Dirty tricks

[Arrian]

Something more sophisticated than "Cleopatra is a known liar and a cheat." My guy says that about everyone.

Yep, so does mine. It's 'cause they all are

Another (relatively minor) dirty trick I've used:

We can usually see an AI sneak attack coming. You know, when you see the stacks massing on your border, or when they just start marching into your empire? Well, before demanding that they leave, ask for a RoP agreement. They will give you one.

The next turn, when they attack you, their reputation is shot.

The reason I call this a minor dirty trick is that reputation doesn't seem to matter for the AI.

-Arrian

[Hail Caesar!]

I love the pillaging roads not yet within their cultural borders trick. And it's not an exploit!! It's revenge for their stupid workers building roads in my territory. I mean one road from Shanghai to Detroit is fine. But sometimes they build roads on every one of my squares that doesn't already have a road?! Anyway, it's a good way to go to war without damaging rep.

[alva]

Actually, has anybody tried to play a game with full auto governor and workers???
So building what he suggests , etc....

[Hail Caesar!]

No way. My governor is way too stupid. Putting all squares on irrigation on a size 12 city in ancient times, and stuff.

And he always chooses to build obsolete units, like archers. Either that or the forbidden palace. So, no way.

[alva]

yeah, but I'm curious how much levels one has to drop in order to remain competitive ?

[Dominae]

About Worker buying as a dirty trick:

Check this out to see how low the AI values Workers in the early game, and what absurd situations this can create.


Dominae

[Harovan]

Gotta add a very dirty trick I found in the general forum, about caging an AI leader with own units to prevent it from being used and from ever generating a new leader by this poor AI civ. One of the dirtiest tricks I ever heard of . Credits go to solodar.

Originally posted by solodar
Better to keep his GL bottled up forever with a few spare units of your own (warriors, workers, whatever). That way you not only deny him the use of the GL, but also he can never generate a new one!

The original can be found here.

[Minmaster]

ROP exploits

my favorite dirty tricks are ones involving ROPs:

1. getting an ROP with a civ that you plan to attack. move all your military u plan to use right next to the enemy city, preferably on mountain or hills. on the turn after 20th, it is usually upto you to expire/cancel it. cancell the ROP and just attack, take his cities. this is much bettter than a straight ROP rape, which causes serious rep hits.

2. we like to plan our military strategy way before we actually declare war. however, there are times when another AI messes your plan up and starts taking over the civ that you were planning to. make sure that you have an ROP with that civ you plan to take over. surround every tile in adjacent to his city so that no enemy civs will take the city before you do.

3. if u plan to go to war, again get an ROP, place your troops over resources. when the ROP ends, declare war, pillage all their resources, and keep those tiles occupied so that they cannot connect it back. when you sign peace later on, if the AI still has those cities you pillaged resources around, then trade them those resources (if you have extras) since you will have to remove troops and they will reconnect the resources. better yet, get an ROP again, and keep those troops on that resource tile, and make them trade with you forever.

4. screw the AI by getting an ROP, and place units in strategic positions to block their troop movement when they go to war with another AI civ on the same continent. open up a path later, they will start moving their units back towards that hole, close up the hole when they are within reach of the hole and watch them go back and forth.

[solodar]

So, here's a peaceful dirty trick that exploits the AI's tendency to go through your territory during their wars:

Once had a continent with a center area and four peninsulas going off it (NW, NE, SW, SE). I (the French) originated in the NW and had conquered the Germans and Indians in the center leaving Persia (SW), China (SE) and Russia (NE). Everyone except Catherine was roughly equal.

Some time later, Persia and China went to war, but without a common border had to go through my center area territory and quickly flooded it with units. I "sealed off" each border/peninsula with a barricade of my own troops. When one side got the upper hand, I'd open the barricade on the other side for *one turn only* and let them send in more units. When that side got the upperhand, I'd do the reverse. Thus, you can manage which side has temporary control of the battlefield.

The net effect is that China and Persia threw an immense amounts of units at each other, wasting untold numbers of shields and dropping into inefficient governments, for no gain whatsoever. Since neither lost a city and the # units lost was always roughly equal, neither felt a need to negotiate and the war went on for centuries. Meanwhile, I kept on peacefully researching and grabbing wonders and knocking over the lesser powers.

Some downsides:

- you have to be comfortable letting all those other civ units get in the way. Luckily, the battle zone was fairly built up and all my workers were busy elsewhere.

- you have to be on good diplomatic terms or risk one of those battle groups turning on you.

