Going without Combat.

[Germnoble]

I'm playing a game where I'm going for a Culture win, on Prince difficulty, CP random'd me Spain. (Havent tried culture before, baby steps.) And the weirdest thing is happening. I'm somehow not constantly at war with the entire map. I never actually engaged in combat until the early mid 1900's and that was because I didnt like how close France was to me in the culture race and I was getting stir crazy. I think I could have made it through the game without combat.

I was technically "at war" once but I never attacked anyone, the entire map was at war with Ceasar so I got roped into it by my allies asking me to declare, besides that, Ceasar was the biggest warmonger and threat to peace in the game. Rammy is starting to fill that role, but at least he's reasonable.

Anyways, I've played around 30 games and have always ended up in a massive war. Has anyone managed to avoid engaging in or becoming involved with direct combat through an entire game on a higher difficulty? Am I blowing this out of proportion? It's just crazy how different this game is without an entire map out for my blood.

Maybe it's because I decided to stay small and not city rush or maybe because I actually accepted research agreements to help my culture. I'm so used to trying for a domination or science victory I guess so I try to not help anyone out.

Whatever, I'm rambling. Thoughts?

 

[FeiLing]

If you start a war (actually two, one is 'free' of diplomatic penalties), it will become a world war (or at least every one will hate you). If you eliminate someone, everyone will hate you immediately no matter what - even if it was just a single CS.

If you don't do that, you always can get away without wars. Except on higher difficulties, you're closest neighbor(s) will always attack you. That means if you don't expand much (and they don't expand near you) or the map causes you not to share any borders for the majority of the game, then you might never have to fight.

Note that you'll also always be the main target, if you don't have units. If you are strong, nobody will dare attacking you (unless they're too close to you or crazy (monty, alex, oda, etc)).

 

[PhilBowles]

If you start a war (actually two, one is 'free' of diplomatic penalties), it will become a world war (or at least every one will hate you). If you eliminate someone, everyone will hate you immediately no matter what - even if it was just a single CS.

In my current Emperor game, I've so far captured Istanbul (though there are surviving Ottoman cities), Budapest (destroying the "Budapest Civilization") and Beijing (destroying the Chinese, as Spain had taken out their remaining cities - AIs in this particular game seem reluctant to attack capitals, which is definitely not always the case).

I'm currently friends with everyone on my continent (the Germans were recent war allies in the big push against the Ottomans, and took several of their cities while I was attacking Istanbul), and with the leading civ I know of pointswise (Egypt), on another continent. France "desires friendly relations with my empire" and only the Ottomans dislike me - even with them I don't have a warmonger penalty (I had war declared against me in each case - Budapest was a Chinese ally when I captured it).

So it's certainly far from the case that everyone will hate you or you'll end up on the wrong side of a world war (in one iteration of that game, which sadly crashed, the Spanish - friends with both me and Germany - moved conquistadors up and declared war on the Ottomans, so I was briefly part of a three-civ alliance against a single AI civ). You have to learn how the diplomatic system works and plan your own friendships/enemies around it, though. For instance, in this game I was friends with Spain and Germany, who were friends with one another (big positive with both civs). Spain had been at war with the Ottomans and Suleiman declared war on Germany as well as me (giving Sully a big negative with Spain and, before his own war dec, with Germany for being at war with their friends); I think he had also been denounced by one of the civs that was friendly with Germany and/or Spain (probably Songhai). As long as you have an idea who dislikes who, and what their history with each other is, you can exploit that to tip the modifiers in your favour, by denouncing or declaring war with the enemies of civs you want to avoid conflict with.

It's rare that you'll go a whole game without war, and even going for culture victory you don't need to. Also, on levels like Prince the AI is less active and will be less inclined to fight on behalf of allies half a continent away (while in this game the Germans marched straight from the defence of my city closest to their borders to Ottoman territory, which was on the other side of Persia from them), so even if you have war alliances you can't rely on other people to do your fighting for you.

You can also exploit defensive pacts; if someone seems about to declare war (amassing troops on your border, for instance), make a defensive pact with a nearby civ you like - if the enemy doesn't back off, they'll end up fighting both of you.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I regularly get through games without engaging in combat, sometimes without even having war declared against me, even on King. Generally it won't happen on a Continents map but even then, I sometimes find that if you can fend them off the first time they attack, they won't attack again. Of course, sometimes this is due to someone bigger and uglier taking them down...

I try to stay as neutral as possible by not signing DoFs or engaging in other people's wars unless I think it's absolutely necessary, though that strategy will go out of the window when Gods & Kings makes DoFs necessary for RAs.