5 favorite/ least favorite war and peace themes

What war and peace themes do you enjoy hearing? Which ones really peak your intrest and get you in the right state of mind? What are a few that grind on your eardrums and make you turn the sound off immeadiately? Mine are:

Peace:
5. France: just a nice peaceful theme with a grand feeling to it and a sense of importance.
4. America: again, a really nice and grand sounding theme, with a warm and welcoming rythm
3. Huns: a more serious song, eith a lot stronger notes. Gives a sense of mystery and wonder to the odd barbatian in the gold chair
2. Polynesia: I bought polynesia as a joke for a trip to hawaii. I listen to their theme while playing civ 5 on the plane (I had headphones) and it really felt like I was allready their. Just a really nice feel and flavor
1. Netherlands: upbeat, quickening, loud. This beat really captures the feel of a small, upstart nation ready to take on tge world! (funny since the in game netherlands are usually massive and the ability is better used in wide empires)

War:
5. Siam: a very nice music to battle with and gives a nice sence of a culture side forced to battle... But not out of its element!
4. Polynesia: when I first heard this theme I laughed. It sounded like a peace theme gone wrong... The more I actually crushed skulls and bombarded hapless horsemen to death listening to this the more I dug it, as it really captures a nice feeling.
3. England: A very... English war theme. Has a nice emperical feel and seems like they captured a lot of the empire in the 5 minutes they had. Hands down best vanilla song.
2. Inca: really capture Pachacutti's "earth shaker" motif and sounds like an avalanche of power is coming down on your head.
1. Huns: have you heard this thing? If emotions had songs to go along with them this would be the theme to terror! Great feel for Attilla.
Honorable mentions:
Netherlands war: best opening and closing of any theme, but the middle is to slow for my liking.
America/ ottoman war: the number 5 spot was a three way tie (lots of good war themes) and I ended up picking based on which one I felt personified the culture best. I gve it to the ottomans at first, but.. I dunno, I like siams theme more than anything else on their side.
Both songhai themes: very good feel for both but WAY TOO LONG. Peters out.
Babylon war: awesome, but slow start and end.

Least favorite themes:
I don't really hate a lot of themes, so This is both war and peace.
5. Germany war: ugh, so BORING. Just no emotion or flavor and very slow to start.
4. Korea war: funky sounding. An odd rythm and very calm for a war theme.
3. Austria peace: umm... Yeah, no.
2. Greece war: massive problem since I have to hear this every game Alexander is in.
1. Japan war: no beat at all. Just sounds like random notes to me. And random notes on east asian instruments is DEFINITLY not my cup o' tea.

Favorite Peace Themes:

5. England: It has a nice royal feel to it. It's at this spot because the song is simply performed so well.

4. Byzantium: It has this feeling of power, majesty, and mystery.

3. Russia: The cold atmosphere of the song really contrasts with a lot of the other "warm" peace themes.

2. Arabia: Awesome Middle Eastern music, with both songs performed very well and they build up nicely, too.

1. Japan: A classic koto piece now with a backing orchestra to provide harmonies and additional melodies? Yes please.

Favorite War Themes:

5. Spain: It has this feeling of exploration to it and the flamenco-styled parts are great.

4. Arabia: Pretty much my same reasoning for the peace theme.

3. Japan: The somber cello/flute intro really sets the mood. Then the way the song keeps building upon itself and speeding up is nice.

2. England: It's just super grand and has a nice feel of the British Empire and such.

1. Carthage: This song chronicles the rise and fall of Carthage in three-and-a-half powerful minutes. The crescendos signifying (in my eyes) the Punic Wars flow incredibly well from the quieter melodies inbetween. The song starts out powerful and confident, gradually becoming more mournful, ending with a faint echo of the initial melody as the song ends, showing the end of Carthage. Absolutely breathtaking and heartbreaking.

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All of the music in this game is great, but some themes are less great than others.

