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Can you win without war?

No war? You can avoid declaring war yourself, but it's hard to avoid having other civs declare war on you. Some people claim to have accomplished it, though.

(Edit: I see, Ville. Did no one *ever* declare war on you?)

A more problematic attempt is to play with no military units. Makes it foolhardy to declare war, and pretty deadly if they declare war on you. But Charis (an excellent player) did it. Here is his report of that game, which he won! Emperor Difficulty, w/Raging Barbs, too!


BTW: Telefragged said the Core ad will be gone Saturday, and they have talked with the distributer who will *not* be providing more like that.
 
You probably can win without wars, but what fun would it be? I can't imagine playing a whole game without a single war. It would be pretty boring.

Originally posted by Padma
BTW: Telefragged said the Core ad will be gone Saturday, and they have talked with the distributer who will *not* be providing more like that.
Click to expand...

Thank God.
 
I won a 5CC without ever declaring war/having war declared on me. It was on Monarch, and I won via Diplomacy. It wasn't all that boring :).
 
I won a game with max civs on a huge pangea map without fighting a war. Got off to a great start and by the time I started running into other civs, I was so much stronger than they were that they never attacked. I was so busy micromanaging I didn't want or need any more cities, had all the resources and lux so didn't attack anybody. Won a cultural victory about 1400 AD. It was interesting but....tedious.
 
Originally posted by Padma

A more problematic attempt is to play with no military units. Makes it foolhardy to declare war, and pretty deadly if they declare war on you. But Charis (an excellent player) did it. Here is his report of that game, which he won! Emperor Difficulty, w/Raging Barbs, too!
Click to expand...

The interesting thing about that was that he still got involved in a war, and managed to lose only two cities!
 
On a huge or even bigger map it's very common to never be in a war. Especially when there's enough room to expand for all the civs. I won a lot of regent/monarch games that way, until I found that making war adds a bit to the game ;)
 
My first Deity win was without any war. See my Epic 4 report on my homepage in my signature. It was still a fun game.

There was also a fun Realms Beyond Epic recently which prohibited war (all civilizations were on different continents, and ships couldn't carry units).

Oh and try using Mozilla to get rid of the Core banner :)

-Sirp.
 
I have won 3 OCC's and I am on my way to a 4th one on deity level. All no war involved! (yes various civs around).

In common play I have won without being attacked, but have been at war. Sometime there is a far away civ that declares war out of the blue....

BTW: Charis' story beats it all!
 
I've had OCC victories without any war, but the best I managed in a normal game was a monarch game (normal size, 8 civs)where I spread out fast and took advantage of bottlenecks and became the biggest civ. I was finally attacked sometimes during the industrial age. I had a good tech lead, but had focused more on building up my cities than keeping a too strong military to scare off the enemies - although my military was so good that they should been scared :lol:
 
On Warlord I've not been able to get into the AD's without at least two wars (usually to the death). I've started next to the Germans on all the games I've had on Warlord so you might as well do a pre-emptive strike on them anyway before they get bored and declare war for the hell of it.

Its not boring without wars, using Diplomacy and trade is a strategy in and of itself, I'm still getting the hang of it.
 
Yes, it can be done. For a personal challenge, I won a 5CC diplomatic victory, monarch level, in PTW without ever warring.
 
As others have said, it can be done but it isn't easy and it isn't common. It's not so much winning a game without fighting a war as it is managing to play a whole game with no AI civ declaring war on you.

I think that most here would tell you that your best chance is to maintain a good military at all times. Even then, the AI is sometimes just plain suicidal (I had an AI civ with 5 cities declare war on me in a game where my civ was the proverbial 800 pound gorillia military wise).
 
Originally posted by Padma

(Edit: I see, Ville. Did no one *ever* declare war on you?)
Click to expand...
It was in Regent and I had at least 5 units in every city + 50 active attackers in borders so no-one did even try that. I had to keep my research at 0% before I entered Industrial Age. I had to buy everything and the AIs were not angry to me. (I had plenty of wines and furs which I traded for techs)
 
It's really not that hard. The key is to not build aggressive settlements (settlements near to established AI settlements). This way the AI will like you much more and be less likely to declare war.

Oh and always cede to AI demands for tribute of course.

-Sirp.
 
If you make yourself really really strong in comparison, you can easily avoid war. The AI civs know whether or not to attack you. ;)

Sometimes that can be tough though, especially on emperor and deity. Right now I'm in an emperor game in 500 AD and haven't yet fought a war (preparing to attack though ;)). While that's not much to speak of, with the position I'm in now, I could probably continue the game to the end without going to war and be able to win.
 
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