Is moderate warmongering durring a culture victory worth it?

[Popedesu]

Lately I've been mixing war mongering with culture victory. I will usually cut down civs down to 1 city to decrease their culture output. This makes it easier for their culture to be overtaken, and I usually try to wipe out the civs with lots of culture/tourism so I don't have to worry about them. Is this a viable strategy I do the common warmonger things as to avoid diplo hits. IE getting others to go to war first, paying them to take city states, only going as far as taking their capital and most cities. So is this a viable stategey?

 

[ShakaKhan]

Simply put, yes.

On lower difficulty levels, it will probably delay your turn-to-victory. The biggest problems is that you may lose the open borders bonus if other civs refuse to give you OB due to your warmongering, and more importantly you can't move GMs into their territory for concert tours unless you have OB. This will significantly increase how many turns it takes to get influential with the 2nd most prominent culture target (as the assumption is you've crippled the most prominent culture target.)

On higher difficulties it's not only worth it but often nearly a necessity. Attacking the culture leader not only means that you only have to become influential with the 2nd most prominent target (which potentially can halve the game), it also means that you're acquiring a city with lots of wonders that not only give you their individual bonuses but also provides a city that provides nearly as much tourism as your capital, possibly even more. Furthermore, the amount of Great Works you can acquire from this target, particularly the capital, could double or triple your total number of GWs.

 

[killmeplease]

>you can't move GMs into their territory for concert tours unless you have OB

or you're at war with them

 

[beetle]

In general, warmongering helps for every VC. Just like science, culture, gold, and CS allies are always helpful for every VC, every game. So I think the question needs to be refined.

...only going as far as taking their capital and most cities

How is that “moderate” warmongering? Why not go for domination in this case? Are you just trying to knock out the achievement?

Wholly peaceful (i.e., not taking any cities) CV is a particularly tricky beast. So taking the nearby caps and then aiming for CV is easier than four-city turtle to CV. But the same is true as well for SV or Diplo. Part of the challenge with peaceful games, CV included, is doing so with only the cities you found. On the other hand, domination-assisted wins are fun too.

 

[Sclb]

Usually it's much faster on deity to do a Dom V than to just go for warmongering assisted CV. Remember in order to knock out a civ, you have to conquer EVERY cities, and most of the time the culture leader is ICS style which will take a long time to conquer and hunt down every single cities. A lot of times they will have cities in the middle of nowhere. An example is a recent game where the culture leader had 98k culture, there was 0 chance of winning peaceful, but in order to conquer him, I would've gotten both Diplo and Dom V before I finally destroyed him to get a Culture V. I actually deliberately lost the WL vote and gifted one of the capital to avoid those VC.

 

[Dushku]

There are only 2 ways I can think of that war makes a CV more challenging: 1) You cannot have a trade route with a civ you are at war with, so no 25% multiplier. 2) You cannot get the open border 25% modifier during war and warring will make open borders cost you that much more during peace time.

As pointed out though, it DOES allow you to perform a concert tour without open borders. However, this is often achieved by selling a city, which you can't do to somebody you are at war with.

 

[KmDubya]

Try it with Autocracy and the tourism boost for war partners. Join with the second or third place culture leader and burn down the leader. You get big stacking bonuses from each war.

 

[Valmighty]

I tried warmongering with commerce and order. I got 40-60 happiness and have tourism boost due too enemy having less happiness (Dictatorship of the Proletariat) and Cultural Revolution.

 

[Iberian]

In general, warmongering helps for every VC. Just like science, culture, gold, and CS allies are always helpful for every VC, every game. So I think the question needs to be refined.



How is that “moderate” warmongering? Why not go for domination in this case? Are you just trying to knock out the achievement?

Wholly peaceful (i.e., not taking any cities) CV is a particularly tricky beast. So taking the nearby caps and then aiming for CV is easier than four-city turtle to CV. But the same is true as well for SV or Diplo. Part of the challenge with peaceful games, CV included, is doing so with only the cities you found. On the other hand, domination-assisted wins are fun too.

I find war slows SV, is way faster for CV, and a toss up on Diplo.

 

[Sclb]

I don't agree that war makes CV way faster. How quickly you win depends on how quickly you reach Internet for the most part, and wars always slow tech. True that you will be able to steal great works and wonders, but in my experience it hardly breaks even. It would only be worth it if you have a peacemonger civ that wonder spams that happens to be close to your capital.

