Throughout the adventures you have various relationships with the other city states in the scenario. Just curious if folks have general ideas on how they handle them. Myself, I usually give all that I am asked for (to allies and rivals alike) and hand out additional gifts of goods I have plenty of regardless of if they want it or not. Kill them with kindness as it were.

Recently I have thought about building Elite early and just going out and making everyone a vassal, including my allies. Anyone use this method? Any comments on its effectiveness, etc? I am usually on Olympian difficulty which ups the military and diplomacy challenges a bit, but any experience on any skill level would be interesting.

Ya i try to gift everything they ask for but some of the states will hate you no matter what , so the first thing i always try to do is invade the aggressive using Hero,gods support , its pretty easy if you manage to build a sweet army , Just invade the people who threaten and they will give back tributes when defeated, stuff like wine , bronze is good

Conquering allies is generally a bad idea. It royally pisses off both allies and vassals alike, so you end up losing a ton of gifts/tribute. Not even remotely worth it.

The best use for allies by far is gift them your excess goods to get them to philanthropic or congenial status, then ask every single one of them for Drachmas. Needless to say, you'll never have any financial troubles ever again.

At the completion of an adventure with no additional progress in sight, I decided to invade one my Allies. But before that I made sure I was solid on finances, armor, horses etc to re-stock my army. Once I conquered my first Ally, everyone else became a Rival and started to attack me in turns and revolts were carried on by colonies. I was forced to bribe (hence, requirement of good treasury) some of the invading parties since my army was still away. Revolts in colonies tend to normalize by themselves with some offerings made to them. Once my army was back in the city, I would re-stock and send them out to conquer other Rivals. Having Demi-Gods and armies from Artemis or Aries is a big advantage. I took out the biggest Rivals and then others and at the end I was the warlord of All Greece with all paying yearly tributes. Biggest downside I faced was trade which was absolutely at a standstill with Allies turned Rival turned Vassals. Again the importance of having a strong treasury.