Is the opportunity cost of early aggression just not worth it?

[snarzberry]

Well, if you've chosen a civ that's designed for early war then to get the most out of them you're going to want to attack someone, right? Religion, citystates, resource trades, social policies, careful choosing of which cities to attack and which to keep... there are many ways to maximize your happiness while going for domination victory. There are many ways to screw up too

Here is a screenshot from a game that shows a conquering spree in the early/mid game and you can see that happiness was kept under control. Some turns being moderately unhappy are probably inevitable but in this game (imm, pan, standard everything, mongols (easy pickings i know)) I don't think I ever spent time in -10 unhappy or worse. Even after taking the final capital, Stockholm, I've only slipped down to -6 and was in the green before that.

 

[OmniPotent42]

There are certainly windows. Just wait for your opponent to become vulnerable, and don't forget about trade routes (and hopefully have other trade partners than your enemies.) I took out a border city with the Great Wall AND the Shoshone defense bonus with only 4 comp bows, 2 swordsmen and 2 catapults, but I slowly added to that force and kept upgrading it over the eras and eventually took out 2 civs with it. Don't be afraid to bribe the AI to get their army out of position as well.

 

[Vidszhite]

Seems like unless there is a clear leader of the game with certain luxuries or possibly natural wonders, early aggression is very hard to pull off/make it worth it. So are civs like Mongolia, Huns, Zulu just kinda meh?

On the contrary, my current immortal Huns game is one of the most fun and best I've played. I conquered Washington right as he was finishing the Great Wall, making me invincible in all my next wars. Now I own my whole continent and am poised to win both cultural and diplomatic victory. By contrast, the last two wonder spam peace games I was in ended in failure because I couldn't stop a runaway Greece. Early aggression helps keep the neighbors in check, and you can always catch up later. I've been 8 techs behind and still caught up.

 

[Arte_Et_Marte]

The Civs you should be questioning are Civs like Rome, Byzantium, and the other classical era Civs.

Rome's not so bad because of the Legion's ability to build roads. I just played a game where I built roads early then I would have because of Messenger of The Gods and Meritocracy, having a couple of Legions' lightened the load for my workers. Then when I had a couple of Ballistae I conquered some cities from Alex and Genghis, who everyone hated, then used the Legions to build more roads and a few forts in case the original owners wanted their cities back.

Your window for warmongering with them is shorter, but the unit's usefulness is fairly long lasting, you won't feel particularly rushed to upgrade them.

 

[ahawk]

My opinion is that early war in BNW is worth it for about a city or two. The following reasons are why:

1) In BNW, it seems the AI is more quickly settling toward me (on Emperor and Immortal, at least) than it did in G&K, forcing me to take an AI city or two just to get up to having 4 total cities, which is the best way to use Tradition when I go that route.

2) 5% hit to science per city or puppet is bad enough to warrant not puppetting many cities. Moreover, in the early game, the puppet may not have the infrastructure to quickly recover population and/or get a library up in a timely manner.

3) Happiness is now a little harder to come by. The happiness-providing SP from Rationalism was removed, and luxuries now seem more localized (a start with 3 of X and 1 of Y, rather than 2 X and 1 Y and 1 Z as was a bit more common in G&K).

4) IIRC, the war-monger diplo hit is now based off the number of cities and/or DoW's one makes. Thus, taking fewer cities helps keep the uninvolved AI's from going to guarded or hostile.

5) The early game now depends on more types of buildings and units than before. Culture depends on not just the original culture buildings, but also the new guilds. Trade depends on trade-units as well as caravansaries. And at the same time, you still have libraries and religious buildings to build. Thus, even with very efficient usage of your units, you still may not want to build even the few it would take to puppet just two or three cities during the crucial time when you also want caravans, caravansaries, shrines, libraries, granaries, workers, etc.

6) Since terrain now, for the most part, does not yield raw gold, it's easy to run into GPT issues when puppetting in the early game as you may only have two trade routes, yet enough buildings incurring maintenance costs in both your original cities as well as the annexed/puppeted cities. And the problem is even more severe in that, at least in my Emperor/Immortal games on BNW, the early-game AIs often run less than +5 GPT (the highest amount they are usually willing to offer for a lux), and you can only lump-sum trade when a DoF is present.

-- Ultimately, I usually find it's worth it to DoW someone who is sending an unprotected settler my way, or founds a city right on my door-step. But going on an early-game puppetting spree now seems less viable.

 

[Mesix]

I'm not sure if Zulu count as 'early' - I certainly think that agression at the time you get Impis is just about perfect.

Playing as Zulu I was able to take two capitals and one city that had been built ina perfect spot for science (right by a mountain and surrounded by jungle). I think hunkered down and rode out a science victory, it worked pretty well.

It does seem like other early aggressive civs would have a lot more issues than Zulu, as Zulu comes online a bit later and you have the lower upkeep cost UA.

You're assuming that a Zulu player will wait for Impis. I conquered the first opponents in my Zulu game with Spearmen and Archers. I had half of the world under my flag (with positive and each turn) by the time I reached the Medieval Era to upgrade my units to Impis and Crossbows.