early war cripples everything - not fun...

Roxlimn said:

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.

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So your suggestion for a warmongering neighbor is to live in a constant state of war with them sometimes from the beginning of civilization all the way until future tech?

And you don't see this as a problem with how diplomacy works?

I prefer to play domination games, and have found that the changes to BNW really change that play style. I spend a lot more time just clicking Next Turn now and managing queues.

It really effects larger maps too, because you either have to take a lot of AI cities, or fill up the space with your own.. or fight off annoying barbs constantly.

I used to play on marathon/huge maps, with normal barbs (especially important for UAs that are barb related, or to help pay for early units.) .. and that approach just doesn't work well. My fix has just been to switch to smaller maps, but I'd like the balance adjusted in the Fall patch.

As a side note, Mods are great, but I'm still racking up achievements, so they aren't a good fix for me right now.

.. on an even more tangential note; I tweaked my back doing yard work last week, and while it's been a terrible experience overall, it was kind of nice to 'have' to sit and play Civ while my wife took out the garbage last night....

Chiatroll said:

So your suggestion for a warmongering neighbor is to live in a constant state of war with them sometimes from the beginning of civilization all the way until future tech?

And you don't see this as a problem with how diplomacy works?

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Not particularly. A constant state of low level war seems fairly normal in some areas of the world at some points of history - and given that both Civs are being controlled by God-Kings that carry over grudges from century to century, this seems consistent with that.

There are actually several ways to deal with a warmongering neighbor. I just didn't feel like enumerating them all. Conquering their cities without diplomatic manipulation with the other Civs is the worst way to deal with the situation, and yes, I think that that is an improvement from where it was before. Also better than every other Civ to date.

EDIT:

Consider this. In what other scenario would you think it's conceivable that a Privateer actually act as a pirate vessel and blockade enemy cities and take plunder from enemy trade routes? Constant low level war where the aggressor has no intention of conquering cities (but has no intention of stopping hostilities) is the only way that's going to happen. That kind of sounds like the entire deal with Carribean piracy in the late 17th century, wouldn't you agree?

Simply gift dominated capitals to another civ.

Since DV requires only your cap to stand, gift it away if it's tactically feasible.

s0nny80y said:

Simply gift dominated capitals to another civ.

Since DV requires only your cap to stand, gift it away if it's tactically feasible.

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This is a false statement in BNW. DV was changed that you must control ALL capitols to win.

It just seems a lot better to wait until the late game before you start to conquer now, both happiness wise and gold wise. It's perfectly viable to start your attack when you have GWB's and finish well in time, whereas early wars cripple you for limited gain.

The war monger penalty seems either broken or just very unituitive.

Example: I'm Morocco. 5 of 8 civs end up crammed in a very small space. Everyone hates each other. Assyria declares war on me. Would have kicked my butt but I'm in a very hard to reach region filled with mountains and hills. I drive him back after years of fighting off his invasions. All he has is a capital so I finally take that to keep him from coming back at me again.

Result: "war monger" diplomatic hit with every AI that lasts the entire game. Except that occasionally it disappears. Then comes back. Then goes away again. Maybe because those AIs were thinking of backstabbing me? It made no sense to me why Isabella and Theodora would forget I was a war monger, then hundreds of years later suddenly remember, even though I hadn't taken a single additional city or even so much as denounced anyone.

jjkrause84 said:

I was specifically referencing wartime strategies but, yes, agreed....tall and peaceful is the way to play.

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Wierd thing is, that's how I usually play, and I still don't like the change. I always prefer tall, and I usually try to be peacefull. Still, if I happen to go into a war and switch to warmongering early, I like to know that war will make me stronger. If I win it of course. But winning a war, capturing some nice cities, and beeing weaker than before? I don't like that.

And as I say, I usually play tall and peacefull, so I'm not complaining because my strategy got nerfed.

Roxlimn said:

EDIT:

Consider this. In what other scenario would you think it's conceivable that a Privateer actually act as a pirate vessel and blockade enemy cities and take plunder from enemy trade routes? Constant low level war where the aggressor has no intention of conquering cities (but has no intention of stopping hostilities) is the only way that's going to happen. That kind of sounds like the entire deal with Carribean piracy in the late 17th century, wouldn't you agree?

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That just makes me miss the old cheese no nation privateer spam on civ 4.

Sonereal said:

Do we live on the same planet or are you writing this from some demented althist with a revisionist approach to historic attitudes?

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I am writing as a professional military historian. Not an 'althist' (whatever that is).

Sonereal said:

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.

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Britain, 1759.

Explain.

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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"The test of time" being actually three tests.

1. Can you survive the barbarians?
2. Can you not get squashed by your neighbors?
3. Can you win before them?

Military does play a huge role in these.

I'm playing a game as Assyria, Standard, Huge, King, Continents. Early warmongering has made me the dominant player in the game easily, and my science is not too shabby (granted, that might be due to my UA, but I find that my own science generation is better than my earlier game as Venice). It's important to annex your conquests; don't leave them as puppets, because the science penalty of 25% is just wayyy too high; just rush-buy courthouses with the help of Commerce. Culture generation also takes a 25% hit when they're puppets, and although annexing increases social policy cost, raw culture helps provide protection against tourism anyway. Also, once the city is developed enough, and with the great works you inevitably capture from conquest, the removal of those penalties is more than worth the minor increase in SP cost.

