Endless wars. One after another.

[Event Horizon]

Greetings, gentlemen.

I've got Civ4 Complete since a mere 3 weeks, so I can be considered a noob... Well, so far, my few games have always been war. War. And more war. And even more war. War I've not provoked myself.

More or less since meeting another civilization, the result is war. They offer Open Borders and I accept, we have trade relations... And suddenly, war. When I massacre a little and they finally agree to peace, two or three turns and another declares war. Nuts. Repeat, and two or three turns later, the first one declares war again. Repeat ad infinitum. But only if you're lucky, because if you aren't, ALL AIs end teaming up against you and you're dead by their sheer numbers.

I find myself building only military units in all cities, or risking losing the pace at which enemies send horde after horde (and I mean HORDE). When I manage to kill one of their monstrous stacks, after endless of turns of bloodshed, before I can make a counterattack with fresh units, another HORDE comes from the horizon. Repeat. I can't even try to flank them, since I need all unit just built to stop the horde. When the horde is killed, no time to build up another army and conterattack, since there comes a new horde. Repeat. And imagine that If you must fight in 4 fronts at a time.

This is just plain boring. As I said, my game is from start to end (end that comes when I go back to desktop tired and bored) building units all the time. And war. And more war. And even more war. And the same f... war again. Boring to hell.

Is it really that all the time? What am I missing or doing wrong? I've tried giving presents to keep them happy, but the result is the same: war. I play on Noble (the "normal" level if I recall well); don't have Aggressive AI checked. Reminds me SMACX, but even worse.

Any advice? Thanks.

 

[Party]

Interesting, i've never encountered that problem to that extent.
If you post a save then i'll probably be able to tell you what you are doing wrong.
But right away I can tell you that for a new player Noble is wayyyy to hard. I was not able to win anything over chieftan for my first few months playing.

Especially if you have BtS, that is just way to hard for a newbie.

 

[Event Horizon]

Tsk. I'm afraid I don't keep any saves at the moment; the last one (with Alexander, since he's Aggressive and I wanted to be prepared for lots of fighting) went to the trash yesterday.

 

[duende29]

Being nice to non abusive civs works, pick one or two, preferably not the ones you're sharing borders and initiate trade. You need civs pleased or friendly towards you, specially the strong on the scoreboard ones. ALWAYS keep your unit maintenance over 0, even at peace, to avoid stronger civs targeting you. Check your Power rating and try to always stay above the weaker civs of the bunch.

Military buildings and Techs also help dissuade the rest of the civs, so don't stay behind on them just to get stuff like religion.

Oh, and always have another city other than your capital heavy on production so you can keep pumping units all the time.

 

[Freedom]

Maybe you have aggressive AI turned on? Or you're surrounded by reputably aggressive crazis like Monte, Toku, Ghengis etc? Or maybe a combo of both?

Honestly I see maybe 3-4 wars the entire game not instigated myself on average on Monarch-Emperor level, strange you are seeing so much more...In fact I find it quite boring...

 

[PieceOfMind]

Interesting, i've never encountered that problem to that extent.
If you post a save then i'll probably be able to tell you what you are doing wrong.
But right away I can tell you that for a new player Noble is wayyyy to hard. I was not able to win anything over chieftan for my first few months playing.

Especially if you have BtS, that is just way to hard for a newbie.

I almost got my rear end whooped on Prince the other day. I used to have no troubles playing Monarch (sometimes Emperor) in vanilla civ.

Being an experienced player (but not necessarily meticulous) I have to agree that Noble is not a good difficulty level for someone fairly new to the game, especially with BtS.

 

[Antilogic]

What I would advise is checking that Power graph...it sounds like all the AIs are dogpiling on you. Either you are up against a swarm of warmongers in every game (who are your most common opponents?), or you are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of power. Or maybe even both.

 

[PutCashIn]

Ah well you see its all about multiplayer these days, but unfortunatly nobody likes co-op any more (no co op on HALO 1 for PC? the fools, finally, no horsehockey split screen, ooops, no luck), so endless wars for you!!
(and get this...they took out AI in multiplayer battles in medieval total war, so its only human on human, no teaming up with people who want to maybe win a couple of times without spending WAAAYYY to much of thier life learning like I, when it was in there for the previous rome version...?)

 

[Powerslave]

PutCashIn, what are you talking about?

 

[Event Horizon]

In my last game, I had Sparta surrounded by mines and with Heroic Epic built, and that kept my ass relatively safe against Boudica, but when De Gaulle joined the party, and later Hammurabi, I ended fleeing in despair.

Being nice to non abusive civs works, pick one or two, preferably not the ones you're sharing borders and initiate trade.

Yeah, I did that with Hammurabi... But I noticed with the others that the "borders spark tensions" gets worse over time. How much units can make me safe from the bullies? 7/8 per city? More? Thanks.

