How to war without being hated by everyone

Darviathar said:

You mention China, France, Russia, Carthage as "untrustworthy" civs. Is there a list of traits somewhere that spells this out? I've never had any particular problem with Carthage. I've noticed that violent leaders (Huns and Mongols, mainly) won't ever agree to a fair trade of resources even when far away and separated from me by several civs, but not noticed "untrustworthy" behavior.

Click to expand...

You can find the full list here. I went ahead and rearranged the civs by loyalty below, from most to least. Remember that flavors vary by up to +/- 2 points so things aren't always going to be predictable.



I question the accuracy of Dido's loyalty but the rest of this seems about right. I know they changed her value in a patch a while back, maybe the list didn't get updated.

It's worth mentioning that just because Kame and Hiawatha have high loyalty ratings doesn't mean they aren't likely to backstab you. This is because they also have very high expansion ratings; they'll love you if you're out of the way, but if you hold territory they want...

Arachnofiend said:

You can find the full list here. I went ahead and rearranged the civs by loyalty below, from most to least. Remember that flavors vary by up to +/- 2 points so things aren't always going to be predictable.

Spoiler :

Zulu-8
Persia-7
India-7
Iroquois-7
Brazil-7
Polynesia-7
Mongols-7
Denmark-7
Netherlands-7
Korea-7
Poland-7
Arabia-6
Morocco-6
Songhai-6
Germany-6
Russia-6
Siam-6
America-6
Celts-6
Carthage-6
Sweden-6
Austria-6
Maya-6
Ethiopia-6
Ottomans-5
England-5
Shoshone-5
Inca-5
Spain-5
Assyria-5
Portugal-5
Babylon-4
Rome-4
Greece-4
Egypt-4
Huns-4
Aztecs-4
Byzantium-4
Indonesia-4
France-3
Japan-3
China-3
Venice-3

I question the accuracy of Dido's loyalty but the rest of this seems about right. I know they changed her value in a patch a while back, maybe the list didn't get updated.

It's worth mentioning that just because Kame and Hiawatha have high loyalty ratings doesn't mean they aren't likely to backstab you. This is because they also have very high expansion ratings; they'll love you if you're out of the way, but if you hold territory they want...

Click to expand...

Definitely, these AIs will DoW if they see that their power is bigger than yours and they ask you to refrain from building in land that they consider theirs. I had Shaka make a DoW on me as I was Ethiopia so I used the UA which gave me a bonus against Shaka's armies. I also bribed Babylon to make a DoW on Shaka.

It totally depends on difficulty mode, too. OP's guide should be alright for Immortal or so, i guess. But on King (which i usually play), it's totally unnesessary. Because on King, what i do is yet much simplier:

1. have an army
2. declare war to any neighbour some city (cities) of whom i want to see gone
3. raze said cities. Reject his offers for peace if he asks for it before i'm done
4. accept his peace offer, taking lots of goodies by it (not his cities - other goodies)
5. rinse repeat

That's what i do. Interestingly, while a few civs always go "guarded", still some others remain neutral despite numerous wars i wage - even some neubours, - and sometimes 1 or two are even "friendly". Without any diplomatic effort from me, that is.

My guess is that things are VERY dependant on overall strength (not just military strength) of the player's civilization (relatively to AIs). If player's score is some 2+ times higher than any AI's, player's production few times higher than an AI's (means it's possible to build many units in a short time), player's gold reserves are high or very high (possible to buy many units in no time), player's territory is close to largest or simply largest, etc - all such factors are probably contributing to overall "fear" with AIs "feel" towards a player. And as such, they "prefer" to remain either neutral or even in good terms with the player _despite_ player's warmongering. However, on higher difficulties, where it is extremely difficult or plain impossible to have that sort of superiority, - the "fear factor" is not present, quite the opposite, AIs see the player as a definitely beatable civilization - and if the player's warmongering, they get a reason to attack the player, too. That's when proper planning and diplomatic means become indeed much needed in order to survive.

This happened in a recent game:

I was on my own continent and everyone else was on another - so I could not access them until Astronomy. By the time I got there, there were 2 civs wiped out and lots of cities had changed hands. It started with Portugal, Zulu, Songhai, Greece, Ottoman, Brazil, and Assyria. (ripe for war, no?)

I launched my first attack on a city state owned by Assyria to establish a beachhead. Then I started liberating Portuguese cities - Portugal had been eliminated by Songhai and Assyria. Portugal loved me and the liberation/ressurection erased all former warmonger traits. I did this for all Portuguese cities except for Lisbon. I then backed off and let Portugal get taken again by Assyria. I liberated some city states and resurrected Portugal (twice) to continually erase warmonger penalties.

