How "Active" do you find yourself having to be?

[Orlanduke]

Hi all, newcomer here. I make long-winded paragraphs that aren't always 100% clear, so prepare yourselves.

One common theme I've been noticing with the CBP is the almost constant necessity for war.

In many of my most recent games, particularly since upping the difficulty to Emperor, I find it more and more necessary to shove my neighbors back, either by taking their cities, or destroying them entirely. No matter what civ I play.

To list my most recent example.

Game as Morocco, of course dependent on trade routes to succeed early on, tried to play pretty passive, and not piss off the neighbors too much. Wound up with Egypt and the Shoshone as neighbors. Both of them had declared war on me before I had any semblance of a threat. Had to push both of them down just so I could make some decent trade routes to CS without them being insta-plundered by a sudden war.

Also, every single game I start with Portugal (another favorite) seems to be cursed, as no matter who my neighbors are, Monty or Siam, my very existence seems to piss them off enough to start a never-ending series of DoW's.

So, my question becomes. Is this normal?
Am I just not building up my military enough, so the neighborly folk see me as some easy prey?

I don't think it should be required to constantly go to war to the point of razing cities, but I rarely see any other option, as the AI tends to be stubborn as a mule, and keep declaring after every peace treaty expires.

Or am I missing something completely and this nice long post needs a 2-second explanation.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[hokath]

On Immortal, I usually find myself in a similar situation to you. If you expand into them, they DoW you. If you don't have their religion, they DoW you. If someone else DoWs you, they DoW you. I imagine this is just because the player is the easiest target. If you want to stave them off you need to be pro-active about diplomacy, sending trade routes, etc. This can be difficult.

In my experience, if you do get in a war, I usually find city-razing is unnecessary. Once the initial waves have died off I can usually sue for peace, or a third party will negotiate peace with me. However, if you push it and start invading their lands, peace usually goes off the table until you are a city up (and holding it).

For a more conclusive answer on the behind the scenes reasoning of the AI, you'll need Gazebo.

 

[tompliss]

Am I just not building up my military enough, so the neighborly folk see me as some easy prey?

It seems to happen with many players, yeah.

On the other hand, I'd like to tell you that it's clearly possible to play (and win) without waging any (real) war.
Yesterday, I played a game as France, and won a cultural victory (in early industrial age). In emperor difficulty and epic speed, and only one civ declared war on me (Indonesia, so a usually pretty peaceful one), and I killed 2 of its units (and it killed 1 of mine). I was denounced a few times during the game (after all, Portugal was my neighbour...), but had an "average" army, so they didn't try to attack me.
I expanded only in the very early game and stayed with only 3 cities as to not anger anyone too much, and didn't try to get any City-State as an ally, so the diplomatic civs would stay happy,though.

 

[Gazebo]

Hi all, newcomer here. I make long-winded paragraphs that aren't always 100% clear, so prepare yourselves.

One common theme I've been noticing with the CBP is the almost constant necessity for war.

In many of my most recent games, particularly since upping the difficulty to Emperor, I find it more and more necessary to shove my neighbors back, either by taking their cities, or destroying them entirely. No matter what civ I play.

To list my most recent example.

Game as Morocco, of course dependent on trade routes to succeed early on, tried to play pretty passive, and not piss off the neighbors too much. Wound up with Egypt and the Shoshone as neighbors. Both of them had declared war on me before I had any semblance of a threat. Had to push both of them down just so I could make some decent trade routes to CS without them being insta-plundered by a sudden war.

Also, every single game I start with Portugal (another favorite) seems to be cursed, as no matter who my neighbors are, Monty or Siam, my very existence seems to piss them off enough to start a never-ending series of DoW's.

So, my question becomes. Is this normal?
Am I just not building up my military enough, so the neighborly folk see me as some easy prey?

I don't think it should be required to constantly go to war to the point of razing cities, but I rarely see any other option, as the AI tends to be stubborn as a mule, and keep declaring after every peace treaty expires.

Or am I missing something completely and this nice long post needs a 2-second explanation.

Any help is appreciated!

The AI thinks like a human in this regard. If your cities are soft and/or your army is below-average, they AI will see you as easy prey. Human players often have a '#1 strategy' of taking out a weak neighbor ASAP to get their capital and boost their own civ, so this is how the AI sees things.

G

 

[Takagi Hiro]

The AI thinks like a human in this regard. If your cities are soft and/or your army is below-average, they AI will see you as easy prey. Human players often have a '#1 strategy' of taking out a weak neighbor ASAP to get their capital and boost their own civ, so this is how the AI sees things.

G

Just mentioning that I do appreciate this bit. It's interesting seeing how my army's so weak at the beginning of the game, so a fair bit of my neighbors turn hostile. Build up a while and they pacify (well, as much as an AI can pacify in this type of game). And it's not like all of them are so extreme, or at least it seems not. Gandhi, for example, will still probably want to be friends.

 

[Foch]

The AI thinks like a human in this regard. If your cities are soft and/or your army is below-average, they AI will see you as easy prey. Human players often have a '#1 strategy' of taking out a weak neighbor ASAP to get their capital and boost their own civ, so this is how the AI sees things.

This has certainly been my experience. When I try to play passively and forgo a military, my neighbors take advantage. When I go Authority and start lashing out, nobody likes me, but they damn sure fear me. I can only think of one time off the top of my head when an obviously weaker AI DoWed me.

What concerns me from a balance perspective is that really, you don't have a choice about building a military (at least not at higher difficulties). You have to pay that opportunity cost...so why not invade? You're leaving money on the table if you sink the costs of building a military deterrent and then don't bother to make use of it. The logic shunts you into a very specific game plan, and I feel more confident about that intuition now that G has articulated it himself.

