How do i keep the peace with the AI?

[Wizzerdrix]

I've never really played Civ before I started on the newest one, V. I've been able to handle Civ V on difficulties 1-3 with no worries. However, at level four, prince, I just fail every time. I get wiped out by my neighbours who always find some reason for attacking me. Seems like no matter what strategy I try to use for winning, I always end up at war with more of my neighbours than I can handle. And I haven't been wanting war lately at all! I've tried being nice and tried being agressive from the start, just so that they would eventually leave me alone. I'm trying to win using something else than conquest! But someone always ends up settling close to my borders and wanting in on my lands.

I have such a hard time keeping the peace, and I'd really like to know how! Must I really have a stronger army than all my neighbours just to get them to LEAVE ME ALONE so I can do my non-violent victory conditions in peace? That can't be right.

 

[northernlights]

I know it sounds redundant but the best defense in this game is a good offense.

On price you should have no difficulty rushing your nearest neighbour with 4 warriors and basically starting the game with 2 cities and lots of land with which to expand.

The speed at which other AI's will declare on you is directly related to how quickly you expand towards them and how weak your army is.

If you maintain a decent military and expand in rings rather than REX towards AI's, you will end up with better relations with the bonus of being able to defend your empire much better (invading units get hit with attacks from mutiple cities).

Lastly, when you inevitably enter war dont just line up your units on opponents borders allowing them to pick and choose where and how combat takes place. Put some siege (Catapults etc) in border cities, declare war and watch the AI send waves (maybe just 1 or 2 on Price) into your territory to die. Once the stream of units stops flowing you are free to invade.

Keep in mind Razing cities and rebuilding is generally the best way to keep your empire happy but pisses off AI's much more than puppetting or annexing captured cities.

I hope this helps!

 

[stormerne]

I've never really played Civ before I started on the newest one, V. I've been able to handle Civ V on difficulties 1-3 with no worries. However, at level four, prince, I just fail every time. I get wiped out by my neighbours who always find some reason for attacking me. Seems like no matter what strategy I try to use for winning, I always end up at war with more of my neighbours than I can handle. And I haven't been wanting war lately at all! I've tried being nice and tried being agressive from the start, just so that they would eventually leave me alone. I'm trying to win using something else than conquest! But someone always ends up settling close to my borders and wanting in on my lands.

I have such a hard time keeping the peace, and I'd really like to know how! Must I really have a stronger army than all my neighbours just to get them to LEAVE ME ALONE so I can do my non-violent victory conditions in peace? That can't be right.

Welcome to Civ5! In older versions of Civ I was originally a science player and later a culture player. I could usually manage to avoid all but defensive wars. (I'm Buddhist; what do you expect! ) Not anymore. Not with Civ5.

Build a strong military. Pay the gold regularly and keep it upgraded with the latest techs. Keep it visible on your borders. However, don't aim for being number one militarily as that arouses pacts against you. Also don't be the main rival of the strongest military civ. But also don't be a weak pushover because that's what you'll surely become. If there are 8 civs, aim for being number 3 or 4.

If attacked, always take the war back to the attacker. Sitting back defensively will only make it drag on and on. Counterattack hard and fast. Take out units. Take out whole cities in single turns. Keep on doing it until it forces them to volunteer a peace deal; I expect that will give you a lot of satisfaction!

Behind this prickly wall, aim to finish the game by your desired peaceful means WELL before the modern era. Nukes are ugly.

 

[northernlights]

In reading Stormene's reply its obviously been way too long since I played Prince difficulty.

If you can get away with that kind of military strategy, go for it!

 

[wurstburst]

At prince level, you should be able to manage the other civs a bit. At higher levels, they get much more aggressive, but you should have a shot at prince.

Get pacts of cooperation with lots of civs.
trade with civs for open borders, luxuries.
make research agreements with civs
do not attack any civ
if attacked, do not take any cities
under no circumstances ever wipe out the last city of a civ
do not attack any city state.
maintain a strong army (sorry but if you are too weak, you are a ripe target - don't make yourself tempting pickings)
don't settle near another civ
never betray your word - if you say you won't settle near, don't - if you have a pact of secrecy against a civ, dont deal with that civ
pacts of secrecy can help tun civs against each other - use them, but be careful to honor the terms and don't have competing pacts of secrecy

At the end of the day, you can pursue peaceful goals, but to do that your civ needs to exist. And to exist, you need a strong enough army to repel invaders.

 

[Mark Havel]

Except that it is. I don't know if it's for the best, but in Civ V, if an AI thinks you have a weak army, it will declare war on you sooner or later, if only to have a better score, get some luxury or strategic resources.

