How often do you play pacifist?

[Nobody]

i hardly ever go for conquest victory. But i fight wars where it makes sense, and also often i go about liberating things.

 

[zxcvbob]

I usually start out peacefully, but with a mid-sized military. But often out of the blue, two friendly AI's declare a formal war against me. (especially if one of them is Gandhi) Sometimes they are halfway around the world and never send a single unit my way. Doesn't matter, I hunt them down and destroy at least one of them; if I'm feeling charitable I only capture their capitals. Then everybody hates me, but that's okay because they are afraid of me now. (nobody except Teddy Roosevelt will trade fairly anyway, and he will offer fair trades even as he's denouncing you. I respect that)

I will declare war if right after founding a religion the AI descends on my holy city with a bunch of missionaries and apostles to snuff out my religion before I can get it off the gound (usually Gandhi again) In that case, I just kill the heretic religious units and any military that come into my territory until I can get a couple of inquisitors and/or debators out, I don't pursue them or capture cities in that case.

 

[Karmah]

A lot of my games are peaceful nowadays. Mostly because I try a leader for some niche aspects in mind and it's usually not about using a UU. Also because diplomacy is easy once you get a few recipes to overcome the 'first impression' malus. But If i play Alexander ....

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Sometimes. Particularly with Terra map that permits opportunity to found colonies on the different side of the ocean. where low tech barbarians are the only opponents.
Only with neighbouring civ became openly hostile did their demise became priority.

 

[newbie2]

all the time. troop moving and combat is tedious and time consuming, and against the AI it's not even challenging because they don't know how to position troops.
Furthermore, sometimes the position of their cities is just so horsehocky you don't want it. If I want war, i'll play TW or EU4

I prefer peacefull victories like science and especially culture. It's fun to make all the numbers go up and connect the dots (like having Reyna to buy the spaceports, or planning for national parks), rather than chunk out units and slam them against the AI for 150+ turns.

I will attack early if I get forward settled and the AI is weak/ I have a good early unit. But in general I like to make friends and keep alliances and trade and such

In MP i would probably be dead after 25 turns

 

[tiamats4esgares]

95% of the time.

 

[Disgustipated]

I often play pacifist. At least 50% of my games. Warfare can get boring if you do it all the time. I may play a lower difficulty level and just focus on building my empire. I often focus on not taking any enemy cities or city states and just defending what I have. Obviously if I don't have enough room, then I'm unlikely to have a pacifist game.

 

[Thormodr]

I usually play pacifist. I may start a war to liberate a city state or an ally’s city but that’s about it. Maybe if an AI keeps declaring war on me, I might finally take a few cities to cripple them. Usually I just pillage them heavily.

I sometimes will go for a domination victory or take over a continent but maybe that’s 1/3 of my games.

 

[Isengardtom]

Almost all the time. I don’t like domination games and I’m not a fan of domination civs like Zulu or Ottomans

 

[Atlas627]

I usually try to go to war in the early game with 1 neighbor, and if I'm on a roll I'll clear off a good section of my continent by attacking another one afterwards. But I tend to slow down after that for 3 reasons:

1) More units is more tedious
2) More cities is more tedious (and winning is guaranteed)
3) The AI has built their cities poorly and being forced to manage them afterwards makes me gag

So basically I'll only fight if the AI still has few cities or they are all undeveloped, so that I can make them good cities on my own. But all of these things are fun in multiplayer, and of course all of my friends are happy builder people, so in multiplayer I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS

 

[Aabraxan]

What is this "pacifist" think of which y'all speak?

In all seriousness, I just got Civ 6 and already feel drawn to warmongering.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

I'm not that pacifist rather than isolationist. In fact, in most of my games, I often play like Lady Six Sky will be supposed to be played: build your civ then don't care about your neighbor except if they settle in your living-room. City-states I was suzerain of are conquered? Don't care, I'll redirect my envoys elsewhere. A friend of mine attacked? Oh, too bad fo you, you should have prepared yourself. Someone try to attack me? I'll defend my borders, stack up happiness until the attacker see that it's pointless to attack me, then we make peace.

Then, after all of that, I sneak a diplomatic, cultural or scientific victory I was building in my core empire while everybody was doing "diplomacy".

 

[The Swede]

98% of my games.

 

[Nikolai II]

Almost all my games. Most games is no or only one war. I play on Emperor. It’s very easy to play peaceful on Emperor I’ve found.

 

[qadams]

Too bad the OP didn't post a poll. Seems the large majority here are peace-loving, like I am, but perhaps that's just a bias of the commenters.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Too bad the OP didn't post a poll. Seems the large majority here are peace-loving, like I am, but perhaps that's just a bias of the commenters.

I think you are correct, most people do prefer a "builder" approach to the game and mostly do defensive wars and prefer building districts/wonders.

 

[Leucarum]

If I go to war, it's almost always to secure my start position.

Mid game wars are a mess of micromanagement. I'd generally prefer to keep most of the game pacifist with maybe a smattering of conflict at the start and in the modern era once war becomes lightning fast again.

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm playing a game now where I have not been at war at all. I'm actually friends or allies most of the AI's and at least friendly with all of them; it has been weird. It's also getting tedious.

It's about turn 300 and I'm trying to get a religious victory as Japan on a small continents map. Two other religious civs spawned on my continent and I snuffed out their religions and converted all their cities and most of the city states to Shinto, with no lasting repercussions. Meanwhile on the other continent, Peter had no competition for his religion. I've converted all the Kongo cities and a few CS's, and a few French cities. There are about 40 cities following Shinto and 18 following Orthodoxy at this point, but Russia seems to have an inquisitor on every tile.

It's about time to end the tedium and start a good old fashioned holy war. (not an official Casus belli holy war because he hasn't converted any of my cities; I kinda wish he would convert one) But for the first 200 turns or so peace was fun.