Early opportunistic wars - severa short or one long?

[Martinus]

I have a question about early wars with your neighbours (I'm a recovering builder/warmonger hopeful, so despite playing for a long time, I am not very experienced in aggressive wars ) - should I normally stop after I conquer 1-2 cities or try to bring the enemy to his knees by overruning most of his empire?

I'm asking because it seems to me that in BtS more than before the AI is building a lot of units, so while taking one border city from it can be arranged since its troops might be elsewhere, the armies it moves in response to your invasion to defend its 2nd, 3rd etc. cities are considerably bigger and require a considerably larger invasion army.

So is it better to sign peace after you take 1 city, and then come back for more, or try to press onwards towards the enemy's capital?

 

[cabert]

I have a question about early wars with your neighbours (I'm a recovering builder/warmonger hopeful, so despite playing for a long time, I am not very experienced in aggressive wars ) - should I normally stop after I conquer 1-2 cities or try to bring the enemy to his knees by overruning most of his empire?

I'm asking because it seems to me that in BtS more than before the AI is building a lot of units, so while taking one border city from it can be arranged since its troops might be elsewhere, the armies it moves in response to your invasion to defend its 2nd, 3rd etc. cities are considerably bigger and require a considerably larger invasion army.

So is it better to sign peace after you take 1 city, and then come back for more, or try to press onwards towards the enemy's capital?

The best outcome for a war varies regarding the moment you declare (and the techs you have). So there is no real rule.
IMHO, an early war should give you a capital. If it doesn't, you could just as well have built your own settler and planted a city yourself.
Later when you have alpha (or your opponent has it ), you may want to squeeze all the techs you can from your enemy before he dies. Of course, if you're already tech leader it's useless.
I often declare war twice on the same opponent in the first half of the game, then later I hit them down into submission.

 

[Ruler]

This happens me all the time whatever I do it seems I can't reach AI's big cities and once I can they pull out their macemens and party is over. Same pattern again and again but if I can capture them I play for the win.

Answer to your question, knock them off if you can. Whip/chop couple workers and catch up and even you don't have Courthouses it's take only a few turn to whip/chop them to all your cities and things start to look a lot brighter.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

Take what you can when you can. Sometimes it may not be practical to assimilate a whole empire at once. Other times, a protracted war would open the door to a rival that wants a key city that you have. If you are declaring, have your objective in mind, then re-evaluate the need to war when you have that objective. If you can't think of another objective, then a peace treaty might be a good thing. If they won't sign it, then just pillage the crap out of them. And now that you have BtS, poison his water supply, ferment unhappiness and otherwise make his life miserable...