I Hate Warmongers!

I hate AI warmongers.
I dispise human warmongers.
They are mindless, skillless souls that contrubute nothing to society except to brandish thier muscles to the rest of the world.
Now that I'm calm, let me tell you what situation I'm in. It pisses me off how the computer can keep up in tech and STILL MANAGE TO HORDE UNITS TO DECLARE WAR ON YOU AND FORCE YOU TO SURRENDER IN THE SAME TURN.

Ugh... my heart... I knew my temper will eventually kill me.
Ok... Whew. Now that I'm calm, here's what I'm talking about. After scrounging from a very low science beaker, I managed to scrounge enough science to... fall behind in tech. Who's the newbie that told me if I REX enough, I can manage to survive? Well, you're wrong. Dead <beep>ing wrong.

Now I managed to get up to say 50% rexing, and I fall behind then BUZZ BUZZ BUZZZ BUZZZZZ... that moron Alexander DOWed me.
Apparently, while I was trying to recover my ecomony, the idiot was emassing his army against me.











I surrended to Alexander one turn later.
(Yes, I'm running a mod, and its Extrajbeta Modified).

Edit: I just realized Alex was an Aggressive leader. Damn.

I'm not good at reading the military advisor screen, so I can't tell if that unit listing is your or Alex's. Either way, it's not all that huge for the 13th century.

The aggressive trait isn't a guarantee that a civ will act aggressively (each AI has a number of personality, um, traits :-D, that affect various aspects of what one might call aggressiveness). Alex is slightly hawkish among the aggressive leaders, who are naturally more hawkish on average than the other leaders, but he does not declare when he is Pleased with you, so a shared religion or favorite civic can keep you safe or mostly safe. Maybe he can be bribed into war, but other than that you won't have to worry about him after that.

Well Alex is an... interesting warmonger, I saw him dow on me without any diplomatic penalties, no close borders and such... so it is kinda ordinary to see him dow on someone for some reason only known to him

Well I dont know what difficulty you play on, but on noble, I learned to survive 1 warmonger near me, well if I am not caught up in building spree...

I understand that you are no newbie, so I cant really give good advices, or advices you didnt know about... but if you ask me (did you?? ) you would need a good hammer city and a cottage city up and running ASAP, so that you can still manage your armies and win some gold...

I understand that you are no newbie,

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With all respect, considering the state of that Incan saved game...

Lone Wolf said:

With all respect, considering the state of that Incan saved game...

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Well I am at work now and I didnt even realize that there was a save attached

Well I am at work now and I didnt even realize that there was a save attached

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I meant the save in the "I have no patience for war" thread.

lol sorry my bad...

Are we really going through this again? I think it was pretty thoroughly proven in the last thread that your complaints (whining, frankly) were unfounded, and that the fault was with the way you were managing your games.

It's not expected that everyone is going to be great at the game right away, but it seems like you're not even trying. Not being very good and wanting to improve is one thing; what you are doing is quite another. People showed you in the other thread how to better manage your empire and gave some good advice; so your response is to abandon that thread and start complaining all over again in a new one?

I think it's time you realized that the problem here is YOU, not the game.

No matter how strong his mistakes (sorry for talking about you in the 3rd person, PreLynMax), saying things like "the problem is you" is probably not a good way to make him change his ways -- i think that kind of comment tends to just make the recipient dig in and defend what they have already said/done.

Bostock said:

No matter how strong his mistakes (sorry for talking about you in the 3rd person, PreLynMax), saying things like "the problem is you" is probably not a good way to make him change his ways -- i think that kind of comment tends to just make the recipient dig in and defend what they have already said/done.

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Probably so, and ordinarily I wouldn't be that blunt no matter how many mistakes he had made; like I said, most people (myself definitely included) don't start out immediately knowing how to effectively play Civ4. Heck, I still make a large number of mistakes on a regular basis, as do many players much more skilled than myself. It's a rather complex games, and for most people takes time and effort to get "good" at. The best way to do so is by opening yourself to criticism from others, and listening to their advice.

PreLynMax, however, has already shown an unwillingness in the previous thread to listen to constructive advice, continuing to spout his baseless arguments in the face of basically everyone telling him there are plenty of games and articles circulating on this site to prove that it is not remotely impossible to do the things he claims are impossible.

This behavior, combined with his decision to start a new thread (with basically the same subject as his last one) after people showed him how to improve and gave him some good advice, suggests a hear-no-evil attitude; he's basically ignoring everything that contradicts his beliefs and refusing to admit he's doing anything wrong.

@OP, Why don't you go play Sim City? No warmongering there. The war system might be broken in Civ4 but if so it's broken in favor of humans.

There are countless threads/writeups in the forums showing how it can be done on noble and all levels above, i'd suggest you read them.

I have to say, if the AI builds up a military that forces me to surrender, it's usually because I'm ahead in tech; i.e. I've been neglecting my military.

If you're low on tech and on military, then the problem is most likely centered around handling your research.

Though I'll admit that prince surprised me for a long while before I learned how to keep an economy afloat.

Now I'm able to do it with automated workers.

Bandobras Took said:

I have to say, if the AI builds up a military that forces me to surrender, it's usually because I'm ahead in tech; i.e. I've been neglecting my military.

If you're low on tech and on military, then the problem is most likely centered around handling your research.

Though I'll admit that prince surprised me for a long while before I learned how to keep an economy afloat.

Now I'm able to do it with automated workers.

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Automated workers??? I have to micromanage every little thing in the game and you beat the game on prince with automated workers???

impressive...

PreLynMax said:

I hate AI warmongers.
I dispise human warmongers.

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Dude ... you know that there is an "Always Peace" option when you start a new game, right? You don't have to deal with warmongers if you really hate them that much....