One solution to avoid this is to be quite aggressive from the start (remember, it's in the barbarian times, everyone warred each other for a few square kilometers of territory, right?) and try to invade at least some part of the neighbouring civilizations, it not an enemy civilization in their entirety. This will free a lot of space for yourself and prevent an enemy from crippling your civ too much to be able to win the game in later stages.
If you've played a few games, you've certainly noticed that a pair of AI usually end up with most of their continent under their sole control, having invaded everyone. That will happen to you if you don't protect yourself against such kind of threat.

Then, in Prince, it shouldn't be that hard to have an huge technologic lead over the AI. Until everyone reach the modern/future era, this alone can be enough to deter or more likely, easily repel invasions, provided that you upgrade your army timely. It will even be fun to see outdated musketeers being obliterated by tanks or bombers.

There is also the diplomatic option. Since diplomacy is still an obscure part of the game, it's not widely understood, but it seems that playing the AI against each other could work.
In one of my games, I made the error to let the AI arrive in the modern era without taking note. Soon, they were flooding me with their modern army which I couldn't destroy anymore since I couldn't out-tech them much more than by producing a small pair of GDR. After some time a few minor losses compensated by gains on another front, dust settled a bit, allowing me to buy time to enhance my army and build the needed spaceship parts. However, war resumed soon, so I swallowed my pride and bribed the AI to declare war to my biggest opponent. This prevented the said opponent was thus prevented from invading critical cities by the virtue of this diplomatic trick.
However, don't forget that this might very well lead to a world where there is your tiny Civ against the world, or a superpower AI.

I think you can manage to avoid war without having to maintain a strong army, but you'd better having an hell of a tech lead or some good diplomatic skills.

 

[stormerne]

In reading Stormene's reply its obviously been way too long since I played Prince difficulty.

If you can get away with that kind of military strategy, go for it!

Yeah, well spotted! That was written for Prince level and peaceful intent (which the OP appears to have). It's not a strategy I'd advocate normally, but it works at that level.

 

[flyingbunnys]

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" -Teddy Roosevelt

 

[Surgeon]

Must I really have a stronger army than all my neighbours just to get them to LEAVE ME ALONE so I can do my non-violent victory conditions in peace? That can't be right.

Sorry. It is right. My wife wins on prince without going to war just by being paranoid and keeping a big standing army.

 

[DaveGold]

Must I really have a stronger army than all my neighbours just to get them to LEAVE ME ALONE so I can do my non-violent victory conditions in peace? That can't be right.

Of course it's right. In the demographics you'll see a ranking for your military and if you're above average your opponents won't be as likely to attack you. Even the stupid AI shouldn't declare war when it thinks it's going to lose. Also keep some units in good positions around/behind your cities to deter any sneak attacks.

You've probably noticed that the AI dislikes you for many spurious reasons and that is simply the broken diplomacy system. My advice would be to establish a few long term trading partners who are as far away from you as possible and try to sign some pacts of secrecy against a specific neighbour. It's almost inevitable that your neighbours will find reasons to hate you through your actions or theirs.

 

[aimlessgun]

Quick guide to staying at peace with AI: works up to Deity

There are 2 options to stay at peace with the AI.

1) Maintain the largest army. You can tell how large your army is relatively from the demographics screen. This is rather expensive, and can be impossible on higher difficulties.

2) Small army, lots of diplomatic manipulation.
In this method you must keep your neighbors perpetually in 1 of 2 states:

A) In a Pact of Cooperation with you.
or
B) At war with another AI (preferably another neighbor to kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone)

For A), it's hard not to provoke the AI, since there are a lot of things that can piss it off. Try to maintain at least one neighbor that you avoid angering at all costs.

For B), this will cost you quite a bit of gold, and will take some practice to get working. Bribes can cost between as little as 100 to over 1000 gold: you must set aside part of your budget for them. Closely monitor the progress of the wars, see when they're about to end (stalemate wars where nothing happens usually end in 10-20 turns), and be ready with another war bribe as soon as they are at peace.

Tips:

-Try to establish 1 or 2 villains that everyone else hates. Sign pacts of secrecy against them with everyone etc. Early in the game try to identify who an AI already dislikes (they will come to you asking for a PoS) and decide who is the best target.

-The early game is the most crucial and most difficult part. You don't have much money or resources to bribe people early on. The amount of time you can wait depends on your neighbors, but usually the critical window where you have to get the AI fighting each other is turns 55-75 (in my experience). If you have a super aggressive neighbor like Japan though, they will often attack before that.

-If you don't have the cash for a bribe on hand, try GPT deals.

-Block their settlers so they don't settle near you. More of an advanced tactic. A wall of 3 guys can block a settler forever if you can guess where they're going.

