posted June 28, 2001 05:52 AM by Alan:
Well, what do you generally do after you take the first city, and the civ wants to talk peace right after that?
This is where the planning and sometime tedium comes in. The other civ cannot talk to you in mid-turn unless ground units meet face-to-face somewhere. I don't allow that to happen after I begin capturing cities on a turn. Airpower (stealths) remove potential enemy before a meeting can occur. When I capture, all possible pieces that could "meet" the enemy are in sleep mode. A meeting never occurs, and a peace treaty is never forced.
The limitations are quantity of control units (partisan prevention) you can produce and pre-position around all your target cities, movement points remaining, as well as range/quantitiy/health of air units.
It is also possible to force the immediate expiration of a cease-fire by subverting a city of an enemy that is not in democracy, but that does not elimnate the pacifists in the senate when you want to initiate a direct attack.
At a certain point, after enough stabs in the back by an opponent and when you've accomplished a lot of damage to a specific opponent, the senate will confirm your wars with a specific enemy even without the UN. If/when this occurs, it is always very very late in the campaign anyway, and it will not extend to other AIs that you want to fight with. Make no mistake... the UN is great for waging war, but massive conquering can indeed be done in Demcracy without it.
The hardest thing I often face is controlling the timing of a war... baiting an enemy to attack on schedule is not always possible, so your plans have to be pretty flexible at times.
Also, if you're nuked and right after the attacker comes for peace (before you've had a turn), the senate will ALWAYS sign a cease-fire behind your back.
I never get nuked anymore (at not least nuked/captured), as I ensure SDI protects any possible cities that could be nuked. Now if the AI culd only manage to use subs or carriers to launch nukes, I'd probably take an occasional nuking in some circumstances. However several months back, I miscounted and left a size 28 just in range with no SDI, and it was pummeled to size 7... but there was no paradrop because the city was far beyond the AI's paradrop range. And so there was no discussion of peace.
If you switch gov'ts, you still have to break a cease-fire and damage your rep (I guess reputation don't mean squat in terms of scoring or even relations once you're supreme, I'm finding out, though....).
Personally, I add a completely voluntary restriction to my own play at deity... I maintian spotless throughout the game, and take the lumps at times. A few weeks ago, however, I did accept an ally's insistence to break a treaty while playing OCC, because I needed the gold and wanted to keep the alliance. But in a non-OCC game, I do force myself to respect the treaties, simply to give the AI a little help and even out the game a bit.
I went the democracy route once, but as soon as a civ sucker-punched me with a nuke and then wanted peace, I went commie for the entire time it took to eliminate their civ, to ensure no interruptions....
Absolutely no question that Commie and Fundy are best for conducting a war, and indeed that's what Brian and Sid intended. It's just more of a challenge and takes more planning to accomplish the same thing in Democracy. In some ways, using Democracy to fight a challenging war against a strong AI opponent(s) is superior to Fundy and Comie, though (especially in the post-capture/rebuild quick/revolt prevention phase). You just have to change the war planning and strategy somewhat.
With Fundy/Commie, you can just sort of spew out units and steamroll. In Democracy, you have to plan out a lot of things, know how the turn will end, consider happiness, look at support, and of course watch out for that damn senate.
[This message has been edited by starlifter (edited June 28, 2001).]
