have, lacks iron, and has the Pyramids.

So I invaded them, of course. At first, I figured I'd take them down alone. I had my 3x sword army, 6 or 7 med infs, 2 musketmen, and 4 trebuchets. I'd have had more, but I made the mistake of building a city on an iron supply, so I couldn't disconnect/reconnect for mass upgrading purposes. I had my initial mass upgrade forces, and any more had to be built the old fashioned way.

Anyway, I invade, take a city, and notice the English have med infs and even knights.

Ah, yes, those silly Spaniards and their extra iron. Hmm. Spain will ally with me and provide me with horses for Engineering. DONE.

With this, I cut the English iron supply, get myself horses so I can pump our horsemen (and press forward pell-mell towards Military Tradition), and get some help from the Spanish army.

I also called in the Russkies, figuring I'd already passed out Engineering, so let's get them in on it too. After all, England had 2 small cities waaaaay on the other side of Russian territory. These were likely to be their last refuge.

End result: I capture all of England proper, including the Pyramids, Great Wall (obselete), Artemis (obselete) and Mausollos. I also take control of 2 new luxuries, and my own horse supply. I even got a 3rd MGL, which rushed the Military Academy in my most productive city. In the peace treaty, I get Astonomy - though I had to cough up 16gpt for it. England was destroyed by Russia ~5 turns later.

Spanish gains: none. Russian gains: the two english cities to their far north (a long way from Moscow). Though they did take, and burn, one English core city rather close to their own core. They might have gotten something useful from it if they had kept it. I replaced that city with a new one of my own.

-Arrian

p.s. Thank goodness for the religious trait in this game. I took a belated shot at the Pyramids, failed, and switched to the Great Library. That was fine, and I'm glad I got it (I received Republic, Monarchy, Polytheism and Theology from it). But due to the fact that I had captured the Oracle in Berlin, the completion of the GL triggered my GA. Note that I got republic from the GL! So 1 turn of despot GA, one turn of anarchy, and then 18 blissful turns of republican GA. *phew*

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by Plotinus
Re the reputation hit - bear in mind that if you are in a military alliance with another power, their attitude to you will be automatically improved for as long as the alliance lasts. When it ends, for whatever reason, this "artificial" boost also ends. So an apparent reputation hit might in fact be simply the effect of no longer being in the military alliance, as your reputation with the former ally drops to what it would have been anyway.

It happened to me a few times, but the one that sticks out in my mind is when a polite civ allies with me against another. Their attitude went to gracious, but then when I finished off the other civ, the gracious attitude went to annoyed (IIRC). Like I said I've avoided alliances when I have a genocidal war in mind for quite a while so I don't remember all the facts. It's nice to know the reason now.