Least Favorite Peace Themes:

5. America: There's not much to this. Just a nice rendition of a nice tune.

4. Siam: It focuses on the melody for far too long in my opinion. When it becomes darker and dissonant is the best part and could have been expanded upon.

3. Aztecs: The song is nice and pretty, but its main problem is that most of the song is build up, and not interesting build up at that, as the climax is a louder and more spirited version of the main melody.

2. Denmark: They really dropped the ball on Denmark's themes. They're a lot more restrained than I expected, and they end much too quickly. This is a soft piece that has a sense of journey amongst it, but again, it ends far too quickly for me to get a good feeling out of it.

1. France: It's not that bad at all. It's a spirited little tune, but my main problem is it just diddies on and doesn't really go anywhere.

Least Favorite War Themes:

5. Iroquois: I don't know. It alternates between menacing and quiet, but doesn't really do much with both of those aspects. It's still kind of cool.

4. Korea: A corruption of the peace theme, which doesn't sound anywhere near as good. It does have a nice dramatic tension, putting it above the three below.

3. Siam: Most of the song is dark and growling, but the only connection with the original is a small segment near the end. Having more identifiable parts from the original would have been nice.

2. Austria: It sounds menacing, but not threatening at all for the most part. Only the crescendos of the song work well in a war theme. This song would work well in some other bad situation, but it doesn't really work too well as a war theme in my opinion.

1. Poor Denmark. With Vikings, I was expecting something more than a brooding laid back piece. It's also the shortest war theme in the game. Rather disappointing. Definitely the "worst" war theme in the game, though it's still all right.

War:

Favourite:
1. England
2. The Netherlands
3. Arabia
4. Japan
5. Sweden

Least Favourite:
1. Rome
2. Greece
3. China
4. Denmark
5. Iroquois

Peace

Favourite:
1. Celts
2. Sweden
3. Polynesia
4. The Netherlands
5. The Maya
6. Korea
7. Songhai

Least Favourite:
1. Greece
2. Germany
3. Denmark

Favourites:

PEACE

1. England
2. Byzantium
3. Russia
4. Celts
5. Ottomans

WAR

1. England
2. Carthage
3. Russia
4. Maya
5. Rome

Least Favourites:

PEACE

1. Polynesia
2. Aztec
3. Siam
4. Mongolia
5. Inca

WAR

1. Polynesia
2. Siam
3. Songhai
4. Mongolia
5. Austria

Is there any convenient place to listen to all of them outside of the game?

This thread motivated me to make mental notes when playing. Don't really care for France. I like the beginning of Austria's (the swinging, almost haunting part). Ethiopia and Babylon I liked.

Matthew. said:

Is there any convenient place to listen to all of them outside of the game?

This thread motivated me to make mental notes when playing. Don't really care for France. I like the beginning of Austria's (the swinging, almost haunting part). Ethiopia and Babylon I liked.

Click to expand...

Download WinAmp, which allows you to listen to .ogg files, the music files for Civ 5.

Matthew. said:

Is there any convenient place to listen to all of them outside of the game?

This thread motivated me to make mental notes when playing. Don't really care for France. I like the beginning of Austria's (the swinging, almost haunting part). Ethiopia and Babylon I liked.

Click to expand...

Or, just use Youtube.

Flying Mathias said:

Or, just use Youtube.

Click to expand...

That's what I do.

Codec for Windows Media Player: http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/oggdsf/opencodecs_0.85.17777.exe

Now you can browse through the music folders of the game and listen to them all with WMP.

Flying Mathias said:

Or, just use Youtube.

Click to expand...

D'oh

I always forget about Youtube. Thanks for the suggestion.

Favorites:
Rokudan no Shirabe 六段の調 (tones in six movements)
Very elegant during peace, scary as hell at war. Just like Japan.

Gao Shan Liu Shui 高山刘水 (tall mountains ??drown??)
Also very graceful. Semi-off-topic, can't stand it when chinese restaurant don't play classical chinese music.