 

[ferenginar]

Play on continents, clear your own, make friends with civs on others, the borders don't cause tension, and the AI are crap at fighting wars on other continents. It's not a guarentee, but it helps.

 

[duende29]

How much units can make me safe from the bullies? 7/8 per city? More?

Not really, usually I have only 1 unit at a city without neighbor frontiers or near your friends, then a small defensive stack of 2-3 on the cities I foresee some aggression directed at, followed by SoD near the civ I'm ready to attack. By the way, BIG TIP, never have a state religion that you're not sharing with one of your neighbors: religious wars are most of the time the cause of early wars.

But really, if they're all angry at you at the moment, there's no other course of action but to take the fight to them or restart another game. Domination conditions. Get a tech for a strong unit if you don't have it already and direct your aggression towards the weakest enemy, make him your vassal and with him, dogpile the next on the list. Don't mind if you have to drop your research to low levels just to keep going.

 

[Bushface]

The secret's in the power graph. Once you have enough espionage points to "see demographics" and the other civs appear on that screen, make sure that your civ is well up with the leaders by training units and constructing military buildings. There's a thread somewhere started by Robi D called "The inner workings of the demogs screen explained" which tells you the values attributed to various units, buildings etc.
If your power is noticeably lower than that of other civs, particularly those with aggressive leaders, then expect to be attacked and, probably, defeated.

 

[pi-r8]

Also, don't be nice to everyone. If you have trade relations with everyone, you'll piss everyone off. It's much better to join a religious bloc of nations that are all friendly with each other, and avoid having anything to do with the other civs.

 

[pi-r8]

Oh, and if they ask for tribute, and you can afford it, it's usually best to give it.

 

[Carver]

Greetings, gentlemen.

I've got Civ4 Complete since a mere 3 weeks, so I can be considered a noob... Well, so far, my few games have always been war. War. And more war. And even more war. War I've not provoked myself.

More or less since meeting another civilization, the result is war. They offer Open Borders and I accept, we have trade relations... And suddenly, war. When I massacre a little and they finally agree to peace, two or three turns and another declares war. Nuts. Repeat, and two or three turns later, the first one declares war again. Repeat ad infinitum. But only if you're lucky, because if you aren't, ALL AIs end teaming up against you and you're dead by their sheer numbers.

I find myself building only military units in all cities, or risking losing the pace at which enemies send horde after horde (and I mean HORDE). When I manage to kill one of their monstrous stacks, after endless of turns of bloodshed, before I can make a counterattack with fresh units, another HORDE comes from the horizon. Repeat. I can't even try to flank them, since I need all unit just built to stop the horde. When the horde is killed, no time to build up another army and conterattack, since there comes a new horde. Repeat. And imagine that If you must fight in 4 fronts at a time.

This is just plain boring. As I said, my game is from start to end (end that comes when I go back to desktop tired and bored) building units all the time. And war. And more war. And even more war. And the same f... war again. Boring to hell.

Is it really that all the time? What am I missing or doing wrong? I've tried giving presents to keep them happy, but the result is the same: war. I play on Noble (the "normal" level if I recall well); don't have Aggressive AI checked. Reminds me SMACX, but even worse.

Any advice? Thanks.

A good way to avoid constant war is to wipe out (or contain) your neighbors. If you seek peace, attack your neighbors early and destroy them or lock them into one small corner of the continent. After your continent is under control you can focus on building and trading with the other continent. By this point you will also be one of the most powerful civs in the world and other civs will hesitate before attacking you. And if they do attack, you'll be able to destroy many of their units at sea and quickly mop up the ones than manage to land on your shores.

 

[jessiecat]

A good way to avoid constant war is to wipe out (or contain) your neighbors. If you seek peace, attack your neighbors early and destroy them or lock them into one small corner of the continent. After your continent is under control you can focus on building and trading with the other continent. By this point you will also be one of the most powerful civs in the world and other civs will hesitate before attacking you. And if they do attack, you'll be able to destroy many of their units at sea and quickly mop up the ones than manage to land on your shores.

A better way to avoid constant war is to tick "permananent peace". I've
done that and still boxed in my neighbour before declaring war and wiping
him out altogether. Is this right? I can declare war on them, but they
can't do that to me? Doesn't seem fair, does it?

 

[Event Horizon]

Not really, usually I have only 1 unit at a city without neighbor frontiers or near your friends, then a small defensive stack of 2-3 on the cities I foresee some aggression directed at

Really? No enemy stack is ever smaller than 3 or 4 catapults (when discovered) and about the same Melee/Mounted units. Can't see how 2/3 units can contain it. Walls are pretty useless, as after a few turns of bombarding there's no brick over brick (learnt it the hard way).