Bah! It's probably my fault for having high expectations, but believe me when I say I really REALLY want to like this game, but after 5 maps, I have little hair left on my head!

My problem is always the same, I prefer to play defensively, and I like to build culture, and refine the domestic life of my nation. Each game (Noble difficulty), I am always eager to trade resources, gold, techs, etc. to keep everyone happy, but EVERY time I end up being overrun by someone who decides on a whim that they are willing to destroy their own civ just to kill me.

Now, I wouldn't normally care, IF there was any way for me to see something like this coming AT ALL! But no, It's always someone who, according to their relationship meter has, let's say 5 "plus" points, and 2 "negatives" , and will have active trade with me, and suddenly bam, And then will refuse to speak to me, because they have more negatives than pluses...and the majority of negative points are from guess what?....THE FACT THAT THEY ARE AT WAR WITH ME!!! Am I the only one who thinks this is just dumb?

Queen Montezuma Chin Yuan says : "I will destroy you!, You're willingness to trade, the tributes you send, your refusal to betray me to others, and the fact that I have to go through 17 other nations to get to you have insulted me to no end...and MY declaration of war on you is the last straw, I CANNOT believe you allowed me to do that!...NO I will not speak to you!"

After this comment comes the onslaught, where every other nation stands idly by, while Hitler Jr. apparently brings his entire economy to a crashing halt so he can focus everything into creating an army to simply destroy me...for no good reason whatsoever. Conquest?, not really..once he takes my lands, he will have an impossible to manage divided empire (since my lands were nowhere near him)

The final insult lies in the facts that, In order to stop this, I have to plan ahead every game, and keep a massive standing army around "in case" this happens, (which of course ruins my cultural, civic plans) , Realistically, the nations between us would not stand by and do NOTHING while someone committed what would realistically be percieved as an act of "Evil". (if you can pull something this unethical, then why have penalties for using nukes?).

And finally, the GRANDADDY of insults...My home is invaded, my towns are in ruins, my citizens lie dead in the streets, and the wise-men are begging for aid from anywhere, and what do I get?....I get messages from the AI players asking me if I'd mind giving them a tribute:eek:

If you read this far, thanks for listening to me vent. Like I said, I REALLY want to enjoy this game, but it seems that I have to play it way too linear for my tastes, because the AI makes absolutely zero sense.

Even as a builder, you need to have a military. I've noticed that when I have a strong military, even if I'm at constant war with someone, my global rep is better. People are more likely to be pleased if they have a reason to fear you--even if you're a builder.

The inverse is true too. If you have a weak military you're going to get picked on in the diplomacy screen and the map. In culture victories, this is especially true. You have to have a strong defense, because once you switch your slider to culture, you're eventually going to be hit with tanks.

So my advise, try again and build some units, even if you're peaceful.

Good Luck

No doubt about it--building military units is alot more important in Civ IV, even if you are playing a defensive/peaceful strategy. The AIs know if your military is weak, and won't hesitate to attack.

A few suggestions: Start or warlord rather than noble. Choose custom game and select your AI opponents (hint: not Isabella, Caesar, Alexander, or Montezuma!) It is quite possible to have peaceful victories in this game--but it won't happen unless your military is scary!

diplomatic, cultural and space race victory should be achieveable without any war and army... if you play a custom game and select your opponents carefully ;)

but the OP has a point. the civ4 ai tends to go for war more frequently than civ3's

Just a wild guess, but I'm guessing religious differences, and trading with their enemies is probably pissing them off. It's really, really difficult to be friends with everyone. You can do it for a while, but eventually, your "on the fence" attitude is going to piss people off. But the two things I mentioned seem to be big factors when trying to keep a peaceful civ.

I've got a game currently in the Industrial Era where I haven't been involved in any of the wars. I won't bore you with the details, but converting my entire continent to my religion seems to be the driving force behind this, as the new continent was not very happy with me when I found them. But they haven't decided they don't like me enough to attack yet.

I haven't given any tribute or gifts, I trade and have open borders with everyone but Ceasar (he doesn't like me, mainly due to religion). I kept closed borders until I was done expanding. I don't keep a huge standing army, although I do keep a decent amount of troops around. I think I'm middle of the pack military-wise. I haven't done anything odd to keep the peace, other than just converting people to my religion, and keeping the late religions from them.

It's really pretty boring though. I'm pretty much out of useful buildings to construct anyway, so that might be the thing that breaks the peace. I'm a warmonger at heart anyway. :hammer: I was just dumbfounded by the fact that I could keep the peace so easily for so long.

I think it's sad that religion can play such a huge part in Civ4. But I'm guessing that might be your biggest issue in trying to play a completely peaceful game. And the problem is that there are seven religions, and if you don't all start on the same landmass, the new civs you find will most likely not like you. And there's not a lot you can do about it, which is lame. But if you can control your neighbor's religions, it has a huge impact on peace.

To be a builder, you need to pick your allies carefully, build a decent military, and not trade with everybody, but with a select few, and try to have the same religion. It really helps. Spread your religion while building culture, and the AI is less likely to attack, due to the people back home opposing the war on their brethern.

