Is civ 6 the most peaceful iteration ever?

Mahi

Prince
Joined
Apr 24, 2010
Messages
398
Ok, it is starting to get ridiculous.. My third game since the new patch and not once did an AI declare war on me. I'm seriously just sitting there for an eternity clicking next turn without anything happens. I swear I'm not even trying to cheese peacemongering AIs. All I built is three slingers and a couple of warriors. Keep upgrading those three slingers to new units and the AI will not touch you..
Is this just a coincidence for my three latest playthroughs?
 
Ok, it is starting to get ridiculous.. My third game since the new patch and not once did an AI declare war on me. I'm seriously just sitting there for an eternity clicking next turn without anything happens. I swear I'm not even trying to cheese peacemongering AIs. All I built is three slingers and a couple of warriors. Keep upgrading those three slingers to new units and the AI will not touch you..
Is this just a coincidence for my three latest playthroughs?

This seems pretty typical, but there are exceptions. It used to be the case that AIs would routinely attack with about four units early, at least on Deity, and request peace once those were defeated, but I haven't seen that recently. Having a larger military than that would be an obvious disincentive.

Having said that, I did face the most aggressive AI I've seen in Civ VI in the first game I rolled after playing the Maya. The Romans came at me as soon as they had legions, with multiple waves of those, chariots and archers, and were very reluctant to make peace despite my having three archers and a warrior initially and destroying most of their army before losing any units (they managed to kill the warrior and an archer). They succeeded in damaging my capital before I got walls up, and had they not divided their attention between two of my cities (at that point I had three, one of which they had no route to) they could have at least come close to taking it.
 
Anecdotally, I received two surprise declarations of war in my only full game with the update. Both early, (Varus from Chandragupta (and I wasn't his neighbor), similar value units from John Curtin). Chandrahupta nearly took a city, while Curtin declared about 7 turns later and only was contained by a combo of mountains, rivers, walls, and an encampment while I finished off the Indian incursion.

The rest of the game was mostly peaceful for me as I befriended Chandragupta and allied John Curtin. I did eventually attack China who captured my city state ally twice, agitating me. I wiped them off our starting continent.

Mongolia terrorized the other continent, and was broadly the villain of the game.
 
Not in most of my gameplay. In most of my games the AI either declares war on their neighbor or on me.

My last game was Kongo defeated Gran Colombia -- poor Simon had a bad tundra start, sandwiched between a forward-settling Georgia and Kongo. Me on the other continent as Ottoman got into war with neighboring Germany (turn 1 they said they just plain dont like me) then later in modern era Korea declared war on me because of my warmongering.

And this was just on King difficulty.
 
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It's far too peaceful, it feels like nothing ever happens.

The game not letting you declare war against friends or any of the several types of allies is the culprit. It really needs to go, especially the friend restriction. As it stands, too many games are just boring endless friendships and alliances between every empire.
 
I believe the agenda system is the reason and in the later era, the grievances penalty.

I think the devs should just improve the behavior attached to agenda related to warmongering so that we can expect more warfare from the likes of Chandy, Alex, Gorgo, Genghis etc.

There should also be a backstabber agenda so that some leaders who appear to offer friendship will later suddenly declare war once the friendship expired. This will put more civs identity rather than them play based on mechanics of avoiding grievances.
 
Not in most of my gameplay. In most of my games the AI either declares war on their neighbor or on me.

My last game was Kongo defeated Gran Colombia -- poor Simon had a bad tundra start, sandwiched between a forward-settling Georgia and Kongo. Me on the other continent as Ottoman got into war with neighboring Germany (turn 1 they said they just plain dont like me) then later in modern era Korea declared war on me because of my warmongering.

And this was just on King difficulty.

AIs will pretty commonly declare war on one another - in my experience it's rare for AIs to wipe others out, but in one of my recent games two AI civs were destroyed by a runaway Mongolia on the same continent. They also routinely capture city states, although much less often than they did in earlier versions of Civ VI.

I believe the agenda system is the reason and in the later era, the grievances penalty.

I've yet to work out whether the grievance system has much effect - I've incurred high grievance for taking city states while still being able to ally with everyone, even the ones whose agendas I repeatedly violate.

It seems there may be an issue with the friendship/alliance system - you can get friendships almost immediately, which is fine, but once you have them you can apparently keep renewing them indefinitely whatever you do. There's no AI backstabbing in Civ VI so you're always completely safe from any civ you're allied with. Things that violate agendas or that the civ otherwise dislikes should much more strongly reduce their incentive to renew an alliance, or their odds of going from green to yellow.

This I suspect is why AIs end up fighting each other a lot but not the player - AIs will generally have militaries fairly comparable to one another, and it seems that AIs rarely or never declare friendships or alliances with other AIs. So while the player gets a lot of positive modifiers for doing so, the AI doesn't.

I think the devs should just improve the behavior attached to agenda related to warmongering so that we can expect more warfare from the likes of Chandy, Alex, Gorgo, Genghis etc.

