Perhaps this can shead some lights on all the anti-warmonger feelings out there

Amarr Emperor said:

Egypt 1 city wonder whores over 20 wonders. Take capital? Y/N

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You'd be a fool not to. You'd also be a fool not to do anything that might prepare you for the diplo hit. Just like you'd be a fool not to try to grow your population as large as possible, but likewise you'd be foolish not to manage your happiness accordingly.

EK834 said:

What I find especially powerful in that warmongering play style is getting all those cities with the buildings intact and all the original population.

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And a bugged city tile. Every time I get a city as a gift, I raze it and settle my own because they still haven't fixed that bug. A gifted city never works the city tile (meaning it'll be shy a few food and hammers - more if you ally with Maritime CS since their bonus is added to the city's tile). You can work all the surrounding tiles just fine, but never get the core city tile to work properly (at least I've never gotten it to include that food/production in my totals).

Barghaest said:

And a bugged city tile. Every time I get a city as a gift, I raze it and settle my own because they still haven't fixed that bug. A gifted city never works the city tile (meaning it'll be shy a few food and hammers - more if you ally with Maritime CS since their bonus is added to the city's tile). You can work all the surrounding tiles just fine, but never get the core city tile to work properly (at least I've never gotten it to include that food/production in my totals).

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This has been fixed for awhile as I understand it. Are you sure you're still experiencing it?
I cannot recall clearly whether I've had this situation recently.

I welcomed the changes and I'm more or less a war monger in CIV V.

It feels more realistic since in the real world people DO hate war mongers and there are severe consequences for aggressive expansion.

I don't like being forced to harass an enemy for 100 turns. Pillaging can be very fun but when it's forced on me, when to do anything else will lead to chain-denouncement and a scrapped playthrough, which is what all these you-can-be-smart-about-conquering arguments are gilding up, it's clear the overly quirky diplomatic game-within-a-game has hijacked my strategy.

I'm farming an enemy for XP and gold. Hey, you know how you can't get more than two promotions from barbarians? Maybe that's because the game doesn't want you to turn warfare into farming. Maybe because warfare farming is cheap-feeling and off-brand (declaring war in civ involves graphics, music, drama, it's supposed to be about conquest, not gaming the AI for city trades).

And no, pillaging does not always work. On Immortal and above AI capitals are totally capable of spitting out a unit per turn even when you're sitting on all their tiles. If they have a tech lead you aren't accomplishing anything. As usual these penalty-workarounds only make sense if your civ is already having a good run and doesn't have any economic motive to conquer. That's moot. In this game you need conquest when your civ is behind.

Jaybe said:

This has been fixed for awhile as I understand it. Are you sure you're still experiencing it?
I cannot recall clearly whether I've had this situation recently.

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In my last three games it's appeared. While they did fix the bug with renewing resource trades, I'm still seeing the lack of food/production in gifted cities. My first game was vanilla BNW (because I just got it) and I saw it. I tried again after the Fall patch (was still there), currently playing with modded game-speed (direct .xml adjustment that in no way affects regular game scripting like gifting of cities to my knowledge) and it was there the last time England bribed me for peace (was planning on burning Canterbury to the ground anyway, so didn't care that it was gifted).

Now, this may be a simple display bug while the city is puppeted or first handed over (I'll run some more tests and actually retain a city for a few turns), but it only shows up with gifted cities, not conquered ones (even while a conquered one is in revolt the Food count matches up perfectly where it does not on gifted ones).

IMO some players are too concerned about maximum early turn wins. You can't do that with Domination, at least not consistently. The game will fight back.

To be a war monger in Civ V you just have to really understand diplomacy and prepare the diplomatic cushion. Ideally, you want to make your war mongering appear to be about heroism. You didn't take that guy's land, you stood up to a bully making problems for the world.

If you are getting kicked in teeth with World Congress anti-trade resolutions there's a major issue going on with your diplomacy. It means you're not doing enough to get other civs into hot water. You have to be dirty, underhanded, and manipulative. Break up friendships, turn friend against friend, flip nations on each other, and when you are done, ride in on your white horse, liberate a city or two and make the other guys look like the villains.


EDIT: I will concede to one major issue though. A civ you've got no relationship with at all cares too much if you invade another civ they also don't know very well. In the very early game this can result in you being 1 turn from taking a city, meeting someone new, and having to halt because if you take the city the new civ will be angry. I don't feel this works very well but I don't hae any suggestions for fixing it.


