What's a Poor Warmonger to Do?

Hi,
I've been a long term player of Civ off and on as well as Civ V through G&K. What I read about BNW suggests that a warmonger like me might be doomed to a bad experience. I confess I like playing Civ in large part like a wargamer. I want to conquer the world I like the other parts of civ but the wargaming is my favorite part.
Sooo.. .my question is, given what I read about AI's jumping on anyone who takes a city, is it pointless to play BNW under the latest patch given my predilections?
If so any idea if this is likely to change in the next patch?
Thanks!

If you keep a strong army during your conquests the worst you'll suffer is bad trade agreements. Those can be overcome by demanding gold in peace treaties or bullying CSs. Try to keep some CS allies so when you get to the later part of the game the other civs can't embargo you or ban your resources or worst of all pass the standing army tax. When you go to war try to get other civs to join your side. The warmonger penalty is reduced when fighting a common enemy and you get a great positive modifier for that too. I've had warmongering games where I've been able to capture 4 or 5 capitals plus some other cities while still keeping allies and that's post-BNW. Try to find a couple good friends early on and you'll do fine.

I think a lot of the complaints are from people who's feelings are hurt when an AI who used to be their friend denounces them. If you're a warmonger you just expect to be denounced. If you're going for a domination victory you're not keeping any friends in the end anyway. As long as you don't care how a robot feels about you, you can ignore the complaints.

As far as I'm concerned the fall patch really fixed the warmonger mechanism at least for my playstyle. It used to work out that your allies would hate you for taking cities just as much as your enemies but now it's possible to get and keep solid allies. Washington, Askia, Bluetooth, Sejong, Suleiman and Nobunaga have all made really good allies for me in the past. They tolerate warmongering alright and aren't really backstabby. Atilla, Montezuma, Shaka, Dido, Elizabeth, Catherine and Napolean have all been pretty duplicitous with me in the past and pretend to be your buddy right up until their armies invade but can make decent trade partners and sometimes allies for warmongers.

It seems a little counterintuitive, but the main thing that makes other civs' warmonger-hatred toward you more bearable is...more war. Bad diplo will make them offer worse trades to you, but there's essentially nothing they'd be trading you that you can't take by force. That's always been my solution when I'm in deep diplo.

You'll have trouble keeping your trade routes safe if you're always at war, but conquest and internal routes can help that.

Thank you for the most interesting replies! You have encouraged me greatly. May also try with the Faerum mod was just hearing about.
Now my concern is that I may hurt the robots feelings though by trying to off them all ;-)
Actually overall sounds really good in that can develop appropriate allies. I also like hearing their are some counters to me like the standing army tax.
I also have the impression it will be fun to play with idealogies other than 'most economically strong democracy' now.

Polisurgist said:

It seems a little counterintuitive, but the main thing that makes other civs' warmonger-hatred toward you more bearable is...more war. Bad diplo will make them offer worse trades to you, but there's essentially nothing they'd be trading you that you can't take by force. That's always been my solution when I'm in deep diplo.

You'll have trouble keeping your trade routes safe if you're always at war, but conquest and internal routes can help that.

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It really sucks though when you not only can't get luxuries from other civs, but they begin voting to ban luxuries you own on top of that.

One thing that can help you out a lot diplomatically is not ever wiping out a civ. You get a massive warmonger penalty for doing that. Let them live with one crappy city, and pillage every square of land so they'll never become a threat again.

Spoken like a true -- albiet thoughtful -- warmonger ;-)

As someone who illogically cares about what a robot thinks of me, I fail at warmongering.

Still remember a time when I took one of Gandhi's cities to claim a Natural Wonder for Spain...and ended up protecting him and giving him units to fight off another AI invading him.

Relations were icy until I ended up liberating him, being too distracted with exploring the world to properly protect him.

Early warmongering will carry heavy penalties if you take cities by force (however you can work around it getting cities on peace deals). Once you are in the lare renaissance/industrial, there usually quite a lot of cities and you can get war partners to get your warmonger dose (those war partners will get much less warmonger hate over you).

Also you get much less penalties the more cities remain on the victim. Taking last city or a CS will carry heave warmonger penalties even late game.

Taking all this into acount is possible yo play war, If you want to do it like on G&K you have to go with mods.

I'm nice to computers, because I know it's only a matter of time before the internet becomes self-aware...

I highly recommend taking Commerce if you want to indulge in some heavy warmongering. That policy tree is designed to assist you in managing your economy independent of other civs. With Mercantilism and Protectionism you'll be able to keep your people happy and wealthy even as the rest of the world curses your name.

In addition, the new Mercenary Army policy is absolute brutal for Medieval war and synergizes beautifully with the Songhai. Have fun with your zerg army that pays for itself through pillaging and conquest.

Arachnofiend said:

In addition, the new Mercenary Army policy is absolute brutal for Medieval war and synergizes beautifully with the Songhai. Have fun with your zerg army that pays for itself through pillaging and conquest.

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Ugh, do I have to?

This policy would have a LOT more appeal for me if the units upgraded like Impi do, to the Infantry line. Instead, they're on what I see as the weakest of all upgrade paths.

No, you don't have to obviously. I would highly recommend it though. The mercs are built about as well as I can possibly hope for something with a short shelf life; it's extremely powerful in its era and you can get a lot of them quickly. If you upgrade a couple of the highly promoted ones to Lancers they're basically Sipahis.

