wow this is an old thread, i dont even remember making this post. Jeffrey, the key to keeping the AIs off you with no military is basically this:

a) Your inital planet rush must be good (you need about 25% of the planets that the major civs control).

Your allignment towards the AI should be the same or nuetral. Opposite allignments= hostility and degrading relations no matter what you do, unless your military is much stronger than theres (which it probably wont be until around avatar tech).

c) Gift Tech. Lots of tech. Your picks at the start should be the +20 diplomacy party, and +60 dilplomacy for your other choices. You should tech trade as much as possible, and around battleship tech you should have a decent lead over all the other civs. Now, whenever you research an non important tech (like one that gives a bonus to trade, the AI loves those), gift it to all the AI's. Your relation should improve at least one notch.

edit: and on the allignment, if your going opposite allignment to get more points, just stay the same as them until your military is better than theirs, and then use the colonizing exploit to flip yourself back.
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Personally, I hate winning by culture flipping and I hate giving anything to anybody.

I enjoy winning by a genuine military conquest.

That is why I stick to the lower levels.

Jeffrey...

Another thing to keep in mind is on maso is when things go bad they can go bad realy, really fast. You can go from cool to war in two turns. So you really need to keep an eye on relations. This is most evident as you in the middle 1/3 of the mil/pop/soc/tech power curve. The AI evaluates all of these so you must manage all them at the same time at a much faster pace than at crip... because after all managing these things is what the game is all about.

I play with miliatry so this may not apply to your situation specifically, but hopefully the concept will. I have the most trouble when my mil stats rating is between about 35-65. This range varies quite a bit depending on how fast I get my manufaturing, population and technology up the curve. If I spend too much time on one for too long, I get hummm... how to say it... CRUSHED. Then I need to go back and try again; sometimes that's years (I get cught up in pressing the turn key :D).

At maso with all the boni the AI gets you gotta keep right on top of things. At crip you get a hair more breathing room to miss the window, not much of a difference but enough.

My 2 BCs. Good luck.

It doesn't work any more. But a tech and a bit of money early helps alot. Once they are friendly or better you have it made in the shade, but keep givin em stuff. Then, if they make an unreasonable demand (say for a planet) you can turn it down and it won't lead you to war, only back to neutral.

Remember, Trade Trade Trade. By the way, even trading tech's helps relations slightly, so do it often. And give em a stray one here and there.

It is important to get your economy going fast. So build banking centers quickly. Then all the money you're giving em will be chicken feed to you anyway.

Jeffrey Calvert posted at 3/21/2004 12:44:19 PM...

Humm... the 1 IP to each AI was closed out some time ago. The main way to stay out of trouble seems to be to bribe, bribe, bribe your way out. Trade everything you can, buy the military ships you need, get the AI to beat on each other, and bribe, bribe, bribe some more.

It's all Frogboy approved diplo exploiting of the country rube AI... Use that computer behind your eyes to out think a few thousand lines of code. You can do it!