EDIT2: It should be added that any time you see two civs form a Declaration of Friendship, or especially a Research Agreement, that from that point until the relationship is dissolved you should be thinking about whether it's in your interest to turn friend against friend. Which of the two is more advantageous to look like a world villain? At the very least you should propose the war but not actually follow through on the bribe just to see if they are willing. Once they get a backstab penalty they will become the world scapegoat and unless you do something really scandalous any World Congress nastiness will likely be targeted at them instead of you.

I just started playing V - years ago played II and III. The whole game mechanic has changed. It used to be about building an empire/world power - expanding and swallowing up lesser civs, and trying to become the strongest kid on the block.

Now it is about forming a little country, and then making nice with all the others. Seems like you used to try to be like the Roman Empire, now you try to be part of the EU.

I also think it is really silly that if you take a city in a war, no matter the reason for the war or who started it, you get condemmed. But go to war and take cities as part of the peace agreement - a lot less hatred. I don't get the difference.

I see whole harass and get city in peace deal with no penalty tactic as an exploit.

A way to workaround a bad design.

isau said:

To be a war monger in Civ V you just have to really understand diplomacy and prepare the diplomatic cushion. Ideally, you want to make your war mongering appear to be about heroism. You didn't take that guy's land, you stood up to a bully making problems for the world.

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Or you can just, y'know, not give a damn. Building an isolationist warmonger who gets enough gold from city connections and trade post puppets is perfectly viable if you put some of your social policies into Commerce. Keep a few CSes in your pocket (easily done with the amount of income you'll be raking in), maybe make friends with the other warmonger on the far side of the world, and you'll have nothing to fear from the World Congress either. Realistically, even that isn't necessary if you're properly self-sufficient. Embargoes don't hurt when all your income comes from your empire. Luxury bans can be a minor pain, and the standing army tax can be quite annoying, but they're not make-or-break. Luxury bans aren't especially reliable either, considering how rarely they affect only the civs everyone hates.

Yeah, people will hate you and you'll probably be at war all game long, but isn't that what you signed up for?

The only part of the game that's particularly difficult if you're going with a total war approach is the beginning, when you've still got economic issues and losing trade routes is a big deal. Pillage gold is a big help in this respect.

But yes, either you plan your economy around the idea that you'll always be at war and can't count on trade routes, or you play the diplomatic game. Both are perfectly viable, and a huge improvement over rolling up every neighbouring civ with no consequence.

As to Player 1, we shouldn't have to "work around" a bad design. The design is flawed.

As to Orasis (and many of the posters here), warmongers today tend to be unpopular. But there have been many civilizations through the years that used conquest as ways to expand - ancient Rome and Medieval Europe being just two examples. Further, most nations have always maintained normal diplomatic relations with other countries, unless they were at war with them. Most nations traded with Hitler as long as they were at peace, and most of the world had no problems coming to the 1936 Olympics. Most of the world trades with countries who have oil to export, even if they do not agree with their politics. Why? They want the oil. Look at the warlike nations depicted in the game - in real life, they traded with others.

There really is no way to have both a large empire and be on good terms with the world. Throughout history, people traded with other nations on equal terms almost no matter what, if it was good for them. If anything, the larger nations got the best deals, since they had more consumers. Further, it is silly just to use one 21st century political mindset to govern a game that goes back long before that. The game starts with cavemen, and many games are over before the 21st century.

The fact is, you have two choices - go the 4 city model and trade with the world, or be a "warmonger", and go alone. That ain't realistic, and the gameplay is stilted.

joshua43214 said:

Face it, the pacifistic moralistic jury took over Civ V when they developed BNW.

The whole slippery slope started when some folks decided they just could not live with other people "exploiting" the game by doing things like sell and DoW. Having won their little moral victory, warmongers are next on the list.

Only children do not understand that people can police themselves. Most people do not exploit the game (myself included). I just wish people would keep their filthy little moralistic paws off my game.

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The thing is you should be able to play the game that makes it fun for your tastes. If you like to play a game of conquest then that should be an option without penalty. If you want to make it harder and turn on a warmonger penalty then that should be your choice. Civ has gone downhill since BNW. The devs made it less fun to play if you are a warmonger. No doubt about it.

I want to play civ like it used to be. Now I feel like I am playing Sim City or something.

nokmirt said:

The thing is you should be able to play the game that makes it fun for your tastes. If you like to play a game of conquest then that should be an option without penalty.

