early war cripples everything - not fun...

Early war I think is very viable with BNW, but it does require much more planning and decision making than with Vanilla or G&K.

@OP - For your situation, avoidance of the problem in your current game is out of the question... since the cities have already been captured. Getting out of the situation is going to take some time, but there are some things you can do in the short term to try and mitigate the issue.

* Trade away extra luxuries. Since your happiness is so low, your first priority should be to trade for other luxuries that you don't have. Failing that, trade for gold per turn. It's robbery, but even 1gpt right now will help but you should be able to get at least 3 even from a civ that doesn't like you. I've not gotten more than 5.

* Remove unneeded roads around the cities you have just captured. If the cities are more than 5 tiles away from your empire then the amount of money you're making on connected routes is probably not even paying the maintenance cost of the roads right now.

* Delete extra units. If you're not going back to war any time soon, delete units not absolutely necessary for defense (starting with those that don't have any promotions yet). Another often overlooked place to cut back on unit maintenance is extra workers; at least until your economy has recovered a bit... but it's a good idea to use extra workers to remove excess roads before you delete them. Also be sure that you only delete units within your borders so that you get some cash from them.

* Possibly consider selling or trading away one or more of the cities you just got to another AI. A city that doesn't have a new luxury probably isn't worth keeping.


For future games, simply being aware now of the consequences that war can bring you will already help alot. Before you capture a city make sure it has something of use to you, make sure that your empire can support the weight of adding another city too. Capture fewer enemy cities.

Catalytic said:

The mechanisms of the game don't allow for early war to be feasible when combined with your own expansion.

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This statement is a fantastic summary.
Early war is quite viable.
Expansion is quite viable.
The combination of the two.... MUCH more complicated.

SicklyAlbatross said:

I am curious how the civilians of an empire react to news of the army's conquests.

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News of the conquests, or news that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of (often draftees) died during that conquest and wouldn't be coming home?

Ramble said:

News of the conquests, or news that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of (often draftees) died during that conquest and wouldn't be coming home?

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People at home also wouldn't have to deal with rising food prices to sustain military operations. Farmers wouldn't need to deal with zealous tax collectors demanding more and more food, and more and more able-bodied sons, to fuel the war either.

If everyone was so miserable why did Augustus have such a hard time convincing Rome that it can be prosperous without constant expansion? Apparently he had to resort to propaganda and lavish displays, like the Ara Pracis.

While the game lacks an explicit travel mechanic, it may help to imagine that there is one. People aren't born and then dead in one city. They move around, including the dirty foreigners, who may then spread propaganda about the war and occupation. People may be angry about resources going to foreign lands. Don't forget that early on you may be attempting to run an empire without writing, proper bureaucrats, or even a functioning trade network. There are probably swarms of refugees from the conquered cities, speaking their stupid foreign languages, worshiping the wrong god, and generally being dirty. It's no wonder conquered cities add so much unhappiness. As for why razing cities increases unhappiness, my theory is that all the current and former residents are herded inside before the burning, a wise choice in light of the constant formation of partisan resistance units in the alternate universe of IV.

Hi all, I'm new here(literally first post) but I was having the same problem the OP had in my first couple of games. I love playing early war civs, like the huns and the aztecs, and I have only played in the BNW environment so I don't know how it used to be. But once I switched my tactics from using war to conquer and instead using war to cripple, I actually had to move up in difficulty because it was becoming too easy to completely shut a civ out of the game from early pillaging and rushing their brand new city. I usually build one tall city focusing on food until I can have the population to support the economic drains of having an army built to siege and I spend most of my early game hunting barbarians to build free culture from the honor tree. Once I'm comfortable with my population and economy, the rival civs on my continent have usually settled somewhere near me, to which I respond by taking and razing, following by some quick pillaging in their capital to make sure they stay down. I am usually pretty far behind in science in comparison to the unmet continent, but it is very easy to catch up because there is no competition on my continent and by the time anyone gets to my continent the crippled civs near me, depend on me to stay even remotely in the game so the diplomacy hit isn't too massive and I feel like city states often don't remember things for more than 30 or so turns.

I will note, that one of my fist games, I rushed a conquest across a pangea style map, killing of 1/2 of my competition in by the medieval era, but then got absolutely crushed once the other half of the people made treaties with each other and crammed superior tech'ed units down my throat. This was on prince difficulty a month or so ago.

