Always War in Civ5

What I mean by "always war" is a self-imposed variant where you declare war on every major civ (but not city state) as soon as you meet them and remain that way the entire game. Always war was a big deal in Civ3, but it doesn't seem to have caught on in Civ5--I've tried my best at search engine queries and haven't come across a single discussion about AW in Civ5 anywhere on the internet, which is a big place. I wonder why, because it was so much fun in Civ3, and some succession game teams managed to pull of some incredible feats, like AW Deity on standard pangaea, AW Sid on archipelago and tiny continents, and others, despite how impossible these would have seemed to the Civ community before they were done. Moreover, I think there are aspects of Civ5 that would make AW especially interesting:

• Insane promotions from fighting all game.
• Challenge of paying high unit maintenance despite not being able to have trade routes with major civs and most city states.
• City states either being totally yours as long as you make sure their influence doesn't get below 60, or enemies for life.
• Challenge of keeping up in tech without research agreements or science from trade routes
• Some civs becoming way more powerful and fun, such as the Aztecs, Japan, and China. Though I think for high difficulty, Babylon and Korea may still be the best because they help with the science problem.
• The Honor policy tree being maximally useful, especially the gold per unit killed.
• And of course, constant fighting across many fronts.

I just basically won an Always War game on Emperor, and I'm now trying Immortal, though it's a lot harder. Does anyone think this would be possible on Deity? I think so, though I know I couldn't do it myself.

I think it's actually not referenced for the opposite reason that you are thinking.

The Civ V AI really sucks at tactical combat. So once you become an expert in exploiting the AI's lame tactics, the "always war" is actually forcing you into doing what will make it easiest for you to win the game if the map isn't too big.

It's more challenging on Deity to have a self imposed never conquer an AI city rule.

joncnunn said:

I think it's actually not referenced for the opposite reason that you are thinking.

The Civ V AI really sucks at tactical combat. So once you become an expert in exploiting the AI's lame tactics, the "always war" is actually forcing you into doing what will make it easiest for you to win the game if the map isn't too big.

It's more challenging on Deity to have a self imposed never conquer an AI city rule.

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Hmm, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about here cause I'm not that good of a player, but when I watch good players win via early domination on Deity in LPs, yes, the AI does seem like a pushover in combat with good human players, but even good players seem to rely on that

A) They're only fighting one AI at a time, and they're probably fighting the AI it makes most sense to fight at that moment.
B) They get to trade their excess luxuries and do other useful things with the AIs they're at peace with to help fund their wars.
C) They use trade routes to speed up their science.

B and C in particular help make sure they get out a good number of CB before any Deity AI has too many advanced units yet, which seems crucial. Don't get me wrong, I also think it's possible, but I think it'd still be a challenge, and definitely not a strategy.

We used to have an Always War Challenge not too long ago. It went about as well as expected, a few Immortal wins but Deity was a notch too high at the time. If I remember correctly, gold was the biggest issue since it meant to trading

Oh wow, I can't believe that didn't come up in any of my searching. Found some now, interesting discussions. Obviously one's neighbors and the map shape matter a lot.