Does the game now favor peace over war?

Does the game favor war, peace, or are they perfectly balanced?

  • The game favors peace.

    Votes: 117 63.2%

  • The game favors war.

    Votes: 5 2.7%

  • There is a perfect balance.

    Votes: 63 34.1%
  • Total voters
    185
I think the *expansion* favors peace over war, but the game as a whole favored war over peace before, so now it is more balanced.

There is finally a potential immediate economic impact for going to war (via trade routes), even if someone hates you. This means one tactic to placate a perceived threat is to trade extensively with them (via trade routes, not just diplo trade), and let them see how much gold per turn they will lose if they do start that war with you!
 
The conquest victory is the easiest IMHO. The lack of AI aggression allows me to dominate the map one civ at a time while ignoring the others. Sure, they denounce me and stop trading with me at some point, but rarely does the AI build an army and DOW me. Once I get my military rolling, I am unstoppable in BNW!!!

All other victories require me to research to the Atomic Era. On a standard sized map, I can with a Conquest victory in the Renaissance or early Industrial Era.
 
Arte_Et_Marte said:
In my current game the Chinese, Iroquis and the mongols have shared their borders up until the renaissance and there's not been a single war.
Click to expand...

So the AI's decided they will cooperate to get many advantages (income, religion spread, technology spread, less unit maintenance, RA's etc.) instead of going into pointless wars. Additionally they have a "pact" in case someone decides to take them out one at a time (works excellent against human players). I don't see a single point where the AI behaving such way can be considered as unlogical. It actually makes their behaviour smarter and dealing with them more difficult.

Let's have a look at a different situation - all these nations go into war with each other. What do you do - 1. You bunker and tech up (instant win) 2. You attack the weaker ones when they in the middle of the war from the other side (instant win). But when they cooperate with each other none of these options are availible and you have to adjust your strategy to the situation.
 
In G & K it definitely favoured war, perhaps too much so. I think its a better balance now. In relation to diplo penalties: I have found that if you go into a war with an ally from the start then there are hardly any penalties at all. Its when you go in on your own and keep everything for yourself that it tends to be a problem. Or is this just me?
 
There isn't a perfect balance but balance. AI was more aggressive in G&K, but it's good now.
 
It depends really,if AI play with build-in personalities than you will most likely end up with them hesitate to go to war,unless there are aggressive civs.If you play with choose random personalities than you might end up with more aggressive civs or not.But if we compare BNW with GK than i have to say this game tends more towards peace (in GK if you don't prepare well until 100 turns you are dead,because as soon as you met other civs they will attack you unless you attack them first that was inevitable),but in BNW i think AI is act much more reasonable although i can understand (there is nothing more satisfying than when you drop nukes on civs that are close to one of four victories-that is if they didn't purpose ban on world congress for building nuclear weapons) why some people hate this.So while i like warfare (i am usually first who pull trigger and set whole world on fire in my games) i think they achieved ,,perfect" balance (its not perfect but it is far more better than in GK )
 
I sort of have to agree with the OP. I feel that there should be some kind of risk involved for your civilizations offensive tourism when it is beating out another civilizations defensive culture. I liken this risk to the same risks involved with spreading your religion with missionaries, settling cities too close to rival civilizations or even stealing a City State alliance from a rival.

I think the penalty could simply be a hit to diplomatic relations with the rival civilization. In this way, players trying to achieve a cultural victory will have to counteract the diplomatic penalties with gifts and financing in order to achieve their end goal.

I believe this is no different than what a warmongering civilization is faced with in many cases; as warmongering also generates diplomatic penalties and other sorts of penalties to happiness etc. In the same way, if a player trying to achieve a cultural victory must counter diplomatic penalties, he or she will need to gift more luxury resources and etc. in order to maintain a balancing act of diplomatic penalties generated from beating out another civilization culturally. Otherwise, he or she might risk denouncements and DoW for their medaling.
 
I think not so many civs are super agressive, and some can fall into wonderspam. Just play a game with handpicked, Sulu, Greece, Rome, Mongols, Germany and Japan and get back to me :)
 
Senteliks said:
It depends really,if AI play with build-in personalities than you will most likely end up with them hesitate to go to war,unless there are aggressive civs.If you play with choose random personalities than you might end up with more aggressive civs or not.But if we compare BNW with GK than i have to say this game tends more towards peace (in GK if you don't prepare well until 100 turns you are dead,because as soon as you met other civs they will attack you unless you attack them first that was inevitable),but in BNW i think AI is act much more reasonable although i can understand (there is nothing more satisfying than when you drop nukes on civs that are close to one of four victories-that is if they didn't purpose ban on world congress for building nuclear weapons) why some people hate this.So while i like warfare (i am usually first who pull trigger and site whole world on fire in my games) i think they achieved ,,perfect" balance (its not perfect but it is far more better than in GK )
Click to expand...

