There definitely appears to be a lack of early war in BNW

Council 13

Council 13

Chieftain
Joined
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Messages
74
Location
Chicago IL
I don't think I have played one BNW game yet where there was a war before the medieval era. That I must say is a disappointing change. I even had Montezuma as a neighbor one game and he never even bothered me (or anyone for that matter) until Medieval times when his UU was already fading in strength.

With that said, I read a lot of people reporting that there is no war at all and that has not been my experience. Starting by Renaissance times I see regular wars particularly against the game leading civ or civ's. Come ideologies and around WWI/WWII times I personally get attacked by not one but several civ's, especially if I'm at or near the lead in the game.

I really hope that there is an adjustment in the coming patch to fix the early game aggressiveness though. It really does seem that perhaps the early economic constraints have somehow affected the AI's decision making about war far too much. Honestly my biggest worry and focus now in nearly every game is just on barbarians :(
 
I'm not sure what difficulty you are playing on, but I've seen plenty of early game wars. There are many threads on this board already discussing this issue, I invite you to check them out.

Personally, with all the new things that need to be built in BNW, as well as the nerf for early gold in general, I think an early war will severly gimp both attacker and defender, unless you're going full conquest-mode. You're spending either :c5gold: or :c5production: which most definitely would be more useful somewhere else. At higher difficulties and with terrain issues (ie their cities are on hills, jungles, etc) you're going to be spending many turns and resources trying to capture their cities (which, imo, is the only way war pays for itself).

As people have mentioned in other threads, the AI no longer gives you the (imo, very easy) choice of attacking you early, which almost always resulted in a few turns of defense on your part, then a march on their cities once you killed their units). If you want an early war, declare one. And to go back to my original point, try spawning near any of the warmongering civs (Attila, Zulu, rome, Russia, mongols, etc) and you'll still get that early DOW.
 
It does seem that the incentive for early war is not that important (unless you're playing as Assyria). Trading with your partners is usually too lucrative. What I like to do is start a war, take over an enemy capital city, reduce him to a weak one-city state, sign a peace treaty, and then trade with their one weak city.
 
Council 13 said:
I don't think I have played one BNW game yet where there was a war before the medieval era. That I must say is a disappointing change. I even had Montezuma as a neighbor one game and he never even bothered me (or anyone for that matter) until Medieval times when his UU was already fading in strength.
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Monty was close neighbor in a standard king game, and as expected he declared war soon after we met, pretty early in the game. There was still plenty of room to settle. Peace was declared quickly without a single shot being fired, and again he declared war soon after. Not a nice neighbor at all.
 
dashwinner said:
... the AI no longer gives you the (imo, very easy) choice of attacking you early, which almost always resulted in a few turns of defense on your part, then a march on their cities once you killed their units).
Click to expand...

EXACTLY.

It is clear to me at this point that some people just miss the above one-line definition of "strategy". I don't.
 
I play with Really Advanced setup and play checked off more than half the civs.

only the good guys remain. Attila, Monty, Alex, Temujin, Shaka, Dido and all the fun loving leaders are who I play against and they war each other and me all the time. Attila goes for an early attack pretty much every game.
 
Council 13 said:
I don't think I have played one BNW game yet where there was a war before the medieval era. That I must say is a disappointing change. I even had Montezuma as a neighbor one game and he never even bothered me (or anyone for that matter) until Medieval times when his UU was already fading in strength.
Click to expand...
I don't know why people think early warfare with a handful of hastily-churned-out early trash is so fascinating. Actually, I can think of reasons, but they're not the kinds of reasons that the dev's should discourage.

Armies *should* build themselves up into a force to be reckoned with before they go rampaging. They should not stake everything on an iffy early DoW "just because".

As for Monty, he can upgrade those jags with some iron.
 
I've had early wars every time Oda or Attila was nearby. I've had Dido arrive pretty early as well. All in all, I don't mind waiting for medieval warfare--the early wars aren't very satisfying. (Unless you are playing Attila, I suppose.)
 
Turn off every victory but Domination. And put 11 war/expansive Civs plus you in a standard map. Up the difficulty makes for some fun wars.
 
Aristos said:
EXACTLY.

It is clear to me at this point that some people just miss the above one-line definition of "strategy". I don't.
Click to expand...

I agree that this is better in terms of long term difficulty now, but only narrowly.

I find it very frustrating that the clear problem with early game war is not its existence, but the ineffectiveness of the AI in warfare. Instead of solving the problem they've avoided it and essentially minimized its roll in the game, which is just such a lazy and disappointing solution.

Incidentally, i have found Immortal and Deity to be as war-filled as ever, but emperor downwards have NOTICEABLY less war. I often play with extra civs too, yet despite space limitations, nothing materializes. I find this especially frustrating personally, since my game isn't strong enough to stand a reasonable chance on immortal yet, but not emperor poses no challenge and contains no suspense or that fear factor that kept you on the edge of your seat and looking over your shoulder in G&K. There's now nothing to prepare you for the monstrous step up between difficulties.
 
In my latest immortal game I was dowed on 8 times, including in the early game, and I am dowed on in the early game in pretty much every immortal game I've played, so I really don't see what people are talking about.
 
