How to deal with warmongers AI?

[harusame]

i have this problem

certain leader i.e Alexander, Montezuma, etc LOVE to declare war ....
though "Pleased" or "Friendly" relationship before (with war downgrade to "Cautious")

so what do i have to do, it's kinda annoying when they kill my cottages

 

[Elandal]

I don't think they do declare war on Friendly relations, although Pleased is still trouble

In one game where I wanted to stay peaceful I already had some doubts about the possibility when I had Alex as neighbour. Cultivating relations wasn't going well enough, so I tried the power graph route: built maybe 30 units that I didn't want to use, just to get up in the power rating. Not that it mattered - Alex did declare war eventually, but then again I did have those 30 or so units ready..

If I don't want to fight someone, I'll first look at the diplomatic possibilities. Can I get to Friendly? Via religion, trade, gifts, giving whatever I'm asked for? If not, then look at the map and see if I can make sure others fight him instead.. If I'm not sure I can get that to happen either, then it's the power route - build units in hopes it deters the warmonger. And if not, then I have the units to deal with him when the time for war comes.

 

[carl corey]

Well, you can either make someone fight him, as Elandal said, or see if you can get him to fight someone else. Once they're engaged in a war they won't come back against you. You can even do the backstabbing part yourself. Ask them to commit to a war on the other end of their empire, than attack when their troops are moved in offensive positions.

If none of that is possible, you'll just have to maintain a very high power graph. Place the units near their border, so that they know you mean business.

Or try to take them out first, knowing that your other won't attack you in the meantime. On higher levels the best thing you can do is not adopt a religion, or adopt the same one as your friends. If you have for example Isabella and Monty as neighbors just share Issy's religion and go for Monty. Chances are Issy will also join you - for a price. The worst thing to do in that case would be to have your own religion and so antagonize Issy too, while Monty'll just wait for you to drop in the power graph.

 

[Elandal]

If you share religion with Isabella for a millenium or so, she'll do anything you ask. "Isabella, could you go kill that bad taoist Alex please?" - "Of course, whatever you ask for!"

Few other leaders are as easily manipulated.

And yes, Alex seems to be stalking me. Guess I'll have to restart a few times to get a game without Alex in my neighbourhood.. Or play the boy myself

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Tokugawa is sometimes agressive, but I have never been backstabbed by him when he's pleased.
But never trust a friendly Louis or Catherine.

 

[carl corey]

Run Mercantilism and share Toku's religion and you'll be buddies forever. I'm just playing a game with Saladin and decided to go for a cultural victory since I bagged quite a few religions, so I'm waaay behind in military right now, but I managed to get Toku to pleased (we have a -3 from close borders), sign a Defensive Pact with him and I don't have a care in the world. Just cruising to victory.

 

[Fire.Soul]

i have this problem

certain leader i.e Alexander, Montezuma, etc LOVE to declare war ....
though "Pleased" or "Friendly" relationship before (with war downgrade to "Cautious")

so what do i have to do, it's kinda annoying when they kill my cottages

First of all, if you don't want war, you should start with the obvious: diplomacy. Pleased civs do declare war at times, but friendly ones don't. Try to get along with all the civs as far as possible - religion is usually a very good help. If you are attacked, you can always bring a war ally against them, which can be a great help.

Another important aspect is your power. The AI usually compares his power to yours, and, if the difference is big enough, they decide to strike you. So basically this means you should put up your defences as soon as possible, with particular emphasis on the cities by your national borders. If they see them well defended, they will hesitate to attack you, even if your relations are awful. To check the power, go to the statistics graphics and select the power option in the drop-down menu.

 

[harusame]

First of all, if you don't want war, you should start with the obvious: diplomacy. Pleased civs do declare war at times, but friendly ones don't. Try to get along with all the civs as far as possible - religion is usually a very good help. If you are attacked, you can always bring a war ally against them, which can be a great help.

