Multiple RoP violations

[vulture]

I accidentally discovered a way to do the RoP violation trick/exploit several times in a row (if you're not in a hurry). Not something I'd normally do at all, but it was one of those games (12 civs, Emperor) where everyone was backstabbing everyone else, and I had a vendetta list of pretty much everyone except the French. I had an RoP with the Greeks (who had previously sneak attacked me), which was past its 20 turn limit, but not cancelled since it was still useful to Greece. So I position all my forces next to cities, phoned up Helen (I was trying out Genghis Farb's Helen of Troy leader graphics in place of Alexander), cancelled the RoP deal, and wiped her out in one turn. This evidently didn't count as RoP violation since I cancelled the treaty before attacking. So I later did the same to the Persians (and would have done the Romans too, but I won before that was necessary).

Not normally a strategy I'd use, but in this game I just hated everyone by the end of it. Something to do with the fact that I made a living off trading techs so that I was running at 100% science for essentially the whole game from the early middle ages onwards. Occasionally one of my trading parteners ran out of cash and felt obliged to sneak attack me, which is the risk you run of course. But it turned into an absolutely brutal game (from keeping track more or less, I think that every civ was at war with every other civ at least once in the game, and the Persian/Roman war continued from the ancient era through to modern times without once stopping - except when the Persians had an existence failure).

[MoonWolf]

I must test this... Pictures of betrayal appears in my head ...

[Catt]

That's very interesting. I've always had great deal of trouble securing an RoP for some period of time after I have declared war with units in another civ's territory (even without an effective RoP). It's been my experience that true RoP Rape (using an active RoP to attack) is reputation-crushing -- not only a sneak attack but a 20-turn deal violation, whereas a "sneak attack" (units in territory but no RoP at war start) is merely reputation-smudging, albeit sometimes pretty seriously smudging.

Catt

[nbarclay]

Another variant might be to park huge numbers of troops in the AI's territory the turn before the ROP agreement is ready to expire. Then unless the AI orders you to withdraw them at the exact moment the treaty expires, you wouldn't have to rely on the AI's leaving the agreement in place after 20 turns. I don't know for sure how that would play out, but it could make a good experiment.

And here's a third possible variant. In my latest games, I've included ROP agreements in some of my alliances when an AI needed to go thorugh my territory to get to a common enemy. Get a ROP/alliance combination, and then move huge stacks of forces into the ally's territory just before taking the common enemy out of the game. When the common enemy is eliminated, the alliance and all other agreements associated with it will dissolve. That would probably make it safe to stab the ally in the back, although I haven't tested the idea (which has to be among the dirtiest of all possible dirty tricks).

And I just thought of an even nastier variant. When your current opponent is down to one city, instead of taking that city, let all your forces rest until they're healed. Then join in an alliance with your next target against your current one, and include a ROP agreement. Move all of your forces except for enough to be sure of taking out your first opponent's last city into your new ally's territory, and then take out the last city. The ROP/alliance combination will dissolve, and if my hypothesis holds, you will be free to attack your ally without being deemed guilty of a ROP violation. In the age of rails, the alliance could be signed, troops prepositioned, last city of the old enemy taken, and new war started all in a single turn! Of course there is some possibility of a misfire if the enemy you were going to take out has a city you didn't know about somewhere else, or a settler on a ship somewhere.

I don't know whether or when I might try these tricks myself, since I'm not fond of playing styles that involve betraying allies. But I'd be interested to hear whether my hypotheses hold up in actual play.

Nathan

[bbaws]

I've been using this to good effect. No rep hit at all, perhaps a smudge as Catt says, but I have been a model of honourability for many thousands of years. However,, other AIs who I had expired RoPs with cancelled them next turn. Got one of them back with just horses as a sweetner in the modern age.
The trouble is the war weariness is immense. I'm not sure if this is because I launched sneak attack or because I haven't left it long enough since my last expansion.