Is there any point in going to war past early game?

[jnebbe]

Unless you capture multiple cities in a row, the ai cities around the captured city will swallow up the borders and I find that these cities end up being pretty useless.

 

[Lennier]

Make them vassals. In BtS, your vassals will cede control of tiles in your city’s BFCs.

 

[jnebbe]

Make them vassals. In BtS, your vassals will cede control of tiles in your city’s BFCs.

I play vanilla

 

[lymond]

I play vanilla

Play BTS...it is the definitive version of Civ IV. Vanilla had a lot of problems that were improved by the final expansion. PLus you can use mods like BUG/BULL and BAT. The BUFFY mod for playing Game of the Months and HOF games.

anyway..yes,, it is always worth going to war. Just kill them

 

[pi-r8]

Make them vassals. In BtS, your vassals will cede control of tiles in your city’s BFCs.

Really? that hasn't been my experience. I've even had cities revolt to my vassals.

 

[Lennier]

Your cities can revolt if in your vassal’s cultural influence. In that case, either conquer the city or cities exerting the influence on an important conquered city, garrison the city with enough troops to prevent revolt, live with the revolts, or give the city back to your vassal.

 

[krikav]

I take it, that this suffice as an answer to the question in topic?

 

[Lennier]

Love that quote!

 

[georgjorge]

To reply to the original post:

It's true that "native" culture swallowing up conquered cities is a problem. However, the answer to that is not to play without wars after the early period, but to continue expanding your empire further after the initial conquests. There's little point in spending lots of hammers conquering five cities, three of which are unhappy, starving and can't work any tiles, so you whip (or draft) them down for more units and continue to take the cities whose culture is bothering you. This creates new border cities swamped by culture, so you repeat until you reach Domination limit ; )

It makes limited wars (as in "only take three cities and stop") rather pointless, which for me is not good game design. But on higher levels, you are very dependent on going to war at SOME point, because that's where your biggest advantage as a human player lies. At that point, you accumulate cities, which make more units, which make more cities etc.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

You can also strategically raze certain cities altogether to give you a buffer between the newly conquered cities you intend to keep and the culture of the previous owner. It's probably better to just crush them and/or vassalize them, but if that's not your cup of tea, then razing cities can work well.

 

[rah]

I usually eliminate the first victim of my expansion wars. Since it usually happens early and I don't want to deal with the return to the motherland anger modifier. When the war for domination begins later, then it's beat and cap, rinse and repeat till victory. If the city is unhappy, poppa needs a new cavalry. Population is rarely the thing stopping me from domination. It's the land area.