Genocide!

[Xiao Xiong]

Do you usually wipe out civilizations?

Babylon made the mistake of attacking me. I took his capital, and his next best city, liberated Jerusalem, and torched one other along the way.

Now he has two lame cities left. No lux that I don't already have, no wonders, nothing.

He also has no military left. I could easily torch these last two cities. Half the world already thinks I am a warmonger, but that's inevitable because I am a war monger, I'm Shaka.

I already sent Pedro into the night.

Here's my thinking: soon the world is going to hate me anyway. If I finish off nebby, that is one less civ voting against me at the world congress.

I probably have a better chance of staving off embargoes and bans if there are fewer civs to bribe for votes. Including Pedro, there are two out already. China is down to just Guangzhou, I could probably push her out too (norway ate her capital). This is on a standard size continents map at normal speed.

Thoughts? Gonna go to sleep now. Tomorrow I need to figure out whether to make peace with nebby or send him into the afterlife.

 

[isau]

IMO it's usually too worth it to keep them around as scapegoats to actually eliminate them completely.

 

[Talcove]

It depends on one criteria: Do they have the potential to be a threat again in the future?
I've had far too many experiences when I destroy a Civ, save for some bad cities, just for them to come back up and harass me and my neighbours/allies. With trade routes this is even worse. So, do I kill them off completely?

If I think they'll still be able to be a threat, then absolutely.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

They won't ever be a military threat, too beaten down. He is willing to give me one of his lame cities for peace so I could leave him with only one.

What he can do to annoy me is spam missionaries for his backwards religion, compete for city states, denounce me, vote to ban my luxuries, and so on.

 

[benjamin28]

Are you going for a Conquest victory? Seems like an obvious question, but the penalty for destroying an entire civ is HUGE. Once, Poland asked me to declare war on Catherine, who had only one city left. I took it, and the next turn, Cassimir denounced me!!
So, if you're heading for another VC, I suggest NOT to eliminate Nebby.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I almost always genocide. I need lebensraum for my Empires.

 

[MarauderCH]

I'll leave them with one lame city just so I don't get the penalty for whipping them off the map. Usually, they nag me anyways but rarely declare war on me again.

 

[0R4NG3]

In my opinion, on Emperor/Continents, it is better to wipe them out, especially before you discover the civs on the other continent, because this way you don't even get a diplo hit.
Little bitter civilizations are annoying as hell and they will never forgive you.

 

[isau]

The main reason I say keep him around is other fools are likely to make friends with him/her or declare war. A weakling civ is a honey trap for wrecking your opponent's diplomacy.

Say they make friends across the ocean. Well, that tiny nation has nothing going for it, so you can bribe their new allies into backstabbing them for a huge diplo penalty. In an absolute best case scenario, the backstabber then comes over and takes the capital from their former ally and puppets it. You then declare on the "aggressor," take the capital back, and return the old owner to life to reset the trap. At that point a lot of people who are mad at you for war mongering will forgive you, the guy you wiped out earlier is suddenly friendly, and whoever you bribed just through their reputation in the toilet for the rest of the game.

Another fun time is to build or take a city in another continent, gift it to the tiny civ, then bribe people on the new continent to war against it. Whatever fool takes that city takes a huge war monger hit because the tiny civ has only two cities. Do this once or twice and you can turn the world leader into a world enemy.

 

[Atinuviel]

I do usually try to keep one of their weaker cities around to send a trade caravan/cargo ship. It's usually a slightly better deal than sending them to city states.

 

[Catawumpus]

I love playing as Shaka BTW. He makes warmongering slightly easier though nothing beats the rain of arrows from a wall of Keshiks to ruin anyone's day. Anyway, I usually like to secure my flanks when I am expanding so its genocide to my closest neighbors so my home territory is safe and secure from any wackiness.

As I expand outward I do not genocide and instead either leave my opponent one really useless city and move on. It is usually a sad little thing in the middle of an ocean of white or burgundy as my culture sweeps through in the wake of my armies. It does make for a potential trading partner and sometimes I actually get a kick out of converting that civ into a lover of my civ. Liberally gifting it with luxuries, gold and other things until finally they forget you reduced them to nothing and they become your closest ally. Doesn't happen often but its a neat thing to pull off when you can.

I notice early genocide doesn't seem to have as much of an impact as late game genocide so again another point to consider is snuffing out those civs early and then be more merciful as time goes on. I also tried out a suggestion on here and it is awesome.

If you get into wars on far flung continents occasionally they will gift you some tundra city or small town on a frontier somewhere that is absolutely useless to you. I decide to gift it to my next victim and when the end of the war comes that small city on another continent is all they have left. The other AI's usually finish them off and your problem is solved without the genocide penalty. I tried it out and it is a really cool idea. I recommend it as a solid solution of both getting rid of your enemy without incurring a penalty.