My experience has also been that playing Authority, going for Terracotta Army, and crushing 1-3 neighbors is just flat out better than playing Liberty or Tradition, no matter your ultimate goals. Hopefully the new buffs to Liberty and Tradition have smoothed that out.

 

[Gazebo]

Just mentioning that I do appreciate this bit. It's interesting seeing how my army's so weak at the beginning of the game, so a fair bit of my neighbors turn hostile. Build up a while and they pacify (well, as much as an AI can pacify in this type of game). And it's not like all of them are so extreme, or at least it seems not. Gandhi, for example, will still probably want to be friends.

Gandhi never wants to be friends. Fallout is his only friend.

G

 

[Takagi Hiro]

Gandhi never wants to be friends. Fallout is his only friend.

G

Yes, it's all just a ploy... "We can be friends... until I find out where the uranium is."

 

[LightBladeNinja]

As Byzantium, I started close to Netherlands. Early on I forward settled him, bought tiles and stole tiles with GG, but he still liked me.

Throughout most of the early-mid game I was fighting defensive wars against Brazil (the leader in almost every categori) and Songhai (biggest military), which ended up with me crushing both after a slow and painful advance.

After I had taken the biggest city + capital from both, Austria declared war on me because of warmongering. The Netherlands stayed friendly. Only after I had taken 2 small cities from Austria and started spreading my religion aggressively towards Dutch lands he DoW.

He did have a decent military throughout the game, so this was rather strange.

Are there other AI factors at play here?

 

[Fragamemnon]

What concerns me from a balance perspective is that really, you don't have a choice about building a military (at least not at higher difficulties). You have to pay that opportunity cost...so why not invade? You're leaving money on the table if you sink the costs of building a military deterrent and then don't bother to make use of it. The logic shunts you into a very specific game plan, and I feel more confident about that intuition now that G has articulated it himself.

There's a very large gap between what you need as a deterrent/defense force and what you need to conquer a civ, namely the additional melee, siege, and coastal bombardment/capture forces along with all the worker turns needed to build out military roads for your troops. Not to mention tech paths, which require you to veer away from strong science and growth techs towards unit techs and rely more on tech steals to keep afloat.

I'm a pretty committed warmonger on Deity but often only keep the basic minimum of military until I'm ready for murder. Eight to ten decent units and some walls in a key city or two is generally more than enough to hold most pushes back up until late renaissance (tercio-ish) when the AI goes bananas and literally carpets their entire territory with units.

 

[Jdoug312]

along with all the worker turns needed to build out military roads for your troops.

Never thought about doing this. Is the quicker movement worth the road maintenance cost in most cases?

...I may be misinterpreting what you mean though

 

[Strigvir]

It's not only a "quicker" movement, roads over "hard" terrain completely ignore movement penalties imposed by it. Which unit will win: the one running between mountains/rivers like it's nothing or the one spending one turn to move a tile?

 

[Jdoug312]

Good point, I think I'll start doing it before I declare when feasible.

 

[tu_79]

Roads are also good to get fast connections once the city is conquered.

I try to play defensively almost always and then one civ go and piss me off (maybe my army isn't scary enough). I feel obliged to indulge them with artillery. Then, everybody hates me for taking their lands and I try to finish with the only help of City-States.

I am also not very proactive regarding diplomacy, I know I need to improve in this, but pulling strings is not very appealing to me.

 

[crdvis16]

This has certainly been my experience. When I try to play passively and forgo a military, my neighbors take advantage. When I go Authority and start lashing out, nobody likes me, but they damn sure fear me. I can only think of one time off the top of my head when an obviously weaker AI DoWed me.

What concerns me from a balance perspective is that really, you don't have a choice about building a military (at least not at higher difficulties). You have to pay that opportunity cost...so why not invade? You're leaving money on the table if you sink the costs of building a military deterrent and then don't bother to make use of it. The logic shunts you into a very specific game plan, and I feel more confident about that intuition now that G has articulated it himself.

My experience has also been that playing Authority, going for Terracotta Army, and crushing 1-3 neighbors is just flat out better than playing Liberty or Tradition, no matter your ultimate goals. Hopefully the new buffs to Liberty and Tradition have smoothed that out.

I don't think the game necessarily pushes one to war no matter what, for two reasons:

1) As others have pointed out, there is a difference between the size and composition of military needed to keep away the DoWs vs the size/composition of military needed to actively invade and capture cities in an offensive war. You can hover just below the global average in military throughout the game and as long as you are actively trying to make friends with your neighbors you can avoid ever being DoW'd. You can most certainly play a peaceful game if it suites you, at least at the immortal difficulty. I've won Tall science, Tall Culture, and Wide Culture games before with practically zero warfare. No conquering at all, and maybe having to fight 1 defensive war settled with white peace. And in those games I don't think warring would have helped me win any faster.

2) There are consequences to invading that are not negligible. Every city you take increases tech cost and policy cost (if you annex). If your plan was to go tall Science/Culture/Diplo victory then it's unlikely those extra cities help much and might actually slow you down.

There are also diplomatic consequences- the situation where you invade a neighbor because he DoW'd you, which in turn makes your other neighbor dislike you more so he eventually DoWs you too, so you invade him and now EVERYONE dislikes you. Everyone disliking you leads to a lack of DoF, difficult trading, more likely to get more DoWs, you get ganged up on in WC, etc. Winning a Culture victory gets harder if you don't have open borders because everyone hates you. Winning a Diplo victory gets harder if everyone votes down your proposals in the WC.

My point is that just because you have a military capable of avoiding getting DoW'd does not necessarily mean you should always use that military to then invade. There is a meaningful choice to be made.