 

[KmDubya]

A lot of my culture wins happen before Internet. Big empire from conquest + lots of archeologists + lots of museums + lots of stolen relics from conquered foes + Autocracy for the +50% boost per war. Burn down (genocide) and loot the culture leader while teaming up with the second or third place culture leader.

 

[Sclb]

A lot of my culture wins happen before Internet. Big empire from conquest + lots of archeologists + lots of museums + lots of stolen relics from conquered foes + Autocracy for the +50% boost per war. Burn down (genocide) and loot the culture leader while teaming up with the second or third place culture leader.

What difficulty is this? I don't know how you can overcome more than 20-30k of culture on deity without at least hotels, and even that is with very strong civs such as Brazil. Big empire basically stagnate your tech so you'll be modern era much later than AI runaways. And if you're talking about lower difficulties, I can win CV without even opening Aesthetics.

 

[Wild_Woojsha]

What difficulty is this? I don't know how you can overcome more than 20-30k of culture on deity without at least hotels, and even that is with very strong civs such as Brazil. Big empire basically stagnate your tech so you'll be modern era much later than AI runaways. And if you're talking about lower difficulties, I can win CV without even opening Aesthetics.

I wonder if this is possible on deity with early warmongering Civs like the Huns though. On a Great Plains map, they can trash any group of AI's fast enough to have them all stuck at 1 city prior to the Industrial era (in the right hands anyway). Then the hoard can just babysit them until enough tourism is built up to win. It'd be a lot slower than a normal Huns Deity Domination Victory, but I wonder how much slower than a normal Deity Culture Victory.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Since <100 turn Deity DomV's are published (standard size), this must certainly be possible. Simply eliminate all except a single city of the culture laggard, pop a GM, win.

 

[beetle]

I find war slows SV, is way faster for CV, and a toss up on Diplo.

Are you thinking about late game war? I am thinking of early game exploits. If you take a cap or two, then peace out, every VC is accelerated as compared to trying to be peaceful all game long. Which is why I was hoping OP would qualify his question more.

Late game, I agree war does nothing for SV.

Late game, I agree since war can be way faster CV -- as you would be targeting the competition.

Late game, post Globalization, war is almost always going to be counterproductive for Diplo VC.

 

[Sclb]

Early game war. It is necessary to tech detour on deity to be able to take a cap or two, especially if your target civ is warmonger type, and you already slowed your science by doing the detour. And it might take at least 50-100 turns to be able to recover depending on what buildings you get to keep. You get better beakers near the end, but for fast science games, war is always going to slow it down. Exception is whoever you conquer has ToA or related wonders. The bonus gets applies immediately.

 

[beetle]

Early game war. It is necessary to tech detour on deity to be able to take a cap or two, especially if your target civ is warmonger type, and you already slowed your science by doing the detour. And it might take at least 50-100 turns to be able to recover depending on what buildings you get to keep.

I would love to some examples of that, with a strong player such as yourself playing the same map twice to SV with the two styles. I would love to be proved wrong, because I think if you detour for a CB/XB rush on the closest caps your turns to SV will be quicker. Have you experimented with this? Or are you drawing inferences between different games?

 

[vanatteveldt]

I would think that XB (via NC->machinery) would be more suited, as this is a bit less of a detour (especially for liberty games where you need engineering fairly soon anyway) and it gives the opponent more time to build some juicy wonders.

I would guess that it mostly depends on who your neighbours are. If they are nice enough to build wonders instead of armies it makes it much more attractive...

 

[beetle]

Well, you are still pursing machinery before education, so plainly delaying your science game.

I understood Sclb to be comparing the speed of SV games with Shaka as your neighbor (hence the detour) to SV games where you can just turtle. But I submit that those turtle games with a soft neighbor might actually be speed up by treating them as if they were Shaka.

Obviously, at higher difficulty levels, one cannot expect a good result experimenting the other way...

 

[Sclb]

So I got in a game where starting a war against Mongolia was probably beneficial (can free at least 3-4 CS, raze his cities on my borders, and enable several fought in the same war modifiers), we'll see what happens at the end. War started around turn 140 with XB (late but should be fine since I'm not concentrating on units). I was 2nd in tech just behind Rome, but he unfortunately denounced me because I beat him to several wonders and stole his CS, so far friendly with rest of the world, several DoF. I should be fine as long as I don't get a chain denouncement, which is unlikely since I bribed Mongolia to DoW half the world prior to my invasion. In this game, Iroquois and Rome are culture leaders, but invasion of either would be difficult as they're both behind mountains, and behind Assyria.