Another important aspect is your power. The AI usually compares his power to yours, and, if the difference is big enough, they decide to strike you. So basically this means you should put up your defences as soon as possible, with particular emphasis on the cities by your national borders. If they see them well defended, they will hesitate to attack you, even if your relations are awful. To check the power, go to the statistics graphics and select the power option in the drop-down menu.

i am usually able to defeat them when they enter my teritory...( but my cottages ............)

to keep a warmonger at friendly is hard
especially because they love to declare war not only to me, but to other civs also (so they want me to declare war also... i usually decline to declare war to other civs), soon or later it will become "pleased"

Monty and Alex declare war at "pleased" as well....
well, meanwhile i dont play with Alex anymore in my game
it's very annoying to see they destroyed my city improvements despite all the bribing and share civics/religions.........

 

[Reprisal]

I've found that having a small but very pointy force ready to delve into an aggressive neighbour's territory to be quite advantageous. In keeping a force of Spearmen/Pikemen, Longbowmen/Crossbowmen and Horse Archers/Knights ready to strike into enemy territory on a moment's notice, one tends to get the enemy in a reactionary stance. If you have enough cavalry units, you can often pillage a Town down to nothing in a single turn. If you have enough experience, you can often upgrade one or two of your cavalry to having Mobility, then you can pillage mine or windmill improvements on the same turn that you enter them (very useful if you brought Guerrilla promoted longbows with your force).

I can't speak to whether this will help you defeat an AI invader, since there are many components to that, but pillaging vital improvements and resources can slow and often mortally wound a former "great power" that made the mistake of invading your lands.

Also, does the relative Score/Power of a potential opponent figure into whether you can bribe another AI into attacking them?

 

[Fire.Soul]

to keep a warmonger at friendly is hard
especially because they love to declare war not only to me

As I said, the best way not to have someone declaring war on you is having a high value of Power and highly protected border cities. For many times, I've had civs furious at me that wouldn't however declare war as I had much more Power than them. They only mess with civs that are as powerful than or not as powerful as themselves.

This said, the solution to your problem is simply having stronger military. Strong military doesn't mean you have to go to war: it means you'll have the respect of neighbouring civilizations.


As for the cottages, that's a very common consequence of war -- a very unpleasant one indeed. When war is declared, distribute some units through the most developed ones (towns and villages) in order to prevent them from pillaging them... Mounted units are usually good for this as they have more than one movement point per turn, so having a few in your border cities can get them to the most important improvements right away. Later you can reinforce their position with more powerful units.

 

[The Engineer]

I usually don't trust ANY of my neighbors. I'd just make a pile of units in cities near borders just in case. Enemies declaring war on me is actually kinda fun since you usually have the advantage, unless of course, you were ready for it. ^_^

I like demanding tribute from them too, though the chances of success is pretty low the second time around.

 

[dime]

This is one reason I am starting to favoring SE - especially in games where I plan to go for domination victory...

- No problem with troops going to pillage in my territory - they are welcome, replacing the farms isn't a big problem
- I have nothing to lose by pillaging THEIR cottage improvements... I gain the gold and would've farmed over them anyways... this means, I can actually have a more or less constantly ongoing war with some opponents focusing around having "pillage stacks" out and about... these will pay their own upkeep through pillaging, and will typically get alot of promotions, while keeping the opponent busy... if you bring a stack with one-two DRILL-promoted long-bow/crossbow (to take care of attacking catapults), one woodsman/guerilla/shock promoted Axe, a couple of two-move units (Chariots for active defense vs. Axe) that can pillage the turn they enter a square and a couple of pikes to defend vs. mounted units, then you have a 6-7 unit stack that can pillage 2-3 improvements per turn... these will typically realize an income of 6-15 gold per turn, seriously screw the opponents infrastructrure. Also, the other guy will often throw most of their troops at this stack with big losses as a consequence and not focus on attacking your cities
- Of course - if you get a very highly promoted pillaging stack, this will be very difficult for the opponent to dislodge. The AI will typically throw 5-6 units at a time against you rather than building up a SOD and go after you if you are proactive. They will rarely let you keep pillaging unharmed. This basically means you take the war to them, rather than have it fought in your own territory

I think another key consideration is WHO you befriend. I will never bet on keeping Shaka happy and go after Washington, even if I have more positive modifiers with Shaka starting out... unless, of course, I can talk him into a mutual war.