Can't stand at all:
Aztec chanting thing. It's ok the first time, but it just plays over and over and over

btw, names of everything in the score is on wikipedia

Traditional Inka Melody Fragments

Lord Gregory, The Lass of Skyrim [WAR]

I Vow To Thee, My Country

Urtiin Duu

In Naam van Oranje

These are favorites, btw

Favorites:

Peace:

1. Austria (the opening is a bit like Mozart's Requiem - Lacrimosa)
2. England (REALLY like the Jupiter, by Holst)
3. China (the melody is peaceful and graceful)
4. Spain (pretty calming but meanwhile has a nice sense of rhythm)
5. Greece

War:

1. Austria (I've noticed that it also has something in Mozart's Requiem (Dies irae). The music is so nice that I always want to DOW on them. But I'm just wondering why both of the Austrian musics adopt rhythms from a Death Mass?)
2. Spain (simply cool. Extremely love the beats, especially at around 3:00.)
3. Rome (sounds terrifying. But I like it.)
4. Carthage
5. England

Favourite peace:

1. Iroquois - So calm and beautiful.
2. Arabia - Nice middle east music.
3. Inca - I really like that theme, it's peaceful and fits perfectly.
4. America - Just beautiful theme.
5. Greece - i kinda like this theme

Favourite war:

1. England - Epic, just EPIC.
2. Huns - I can almost hear hunnic rage from this theme, it makes me bricks
3. Ottomans - Really nice sound.
4. China - Chinese war theme just sounds good
5. Aztecs - I sure hear that theme alot, it's very good war theme.

Favorite war:

England
Russia
Japan
Babylon
Ethiopia

War Favorites:

1. Sweden (this was a tough choice, but the epic breakdown at around 1:30 is simply magnificent)
2. Netherlands
3. Ottomans
4. Greece
5. Carthage

Ethiopia, Arabia, France and Byzantium are close top contenders too though.

War Least Favorites:

1. China
2. Maya
3. Russia

Peace Favorites:

This wouldn't go very differently from the war favorites... heh

1. Netherlands
2. Ottomans
3. Sweden
4. Byzantium
5. Arabia

Peace least favorites:

1. China (I don't have anything against China, I just don't like their music much )
2. France

Tempto said:

War Favorites:

1. Sweden (this was a tough choice, but the epic breakdown at around 1:30 is simply magnificent)

Click to expand...

I agree!

Sweden is one of my favorites for both war and peace. Same goes for the Dutch, American, and the Hunnic war/peace music. I also like the Celtic peace one.

I also really really like the viking scenario music. Coincidentally, the viking scenario music in Civ 4 was my favorite too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuBmTII54c

Pandora is my soundtrack to this game Not bad music but I've heard it all too much (745 hours according to Steam)

Princeofnigeria said:

What war and peace themes do you enjoy hearing?
1. Netherlands: upbeat, quickening, loud. This beat really captures the feel of a small, upstart nation ready to take on tge world! (funny since the in game netherlands are usually massive and the ability is better used in wide empires)

Click to expand...

We used to own a lot of land in the past so it's not that odd actually.
Even to this day we still hold some influence in the Caribbean but we also used to claim land on the North-American eastern coast, South-American northern coast near the Caribbean, pretty much all of Indonesia and South Africa.

But yeah, we let them become independent/sold of land because we are just that chill.

On that note, I really like all the music, have no distinct favorites aside from the Polynesia peace theme which is really nice.

Favourites:

War
1. England
2. Mongolia
3. Carthage
4. Huns
5. Germany

I also rather like the nods to 'Dies Irae' in Maria Theresa's theme.

Peace
1. England
2. Celts
3. Sweden
4. Byzantium
5. Netherlands

(I wonder what my favourites were before G&K )

Least favourite:

War (1=least favourite)
1. Siam
2. Babylon
3. France (I know a few people like this one but it's just so... silly!)
4. Egypt
5. Polynesia

Peace
1. India
2. Maya
3. Iroquois
4. America
5. Aztecs