(Or you could play SimCity, as Dirk1302 suggested. Civ4 is in large part a wargame, so it seems a little odd that someone who hates war would play it.)

PreLynMax said:

They are mindless, skillless souls that contrubute nothing to society except to brandish thier muscles to the rest of the world.

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Hey, I'm a warmonger!

PreLynMax said:

Now that I'm calm, let me tell you what situation I'm in. It pisses me off how the computer can keep up in tech and STILL MANAGE TO HORDE UNITS TO DECLARE WAR ON YOU AND FORCE YOU TO SURRENDER IN THE SAME TURN.

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Aha, here's the real problem: You simply don't know how to manage the economic and military aspects of the game at the same time. No big deal! Civ4 is a complex game. It takes a while to learn how to play it. Off the top of my head, I'd say that the two most common newbie mistakes are:

1. Overexpanding and killing your economy, and
2. Teching up, neglecting your military, and being crushed by an aggressor.

You have to balance your military and your economy. If you do it properly, you can have quite a lot of both. However, you have to do it properly. Otherwise, you'll fall into one of the two traps mentioned above.

My first piece of advice for you is to go back and re-read the advice that you received in the "I have no patience for war" thread. Some expert players (much better than me) took a look at your saved game and showed you how to turn it around. More workers, more terrain improvements, fewer (but stronger) military units, and aggressive tech trading were enough to pull you out of the hole into which your Incas had fallen. Read what they did and try to learn from it.

Next, I'd recommend that you read Sisutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners and several of the other strategy articles on these forums. I'm certainly not a great player, but I have learned a lot from these tips.

Finally, if none of those options appeal to you, then I can only recommend that you find another game to play. Civ4 is a complex game. It takes a while to learn how to play it. But it's still only a game. If you don't enjoy playing Civ4, then you should find a game that you do enjoy. The whole point is to have fun, right?

Dirk1302 said:

@OP, Why don't you go play Sim City? No warmongering there. The war system might be broken in Civ4 but if so it's broken in favor of humans.

There are countless threads/writeups in the forums showing how it can be done on noble and all levels above, i'd suggest you read them.

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I have well over 10 cities long before 1000AD in my youtube walkthrough too, and that's on monarch. A lot more units and tech too. What's he's going to have to realize is that 1) it's absolutely possible and 2) how. Then, he has to believe he can do it and work towards it.

Alternatively, the OP can just stay at noble forever if that's more fun, although I do get tired of seeing comments about how things that can be done (easily) "can't be done".

When I rex hard I routinely will have up to 10 cities by 1AD on monarch/normal. Shortly after I have a tech lead and proceed to draft a large army and clear my continent.

It's not rexing that is the problem. It's identifying your situation.

If you have a warmongerer on your hands, you MUST decide what you are going to do. Sitting there presenting yourself as a soft target is NOT the answer. Decide:

1) Prepare for war. Raise an army and be the instigator, not the punching bag.

2) Diplo 1. The best way to ensure a warmongerer, especially a backstabber like Alex, is not going to war against you is to bribe them to war against someone else. This may necessitate that you join in a "fake war" with them. In this case, make sure you are prepared for a possible stack from Alex's opponent coming your way.

3) Diplo 2. Make Alex your bff. Give him techs, open borders, share religion, share wars, trade resources, give in to demands, share favourite civic, etc. etc. Once you get him to friendly, you don't have to worry about it. This can be hard with someone like Alex, although if you get it to work it can be very nice having an aggressive attack dog as an ally.

In short, first learn the basics of the game. There is no reason you should be falling behind in tech on noble if you know what you are doing. Lay down more cottages. Assign more specialists. Lightbulb a couple techs. Make tech trades. Don't overexpand too quickly, especially before pottery and writing (after pottery and writing you can expand to 0% sci slider and still recover...target monarchy/currency/col).

Then realize that warfare is part of this game. If you are not going to take the war to someone else, you at least need to defend your own empire. You do this through 1) having a strong defensive army; and 2) Diplomacy. If a warmongerer declares on you, at the very least you should be able to immediately bribe a friend to come to your aid. However, that will not save you since the AI sucks at coming to your aid, really. But, they might send a stack to harass Alex back at home. You MUST be prepared to defend yourself, unless you are CERTAIN that you have the diplo situation well in hand.

Ignoring diplo and military is a good way to present yourself as a tasty meal for an aggressor.

afair there was a "peaceful Gandhi" RPC somewhere in hte forum. If only someone could find it!.. i think reading it would help the OP a lot
A nice example of avoiding being DoWed through esp/diplomacy. Any OCC walkthrough is mostly the same, though.

nanomage said:

afair there was a "peaceful Gandhi" RPC somewhere in hte forum. If only someone could find it!.. i think reading it would help the OP a lot
A nice example of avoiding being DoWed through esp/diplomacy. Any OCC walkthrough is mostly the same, though.

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That game had some harsh constraints (I had to fogbust with SCOUTS), but ultimately was quite easy because about 0 AIs in that game declare at pleased and they all had similar peaceweights IIRC. In other words, it was overwhelmingly easy to duck war in that game. Mad won culture, I used the AP. Probably not good for someone just learning gameplay basics though, because the situation was so contrived.

Warmongering AIs are (usually) the least of my worries when my unit pumping is up to speed.

It's the runaway-techers on other land masses (with a religion love fest) that drive me nuts.

nanomage said:

afair there was a "peaceful Gandhi" RPC somewhere in hte forum. If only someone could find it!..

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Hmm, I wonder if you meant Kylearan's Nonviolent Gandhi variant. The only military unit he allowed himself was India's initial warrior.