Consider also that the AI will often be willing to part with cash, epscially to save their own skin. Consider using your starting cash to help lubricate diplomacy, but don't pay an 'untrustworthy' neighbour a fortune for a pact that they will probably break as soon as is convenient. Additionally, if you can sour relations between them enough, one of them will actually love you for your war efforts against the other, and you'll have a firm friend (or unwitting next victim). However, if you instead boost relations with one or both, not only do you make them less likely to attack you, you also create a further incentive to leave you alone if one of them attacks you now, the other will dislike them for it since they like you, and thus you're much more likely to have a fair 1v1, or even a 2v1 in your favour. If you start a war with either one, you will hurt relations with the other and galvanise them against you, the most likely outcome being that they form an alliance against you aaand it's game over. For example, consider relations at the start of the game: Say you have 2 neighbours and they are somewhat friendly to each other due to a shared culture (often the case with barbarian tribes). In general, try to play the diplomacy game intelligently. One cheap strategy is to sweeten up a neighbour until they trust you enough to march off to war with someone else and leave their land unguarded, and then you backstab them when their army has moved (beware the 'trustworthiness' diplomacy penalty for doing stuff like this, but don't stress too much about it, it will replenish with time). Make sure you're sending out a politician every turn on a diplomatic mission at the start, and get a non-aggression pact with at least one neighbour if you can. First off, diplomacy is crucial for smaller factions.