Cjaek, you can walk softly in Civ 4, but you MUST make sure that you are carrying the "big stick." Or at least a fairly decent sized stick. :)

You cant just build buildings in this Civ. (Really on all the civs you got picked on if you were weak, but it seems that maybe its even more true in Civ 4.) You gotta have a decent sized army for defense, even if you never plan on harming a soul.

I think the programmers got this right. Its human (and AI :) ) nature to take stuff thats easy to take. Like the saying goes "locks only keep honest people honest." Its kind of the same way in Civ, you need an army to keep the "honest" civs honest.... If you dont have that then they will just walk all over you.

I am like you Cjaek, I enjoy the building aspect much more than the war part, but I understand the need for protection.

In my last game, I started on Noble on a standard continent map with 7 civs. Six of us were on 1 continent and the Egyptians were by themselves on another one. Right off the bat the French, who were right beside me, were being fairly agressive. They were blocking me in with their settlements and were "annoyed" with me.

I was completely hemmed in with only 4 cities, so I had to switch to war mode for a bit and stomp on France. They were in first place in the score and I was second to last. But finally after I started womping on them really good, it catapulted my score to first and theirs (eventually) to 0!

And also after that nobody else has messed with me, because I still have a nice stack or 2 left over from that war.

So yea, speak (or build) softly, but you gotta have that stick!

(hint: not Isabella, Caesar, Alexander, or Montezuma!)

:lol: :lol: :cry:

Current game:
I am on one side of a fair sized continent (large map)
Two closest neighbors: Rome and Spain
Otherside of Rome: Mali
Otherside of Spain: Greeks
Below Isabella and Alexander: Egypt
Japan has the closest border across the ocean to my north.

Talk about needing a standing army..........

Spain has been eliminated and Rome is in ruins and about to become part of medival history. Mali and I are buds, but he likes Egypt and Greece and both of them hate me.

Make that a LARGE standing army...

And oh yeah, I have seen one Ican caravel, but have no idea where HE came from

O rember to play with gandi and the like that are like you(build culture)
dont go against the ones that like to build agg units!!
(in civIII you could see what each leader likes to build alot)

Sometimes it isn't even about having an army that can defend against an all out attack so much as it is having an army period. If you like being defensive make sure to have a couple longbowmen in each city early, machingunners later, then mechanized infantry near the end of the game. It may take 4-5 turns away from buildings, but it's worth it in the long run.

It's possible to win without any wars (well, maybe not on Deity), but you need to have reasonable military

If there is anybody on the same continent with you, not being friendly and having same religion, you NEED military, because time when they will think that general existance of your civilization is bad for their cause will come sooner or later.
If you are alone on continent or with friendly civs having same religion you can get away with 8-12 elephants/cavalry/armour, some defensive units and a couple of siege. It will usually scare away invaders. If not, this force is capable of destroying most AI naval invasion forces.

Thanks for the replies, it's been a few hours now, and I've had a few beers and some hair replacement surgery...so I think I'm ready to have peacefull talks with Montyezuma again, :)

After reading a lot of what's on these boards, I realize in retrospect that I do a lot of "auto" managing that I probably shouldn't do. I set all my workers to auto, for instance.

eewallace hit the nail on the head though, since the people he listed were the problems for me. Montezuma was one map's tyrant, Caesar was another, the "other" Khan was the third, and Catherine was the last. I don't like shying away from the possibility of War, so I wouldn't set it speciufically to peacefull AI's, it's more the nature of why they seem to war with me for no good reason hehe. But, you are right, I tend to procrastinate when it comes to military....("ok, I'll just build that granary, and then switch to swordman...ooh, wait, I want that hanging gardens before anybody else, THEN I'll do swords...Oh wait, I can do a library and get faster research..yeah!, THEN I swear I'll start making swor....hey, How'd that army get in my borders???"

Anyhow, Is there a minimum number of cities you all go with? I try to get a lot of cities built early on, and perhaps they are a bit cramped, and not as efficient as keeping it down to 3-4.

I have that same procrastination problem.

I finally got around it by designating a scapegoat city. This is a city with high production whose only job is to build units. If I must have some building in that city (forge comes to mind), I make sure some other city is building units while it builds the building.

Otherwise, its citizens wallow in misery and discomfort, and I just keep building units. Even with 11 or 12 cities in my empire, just one city building units was enough to intimidate the AI to backing down. No one declared war on me the whole game.

Of course, I wasn't playing the most challenging of difficulties.

As the difficulty gets higher you need to be very careful about quick expansion (especially if one of your traits isn't organized) - CIV IV penalizes expasding too fast, so I find it's better to take a slower more steady approach rather than just pumping out settlers for the first 4000 years. That said, I find that around 1000ad if you don't have enough cities you run the risk of falling behind in tech. "Enough" depends on the map size. I normally end up settling around 10 cities on a normal sized map and capturing a few (in my non war-monger games).

You're right about auto'ing workers too. The AI in this game is good, but not as good as a human player - you're better off controlling them yourself. It took me a long time to figure out what improvements I needed where, but as with anything the more you play the more you'll learn. Good luck!