I definitely agree with a few of you saying how if early war was any less risky than it is now, it would be way to overpowered to not abuse. Maybe when defending city states, you do just that, defend them by just crushing enemy units attempting to siege. If you're not planning to be militaristic, then there is no reason to respond to conquest with your own conquest, just simply back them off. I don't know how this affects diplomacy though, but from my understanding you only lose relations with other city-states and other civs when they feel threatened by you. But defending a city you said you defend doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Hope this was helpful in some way or another.

jjkrause84 said:

You know Civ's war system is broken when 'genocidal maniac' is the optimal strategy (with the exception of cities that happen to have new luxuries or wonders). The fact is that Civ 5 put all its eggs in the 'happiness' basket. This one decision had many far-reaching consequences that, along with 1upt, completely shape the game (and for the worse, in my opinion).

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I will hear no complaints about 1upt. This is a change that needed to happen ages ago but was held up by those who were stuck in their ways and never could enjoy real, tactical combat.

Hi, I've been trying to learn the early war game for a bit now (as well as trying to learn to survive emperor better), and there are definitely viable ways to do it.

In my current game I randomly got attila, and just teched straight for military units after pottery. Made 2 battering rams and 3 horse archers, they let me take down my nearest neighbour (Santa) very comfortably. Stole both of his cities and eliminated him.

Next up, Polynesia started denouncing me so I decided I should take him out as well. I got a couple of more horse archers to make sure I could, and to make sure barbarians wouldn't mess up my cities while I warred. Also took a small break to get my happiness up to reasonable levels. I only took his capital, burned down two other cities (would've been majorly crippling for me to keep them), and then stopped all military stuff and focused on catch-up.

I think I'm rather lucky on the current map. It's a big pangaea, with a chokepoint in the middle where Dido lives (She tolerates warmongers!). I sold her some of my extra luxuries since I had a ton by now, and even gave some for free to make sure she'd let me build up my tech and economy in peace. I now have a huge area of land to expand to, own two capitals, and it feels like I'm not very far behind of the other civs. I haven't even discovered all of them yet as Dido is blocking the way. I don't really care to, either, before I'm sure my warmongering is mostly forgotten.

For sure, if you end up taking new cities early on before ideologies, whether it's planned or not, you'll almost certainly have to burn some down. The earlier the better, if you'll be moving on to a capital next you best keep in mind you can't burn that one. If you don't want to burn them, and haven't got a lot of excess happiness, just sue for peace and hope they'll give you something nice instead of capturing anything.

Civs with ancient/classical military units are in a very weird place right now. A lot of these civs conquered huge amounts of territory and spread their civilization to those people, for better or for worse. Where as in CiV you slaughter 90% of the population, burn their culture to the ground and settle your own people there.

Real world warmongerers were hardly good people and in most cases left the world in a worse state than they found it, but in CiV you take that dickery to a whole new level. "What do you mean you have no cotton?! Burn them all!"

Agree if you shoot for war early it's pretty hard not to fall behind other civs. It seems like military units are not scored as high as other parts of the game.

Randall_Flagg said:

*Can you stand the test of time* That has always been the calling card of the Civilization series.

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If you believe that the game should make a connection to real history, all civilizations and nations had to fight to expand, gain what was lost or simple survive. There has to be a goal to "standing the test of time" and that is to win, even if it means to out-point your opponents till the end. There are several ways to win (and lose) and the goal of your and your opponents is to use whatever means at your disposal such an end. The most common means since Civ1 has to been to use the plethora of military units, not necessarily to dominate, but to effectively slow down or hurt your opponents. That's why there are so many of them in every era. By doing so, you or your opponents can get a tech lead or beat someone to a wonder or gain more gold for a variety of purposes - all to be able to survive and stand the test of time to win.

Catalytic said:

4) You're getting an essentially permanent and always severe diplo penalty the moment you take a city. They'll forgive you trashing their army. They chain denounce you the moment you actually take a city, even if you raze it, liberate it, or give it away.