Also, I tend to be very aware of fav. civics for opposing leaders. If it is civics I plan to use extensively I will make a point of trying to make that leader my friend as often this is a +3 to +5 bonus

/Andreas

 

[glokkonn]

I have wrestled with how to deal with close aggressive civs for quite a while. Now I am tired of dealing with them. Now my new plan is to just declare war on them as soon as possible (bee line to construction, make a bunch of cats to go along with my axes or swordsmen or archers or warriors, <ok maybe not warriors!> and just get the war over with.

Saves a lot of hassle over the course of the game. And I KNOW there will be a war at some point or another, so I might as well have the war on my terms.

I prefer being a builder, and the best way to build is to take out any aggressive civs near me early and quickly. Then I can build on my land AND on their land

There is still not a lot that can be done about distant agressive civs. They will declare war on me and send a stack of units through 2 or 3 civs territory to launch an attack on me. For distant aggressive civs I just know that at some point they WILL launch a long distance attack on me, and their units will start next to my civ starting from the territory of someone else. Usually once this initial stack is defeated though the war is essentially over. Keeping each city somewhat defended, along with a mobile defense force (or more than one possibly) that can rush to defend any city attacked seems to work well enough.

General rule: kill all close aggressive civs ASAP (don't worry... if you don't they will repay your kindness by attacking you sooner or later)

Cultivate good relations with any and all builder civs (to get as many tech trades as possible). The obvious caveat here is that if the builder civ is too strong than by all means stop trading with that civ, and if necessary go after that civ to keep him/her from winning first.

 

[Syndrome Zed]

i am usually able to defeat them when they enter my teritory...( but my cottages ............)

to keep a warmonger at friendly is hard
especially because they love to declare war not only to me, but to other civs also (so they want me to declare war also... i usually decline to declare war to other civs), soon or later it will become "pleased"

Monty and Alex declare war at "pleased" as well....
well, meanwhile i dont play with Alex anymore in my game
it's very annoying to see they destroyed my city improvements despite all the bribing and share civics/religions.........

One thing people haven't mentioned yet - it sounds like your defenses are primarily passive defenders (archers, longbows, etc.) if they're brutalizing your cottages that badly.

If that's true, I'd do what reprisal suggested and have an extra "pointy" stack waiting. But rather than sending them to pillage your enemy, I'd keep them near the border with the enemy and if he/she declares war on you, use them as an active defense force. Attack the enemy stack(s) with your pointy stack, don't just wait until they march through your land. If you've reached catapults, a couple cats in your active defenders will rip apart an enemy stack thanks to collateral damage. If not, a collection of horsemen (HA's, knights, cav) makes a good "rapid reaction force", which can react to an attack almost as soon as the enemy declares war on you.

Incidentally, an active defense like this will also not cause war weariness as quickly as raiding and fighting in the enemy's territory. Now, if you plan on turning the tables on him anyway, that's a different kettle o' fish.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Well, the easiest thing is this....since you can reasonably predict they're going to declare war on you, you should at least be ready for such an eventuality. But...why not take it up a notch and catch THEM when their pants are down? Pre-emptive war works well!(at least in Civ...)

 

[uncarved block]

I'll echo what's been said so far, and give my general advice: always have an invasion plan under way for one of your neighbors. Even if you never go for it, you have a bunch of offensive units ready to deal with an invasion. Another trick you can do, if they are "pleased", is keep an old unit (Archer, Warrior) wandering around in their territory. The AI ain't exactly subtle when it comes to war, and a couple turns of warning can make a big difference.

The other thing you can try is play a few games as a straight up warmonger yourself, just to see how the other side lives. Sounds as if you're a builder. That's my natural game, but sometimes you have to just go kick some butt.

 

[Murky]

i have this problem

certain leader i.e Alexander, Montezuma, etc LOVE to declare war ....
though "Pleased" or "Friendly" relationship before (with war downgrade to "Cautious")

so what do i have to do, it's kinda annoying when they kill my cottages

I've found that that best way to maintain peace with warmongers is to build a stronger military and have a technology advantage over them. They might be a little crazy but they are not stupid enough to go up against superior forces.

 

[Crighton]

To be blunt, as soon as you meet Alex, Monty and Izzy, gear up for war. Typically when done right it'll be a whole lot faster than trying to be friendly. Use diplomacy to put them at a disadvantage (ie frivolous wars not conencted to you, then backstab the AI). Let them see how it feels.