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I would like to play a game that deemphasizes science. I want to be able to put no thought into my tech tree at all, and I should suffer no penalty for my chosen play style. There should be an option for this.

I would also like to play a game at the opposite end of the warmonger spectrum. I find building and moving units tedious. The game should allow for my playstyle, in which I delete my starting Warrior and never build any military units, to succeed on even footing with those who prefer to defend their territories.

To be fair, Civ V probably could stand to de-emphasize science a little. Wouldn't it be nice if, say, the thought of spawning a Great Merchant didn't make us all cringe?

Polisurgist said:

I would like to play a game that deemphasizes science. I want to be able to put no thought into my tech tree at all, and I should suffer no penalty for my chosen play style. There should be an option for this.

I would also like to play a game at the opposite end of the warmonger spectrum. I find building and moving units tedious. The game should allow for my playstyle, in which I delete my starting Warrior and never build any military units, to succeed on even footing with those who prefer to defend their territories.

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They should just take out units altogether. I wish I could warmonger like the AI civs and get away with it, like they do. That would be nice.

nokmirt said:

They should just take out units altogether. I wish I could warmonger like the AI civs and get away with it, like they do. That would be nice.

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So...no dice on that being an option if I feel that I should be able to play while ignoring science and military entirely? How about playing without cities? I think that it should be just as valid to never found your capital and that it's unjust that I should suffer a penalty for choosing this way to play. How would you recommend making that balanced?

player1 fanatic said:

I see whole harass and get city in peace deal with no penalty tactic as an exploit.

A way to workaround a bad design.

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It's not a workaround, it's part of the redesign to make warmongering more strategic in the game. It goes hand in hand with the halving of warmongering penalties from war allies and the other incentives. It's now more in line with the rest of the gameplay of Civ, with opportunities and cost to balance. You can't rush into a campaign to steam roll a neighbor anymore, you need to calculate costs and benefits and the real value and costs of the cities you take, or be clever in how you time it, so that one ever knows that India used not be part of the Mongol civilization... And as far as "exploit" goes this tactic of getting cities from peace deals to be efficient requires the player to plan well, build friendships, use the denouncement feature cleverly, often bring allies to the wars and beware eventual chain denouncements. It's much closer to the other mechanics of the game than warmongering used to bem and it's more demanding than steam rolling a rival was pre-warmongering penalties. It's also not cost or risk free as there's a diplomatic cost to any DoW and this tactic requires many of them to seize more than a city or two. If you miscalculated your relative strength, if you get DoWed and must retreat, or if you fail to harm the AI enough you gain nothing but an enemy.

This is also more realistic than steam rolling continents before modern time, and those who did that sort of wars are still remembered as bloodthirsty monsters century and more later. More wara for territorial acquisitions were fought and won like this than by capturing cities by force and by their permanent military occupation. Many more territorial acquisitions in the medieval period and the Renaissance were made by forcing the enemy to surrender and pass control of parts of his territory into the winner's control. Battles and sieges alike were most often used to destroy the enemy's military, live off its country (which undermined its capacity to wage another campaign the next year), shatter its defense systems, harm its will to fight to force him to surrender and give you what you want in exchange for peace.

I sympathize with those who hate those new mechanics or who find them too restrictive, but it's not necessarily flawed because of that. It's a fairly coherent design, not quite perfect and not perfectly balanced, but on the whole it works.

One thing that is not mentioned is that warmongering on a small map with less players is far easier than war mongering on a map with many more players.

If I take over 2 cities on a small map, 4 CIVS will hate me. If I take over 2 cities on a huge map, 20 civs will hate me.

El Caballerion said:

One thing that is not mentioned is that warmongering on a small map with less players is far easier than war mongering on a map with many more players.

If I take over 2 cities on a small map, 4 CIVS will hate me. If I take over 2 cities on a huge map, 20 civs will hate me.

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The degree of the penalty decreases based on the total number of cities on the map, so on a larger map, you're hated less for taking those two cities than you would be on a smaller map.

So, I've been mulling over the current state of affairs in CiV. Mainly, the situation where it seems the best play is to not take cities, to instead go to war to pillage and kill all your enemy's units, and to liberate cities.

The logical problem I've encountered is that there's only one real life nation that I can think of that really did/does this. And that's the U.S.

For the past 50+ years, the U.S. has made a policy of going in, fighting a war, and liberating the conquests. Starting in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

And, how does the world feel about the U.S. as a result? As meddlers, arrogant, and as warmongers. Yes, the exact opposite of how CiV works.