- takes up your units sitting on the fence line. I had 12 - 15 knights/cavalry/whatever sitting on the line on any given turn instead of helping to finish off the Russkies. (The # varies as occasionally a turn with an open border will end with an enemy unit sitting in the line and you need to reset the line around it.)

Also, this makes capturing GLs easier since they're stuck in your territory anyway.

Eventually, I was ready to take on Persia and opened the fence line enough to allow China to soften them up and assist without actually capturing any cities. Worked nicely.

solodar

[Hail Caesar!]

Originally posted by solodar
So, here's a peaceful dirty trick that exploits the AI's tendency to go through your territory during their wars:

Once had a continent with a center area and four peninsulas going off it (NW, NE, SW, SE). I (the French) originated in the NW and had conquered the Germans and Indians in the center leaving Persia (SW), China (SE) and Russia (NE). Everyone except Catherine was roughly equal.

Some time later, Persia and China went to war, but without a common border had to go through my center area territory and quickly flooded it with units. I "sealed off" each border/peninsula with a barricade of my own troops. When one side got the upper hand, I'd open the barricade on the other side for *one turn only* and let them send in more units. When that side got the upperhand, I'd do the reverse. Thus, you can manage which side has temporary control of the battlefield.

The net effect is that China and Persia threw an immense amounts of units at each other, wasting untold numbers of shields and dropping into inefficient governments, for no gain whatsoever. Since neither lost a city and the # units lost was always roughly equal, neither felt a need to negotiate and the war went on for centuries. Meanwhile, I kept on peacefully researching and grabbing wonders and knocking over the lesser powers.

Some downsides:

- you have to be comfortable letting all those other civ units get in the way. Luckily, the battle zone was fairly built up and all my workers were busy elsewhere.

- you have to be on good diplomatic terms or risk one of those battle groups turning on you.

- takes up your units sitting on the fence line. I had 12 - 15 knights/cavalry/whatever sitting on the line on any given turn instead of helping to finish off the Russkies. (The # varies as occasionally a turn with an open border will end with an enemy unit sitting in the line and you need to reset the line around it.)

Also, this makes capturing GLs easier since they're stuck in your territory anyway.

Eventually, I was ready to take on Persia and opened the fence line enough to allow China to soften them up and assist without actually capturing any cities. Worked nicely.

solodar

If you have enough units or workers you can also set up "roadblocks" and make them travel through the mountains and hills to get to China. Those archers and swordsmen are actually handy during the Middle / Industrial ages for this purpose.

Sometimes if I have a ROP with a neighbor, I'll set up these roadblocks in their own territory... it's annoying when I have my knights on auto-goto and they run into a Greek horseman straddling the road and instead of stopping and waiting for orders or for the next move they u-turn into the mountains.

[ManicStarSeed]

Better than Airports..

Here is a dirty trick that borders on exploit. I just found in my latest game.

1.29, Monarch, 10 Civs, 70% ocean, Contenents.

The big D-Day invasion has been well under way. I have secured a port city on the contenent I have been invading. That port city (beach-head) is 6 moves (tiles) away from my homeland port city where the invasion has been launched from

Transports have a move of 5. Therefor it takes 2 turns to get units from the city of origination to the "beach-head". Move the five tiles with a fully loaded transport. Use a transport with full movement remaining (waitng on that same square). "Wake all" then using the interface button for load, load the units into the transport with the remaining moves. Bring the transport to the beach-head. Unload and you have 8 new units and assuming a decent rail system, you can have them on the front the same turn the units are completed.

Mss

[punkbass2000]

I don't think that's considered an exploit. You have two transports anyway, so you could be simply alternating without any difference. In short, building more units is not an exploit, it is common sense.

[ManicStarSeed]

I could see it argued that it is an exploit as the AI does not seem to do it.

Punkbass, I thank you for the vote of legitimacy. Its been so effective that I feel a little guilty. It has gotten to the point that I am have more than exceeded the goals of the war that I have taken up the cause of nation building just to keep it fun. I feel like a cat with a ball of yarn.

I do really love the metagame.

Mss

[Fosse]

If I have long term goals for invasion, I'll usually try to set up a trade agreement with my target which gives them as many luxuries as I can afford (even if this means gifting them).
Then, I cancel the deal on my turn and declare war. I can usually get 75% of their biggest cities to riot, giving me at least two turns to take as many cities as I can before the AI starts building units.

A human would be a little suspicious of somebody begging them to take luxuries for little or no return.

[Fosse]

This naturally assumes the 20 turn limit is up, so I don't take the reputation hit. These deals are usually so lopsided that the AI will never renegotiate them.