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Thats not true. On king level I started a war with spain - conquered them and only two civs gave me the war monger penalty - one is tolerant, the other isnt. The byzantines my friends the whole game don't even register it. Also Assyria which backstabbed me and fought two wars is now surprisingly friendly with me after we had a big fight over nineveh (changed hands probably 6 times) until I razed it.
I think it depends on the game. the personalities very a bit on leaders.

jjkrause84 said:

You know Civ's war system is broken when 'genocidal maniac' is the optimal strategy (with the exception of cities that happen to have new luxuries or wonders). The fact is that Civ 5 put all its eggs in the 'happiness' basket. This one decision had many far-reaching consequences that, along with 1upt, completely shape the game (and for the worse, in my opinion).

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Change happiness to 'stability'. Now everything starts making sense. The larger the empire, the less stable it is. The larger the population, harder it is to keep it under check. Historically Genghis Khan committed HUGE massacres but his empire was pretty stable despite being huge (psychological warfare) ...

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Only annoying part is when other civs declare war on you and then you fight back taking their city and then everyone hates you.

Tibbz said:

Only annoying part is when other civs declare war on you and then you fight back taking their city and then everyone hates you.

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That's the worst way to fight a defensive war. Destroy their army and demand a city in the peace deal, no warmonger penalty and get a fully socked city to boot.

SicklyAlbatross said:

That's the worst way to fight a defensive war. Destroy their army and demand a city in the peace deal, no warmonger penalty and get a fully socked city to boot.

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Then the attack again the second the peace treaty ends and again and again until the end of history.

If you have money you can pay someone else to war with the civ to keep them off you. Or you can weaken their position with an offensive. Those are generally the only way to get them off your back so you can move civilians.

Taking enemy cities is not "fighting back." That's a counter-invasion. Provided that you kill an enemy Civ's army, you won't generally have to deal with any more invasions, and they're generally keen on peace afterwards (unless they totally hate you for other reasons). If you pillage their luxury and strategic resources and lay siege (but not take) their cities, you could even snag quite a few cities in the peace deal, all without incurring warmonger penalties.

In fact, given that you can now directly counter warmonger penalties two ways, I would now say that if you're the world villain for going on conquering sprees, it's largely because you failed to play the diplomacy game right. It is totally possible to have half the world under your autocratic thumb and still be besties with Ghandhi (no warmonger penalty whatsoever).

Roxlimn said:

Taking enemy cities is not "fighting back." That's a counter-invasion. Provided that you kill an enemy Civ's army, you won't generally have to deal with any more invasions, and they're generally keen on peace afterwards (unless they totally hate you for other reasons). If you pillage their luxury and strategic resources and lay siege (but not take) their cities, you could even snag quite a few cities in the peace deal, all without incurring warmonger penalties.

In fact, given that you can now directly counter warmonger penalties two ways, I would now say that if you're the world villain for going on conquering sprees, it's largely because you failed to play the diplomacy game right. It is totally possible to have half the world under your autocratic thumb and still be besties with Ghandhi (no warmonger penalty whatsoever).

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In my experience the second they ask for peace they start building up an army again and when they treaty ends attack again and it's pretty much non-stop.

I had a spawn next to the incas in my current game and they wars on me five times until mid game when I paid other people to attack them for me distracting them.

a few games before that I was on an island with china who constantly would war lose an army go into peace and then war me again all the way until the 1800's on marathon. This was at least a dozen wars.

When does this AI back off when you defend from the invasion specifically? I don't see this happen ever.

Huh? Why would you accept peace? Never accept peace. An AI that trickles its units towards you is providing an additional resource - XP. Just let it trickle the units and harvest the XP. In addition, you can generally also acquire workers via steal, and get gold on the side via pillaging. None of this activity generates warmonger status.

Even more fun - you can use your horse units and Privateers to raid their trade routes. Those yield nice rewards and is kind of fun.

Chiatroll said:

When does this AI back off when you defend from the invasion specifically? I don't see this happen ever.

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I often run into a situation where I get attacked and wipe out the invasion. After a few turns to heal up I launch a counter-attack. At the outset my enemy often seems to have no army. Then I get near a city and a dozen units suddenly appear. It reminds me of bees if you disturb the nest; they just appear simultaneously from everywhere.

Until I actually go out to them, they often seem as if they've backed off. Looking at demographics they don't seem to have been disarmed. The 'peace offers' they give are as absurd as ever. So overall it looks to me like they recognize that the attack failed and are waiting for the counter-attack to come.

This could just be the result of production timing; maybe I get there just in time for their next wave to be produced.