Always Peace

General Disclaimer: I haven't played a succession game before.

Having said that and looking around I don't see any ongoing succession games like the following. The basic idea of this succession game comes as having NO wars. Of course, we might get attacked. So, I'll set up the following rules...
1. We may never declare war. Not even for our golden age. We only fight defensive wars where we absolutely must fight.
2. We may never attack an AI outside our cultural borders (so no attacking enemy cities and consequently no razings). We may attack barbarians at our leisure.
3. We may never *bait* the AI into even a long-distance false war by say making outrageous demands and then demanding the AI leave our territory.
4. We must sue for peace ASAP no matter the cost.
5. We MAY *unlethally* bombard AI units in opposing territory to say protect a border town from attack... provided that... of course the AI declared war on us (see rule 1).

If we make it out of the ancient age without a war, we might seriously have a shot at no wars the whole game. I kind of feel we could do this on demi-god, but since I think I'll have trouble getting takers I'll suggest emperor. I don't want to play Monarch, as that could all too easily turn into a 20k game... and I've played so many archipleago 20k games on Monarch that they feel all-too-easy for me. Pangea Monarch hasn't seemed all too much harder. Emperor at least provides some challenge for a 20k game. We'll keep all victory conditions enabled. Of course, the domination condition seems off the table for us.

I definitely want to play this game with AIs at maximum aggressiveness (yes... I DO mean this... maximum aggressiveness AND little or no war). I'd also prefer a huge pangea map with 15 other tribes, but if you'd want to do a large or standard sized pangea map, alright... and if everyone really wants to do archipelago, we'll do that. I think many different tribes will work. The Babylonians seem like an easy and natural choice for this... almost too much so when I think about it. Of course, India can work well.... but I don't think as easy-going as the Babylonians. Most of the other religious and agricultural tribes might also work well. So, what would everyone like as a tribe for a peaceful game (lurker suggestions welcome)? I'll suggest the Babylonians for now.

I don't usually play with barbarians on... but after slugging through the ancient age of COTM48 several times and finally learning how I can succesfully handle raging barbarians I'd feel comfortable with any sort of barbarians. I think we'll want to discuss a wonder plan and city spacing before we start. Also, Moonsinger's mapfinding utility doesn't work all that well for me when I've tried it... so I'll want someone else to roll starts for us. Takers? Comments?

First of all, I'd love to give it a try. Have not yet played a succession game, but would like to.

A few suggestions & questions:

Re: #4, I would suggest always being required to make peace if it does not cost anything. No sense in being required to pay whatever the AI wants for peace. (Of course, if we feel it best to pay for peace, we can.)

Conversely, we can't beat up anyone to improve peace conditions by extorting something from them. If they will grant peace for free, we have to take it.

Loving the huge map/max tribes out there. Perhaps Continents, or low-water archipelago (which usually turns into continents connected by narrow strips of land in my experience.

Emperor seems like a fine level. Diplomatic as the goal, I'd say.

Suggest fairly low barbarians. But that is personal preference.

On choice of civilization, Egypt would also be a good choice. Or France. Alternatively, it could be funny to try it with someone like the Mongols or Zulu.

I am just a lurker by nature but I agree that it is not a great 'Condition' that you have to pay any price for peace - Chamberlain tried that and it gets you no where. - well actually it takes you and 30 million people straight into the jaws of hell.

I agree that you should go for peace as soon as you can but why slit your own throat when your enemies will be happy to do that for you?

Subscription post. No time to join an SG right now, but I want to follow this one. Good luck!

If we really *want* to continue to have an AI at war with us when we can't attack them outside our cultural borders, I suppose we could do that. It does seem out of spirit of the "pacifist" idea... but I could deal with it, I suppose. The only problem seems that we could get kept in a longer war... and I don't think we'll want that. We seriously might not get attacked if we play intelligently enough. In my experience we don't have to decide as diplomatic or spaceship at the outset... they play very similarly for a good long time. With both France and Egypt we'd probably trigger our GA at the same time... and rather late I'd say... although I did just see another way to do it.

