How do I attack a civ, without being hated for the rest of the game?

I know I'm not supposed to be taking cities, but what is the point of attacking then if everyone becomes passive/aggressive towards me from that point forward? I do steal workers early, along with a settler if possible, but I'm asking for taking a civs capital while still having trading partners. A lot of my happiness actually comes from trading lux for lux with other civs.

denouncing a civ they don't like helps a ton if they hate that civ they won't mind too much as long as you don't wipe them out.

Yep. You have to get on board with the dogpile. Extra super bonus points if you can create the dogpile. Bribe your enemy to attack your friend.

Wait for another civ to invite you to attack the civ you want to attack. You have to be really patient, but it could eventually happen.

Hmm.. attack early. Attack before you meet all the other Civs. Destroy his units and get the city in a peace treaty. If it's a juicy capital, it's mostly worth to have a red modifier. Also make sure the remaining Civs are not a bunch of whimps who will cry immediately after some small-scale war.

And maybe most important: only enter the warpath when you are confident that you can go all the way.

Ancient/Classical war induced warmonger hate usually mellows out pretty fast as long as you don't take any cities. But even then if it's early enough, you're more likely to get away with it (At least I was punching England in the face, and we all know Lizzy's attitude problems). If said civ has taken city states, liberating them helps a ton for fixing that warmonger hate against you.

Never liberate Venice.

Just don't.

But as others said, if you're planning on domination victory, make sure you can go all the way through. Raze cities you don't intend to keep at all; that way you can keep the science cost increase at a minimum.

EDIT: When I play Sweden, it almost feels like a religious prophet spamming neighbour is a boon to me. Thanks, Ethiopia, I'll take those Prophets and keep them. I will then give said prophets to city states and gain a nice 90 influence boost for free.

Bought city states can't be liberated.

If you're worried about that you're not even ready as a civilization to start going to war.

But, if you do ... you can always wait until the AI declares war on someone else first (or you get them to do it) and then liberate the cities later to help reduce your war-monger penalties.

It also depends who is on the map... some Civs HATE war .. some don't care much for it and some don't really care as long as you remain strong and don't go after them.

At the beginning you can do the ol' ''pay to war - liberation'' thing, it works for almost all the civs except for India, Sweden, and Ethiopia, I think.

But I agree in part with orasis, you can't expect to be a warmonger and keep depending on the good will of the other civsv at the same time, you can handle the diplomatic situation after warring one civ or even 3 civs if you plan carefully how to justify your wars, but eventually it gets to the point when you have plenty of resorces from your conquests and you have to raise the iron curtain because the diplomatic situation is just unmanageable.

Do negative relation penalty's also apply when the Ai declares war on you and you anihilate them?

There are deffiantly ways to get an ai to declare war on you, depending also on the specific ai. Settling near them and/or appearing weak can do that. i wondered if, in relation to "appearing weak", if someone had ever tried out some unit queue strategy where they had multiple units and defensive structure's sitting in queue's at 1 turn before completion, you know putting the hammers into it but leaving them unfinisched to appear weak, and when war gets declared you flash build that stuff , defeat the invading army and turn the war on them

I know whenever i get guys like Shaka nearby that i can make him declare war on me by either settling near him or appearing weak, or for that matter for appearing to sizable.
Should one really ever make peace with an AI that has declared war on you if they cannot put up a threat anyway? You might have a situation where you'd think you'd need more time for an offensive on youre own and that peace could be good too, but maybe because of the opportunity in terms of relations one should really take the opportunity to kill an AI if he was so foolish to declare war on you withought being able to beat you?

I think the easiest way to be a warmonger while looking good to the AIs, is to bribe the warmongering AIs to fight everyone, then you fight him and destroy him. Even if you take 3 or 4 cities and leave him or her with just one.. And they denounce you perpetually. Odds are, other AIs will not mind his denouncements, nor mind your attacks on that one warmonger.
They may even like you for going to war with a common foe.

Or start the war early enough and the other civs tend to forgive you by mid-late game.