Eventually, there were 4 civs left - Greece, Brazil, Songhai, and Germany (me).

I got Alexander and Brazil to join the war against the Songhai so they didn't care that I was razing cities too much.

By the time I got to the other two to finish them off, I didn't care.

Didn't work for me. Maybe because I chose all the most warlike civs for my map. It's tough to keep an alliance together when your super best friends keep plotting to kill each other. Oddly my one true loyal ally from turn ~90 to turn 465 has been Dido. I think the problem people have with Dido is they don't realize the obvious. She's a woman. I rarely give her what she wants. I think she respects that.

Dido: Can I have some nutmeg?
Gajah Mada: Don't be stupid. Go back to the kitchen and get me a Bintang.

Or you could sell the nutmeg.

There is a spreadsheet called diplo by the numbers somewhere around here. I don't know if it has been updated for BWN. Loyalty is the stat in question, I don't know exactly how high the loyalty value needs to be to refuse an offer to attack at friendly. Any AI can attack at fake friendly though. If you get an intrigue about your friend plotting against you, it means he is fake friendly. That could mean he is planning to vote against you in the WC, it could mean he has accepted an offer to attack you in 10 turns.

Click to expand...

the diplo spreadsheet has been updated for BNW

when you mention china as untrustworthy she has always been loyal to me and has never backstabbed me

Quite a few Civs..even peaceful ones with a few minor exceptions I have found to be untrustworthy. DOF(there are exceptions) meant very little and I think it's a math calculation...the AI Civ calculates your Military Strength and it's and decides if it can kill you given it's not under immediate threat... Also check that Diplo screen for Coveting your Land and watch for an immediate removal of any gripe the AI has for you. It's preparing to attack when it stops disliking you.

If the AI covets what you have, has the strength it feels to take what you have and has any reason to do it. It will do whatever it can to do it. "Also I simply love those, This Civ is Conspiring against you diplo messages."

I wish we could sew such seeds of discontent?

So do you only start attacking when you have artillery, and (mainly) be the peaceful (science) civ before that? (at immortal+)

My last two China games (emperor) I teched only to Chu-ko-nu's and then started full time war. Only managed to win by reloading often

It depends on the diplomacy situation, and if you care about diplomacy. If you're going all out conquest asap then you just bribe your targets to war as much as you can. By the time the AIs start hating you for your warmongering you'll be in control of more land than the rest of the remaining players combined. If you're aiming for any other victory condition, you have to consider the value of capturing a city to the cost of possibly losing dof partners and research agreements.

If someone starts to run away with science or culture, that means he has a strong economy, which means a strong military, which makes him easy to bribe into wars with your friends, which means your friends won't be so upset when you sack his capital. If he has a weak military and a capital full of wonders, than you bribe everyone else to attack him, if they haven't already.

If you are attacking someone who isn't a runaway or a pariah, you want to use the war to extort something in a peace deal. I've noticed that you can often times get an AI to give you a sexy peace deal if you are in a position to capture one or more cities on the next turn, sometimes even including the city itself.

Here's a big one I found: take city-states in a peace deal and Liberate them. It doesn't happen that often, but it's a big play. Normally when you liberate, that just offsets the warmonger penalty you normally get for taking the city. But as part of a peace deal, you're getting pure bonus. And you get a solid CS ally, which is probably better than a puppet.

When I choose my next victim and I still care about diplomacy, this is a key criterion: someone who has taken some city-states that I can liberate. Genghis is often that guy. Usually that guy tends to be militarily powerful and can cause a lot of trouble for my trade routes: if he was powerful enough to take all those city-states, he'll be powerful taking on you. But if you want to win the game... You'll just have to use less lucrative but safer trade routes.

But first things first, bribe your victim to attack all your friends and denounce him for it before attacking.

Click to expand...

that reminds me of what america did in world war 2

Not sure I follow you there. Are you saying the US bribed Japan to DOW other civs (i.e., China in 1937?), then the US denounced Japan before attacking it?

they traded weapons with the nazis so they DOW other civs but when they took france and started torturing jews and got out of control america acted like the hero come to swoop in and save the day true story look it up

the nazis were supposed to be americas little "puppet" until they broke the contract that or
they were supposed to turn "bad" so america could be the hero and stop them i forgot which one and the italy and japan decided to tag along with germany but the US did give weapons to the nazis

so pretty much what you said except it was germany not japan

This is probably for the World history forum, not here, but I always did find it odd that the U.S. declared war on GERMANY because JAPAN attacked us.

You're a bit out of sequence there. Germany declared war on the US. on Dec. 11, and the U.S. responded with its own declaration a few hours later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_(1941)

Germany's side of the story:

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/germany-declares.htm

But as it is said, the winner writes the history books.