I spawned on what appears to be an archipelago map. I began on a small island chain with two other civs. I took out one already, who was already annoyed with me and clearly didn't pose a threat. Now the archipelago is divided between me and the remaining civ. From everything I can gather, I can probably beat him (though due to our extensive border it would be hard to stop him from launching a counter-offensive while I was rampaging through his territory).
Problem is, I have a hard time forcing myself to do this. He has pleased ranking with me, and absolutely NO negative modifiers. I don't know how that can be; he did catch my spy at one point, and sometime later he did get a negative modifier but it vanished rather quickly. Funny enough, the first turn after I finished the war with the first civ I got a random event that could've allowed me to get an addtional +3 with him. I was tempted to take it just to see if it would make him hand over one of his cities, but I didn't because I would've felt even worse about attacking him later.
He's also been rather useful to me. He's traded me a lot of techs, though seems behind me now. He did send a spy into my territory, which did accomplish something (I know it was him, because there's no literally no other civ on this island).
Of course, I have no idea what may be waiting for me outside this island. It would be in my best interest to take his land to give myself as many resources as I could. Of course, his territory isn't that great; he has about as many cities as I do but half of them are surrounded by desert tiles and thus are clearly not doing much of anything. Maybe conquering him in his entirity wouldn't really be all that useful. Really the only city of his that entices me is his capital, which happens to be the holy city for my religion and actually does have decent tiles around it. Of course, given the scale of his lands the maintenance costs from his cities may be too much for me to afford. I may have to literally move my capital if I was to conquer him.
Is there any practical reason to NOT be a psychopath and let this civ live? Like I said, he's doing me no harm, and he's NOT on the list of civs that declare war on pleased either. He just now researched engineering (I had to wait for my army to arrive at his border anyway, because they were all on the opposite side of my island where the other civ was). Now he can make pikemen, which counter my upgraded elephants. I really can't make another move in this game until I make the decision to attack him or not.
I know its just a game, but for some reason I still have a hard time going over and backstabbing my own best-friend in the game. I have lost in the past due to being a carebear, so I'm thinking it would be better for me to stop that. I guess I just have it in my head now that being a warmongerer is immature because I used to just go around eradicating every civ in the game regardless of whether there was any practical benefit to doing so. Also, I was trying for a space race victory, so how much land other civs own doesn't matter much as long as I'm beating them in tech and production (I'm almost certainly doing the latter, damn my spawn location has a lot of hills).
Should I or should I not?
Problem is, I have a hard time forcing myself to do this. He has pleased ranking with me, and absolutely NO negative modifiers. I don't know how that can be; he did catch my spy at one point, and sometime later he did get a negative modifier but it vanished rather quickly. Funny enough, the first turn after I finished the war with the first civ I got a random event that could've allowed me to get an addtional +3 with him. I was tempted to take it just to see if it would make him hand over one of his cities, but I didn't because I would've felt even worse about attacking him later.
He's also been rather useful to me. He's traded me a lot of techs, though seems behind me now. He did send a spy into my territory, which did accomplish something (I know it was him, because there's no literally no other civ on this island).
Of course, I have no idea what may be waiting for me outside this island. It would be in my best interest to take his land to give myself as many resources as I could. Of course, his territory isn't that great; he has about as many cities as I do but half of them are surrounded by desert tiles and thus are clearly not doing much of anything. Maybe conquering him in his entirity wouldn't really be all that useful. Really the only city of his that entices me is his capital, which happens to be the holy city for my religion and actually does have decent tiles around it. Of course, given the scale of his lands the maintenance costs from his cities may be too much for me to afford. I may have to literally move my capital if I was to conquer him.
Is there any practical reason to NOT be a psychopath and let this civ live? Like I said, he's doing me no harm, and he's NOT on the list of civs that declare war on pleased either. He just now researched engineering (I had to wait for my army to arrive at his border anyway, because they were all on the opposite side of my island where the other civ was). Now he can make pikemen, which counter my upgraded elephants. I really can't make another move in this game until I make the decision to attack him or not.
I know its just a game, but for some reason I still have a hard time going over and backstabbing my own best-friend in the game. I have lost in the past due to being a carebear, so I'm thinking it would be better for me to stop that. I guess I just have it in my head now that being a warmongerer is immature because I used to just go around eradicating every civ in the game regardless of whether there was any practical benefit to doing so. Also, I was trying for a space race victory, so how much land other civs own doesn't matter much as long as I'm beating them in tech and production (I'm almost certainly doing the latter, damn my spawn location has a lot of hills).
Should I or should I not?
from gold and fur, combined with trade routes, once settled that city would pay for itself.