Every city you take is an escalation of hate a civ will have towards you. Depending on the civ there is always a point of no return in which no civ will treat you like a legitimate partner at all. And if you have attacked most the civs in the game they will definitely not like you if you've taken multiple cities by force.

Think of real world parallels.

It would have taken hundreds of years for the European powers to treat Mongolia as a legitimate state devoid of threat and not seen as reprehensible. Same with the chinese. They would NEVER respect a Mongolian state had it survived. The Gauls, the Germans, the Celts would never just accept in a theoretical sense, the Roman Empire.

The Germans in 1942 would never again have been treated with the level of legitmacy they had in 1936. The Chinese still hold a grudge against Japan. The North and south Koreans are still at war. The French empire under Napoleon probably could never really become an honest actor in European society, even if he had stopped at his height.

Even today Russia takes ONE tiny city, in the scope of Civ, and he gets chain denouncements.

Iraq under Sadam conquers a civ and gets war declared on him

ISIS essentially "razes" a few cities and rightfully speaking the whole world declares war


So if you think about your civ in that context, think about what would be acceptable in the real world. There is always a point in which the world will refuse to interact with you. It just makes sense.

Knowing that, you have to make sure the original cities you found, have to have a diverse scope of resources to get happiness from. Build Happiness wonders. Declare war against unrespected Civs who might be weak and at war with others. Just aim at there capital and minimize the cities you take. Avoid conquering city states because eventually they'll be your only trading partners and source of resources.

If you conquer a civs capital, and wipe out their military units and pillage tiles. You basically cripple them for the rest of the game. You don't need to wipe them out.

At a certain point you WILL be hated. And it makes sense other non warmongers will want to survive. Make sure you're ready to handle that with plenty of resources under your empire.

If you are invited to join a campaign against another Civ, is there fewer negative repercussions from taking one of their cities?

Similarly, if you take out a CS it seems to be the fastest way to get a "kick-me-hard" sign on your back. How about if a CS asks you to take out another CS, is there less negative consequences to your trading reputation?

Thanks in advance.

lockandload said:

If you are invited to join a campaign against another Civ, is there fewer negative repercussions from taking one of their cities?

Similarly, if you take out a CS it seems to be the fastest way to get a "kick-me-hard" sign on your back. How about if a CS asks you to take out another CS, is there less negative consequences to your trading reputation?

Thanks in advance.

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1) You get 50% of the warmonger penalty from the Civ who is also in the co-op war with you.

2) Nope.

I cannot really make sense of OP, and I am surprised that more people are not pushing back on the premise that one is not supposed to be taking cities?

fallout3dc said:

I know I'm not supposed to be taking cities, but what is the point of attacking then if everyone becomes passive/aggressive towards me from that point forward? ... I'm asking for taking a civs capital while still having trading partners. A lot of my happiness actually comes from trading lux for lux with other civs.

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Post-Halloween patch, I am not experiencing any long-lasting hate from early city conquests, even when I eliminate an AI. (I am poor at Deity warmongering, but trying harder.) How many caps are you talking about? Are you killing CS? I too need trade partners.

lockandload said:

How about if a CS asks you to take out another CS...

Click to expand...

That does not happen. CS ask you to bully, not kill, other CS.

TheDuckOfFlanders said:

Do negative relation penalty's also apply when the Ai declares war on you and you anihilate them?

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Yes. I imagine that is intentional behavior so you don't bait the AI into "letting them attack you" while getting no repercussions.

Make sure you dont destroy other civilizations. Other AIs will hate you if you destroy others so if you want to dominate, only take their capitals.

Don't pick on people everyone likes, don't raze cities, don't backstab

Is there a general rule of thumb, how many cities you can take out without everyone going crazy? Playing Genghis on a Pangea map at the moment and to use the strength of the Mongols, I simply have do some wars. But after taking two of Etiopias cities and one Brazilian, half of the world is already starting denouncing me. There are no other wars, everything is peaceful...

stormtrooper412 said:

Don't pick on people everyone likes, don't raze cities, don't backstab

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Right..