Endless, endless, war!!!!

[telas]

So, I'm going for a peaceful cultural victory as Siam just minding my own business when I notice Montezuma massing troops at my borders. The Aztec invasion was smashed beneath my city walls and their leader sued for peace, but in 20 turns Monty just came back with a bigger army and history repeated itself. The last 3000 years have consisted of Aztec troops marching into the maws of my siege weapons, I could take over Aztec but I don't want to get too many cities because I'm going cultural, so I'm wondering if anyone has any diplomacy tricks that I can use to keep Monty from declaring war as soon as peace is made

 

[Ford]

Wrong thread, maybe? Anyway, capture his cities and puppet them. No cultural penalty for that.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to strategy & tips (fits better here ).

 

[timtofly]

Play against an AI that is not a warmonger?

 

[Rydin_Nurdy]

Unfortunately it's something you'll have to get used to, something about your Civ makes Monty want to attack, usually it's the size of your Army, your culture or that it looks to the AI like you're going for the same victory as he is. I get that a lot when I try to go for a Culture win.

I usually always just ensure my garrisoned troops are upgraded with the Era and keep some good ground troops around to assist in cleanup. It does get old though.

 

[npanth]

When you have an aggressive neighbor, they will look at you as a target for the whole game. The only value they seem to respect is military strength. You can either maintain a larger army then them, or beat them down. If a neighbor declares on me early, I've found that the best way to deal with it is to make war on them until they either capitulate or are rendered permanently weak and backwards. Otherwise, they will just come back again and again.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Beat on him, take a couple cities, puppet them.
Then if he attacks again, he's trying to get to his old cities (making gold)
not your good cities.

(Monty is a nutcase anyway. You're better off pounding on him. Love his psychotic animation though. very well done)

 

[Scarpa]

I just finished a Korea culture game with only 3 cities and my neighbors were Alex, Askia and Bismark. The only bright side to having 3 warmonger neighbors was they happily beat on each other when not trying to kill me.

In the end good defensible terrain coupled with HUGE cultural border expansion kept them at arm's length. I did need to make sure I kept my siege tech even or an era ahead of my neighbors the whole time. Luckily Korea is well suited to maintaining tech pace while going almost pure culture.

Another tactic I've used in the past when playing a peaceful game is to start proxy wars whenever a neighbor gets too big. Usually you can bribe the civ on their other front to go to war fairly easily, which will cause your neighbor to shift all their units away from you during the war.

A funny thing about the Korea game above was when I was early modern I noticed Persia to my west had a ton of units in the water at my borders. I thought I would get DOW'ed from them for a bit until they asked me to join a war against Askia (I declined) and then asked for open borders. I figured since they had been friendly to that point I'd let him through and he literally filled every tile in my borders with units on the way to wiping out Askia. That was fun to watch, given I was in the late-game "next turn until win" phase of the cultural victory path.

 

[RedRover57]

The biggest problem you have with Monty as a neighbor is that he always goes for nukes, so you need to deal with him earlier rather than later or suffer the consequences. You can fend him off for most of the game with just a few well promoted troops, but that won't help later against nukes since you are too vulnerable as a small and tall civ. Sometimes you have to modify your original plans in order to deal with the situation at hand. Early and aggressive retaliation is usually the key. Cripple him permanently so that he can't tech to nukes before you reach your win condition.

 

[Monthar]

Anyway, capture his cities and puppet them. No cultural penalty for that.

QTF, plus those puppet will build some culture buildings, thus boosting your culture output. Sure it'll only be a few extra points per turn, but the earlier you capture those cities to make puppets out of them the more those few points will add up. This can shave a few turns off the the game.

 

[Ruler]

Well, thats old good Monty.

I think Germany is real dick in Civ 5 though.