Avoiding the "warmongering menace to the world label"

nokmirt said:

It seems the AI civs can have their cake and eat it too, why not the human.

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I haven't really found that to be the case - I'm pretty sure the AIs get warmonger hate too. In my games where one particular civ was running away towards a domination victory, the other civs have hated them and ganged up on them. Also keep in mind there are usually a couple civs wither very low warmonger hate modifiers, so both you & the AI can keep trading with these civs even with a bad rep.

I don't fear being branded a warmonger.

If they call me a warmonger, so be it, I will send in my panzers and take their women and resources and territory and they'll have to suck their thumb and live with it.

I eliminate civs and city states and I don't pussyfoot around it.

Mock my culture? I give you ten turns max before you see my panzers checking out your culture up close and personal.

Mock my economy? I give you ten turns max before you see my panzers relieve you of your great and wealthy economy by pillaging everything in sight to prop up my "poor economy".

Mock my army? I give you ten turns max before sending every single unit I have onto a tour through your lands while blowing up and whilst mocking your inferior army.

Mock my sad and unhappy people? I give you ten turns max before sending every single unit I have to pillage all your happiness luxuries and stealing cities that have colosseums in them and allow you drown in unhappiness.

You're weak but do not insult me? You live.

You're very powerful and insult me? You will die in the future when I'm strong enough to personally put your head on the top of my pike. Even when it takes me two thousand years to do it, by golly I will do it.

Due to the nature of how I do diplomacy, city states tend to live because they don't insult me or interact anything they're just vendor machines to me honestly. I generally take them over if they're allied to my enemy.

yes I don't think there is anything wrong with the system, it could be better, but its not broken.

I think people who think it doesn't work aren't playing sides or paying attention to who is allied with whoever they are attacking. When choosing who to take out I always start with the most hated civs, and try to get other civs to join in. This prevents 3-4 civs ganging up on me later on. Unless I'm planning domination, then I don't really care who hates me.

The only thing I have trouble with is the "fake friendly" civs, usually only happens if I have a really weak military and my neighbors gang up on me. But more often than not when 2-3 civs declare war on me, only one really attacks me with significant force, the others seemed to just be part of pact but don't really attack me themselves, maybe send a couple units to show up on my beaches 50 turns later to be easily disposed of, but that's it. I have yet to see the AIs ever really work together well in one concentrated attack.

The best way to go about avoiding the warmongering label if you are going to wage lots of wars is to use the Declaration of Friendship system and denouncements to divide up the world into friends and foes - just the same way the AI does. You just need to be careful whom you befriend because befriending someone who then denounces you is really bad. Playing Montezuma, you cannot befriend Gandhi or Washington and expect him to still back you up when you destroy your third civ. Make buddy buddy with Alexander, Napoleon, Genghis Khan - and, preferably, always engage in joint wars so you get the 'fighting common foe' bonus.

Thus, warmongering will always cost you - it will cost you good relations to the peaceful players (with whom you can never avoid the warmonger label) and it will cost you gold when Genghis comes begging for your Cotton to remain friends.

As of today, I can confirm that I did not even have to wipe out a civ to get the Monger moniker. All I did was wipe out two lousy Japanese cities! Of course, that put me 600 points up on the nearest competitor, so I was not surprised at the mass denouncements. See, the AI is juvenile and vindictive, and will use ANY reason it can to denounce you once it thinks you re going to win.

As far as avoiding it goes, I'm not sure that I can (or even care to) considering my strategy of beating down the No.2 civ as soon as I have 4 frigates and a pikeman.

An interesting side note: I actually caught Monty crossing a large body of water with a sizable force of cannon, crossbowmen, and pikemen! I was shocked! I really did not think that the AI would EVER send an invasion fleet across water! Of course I had to immediately declare war and wipe them out before they could scurry back to land! Mass denouements followed, but it was just comical at that point.