When warmongering do you leave 1 city so no diplomatic hit or just conquer the civ?

Conquer civ and take diplomatic hit or leave a city and come back later at the end when diplomacy doesnt matter?

It depends on the Civ. Someone like Monty is or Suleiman is going to keep DoWing over and over and being a general annoyance so I happily take them out of the game. If I'm the primary aggressor, I'm often tempted to leave them one city out of pity.

Yeah, it depends. If it's a little peripheral city with nothing of use, it's usually better to just leave the enemy nation alive.

I miss vassals.

I leave one alive and bribe someone else to do it unless it's late game and everyone knows I'm a psychopath already. Not worth the diplomatic hit otherwise.

Nothing more satisfying than leaving a really annoying civ a one tile island or ice/tundra location as their last city. Particularly if this civ was the one to originally backstab and DoW you. Now if there were only options in the diplomacy screen to taunt them periodically for the rest of the game ("How are things going on your floating rock, Napoleon?").

I leave them one and allow an allied militaristic city state or friendly AI to destroy them. One game I had taken most of Napoleon's cities and Hanoi happened to be right next to his last. So sooner or later Hanoi took Lyon, destroying Napoleon, and ended up razing the city. But I still like leaving them one city unless its someone I don't like or is annoying

Always leave last city to avoid diplo hit and possible RA's later

If it's a Civ that has really gotten my short hairs ablaze, I usually wipe them out. If not I let them live and just use them as cash cows. When you have a big enough military to conquer the world and can fight the other Civs off, wipe 'em out.

Another consideration is if you need trading partners. Sometimes, in order to keep a war moving, I need other civs' lux resources. Once you take the diplo hit, it is often harder - darn near impossible - to get lux resources from them. So, a key cosideration is wheter or not I need trading opportunities.

The Mad Russian said:

If it's a Civ that has really gotten my short hairs ablaze, I usually wipe them out.

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That's true, sometimes the satisfaction of annihilating an especially pernicious enemy is too good to pass up. There are also the times when the defeated enemy just refuses peace.

Russia declared war on me, I took 2 cities, then I declared on Greece and took 1. So far, no warmonger.

Russia then declared again, and after killing a few of their units (haven't entered their territory much yet), I'm starting to get Warmonger already. The fact that I've been in war for so many turns might have something to do with it too.

If I can't exile them to oblivion - the ice floes, lonely island - then I finish them off. They're just going to endlessly denounce me anyway, so I might as well take the initial diplo hit and move on. Aesthetically, I like the complete kill.

I find it doesn't matter. My last game I didn't get any warmonger, but I still had tons of wars. Someone was always needlessly declaring war on me, getting smoked hard, and then begging for peace.
Only 5 turns after the peace treaty expired, to have them do it again.

I never started a war, the first time I usually never took anything. Killed a dozen units, sent them running, accepted peace. After Russia's third DoW, I took 1 city to teach them a lesson. They didn't learn, so next time I took 4. They still didn't learn so next time, I took everything except one, liberated Ramses, and gave him half of their cities. Otherwise I was at -45 happiness.
I still didn't get war-monger.
Incas declared war a couple times, sent them scurrying away, alexander spent the entire game denouncing me, never DoW though, and the Iroquois also DoW a couple times. I just burnt his cities to the ground. I couldn't be bothered at that point.
So frankly I don't see how having warmonger would really slow it down. There wasn't a lot of time where I wasn't at war or just about to be at war.

It depends on the map. Island or small continents. I don't get many needless war because the borders don't touch much but on Continents or Pangaea. I always expect to be DOW'd because eventually someones border will touch mine and then it is on like Donkey Kong.

Yes I do leave the last city unless it is a really attractive one with NWs or luxuries etc. Destroying civs usually results in the world hating you sooner than you want them to which is bad for conquest & of course for your economy.

I usually conquer most of a civs good cities and notice they have one horrible city in a bad spot. I usually take out all their units with my remaining force and then let them sit there for the rest of eternity, reminding me there used to be other civs in the area. The clearing of all the units of a dying civ is one of my guilty pleasures in this game. Ill even pillage all their lands before declaring peace just to make sure theyre forever stuck at -50 gpt with no reserve or luxuries. Id like to think the other AI's see this and take note but i know thats not the case

The end of my warmongering games always play out the same though, with everyone telling me how horrible i am even if the AI is the one DOWing me. In that case I just steamroll anything left and leave a pile of burning ash behind my ever advancing forces.

AriochIV said:

That's true, sometimes the satisfaction of annihilating an especially pernicious enemy is too good to pass up. There are also the times when the defeated enemy just refuses peace.

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Especially annoying if they're down to their last city and refuse peace+1gold with their haughty "unacceptable, must offer a fair deal".

Makes it more difficult to leave them alive.