GoStu said:

This policy would have a LOT more appeal for me if the units upgraded like Impi do, to the Infantry line. Instead, they're on what I see as the weakest of all upgrade paths.

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Normally I would agree with you on this. But considering the Landsknechts' special abilities, I'm really glad they upgrade to Lancers rather than Rifleman. You can pillage more tiles with the 4 movement that Lancers get, and the higher movement rate also helps you run in capture cities with them.

there is a mod that reduces or removes the warmonger penalty play the game with it and you will see the game is more balanced

firaxis doesn't see it and doesn't spend time to fix their horrible change in the fall patch to increase the warmonger penalty so it is to high.

Thanks everyone

I am as you, love to war especially early - classical era with Rome, Iroqouis, Babylon, Assyria.

As far as I can tell it's now very hard to do these early wars due to lack of money and everyone will go after you because of the warmonger penalty, just for wiping out 2-3 city states and a neighbour.

So it's usually more profitable to build up and establish friends (to send Trade routes to -> have money to maintain an army) and than carefully eliminate non friend civs. But that wont happen in the ancient or classical so Legions, Ballistas, Mohawks, Siege Towers, Bowmen are kind of wasted. You can still have a lot of fun with Mongolias Keshiks, but yeah warmongering in BNW right from the start is really very hard to do, so no fun for warmonger like me.

So that's my impression, but you can play the game with TR peacefully (differently) and still have fun.

For an example of brutal warmonger game in BNW watch the MadDjinn's LP Venice, there he slowly develops his empire and carefully takes one civ at a time out. Probably that's how it should be done in BNW, but he started the wars in late medieval, so no early war. And he used a lot of bombers, so yeah in BNW the war is more late era oriented.

Santa Maria said:

I am as you, love to war especially early - classical era with Rome, Iroqouis, Babylon, Assyria.

As far as I can tell it's now very hard to do these early wars due to lack of money and everyone will go after you because of the warmonger penalty, just for wiping out 2-3 city states and a neighbour.

So it's usually more profitable to build up and establish friends (to send Trade routes to -> have money to maintain an army) and than carefully eliminate non friend civs. But that wont happen in the ancient or classical so Legions, Ballistas, Mohawks, Siege Towers, Bowmen are kind of wasted. You can still have a lot of fun with Mongolias Keshiks, but yeah warmongering in BNW right from the start is really very hard to do, so no fun for warmonger like me.

So that's my impression, but you can play the game with TR peacefully (differently) and still have fun.

For an example of brutal warmonger game in BNW watch the MadDjinn's LP Venice, there he slowly develops his empire and carefully takes one civ at a time out. Probably that's how it should be done in BNW, but he started the wars in late medieval, so no early war. And he used a lot of bombers, so yeah in BNW the war is more late era oriented.

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Best way to achieve domination victory is to

start 1 classical , medieval war to expand you're territory you could olso wait until you got cannons if the enemy has to high defence. After that you build up you're empire and wait to war unitl the industrial age.

either artillery or bombers and go take over the world there are a few prepration you have to do:

Everyone will hate you for warmongering so make sure you have enough city state allies and at least one ally a other warmonger so you can use it to stop embargo's against you or banging luxuries.

Its important to have huge happiness so you can actualy take enough cities
Pick cities accordingly sometings its usefull to built a navy even in pangea's to strike coastal capitals (remember you only need the capital.

Its usefull to create multiple armies so you can atack multiple people and capture the capital fasters.



the key is that you prepare you're final assaults in the industrial . Never start a second war in the renaissance or earlier it causes diplomatic tensions and you need breathing space to built up for final assault.

Ninakoru said:

Early warmongering will carry heavy penalties if you take cities by force (however you can work around it getting cities on peace deals). Once you are in the lare renaissance/industrial, there usually quite a lot of cities and you can get war partners to get your warmonger dose (those war partners will get much less warmonger hate over you).

Also you get much less penalties the more cities remain on the victim. Taking last city or a CS will carry heave warmonger penalties even late game.

Taking all this into acount is possible yo play war, If you want to do it like on G&K you have to go with mods.

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Your warmonger penalty reduction mod is one of the most popular Workshop items for Civ V right now. Clearly, there's a huge demand to have Firaxis' atrocious model replaced by something more sane. We still need Firaxis to roll back the absurd changes from the Fall Patch (including the obscure 'warmonger level flavor texts' in diplomacy) and have the warmongering model changes properly but until that happens your mod is the new gold standard - thank you!

[shameless plug for Ninakoru's mod ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=192953436&searchtext= ) ends here]

More thoughtful posts. Yes it would be a shame to have not classical era fights. I think they might have had a few historically ;-) Also thanks for mod pointer.

If you play on any difficulty up to King, you can more or less ignore the warmonger penalty and just carry on. You lose good trading partners, but if your careful you can stay happy and you get plenty of gold from taking commerce and landshnedkt (sp?).

On higher difficulty trying to win by domination starting with early CB rush is dicey.

The folks who seem to think the whole thing is wonderful are generally not warmongers near as I can tell - just a bunch folks playing at warmongering that consider getting a crappy expo in a peace deal a good exchange for spending all that gold and hammers on a military.