I know you meant it as a joke and it does sound funny... but with the Zulu or the Mongols to trigger our GA we'd have to build the Colossus or the Great Lighthouse... building the Colossus seems like we'd go for a 20k game or would delay our expansion... not good for a peaceful tribe. The Great Lighthouse doesn't have much use on a pangea map and seems to have little use other than faster ships on a 60% water map... which I think you meant. Or we would have to build Copenicus's Observatory or Magellan's Voyage *and then* build the Great Wall, the SoZ, Sun Tzu's, Leo's, or the Manhattan Project (or just the Internet if we went for a space race). Lol... here's a stupid variant... no wonders allowed until the Internet with the Zulu and maximum peace and NO barbarians. Maybe not as bad as the "finally ready for regent" game without most worker actions.

My little pea brain finally kicked in and I remembered reading this story.

Now this is a pacifist game!

when you mentioned "playing it right", it triggered this memory. It was a good read.

And then we have this one from Charis' trilogy

I started reading the first one... "I don't believe there exists such a thing as barbarians." Best line ever! Interesting write-up and game concept. The second game seems pretty sick. I can see the resemblance... but I don't mean to make things that difficult or chancy.

Well, I would suggest we don't WANT any war, of course... but if the choice is "make peace, lose everything" or "fight defensive war", I'd rather do the latter. But fighting for the sake of gaining something is not a good idea. (I might go so far as to suggest that if someone offers peace + something, we should decline the "something" and just grant peace).

I am warming up to the idea of France for this. Strong defensive unit, two nice late-game traits, and the GA could be triggered either by a defensive win if necessary, or by a useful combination of wonders (Great Wall or Hanging Gardens + Smith's would do it). My chances of building the Great Wall in a normal game is nil, but it may be useful for us (I assume Conquests) in some circumstances.

And yes, I meant 60% water. For which the Lighthouse CAN also be very useful, but it isn't necessary and it's VERY map-dependent. Sometimes you can get a 3-square crossing; sometimes it's 2, sometimes it's a lot.

I'd like to try but do not have much time this week (at all) and next 1.5 month after.
But since game may be long, it doesnot matter, I belive.
Actually there manu nuances like can we renegotiate "peace Treaty", can we enter to MPP, should we cave to demands, can we brings somebody to MA
But idea sounds good...
With "soft rules" Deity doable, With hard restriction Demi- Emperor I think.

DWetzel,

Your joke about the Zulus or Mongols inspired me.... check the save below. At one point in the game I thought the AIs might get to nukes and nuke me, as both Korea and Greece played in the game (for a while at least). At one point I actually thought the Japanese might win by domination. I noticed two Japanese infantry decided to make their way onto my mountain and at 19k culture already, I asked them to leave... of course they declared war... yeah... didn't sweat the game at all then. It's an 80% pangea map... so I guess I COULD have made conditions harder, but still I doubt I would have had much trouble at the Monarch-level I choose. I had tech-parity or the tech-lead throughout much of the industrial era... and I even researched "garbage" techs like sanitation (I did end up using the hospital as a prebuild for TOE... which I bulit before Universal Suffrage) hoping to trade it for something like industralization. In light of this, I think we could actually do the "always peace" (with many more cities and a good food start, of course) game with the Zulus or the Mongols on emperor and launch the spaceship or win diplomatically. If we choose the Zulus though, I would want to restrict us to NOT building impis until we got into the republic either from our research or from the Great Library or trading... just in case we got attacked.

Best of luck.

I'll be watching (and cheering).

So, uh, what're we thinking in terms of consensus on the issues above?

I may draw up a "charter" to play by. We still need to determine a civ (I vote France but can be elsewise persuaded) and map settings. If we do that I'll be happy to roll up some starts.

France makes an interesting choice, at least for me, because either we have to build the Hanging Gardens or Hoover Dam, and we have to build Smith's or the Colossus (probably not a good idea for the Colossus since we'll probably want to grab as much territory as we can). Sounds like enough of a challenge, but not all too intimidating (I'd feel comfortable with the Zulu or Mongols... but I can see how that might scare people away). France sounds good to me. Since I haven't seen anyone else want to play beside you and myself DWetzel, but we do have a good bit of interest, I say we may as well get started and let people join in later on for some turns if they like.