AIs don't differ in their behaviour in any detectable way with virtually no exceptions (Gandhi and Poundmaker won't declare wars early where other civs mostly do, but that's the only difference). Some of those civs have agendas that make them more prone to dislike you if you're a good military target, particularly Chandragupta (but conversely if Chandragupta isn't immediately next to you he'll be the friendliest leader in the world), but Civ VI AIs do not have personalities in the way those in IV or V did - apparently they are coded with tendencies, but something in the modifier system or the general process of generating trait values for any given game prevents those from being expressed in any consistent way in Civ VI.
 
The Romans came at me as soon as they had legions

I had the Romans relentlessly keep attacking me on a Prince level game played on Online speed I was using to get great Colombian general UU's to try to get the last general I could not get in 2 previous games. It's funny that a lower level game actually provided the most challenge to me. The Romans threw a lot of units at me and came close to getting my capital (though I had several other cities). I was slacking in building units for defense. The AI is definitely better and more aggressive on Online speed. I found it hilarious that a Prince level game gave me more challenge than an Emperor or Immortal game.
 
I had the Romans relentlessly keep attacking me on a Prince level game played on Online speed I was using to get great Colombian general UU's to try to get the last general I could not get in 2 previous games. It's funny that a lower level game actually provided the most challenge to me. The Romans threw a lot of units at me and came close to getting my capital (though I had several other cities). I was slacking in building units for defense. The AI is definitely better and more aggressive on Online speed. I found it hilarious that a Prince level game gave me more challenge than an Emperor or Immortal game.

Mine was a Deity game on Standard speed (I never play any other speed or difficulty level). It's possible there's an undocumented change that has allowed the different AI civs to express more personality in such things as military buildup and aggression, but I haven't played enough games to find out (just started a third - I ended up abandoning that one after getting the China 'Hidden Cannon' achievement, as I already have the Chinese victory achievement and I wasn't finding the game particularly interesting - I was cramped into a fairly poor position but climbing in science and I could foresee basically the same game I'd previously won as the Maya all over again).
 
Certainly more peaceful than Civ IV. Usually after an early Ancient era war or so, the AI doesn't attack me. On Deity they are more aggressive, but there are ways to discourage them from attacking as well.
 
I have had a lot of peaceful games where I am able to befriend most if not all the AIs.

I also have games where I get attacked a lot.

I have also seen AIs beat the *bleep* out of each other. I watched Sumeria wipe out 3 civs in the first half of the game. Good thing Gilgabro was a friend and stayed one. Lol.

Personally, I like the variety.

Anyway, as far as it being the most peaceful Civ, I would agree.
 
I've only played Civ 5 and 6 a lot (I have almost 3k hours each) but in my opinion, Civ 5 is waaaaaaaay more peaceful.
 
I've only played Civ 5 and 6 a lot (I have almost 3k hours each) but in my opinion, Civ 5 is waaaaaaaay more peaceful.

Civ V went through wild swings through its lifetime - in most incarnations it was highly aggressive, but I agree they toned it down too far in its final version and BNW is much too peaceful until you hit late-game ideologies where it doesn't really matter.

Civ VI has however been very peaceful most of the time (barbarians aside), and aggression doesn't (or at least didn't) much differ across the few difficulty levels I played before setting on Deity. It commonly sent a cursory attack your way at the start of the game, as has been fairly routine in most Civ games, but once that was beaten it would usually simply never declare war again, at least against the player.
 
I don't think it's a problem if the AI doesn't pursue pointless or hopeless wars just for the sake of it.

The main issue is that the AI doesn't actively seek a victory most of the game, hence its wars happen juste because they can, and they're rarely focused on an objective.
 
In my Columbia game the Ottomans declared a couple of surprise wars to the point I got fed up and wiped them out. But usually I can keep the peace if I want to. "Speak softly and carry a big stick" is usually enough.
 
I am a peaceful player (playing on king difficulty) and there hasn't been a single game since Gathering Storm where the AI left me alone.
In fact, right now I am waging an already 50 turn long (on normal speed) defensive war against three AIs that simply refuse to sign peace.

So my guess is this might be something related to military strength?
I tend to keep my military size at a minimum, which might make me a prime target for random AI war declarations.
 
I am a peaceful player (playing on king difficulty) and there hasn't been a single game since Gathering Storm where the AI left me alone.
In fact, right now I am waging an already 50 turn long (on normal speed) defensive war against three AIs that simply refuse to sign peace.

So my guess is this might be something related to military strength?
I tend to keep my military size at a minimum, which might make me a prime target for random AI war declarations.
Yes, if you want to play peacefully you need a big military as a deterrent (I find it doesn't need to be a technologically advanced army, just big, so you don't need to constantly pursue the cutting edge military tech). Also, the AI won't be interested in a peace deal until you threaten them. Merely fighting them to a standstill usually won't be enough. Sometimes just destroying their army will do it. Sometimes approaching one of their cities with a big army will do it.
 
In my recent post patch game I was playing as Cree and everything was very peaceful and I had 5 alliances. Suddenly out of the blue in about the Renaissance or Industrial, my neighbour Maya surprise warred me with levied troops from Akkad and took a city away from the border where I had neglected to build walls in about 2 turns. Gave me a real fright but I managed to peace out and got it back through loyalty.

I wonder whether map type has an impact on AI aggressiveness as the AI tends to attack land neighbours rather than those over water
 
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