-Be proactive! Being passive and hoping nobody attacks you is the surest way to get killed off. My most common mistake when learning how to do this was thinking "I'll spend this 500 gold on a city state instead of keeping Bismarck at war, maybe he'll leave me alone for a little while". Of course he wasn't going to leave me alone.

Anyways, this should be possible in most but not all starting conditions. At the most extreme I played an OCC game in the middle of a pangea map and stayed at peace through the whole game despite an army of 2 scouts and a warrior.

 

[aimlessgun]

Link to a previous post of mine illustrating settler blocking w/ a screenshot.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9858116&postcount=26

 

[Martin Alvito]

Multiplayer games are dominated by all-war, all-the-time approaches for a reason. As you rise through the difficulty levels, the AI starts to approximate that behavior.

There are many design reasons for this:

- Promotion system. Highly promoted units are far superior to regular units, so even if a war stalemates your army's quality improves as long as units aren't dying.

- Lack of economic penalties for war. In previous Civs, you were giving up something to be on a permanent war footing. In Civ II, the better governments gave you a Senate to contend with. SMAC basically gave you a production penalty (via Social Engineering choices) for warmongering. Civ III and IV had war weariness, creating unhappiness. Nothing of the sort exists in Civ V, so there really isn't any reason not to fight.

- Unit disparity. On higher difficulties, the AI has lots more units than you and thinks it can take you. It can't, because it's bad at making war, but it doesn't realize that.

- Prisoner's Dilemma. You and another AI might be better off if you could agree to focus on butter rather than guns, but if the AI knows you went for butter, it should go for guns, and if you went for guns, it should go for guns. These situations are hard to contract around, and even if you managed it other AIs would simply see two weak targets and pounce.

- Lack of ways to buy peace. The stripped-down interaction system means that the AI doesn't have ways to get things it wants without a costly war. It can't bully you for your lunch money; it has to knock the gold tooth out of your head and sell it.

- Finite map space. Once it's exhausted, the only way to get more dirt (and therefore production) is to take it away from somebody else. If you aren't doing so, somebody else probably is, and you are falling behind.

To sum up: we have fierce resource competition, low war costs (and even the potential for negative costs!), misperception about capabilities, highly indivisible issues of contest and trust problems which lack proper diplomatic/signaling remedies. That's pretty much the cookbook for war.

It should come as no surprise that both humans and the AI fight like crazy in this game. The design makes it inevitable; if the AI sat back and waited, it would be playing badly.

 

[pi-r8]

Even if endless war is the optimum strategy, I'm surprised there aren't more AI leaders programmed to play peacefully as their flavor strategy. Even Ghandi will declare war readily.

 

[MuteWolf]

Quick guide to staying at peace with AI: works up to Deity

There are 2 options to stay at peace with the AI.

1) Maintain the largest army. You can tell how large your army is relatively from the demographics screen. This is rather expensive, and can be impossible on higher difficulties.

2) Small army, lots of diplomatic manipulation.
In this method you must keep your neighbors perpetually in 1 of 2 states:

A) In a Pact of Cooperation with you.
or
B) At war with another AI (preferably another neighbor to kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone)

For A), it's hard not to provoke the AI, since there are a lot of things that can piss it off. Try to maintain at least one neighbor that you avoid angering at all costs.

For B), this will cost you quite a bit of gold, and will take some practice to get working. Bribes can cost between as little as 100 to over 1000 gold: you must set aside part of your budget for them. Closely monitor the progress of the wars, see when they're about to end (stalemate wars where nothing happens usually end in 10-20 turns), and be ready with another war bribe as soon as they are at peace.

Tips:

-Try to establish 1 or 2 villains that everyone else hates. Sign pacts of secrecy against them with everyone etc. Early in the game try to identify who an AI already dislikes (they will come to you asking for a PoS) and decide who is the best target.

-The early game is the most crucial and most difficult part. You don't have much money or resources to bribe people early on. The amount of time you can wait depends on your neighbors, but usually the critical window where you have to get the AI fighting each other is turns 55-75 (in my experience). If you have a super aggressive neighbor like Japan though, they will often attack before that.

-If you don't have the cash for a bribe on hand, try GPT deals.

-Block their settlers so they don't settle near you. More of an advanced tactic. A wall of 3 guys can block a settler forever if you can guess where they're going.

-Be proactive! Being passive and hoping nobody attacks you is the surest way to get killed off. My most common mistake when learning how to do this was thinking "I'll spend this 500 gold on a city state instead of keeping Bismarck at war, maybe he'll leave me alone for a little while". Of course he wasn't going to leave me alone.

Anyways, this should be possible in most but not all starting conditions. At the most extreme I played an OCC game in the middle of a pangea map and stayed at peace through the whole game despite an army of 2 scouts and a warrior.