I've had plenty of war. In my first BNW game as Venice, I had the Huns as neighbors. They declared war on me three times, and each time I smacked them down. I fought a 4th war when I joined Poland against the Huns.

In my last game as Morocco I shared a continent with Songhai and Denmark. They never went to war with me, but they were almost constantly at war with each other.
 
Wuddel said:
I think not so many civs are super agressive, and some can fall into wonderspam. Just play a game with handpicked, Sulu, Greece, Rome, Mongols, Germany and Japan and get back to me :)
Click to expand...

You can add the Huns and the Aztecs to that list!
 
@Itconne
As i said if you encounter aggressive CIvs than you will be at war with them pretty soon,but unless that's not the case they might jump on each other throat,but will not declare war against you unless you,broke few promises,stole few wonders they planned to build,expand to much near their borders,have less military power,less advance in technology ... which means it might never declare war but he will denounce you.
 
I've been playing three games to their end (2 cultural victories and 1 domination, on Prince) and while AIs do seem to attack less often, they aren't entirely pacifistic. I was attacked a few times, twice on two fronts simultaneously, and once by all 3 other civs on the continent. Still, the AI moves around units really, really badly, placing their attack force on the water where they get decimated by my ranged units.
 
bonafide11 said:
Based on the poll results, the vast majority of people disagree with you. War isn't just about stealing wonders -- it's a victory condition, and with the current game mechanics, it's the most difficult victory condition because the AI resents you for it at an early age and it's very difficult to balance your happiness while conquering cities, especially with an AI that won't trade with you.
Click to expand...

The game balance has moved toward peace, yes, but I certainly wouldn't go this far. In the games I've played, I've had little to no trouble going for domination victory. Mostly because certain AIs aren't putting up a fight. The AI seems wholly unprepared for war at times, and this is at the mid-to-high difficulty levels.

They intentionally made Domination more difficult because on a Standard Map it was the easiest and fastest victory type. The devs were correct to balance it by putting in a few extra obstacles. Unfortunately, the gameplay has become more peaceful if only because the AI has at times become too passive.
 
I wouldn't call the balance 'perfect' and maybe the AI needs to be a little bit more aggressive but for the most part I think it's very well balanced in its current state.
 
Sidor1982 said:
So the AI's decided they will cooperate to get many advantages (income, religion spread, technology spread, less unit maintenance, RA's etc.) instead of going into pointless wars. Additionally they have a "pact" in case someone decides to take them out one at a time (works excellent against human players). I don't see a single point where the AI behaving such way can be considered as unlogical. It actually makes their behaviour smarter and dealing with them more difficult.

Let's have a look at a different situation - all these nations go into war with each other. What do you do - 1. You bunker and tech up (instant win) 2. You attack the weaker ones when they in the middle of the war from the other side (instant win). But when they cooperate with each other none of these options are availible and you have to adjust your strategy to the situation.
Click to expand...

It's not about whether it's logical and more prosperous to live in peaceful co-existence or not. It's about different civs acting in different ways, that's why the AI has flavours in the first place, to give you different problems to tackle, it's good that you're not being DoW'd by peaceful civs now, but aggressive civs should be aggressive. So far in the majority of my BNW games it's been easy to avoid any war, essentially removing a whole mechanic from the game, you don't get the same result ignoring science, culture or diplomacy.
 
Senteliks said:
@Itconne
As i said if you encounter aggressive CIvs than you will be at war with them pretty soon,but unless that's not the case they might jump on each other throat,but will not declare war against you unless you,broke few promises,stole few wonders they planned to build,expand to much near their borders,have less military power,less advance in technology ... which means it might never declare war but he will denounce you.
Click to expand...

Which means no one will declare war on you unless they need to, or feel they have no choice. Which is how it should be.
 
There are more consequences for war, so the AI is more deliberate in its choice to go to war, and so should the human player be as well. I believe this is for the best.
 
I think domination is, in general, the hardest victory condition to achieve...but to me, that is primarily because once I've taken over a few capitols, I don't have enough patience to finish the job most of the time. I don't think the actual battles would be *hard* (in difficulty), just that they would take more time with an already-won game.

That said, compared to earlier incantations of Civ, I think the "take the capitol" victory condition is significantly easier than military victory in the past...although I do miss the "control 2/3 of the land" domination condition and wish it would be added back in. It would also boost certain civs that need a perk, such as Washington, since buying up tiles would have an added effect of leading toward that VC.
 
ltccone said:
Which means no one will declare war on you unless they need to, or feel they have no choice. Which is how it should be.
Click to expand...

Yes but that don't necessarily mean its fun for some people,the best solution in my opinion would be for them to add option in advanced menu which would make AI more aggressive and that way people who prefer peaceful way of playing game wouldn't be force to play with aggressive AI and opposite for people who don't like how AI acts now.
 
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