The constant-war tactic

I was playing a game on immortal as Assyria the other day on a continents map and got a decent start location in the middle with no coastline. A peaceful Portugal in the north and a not so peaceful Poland in the south. Now, I'm not a good immortal player and need a better start location and an early game without wars to be competitive.
Tried to maintain a good relation with Poland but he wanted otherwise, I got constantly attacked by him and his wast armies. Managed to hold him off and got peace when his units were killed off. Only to get attacked again when his army was rebuild.

So, now I decided to be at constant war with him, even though he wanted peace, and use my smaller army a little all the time rather than having to rusch units to stop the tsunami attacks that I know would come anyway. The game was lost though since the early pressure.

After this I've tried it once against Shaka and it worked pretty well, this time on emperor since that's my preferred difficulty level. He was way behind since he was building nothing but his army and I managed to cripple his expansion.

What do you think? Are there any long term disadvantages using this method, like the warmonger penalty? Does this accumulate?

I think it might work sometimes, depending on the opponents of course, if you're able to continue to build other things than soldiers at the same time. You'll get a decent amount of upgraded units as well.

If you want some examples of continual war, you could look at some of peddroelm's videos:

http://youtu.be/MvDosx_OQs0

http://youtu.be/H299LD6vdYQ

I find them quite extraordinary for the way he deals with waves of enemies with complete equanimity, and humour (and success!) I've learned huge amounts by watching these videos, and also those of tommynt (though there is usually no commentary on his videos).

If you want to learn how to play better, I'm of the opinion that videos are the best way to do it.

Im playing a very aggressive game at the minute,still very new to civ 5 but im presuming the character traits from civ4 are pretty intact,and with starting next to the Zulus,carthage and japan I figured I was in for a blood bath,and I was right...At about turn 10 shaka asked me to join a war against Dido!!!After accepting-the path was set,and quite early on I took carthage,osaka and Tokyo(wow- happiness is a tough call early game)

The great general I earned built a fortress right in Shakas face-and is nicely positioned on a 6 tile wide choke point.I knew if shaka was anything like in civ 4 then war was iniment,and he didn't disappoint,Ive spent ages now X-bowing Impis to death-its like roarks drift!

The best part of it is Im Montezuma so ive been earing tons of culture at the same time!It seems to me that city states are a key to war in the early game for the happy resources/military units.Ive gone down the Patronage route for the first time,and its worked realy well.I don't see any problem with continual war...

But this is only my 3rd emporer game,(won,culture/space on 1st two)so im sure I have a lot to learn.

FlyingSwan said:

Im playing a very aggressive game at the minute,still very new to civ 5 but im presuming the character traits from civ4 are pretty intact,and with starting next to the Zulus,carthage and japan I figured I was in for a blood bath,and I was right...At about turn 10 shaka asked me to join a war against Dido!!!After accepting-the path was set,and quite early on I took carthage,osaka and Tokyo(wow- happiness is a tough call early game)

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Those three will certainly not make for a peaceful game. I'd be most worried about Shaka.

Generally I raze cities I capture unless (a) I can't or (b) they have a world wonder or (c) liberating them is possible and seems like a good idea. Note if you raze a city immediately you avoid the science and culture penalty that normally comes with acquiring a city. You can also avoid the plunge into misery by selling the city you've captured. This opens up some interesting possibilities for manipulating the diplo.

Just to add, if a player chooses the Honor social policy tree, it is actually necessary to be almost constantly at war, because the economy depends on killing enemies. See this guide:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13314644

Some players attack a nearby City State very early in the game and keep it at perma-war so that they can use it to gain experience points for their military units before they have to take on tougher opponents.

Itssoeasy said:

Managed to hold him off and got peace when his units were killed off. Only to get attacked again when his army was rebuild.

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Do you have the turn 0 save? I would be interesting to play this staying constantly at war with Poland.

The game was lost though since the early pressure.

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Did you play until an AI won? What VC did they get?