Aimless gun has got it figured out. I've been playing on immortal using this kind of strategy. I recently won a culture victory as Greece on continents immortal never being DOWed except for the end when the AI seemed to all decide a dog pile was necessary to keep me from winning. That was probably my fault though because I started just hitting the next turn button knowing I was just gonna coast til I won. I should have been continuing with making various deals. It didn't really matter at that point I was dominating. A world of CS kept them distracted until I won. I just supplied them all with advanced troops.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Even if endless war is the optimum strategy, I'm surprised there aren't more AI leaders programmed to play peacefully as their flavor strategy. Even Ghandi will declare war readily.

TMIT has insightfully pointed out that AI civs playing badly for flavor just leads to their destruction and a runaway by AIs that play well.

What you need is civ traits that alter the game meaningfully enough that they make otherwise unsustainable strategies effective for that civ. SMAC did the best job of this in the series. In Civ 5, exploiting strong UAs requires strategic decisions that are too deep for the AI to handle, so it's probably best if they're all bloodthirsty warmongers that attack whenever they see blood in the water.

Having them play to flavor on Emperor and down (where maximizing challenge isn't the goal) would seem to make some sense. There's plenty of data to suggest that the human can easily be the runaway on those levels irrespective of AI behavior.

 

[Rathelon]

Just finished my Greece game, and I never had a war with only 3 cities and 4 units for most of the game. I had America and Mongolia on my continent and I occupied a pennisula on the south end of the continent. America was spammed all over the middle above me, and Mongolia was up north of him. Towards the end of the game I did send out some settlers and added 4 more cities on a couple uninhabited islands. Unfortunately, I did lose the game - England won a time victory. First game I have lost, and first time I've seen a time victory.

Dont sign Pacts of Secrecy or join AI's in wars. Always sign Research Agreements and Pacts of Cooperation. Open Borders is a matter of choice...sometimes I do, sometimes I say no. I kept expecting the inevitable attack from America, but it never came. I kept my 4 units lined up across my northern border with him (but not right on his border). He was, in fact, signing research agreements with me off and on throughout the game and I think fighting with Mongolia (he kept asking me to join him against Mongolia, but I always politely declined).

 

[Lyoncet]

Dont sign Pacts of Secrecy or join AI's in wars.

Just wanted to rectify this a bit. Pacts of secrecy, and even a war or two if you want, aren't always detrimental to playing a peaceful strategy. It sounds counter-intuitive, but as long as you're using the pacts to keep one or two AIs isolated as per Aimless Gun's strategy and any wars you're engaged in are against a vilified AI (that being one who you've forced people to hate by getting them to capture cities or generally be a xenophobic sociopath), you may actually end up being safer for them. Reason being that if your target AI is a runaway (which may happen depending on how things shake down), taking a chunk out of their army and helping them get rolled can end up putting you in a safer position. If they get taken out as a result, then you move on to your next target.

Also, you need to be very, very careful with pacts of secrecy. I don't know if there are variables associated with this behavior, but I've frequently ended up getting AIs to hostile very quickly just by forgetting I had a pact of secrecy and doing something silly like trading open borders for 50g.

 

[stormerne]

Multiplayer games are dominated by all-war, all-the-time approaches for a reason. As you rise through the difficulty levels, the AI starts to approximate that behavior.

There are many design reasons for this:

[...snip...]

It should come as no surprise that both humans and the AI fight like crazy in this game. The design makes it inevitable; if the AI sat back and waited, it would be playing badly.

Brilliant post, summing up what others have said and what we've all found.

 

[bryanw1995]

At prince level, you should be able to manage the other civs a bit. At higher levels, they get much more aggressive, but you should have a shot at prince.

Get pacts of cooperation with lots of civs.
trade with civs for open borders, luxuries.
make research agreements with civs
do not attack any civ
if attacked, do not take any cities
under no circumstances ever wipe out the last city of a civ
do not attack any city state.
maintain a strong army (sorry but if you are too weak, you are a ripe target - don't make yourself tempting pickings)
don't settle near another civ
never betray your word - if you say you won't settle near, don't - if you have a pact of secrecy against a civ, dont deal with that civ
pacts of secrecy can help tun civs against each other - use them, but be careful to honor the terms and don't have competing pacts of secrecy

At the end of the day, you can pursue peaceful goals, but to do that your civ needs to exist. And to exist, you need a strong enough army to repel invaders.

that exact same strategy works on immortal as well. of course, on immortal you usually have to dow at one ai to carve out some space. as long as you only dow one single ai one time and you don't completely wipe them out you're still ok with the others.

a fun trick if you're relatively isolated is that you can completely wipe out everybody on your continent, lie, cheat steal, etc as long as nobody from any other have met you guys yet. by the time you start exploring or rival caravels show up just play it cool: "napoleon, nope, never heard of him."