If an AI is bordering you, differently aligned, and significantly stronger than you, it WILL attack you.  That I have no problem with. 

What I do have a problem with, is that once you are at war, everyone smells blood, and will join on the side of the stronger combatant, which in the above case is the enemy AI.  And once you start actually losing cities, or even battles, everyone attacks you.

And, no, there's not much you can do about it, except two HARD things:

1. Do not let AIs outpace you.

2. Make AI go to war with each other by bribing them, but only as way to to curb their growth.

Things that do not work, but should:

1. Non-aggression pacts.  The AIs use them to wipe their ass.

2. Maintaining positive relations.

3. Relying on common allegiance.

4. Relying on distance, AI's already being at war, common enemy, etc...

In conclusion: Diplomacy can be summed up in two sentences: If you are weaker, you will be attacked. If you are much stronger, you can extort money.

Oh, if you are being extorted, do not bother paying.  Sometimes, you will only delay the attack by 2 turns...

In my experience there is no peace. One AI will inevitably declare war on you, and have 80% of the other AI friended on facebook so they declare war as well. Even if they are weaker than you they will jump in and it ends up being you vs most of the AI.

Doesn't really matter how friendly you think you are.. the AI is always better friends with the AI. This is one of my biggest complaints so far.

Off topic:

my other complaints are the pure randomness... some games you get a dragon running amok in your territory on turn 30 and you cant do anything so you end up having to restart or play the inevitable loss,

And the fact that Mage type sov/heros are at an extreme disadvantage compared to melee types.

 how was that sov a mage? I'm talking about an actual mage build not some hybrid who can cast spells and whack with a sword. You just made my point. An actual mage build would get creamed. What you had sounds like a melee/caster hybrid build.

Either way good for you.. still sucks when it happens and it forces me to start over. Couldn't even get a pioneer out of my territory without the GD dragon eatting him.

Then the next game i got a decent start.. but as soon as I met the AI they started all declaring war.. til it was me vs everyone. And even when I signed peace with the weaker ones the next turn they would declare war on me stating that I was at war with their friends. So i couldnt do anything but hold the line against the constant barrage of 6 different factions coming from all directions.

I have yet to start a third game due to the way the first 2 went. Just seems like hours wasted when any forward progress is halted by random monsters coming after me early or the AI piling on.

I guess all of us should just play like you though huh? That was your point right?  You min maxed and did it so everyone else should too? Forget customization just do what you did if you expect to play the game without a dragon making you start over. Heck they should just remove the customization options and make all the sovs start specced exactly like yours. Its not the randomness thats an issue its that not everyone is running your uber sov. and the issue with the AI piling on.. oh thats just cause we dont have your uber sov to walk through them all.

one thing you can do is to take the offensive against the weaker nations that declared war on you. This makes you stronger while you take their resources and cities and allows you to create more fighters. use these extra resources to take more cities from the weaker nations until you get strong enough to hold off the main enemies. Once this happens, you can usually turn the tide of the war slowly but surely.

that is how I usualky handle that situation at least. I have to say that I quite enjoy when that happens, since it makes for an interesting game.

Frog:

"Well the AI doesn't get to complete quests automatically. They simulate the quest (rolling the dice) and they aren't allowed to go on tons of quests like you humans are! And they don't get to save games.  What you're seeing is the tirene taking out a battleship roll.

Blame old man Paxton for letting the AI go get dragons from quests or what have you. XML controls whether the AI is allowed to go on quests. I just take advantage of whatever cheese I can find."

Derek:

"Hmmm... the quest that gives a dragon is already set as not being doable by the AI.  It is is doing it, thats a bug.  Looking at the code the logic looks good to me (ai is checking to see if its doable).  I'll get a dev to check it out, must be failing at another layer."

https://forums.elementalgame.com/434823/page/1/#3259180

Out of curiousity Fistalis, what world difficulty / AI difficulty are you playing at? I do not play the way Tuidjy plays, because he plays on riduculous or higher a lot and needs to min / max to be competitive. I myself play on challenging a lot of the time and find the game just about right for me. I don't care for the AI to join up the way they do, it's annoying at best.

(Also, if you find yourself with what you feel is a 'bad start', might I suggest that you press ctrl+N. This restarts the map to give you a better start.)

I also wonder if part of the diplomacy problem is that the AI has gold to spend, and forces all the other AI to declare war on you? This is entirely feasible within the rules of the game, and if this is the case, I think there should be different rules when it comes to forcing another player to declare war on another player. Maybe a late game tech, I don't know, Alliances. Maybe there should be a higher cost ratio to forcing a faction to declare war on somebody they are friendly towards or possibly make a cost prohibitiion in these cases.

Personally I can't find a reason why the AI would be incapable of visiting a string of quest locations, rolling dice as necessary along the way.

Neither can I... but thats not whats happening lol.

ICS does not work, because you run into growth issues.  But you do need at least 4-5 cities in the first 50 turns is you want to be competitive with Ridiculous AI.  I assume you needs less if you are playing on lower difficulties.  That said, I usually win my games by turn 150-200, and by then I have 20-30 cities.   Most come through conquest, though.

I have found that I cannot afford to avoid settling near BBs (Big Beasties).  It's just too constraining, because not only it slows you down by denying you a city spot, but it also breaks your dominion spread, so you get cities with no link to the capital.

And to top it off, the AI bound to come by, and wake the BB, and then you have a roaming disaster in your backyard.

So I always have a plan to deal with BBs when I design my side.  Sometimes the plan is 'I have wealthy so I can spare a pioneer to lead the BB by the nose".  Usually the plan is "My sovereign will be able to handle anything but a full blown dragon by turn 50".

You must be misunderstanding. I am talking about Ridiculous AI.  It's a setting in which the enemy gets unlimited cash (OK, it's actually 150000, but it can never spend it) bonuses to production/research/etc... and worst of all, five free traits for every unit (and another four for the sovereign)

You have to expand, and you have to have a fighting sovereign, and you have to research/build troops/etc...

It's not one strategy, its all strategies at once.

But on Challenging, you can win anyway you want.  You can do solo sovereign (no cities), you can go questing, you can turtle with Earth spells, or you can just crush everyone militarily (easiest option on challenging)

I really should do a 'challenging' playthrough.  What's a good video recording program?  One that records the PC audio, and can grab from a window?

Yes, what you are saying makes sense.  But you are missing the point of my post

One thing that bugs me, when dealing with AI sovereigns, is that they are all basically the same after a few levels. They all pick Assassin path, every time, even Procipinee and Ceresa who are supposed to be mages.

Would really like to see some variety in my future slaves, not enough targets for all those assassins.