Back to your question, doesn’t matter how good the relationship with the other countries are, if they think you are an easy target they will attack you.
What you want to do is to check quite often the Military Power graph and see how well placed you are there. Consider that the more cities you have, the more power you need to have to have the enemy consider you dangerous.
In other words, the actual power of a country is the level of the bar in that graph, divided by the number of cities.

Let us know how the next game goes.

1) It’s the only low-fantasy game out there. Even then, to get in all the traditional class roles and have some flashy effects they had to raise the fantasy level a bit. We’re all used to very high fantasy with flashy armor, flashy mobs and flashy spells and weapons. LOTRO is very decidedly down to (Middle) Earth and can seem a little “off” compared to all our prior fantasy experiences. For the longest time I would do LOTRO for LOTRO then switch to Vanguard to balance things out and get my high fantasy fix.

2) The game is designed and presented in a totally different way than we’re used to. Every other game says “here’s our game world” *PLOP* “go have fun.” From the get-go, you’re in the thick of things and while you may level up and get to even more crazy adventurous lands, you always know what you’re in for. Horde vs. Alliance, Freeport vs. Qeynos, whatever… it’s all there from Day One. LOTRO is taking an approach following the books. What we have this first year of the game is only up to where the Fellowship reaches Moria. We’re adventuring in Eriador during the timeline when most free peoples have no clue Sauron is up to anything; no clue war is imminent. So we mostly have a happy-go-lucky atmosphere and we adventurers spend a lot of time (especially the solo time) acting as medieval Orkin pest-control employees, enacting population control on the local wildlife. As we get into the higher level areas, closer to where some of Sauron’s forces are more in the open, the mood and overall atmosphere of the zone and its peoples drop, which is appropriate. The first expansion will take us into Moria itself and a couple zones on the other side of the Misty Mountains, so we’ll see what Turbine has in store for us then. I personally like this approach, but coming from… well… every other game out there, it’s easy to take a look and say “meh, LOTRO is nothing but whacking wolves and boars.” We’ll see how/if things take a turn once we’re adventuring right where Sauron has his armies out in force… I’m hoping the action and excitement cranks up quite a bit so I’m not wondering how much 401(k) retirement I get from grinding my Orkin reputation…