After this I've tried it once against Shaka and it worked pretty well, this time on emperor since that's my preferred difficulty level.

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You are comparing apples and oranges, since you dropped down a difficulty and there are enough variables game-to-game any way. I am looking for slow-and-steady Immortal domination strategies myself.

Are there any long term disadvantages using this method, like the warmonger penalty? Does this accumulate?

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The warmonger penalty is almost only about taking cities from tiny states. There is a small penalty for DoWing, but none for staying at war (even when peace is offered). The penalties are lower at the earlier part of the game, and decrease over time. Also, your opponent cannot denounce you when you are at war. You lose some trading opportunity, but if the war is well contained and you are not fighting on multiple fronts, I cannot think of a compelling reason not to keep it going!

Thanks for all replys!

First I must say that this way of play is not intended to be for a domination victory, more a way of controlling an agressive player that happend to end up near you with noone else around and with no space to expand. All while you're busy with your gameplan.
Using the poor art of war of the AI to your advance. By using a smaller army that are constantly in action but with small, or no, need to grow. Since there's no peace, you can keep your foe's army pretty weak.

For my first game I could of course tried to bribe Poland to attack Portugal, but that could have meant that with Portugal out I would be next. Perhaps. I've experied that in the past with Shaka taking over the entire world and me being last in line.

I watched the videos, (well, not all )with that guy going honor/commerce, tried it and it was a very fun way to play!

beetle said:

Do you have the turn 0 save? I would be interesting to play this staying constantly at war with Poland.

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I'm on a mac, does that work? I'm not sure anyways.

Did you play until an AI won? What VC did they get?

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No, I quitted before that.

You are comparing apples and oranges, since you dropped down a difficulty and there are enough variables game-to-game any way. I am looking for slow-and-steady Immortal domination strategies myself.

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Yes, that's correct, but Shaka is more agressive than Poland so I thought I could mention that. I often play small continents maps and that means three civ per continent. So if I end up with more peacefull civs this tactic would be unnecessary.

The warmonger penalty is almost only about taking cities from tiny states. There is a small penalty for DoWing, but none for staying at war (even when peace is offered). The penalties are lower at the earlier part of the game, and decrease over time. Also, your opponent cannot denounce you when you are at war. You lose some trading opportunity, but if the war is well contained and you are not fighting on multiple fronts, I cannot think of a compelling reason not to keep it going!

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Great!

Itssoeasy said:

I'm on a mac, does that work? I'm not sure anyways.

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I am on a Mac myself. Yes it is possible. Finding the files is a little tedious, at least the first time.

No, I quitted before that.

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Sorry to hear that. I would encourage you to stick it out. I have gone on to win many games that I thought were a loss. I learned a lot that way.

Apparently, the trusty linux command "locate" is also usable on the Mac (not too surprising given their *nix heritage), so you can use (in a shell/terminal)

locate Civ5Save

And it should tell you where the files are located.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/02/enable-and-use-the-locate-command-in-the-mac-os-x-terminal/

vanatteveldt said:

Apparently, the trusty linux command "locate" is also usable on the Mac

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It's a lot easier and quicker to use the Finder, and it has the advantage of bringing up the list in a Finder window where you can act on the files without having to know Unix commands. Just open any Finder window, hit Command-F, and type .civ5 into the search slot.

In any case, the file will probably be inside the Aspyr folder inside your Documents folder. You will have to dig down a few levels, but eventually you will find a folder called "auto" inside a folder called "Saves" which is where the automatically saved games live.

And on that subject, I find it useful to have the game options set so that it autosaves every turn, and keeps about 200 autosaves. It means that if I mess something up by misclicking (happens more often than I would like) I can just go back to the previous turn. Alternatively, if I get the strategy wrong, I can replay and see if I can do better. Often I do worse

I always do constant war. How else are you going to produce highly-promoted units? The only disadvantage I know is when you forego a nice peace deal to get it, and even then...just declare war on someone else.