The key to successfully early warmongering is to keep the cities you conquer selectively; don't be afraid to raze! Also manage the population of your original cities carefully. Trade with players you aren't at war with, especially those you've already thrashed so utterly they are no longer a threat. England and the Netherlands are my biggest trade partners despite me destroying/razing half their empires; bad relations are no obstacle to trade, remember that. Gold is also not much of an issue if you can build up your city connections.

As for Happiness, that will sort itself out when you capture cities that are chock-full of wonders like the Forbidden City. SPs help a lot, and religious buildings help too. The only problem is managing the unhappiness before you get those wonders/SPs, and that can easily be done using "avoid growth" in city management; that option is a life-saver.

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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1upt is not a bad decision. They just need to improve the AI. Hex is far more interesting than square.

Roxlimn said:

Consider this. In what other scenario would you think it's conceivable that a Privateer actually act as a pirate vessel and blockade enemy cities and take plunder from enemy trade routes? Constant low level war where the aggressor has no intention of conquering cities (but has no intention of stopping hostilities) is the only way that's going to happen. That kind of sounds like the entire deal with Carribean piracy in the late 17th century, wouldn't you agree?

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Thank you for this thread. You guys have given me a wonderful new outlook on how to conduct War in this game. Before in my mind it was always War = City Conquest but you are right, that is not necessarily how it needs to go.

The devs did need to stop the grind/steamroll of conquering city after city. You can still weaken your enemies without annihilating them. In some ways you could say that War has become a more important aspect for non-militaristic civs.

kaltorak said:

Just after reading this post, I saw a picture on 9gag and I thought it totally belongs here

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That was my strategy in Civ4 using slavery. If people are unhappy I work them to death and the survivors are no longer unset about overcrowding.

SicklyAlbatross said:

I am curious how the civilians of an empire react to news of the army's conquests. When the legions conquered new territory were the citizens of Rome happy at the news? Or were they refusing to work and planing open rebellion when they heard?

I'd imagine all they cared about was the influx of new luxuries, I doubt they gave a damn how many cities were annexed as long as they got their spices and precious metals. But rarely in Civ' is the happiness cost of conquering a rival civ' balanced by the luxuries you'd gain, in my opinion there simply needs to be more types of luxuries.

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The part I find even more interesting is in a game I had recently I had 3 cities early. My happiness was -1 or 0. A war broke out. The enemy took one of my cities, and my happiness went up. In what world does happiness go up when your enemy conquers a city? lol And the enemy started the war. You'd think people would be angry when our city was conquered and happy when the enemy's city was conquered.

Chiatroll said:

That just makes me miss the old cheese no nation privateer spam on civ 4.

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That was good for its time, but it was kind of a misrepresentation. It's not like the Spanish crown didn't know which nation was sponsoring the attacks on its galleons. This was necessary because in Civ IV, there was no incentive to avoiding conquest or city takes - more was always better so long as you could afford the initial gold hit. Eventually the city would pay off.

The current milieu feels more true to the situation.

kaltorak:

Wierd thing is, that's how I usually play, and I still don't like the change. I always prefer tall, and I usually try to be peacefull. Still, if I happen to go into a war and switch to warmongering early, I like to know that war will make me stronger. If I win it of course. But winning a war, capturing some nice cities, and beeing weaker than before? I don't like that.

And as I say, I usually play tall and peacefull, so I'm not complaining because my strategy got nerfed.

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War didn't always make the winner stronger historically, either. It's a better balance to have war be both a military and administrative exercise. Having more cities absolutely will make you stronger - if you plan for it and manage your conquests well. If you botch it, you'll get weaker than before, leaving you open to counter-invasions.

That's more interesting than a runaway steamroll, either by the AI or by the player.

And yes, runaway steamrolling was the rule in Civ V (and in every Civ game before) before BNW.

My problem with the new warmonger diplo factors is that you can lose just because they forward settle in your face. A game loss I had last weekend, Greece surrounded me with cities. 5 cities, 4 of them in my face, fully surrounding my capital. I was disheartened in knowing that even if I won the campaign & removed the offending forward settled cities & resettled that everyone was gonna think I'm a warmonger & hate me with the standard severe and constant diplo & trading problems from there on out. The permanent raze culture & golden age costs don't help.

The correct strategy now is to speed settle in everyone's face, even if they take the city or you sell it to them, so you can recapture it later without the steeply negative diplo ramifications. Then settle behind that, box off a backyard, seal it air tight and never let anyone in there, settler blocking the whole way. Because a single settler drop anywhere near you is a permanent diplomatic problem. Especially if you are looking to ICS - you need luxury trades.

That's always been the correct strategy. You can go all the way back to Civ 3 discussions talking about forward settling and such.

It's somewhat refreshing that in Civ V, there is something of a balance between forward settling and "restrained" settling. Of course, starting with Alex in the face is almost always going to end in war - it's just a question of when and how much land you can claim before the fires start burning.