But I understand the hesitancy. It's annoying as heck having your armies strung out across several continents and the trouble maker Civ you spared 1,000 years ago decides to go and make trouble by pillaging improvements all the way back in your home territories guarded by severly outdated units or not at all.

 

[Polisurgist]

If I'm sure they won't be a problem, I'd leave them. Eventually there will be some kind of peace, you can send trade routes to them for a bit of gold, and those routes should be safe because you're sending them from his own former cities. He'll never be strong enough to want to declare war, at least not until you get to the "I have no hope of winning but you must be destroyed" level, at which point you're probably close enough to winning that you can clear him off the map without getting much worse.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Can you liberate a civ you annihilate? I know you can't in most cases, but China is down to guangzhou. Denmark owns Shanghai and Beijing.

If I wipe out China now, then attack Denmark via Shanghai, can I liberate Shanghai? That is the most direct route to attack.

If not I need to figure out how to get harold to take out China completely so I can be the liberator.

 

[Callonia]

I like wiping them out. They are of no consequence, I have nothing to fear from a single puny city state who thinks he can hurt and crush my armies with denounces.

 

[SilverDash]

As someone suggested to me recently:
-Sent a settler to the artic (or some other useless spot) & build a city.
-The worse the spot the better.
-Donate that city to the civ you are about to destroy and then take over all of his cities except the one you just donated.
-It's highly unlikely that they will ever recover from that within the next 300 turns or so. They have a 1-pop city in the artic with no lux, no growth potential, nothing. Perhaps oil if they are really lucky later .
- no genocide penalty. Probably the worst penalty of all penalties you can get as a warmonger.

You can then trade-route those poor civs later when everyone else is at war with you.

 

[weregamer]

Another thing you can do is keep the war going to soak them for experience for your units. You can generally bombard with one unit a turn, and leave another on "heal" (with some combination of enough strength and a nearby medic/Khan to make it heal more than it takes) in range of the city bombard. Ideally this city will be one of their youngest, with little territory and nothing you want.

I've sometimes had this milking last for dozens of turns, enough to get something like March on a couple of melee units and/or logistics on a bomber, before either some other civ takes the hit for killing them or I get bored and accept their peace, secure that they are sooo far behind with their puny last city and no surviving units or improvements that they won't be a problem ever again.

 

[Polisurgist]

- no genocide penalty. Probably the worst penalty of all penalties you can get as a warmonger.

Nope. The biggest penalties come from taking over cities (worse if you raze them), whether or not they're the last one. The penalty scales up the smaller the civ you're attacking is, so the last city is the worst penalty of the lot, but you're not doing yourself any favors by sparing one if you're already taken all the others.

If you're warmongering, be a warmonger. Accept that the AI will hate you, crush them and see them driven before you.

 

[Jampine]

ahh, the classic Waring problem: Do I kill them off so they can never bother me again? Or do I keep they so everyone doesn't hate me for this side of eternity? I'd recommend keeping them in one of their worst cities, so diplomacy still remains an option with others(unless you're already hated by everyone, so why not wipe them out, then do the same for the rest of them )

The only 2 reasons I will wipe someone out is: 1. They have annoyed me to the point of no return: This may come about from denouncing me one turn after we meet, or settling a city 3 tiles from my cap and then whining that I'm too close >:/ If so, then my desire for petty revenge overrides all diplomacy.
2. ALL their cities have something I want. This is most common in earlier wars, when there's not too many cities up. So the remaining AI city might have something I want, be it luxes, land or a natural wonder. Slight problem is that this city is ALWAYS in a spot where it could have been better built, so I have to raze it, making people hate me more. But meh, if they think they can offend me with nasty words, they've got another thing coming

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

If you have an army good enough to wipe your most annoying rival, it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks. If an AI has a lux you want but he denounced you for warmongering and won't sell at any price, put your army on his doorstep and demand he fork it over.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

If you have an army good enough to wipe your most annoying rival, it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks. If an AI has a lux you want but he denounced you for warmongering and won't sell at any price, put your army on his doorstep and demand he fork it over.

The problem is that while my army is good enough to win the fight, the AI likely doesn't believe it. My next target is out teching me and has a zillion units.

I will beat him by making him attack strategic locations where I have highly promoted units.

But he won't realize he is going to lose until I start taking cities.

This is the biggest downside of the AI's horribly bad military tactics. They actually think they are going to win.

You annihilate most of their army, losing no units, and they suggest you hand over cities to them to make peace.