OK, sounds good. When I'm at home tonight (about 5 hours) I'll work on a few suitable starts.

Oh, do you care about barb level? I'd prefer low or even off.

Alright, so 60% water, I'd say warm, wet, 5 billion (that way we have more food... since we won't take territory by force, faster growth seems more important... also less deserts since France doesn't play agricultural), I don't have a preference on pangea or continents (I haven't finished a continents game before... so that would make things different for me), huge map, 15 other randomly selected tribes, and I'd say no Barbies... only Joanies. A few sedentary barbarians could slow down our expansion or speed up the AI expansion, so I think no barbies works out better.

I don't know how you usually space things out DWetzel. I usually go with a tight form of CxxxxC... it looks more like CxxxC than CxxxxC overall, but not exactly. I wouldn't mind us having a tighter spacing than I usually play... BUT at first I'd think we'd want to spread our cities out since we won't take any by force. So, CxxxxC with terrain taken into consideration, and then we fill in gaps/plant the middle C in the CxCxxC or CxxCxC spacing once we've maxed the CxxxxC spacing. Unless, you have a better idea, of course.

I finally remember to address this:
Mutual protection pacts-I don't see any point in signing these, since they'll almost drag us into an unwanted war. So, I say we take them completely off the table in our charter.
Military Alliances-I suppose we can sign these provided that someone attacked us, of course, as a way of detering them from attacking us. The only problem comes as that we don't want to sully our reputation by breaking one too early by signing a peace treaty. I can see how though this could work out well for us though, so I think they work out as O.K. in principle... but... perhaps we ought to have a team discussion before any of these get signed.

Also... do we want the Great Library? I'll go either way on this, so no rush for a decision. I'd think Hanging Gardens and Smith's works as the better wonder trigger strategy than Smith's and Hoover Dam, so I think we should aim for Hanging Gardens and Smith's as our key wonders. If we miss the Hanging Gardens.. oh well. We can build as many other wonders as we like, but let's try to avoid a 20k city. Copernicus's and Newton's rather clearly come as desired, but not necessary I'd say. I wouldn't underrate SoZ or Knight's Templar, because we can always disband extra units from these wonders if we like... or have more of an enemy deterrant. Diplomatic or space... whichever we feel like in the modern era I'd say.

A charter sounds like a good idea.

Okay, rolled up some starts, I have the usual 5 suspects for what I think are our preferred settings: Emperor, 60% continents, wet, warm, 5Byo, huge, max opponents, max aggression for the AI, and I left SGLs on, just because.

I'll get screenies up here in a bit.

Now, for the charter, or Rules To Live By:

1. We may never declare war on another civilization, for any reason, by any means.

2. If war is declared upon us, we may not attack units outside our cultural borders. (Note that this means no attacking opposing cities with any of our units, ergo no capturing cities.) We may, however bombard (non-lethally) those units from within our own borders. Within our own borders, anything goes.

3. We may ask civilizations to leave our territory. However, we may not do things like entrapping a unit in our land then repeatedly asking them to leave until they declare war.

4. We must always make peace that does not cost us anything as soon as it is available to us to do so. If an AI demands something from us in exchange for peace, we may decline the peace proposal if it is deemed necessary.

5. If a civilization will offer us peace and something else, we are to accept peace only.

6. We may not enter into mutual protection pacts. These lead to violations of Rule #1 which are not in our control.

7. We may enter into military alliances. However, the existence of an alliance does not relieve us of our obligations under rule #4 above.

8. We may definitely use spies. That's not declaring war. Use of spies shall be subject to the spirit of rule #3 above.

9. Privateers are acceptable, as they do not require a declaration of war.



Anything you want to add or change?

You could build defensive units only. Aside from Artillery type units of course.

And, the five screenshots:


1:


2:


3:


4:


5:

Did you take the pics on the Z setting? Kind of hard to see those and details matter in a start.