I've played on Warlord and in one game, Monty declared war on me sometime in the Classical Era while Shaka had eliminated Indonesia and Persia before the Renaissance Era. I'm still seeing plenty of war.
 
mythmonster2 said:
I've played on Warlord and in one game, Monty declared war on me sometime in the Classical Era while Shaka had eliminated Indonesia and Persia before the Renaissance Era. I'm still seeing plenty of war.
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This just really confuses me. There seems to be a distinct divide where some people just don't experience this lack of warfare.

I've played 8 games now prince-emperor difficulty. 5 of them starting next to one of Attila/Genghis/Monty/Shaka. In none of them have i had a war before the renaissance. :confused:
 
in my last emperor game, Montezuma + Pocatello + Askia + Japan ganged up on me (ideology again, I never started a war in that game) and attacked simultaneously on three fronts (Montezuma just went after my CS allies).

For some reason Attila stayed out of it, even though we actually went to war when he had his Horse Archers and rams ready and I took a puppet CS from him and liberated it.
 
I think, as in so many other aspects of BNW, that Geography has a lot to do with it. I play mostly on Large or Huge Maps, but in my second BNW game, Sully and the Ottomans eliminated both Egypt and Venice before the Renaissance Era, while Odo and Isabella fought three wars with each other in the same time frame. In both cases the starting positions of all the participants were very close together. Genghis, on the other hand, was on a peninsula isolated from everyone by City States and jungle, and he never declared on anyone but the CSs. I've seen this same pattern in other games: as long as there is room, the AI seems to leave well enough alone, but as soon as another civilization seems to be invading their perceived territory, they are perfectly willing to go to war. I've also seen this result in almost continuous wars between groups of AIs after the end of the Renaissance, because they have all expanded into each other's 'space'...
 
Boris Gudenuf said:
I think, as in so many other aspects of BNW, that Geography has a lot to do with it. I play mostly on Large or Huge Maps, but in my second BNW game, Sully and the Ottomans eliminated both Egypt and Venice before the Renaissance Era, while Odo and Isabella fought three wars with each other in the same time frame. In both cases the starting positions of all the participants were very close together. Genghis, on the other hand, was on a peninsula isolated from everyone by City States and jungle, and he never declared on anyone but the CSs. I've seen this same pattern in other games: as long as there is room, the AI seems to leave well enough alone, but as soon as another civilization seems to be invading their perceived territory, they are perfectly willing to go to war. I've also seen this result in almost continuous wars between groups of AIs after the end of the Renaissance, because they have all expanded into each other's 'space'...
Click to expand...
I have noticed this as well. Unfortunately the map scripts like to put me at the very north or south of the map so I never have two open sides to defend. That and I tend to be the one with I tons of open but terrible terrain to settle. I think my last 4 games I haven't had a single DOW against me the entire game on large continents King difficulty.
 
True_Candyman said:
I agree that this is better in terms of long term difficulty now, but only narrowly.

I find it very frustrating that the clear problem with early game war is not its existence, but the ineffectiveness of the AI in warfare. Instead of solving the problem they've avoided it and essentially minimized its roll in the game, which is just such a lazy and disappointing solution.
Click to expand...

Can't really blame them though. Games like this against human opponents make losing units extremely painful. Look at the classic game of chess where at higher level of plays it breaks down into "Whoever makes the first mistake loses".

Every time an AI loses a unit without doing any damage to you in return, they fall further behind. They are given cheats to compensate, but it doesn't change the situation. Being able to program an AI in this type of game is a huge challenge, since every unit lost is so devastating.

Aristos is exactly correct. Early war for the AI nearly always resulted in huge gains for the human player. Even if you don't attack their cities, they spent all those hammers and gold on military (which is now trashed) instead of expanding and infrastructure.

Absence of ancient-era warfare doesn't bother me, but it is disappointing that classical era gets more or less skipped over. If you move up to a difficulty where the AI is a threat and will DoW, they are already on Medieval.
 
Matthew. said:
Can't really blame them though. Games like this against human opponents make losing units extremely painful. Look at the classic game of chess where at higher level of plays it breaks down into "Whoever makes the first mistake loses".

Every time an AI loses a unit without doing any damage to you in return, they fall further behind. They are given cheats to compensate, but it doesn't change the situation. Being able to program an AI in this type of game is a huge challenge, since every unit lost is so devastating.

Aristos is exactly correct. Early war for the AI nearly always resulted in huge gains for the human player. Even if you don't attack their cities, they spent all those hammers and gold on military (which is now trashed) instead of expanding and infrastructure.

Absence of ancient-era warfare doesn't bother me, but it is disappointing that classical era gets more or less skipped over. If you move up to a difficulty where the AI is a threat and will DoW, they are already on Medieval.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, there is that whole chess thing going on, but isn't that the entire premise of the domination victory? That you do have a chance to eliminate people throughout the game? Interestingly, you only referred to the problem as one for the AI as they can't cope. I don't see this as a problem if they were better at it, where they have a good chance of knocking out the human player instead, or at least hit a very humbling blow. There are HUGE gains to be made through early war, at the cost of potentially huge losses. Instead of reinforcing this, the devs seem to have just abandoned it though.

Besides, there are ways of changing warfare that would make it less painful to use units. Being devs they could do this as a solution instead of improving AI to cope with the current risks. But they've decided to find no solution, and as such its faded out of the early game. I can blame them for that.
 
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