Is this way possible?

[garric]

I figure next week I will have some time and I will buy C3C, and I want to try out this style of playing. I'm a real big fan of history and most of the times in a war, a total country was not destroyed and assimilated by another. Yet reading through this forum, most of the time I see people just saying "First I defeated this civ, then this civ, then this civ, then I won!".

Is there a way to play a diplomatic game? I.E I'm allied with France and France goes to war with Germany. I help France defeat Germany's army, but I stop the war and give Germany back it's cities and ask it for a huge sum of money and force them to be my ally.

Would this work or would France just keep going and destroy Germany and take all of it's cities?

I'm not really into that power gaming killing all of the civs 1 by 1 to win thing, and I don't care if the game NEVER ends, I'd have more fun having little wars and then reestablishing a balance of power.

So is the game sofisticated enough for this to work or will the AI just go it's own way?

 

[Hyronymus]

Germany will never take back the cities you offer, not even for alot of money. France will stop somewhere, the AI doesn't usually eliminate enemies. The best option to your gaming style would be to stay out of war, be friendly to all, occasionally attack enemy units, not conquer cities and build the United Nations asap. It might be a real challenge to not go into war mode all this time.

 

[homan1983]

OMG Garric, are you the same person from MFO's Age of Mythology / TT forum??

My nick there is Wimp...

 

[thx1138]

I played a game where I attacked no one, ever. It was boring as hell.

 

[jb1964]

I just finished a game where I had a total of three wars that lasted 5, 6 and 20 turns. I attacked early for ivory and late for silk. Iroquois sneak attacked me late but I simply brought in all their neighbors so I could concentrate on the spaceship. Launched in 1685.

Ya, it was sort of boring but I was seeing how early I could casually (w/o massive MM'ing) launch.

 

[garric]

Why won't Germany take back his cities? Can't I just offer them back for something? Or does AI not do that?

I remember playing Civ 3 and bartering for cities.. strange. I would be cheap and sell someone one of my cities for an insane amount and conquer it back with adjacent troops, but I'm not planning to do that.

And yes, Wimp, it is I.

 

[Masquerouge]

It is perfectly possible to play and win a diplomatic game. You can very well wage limited wars, to gain access to a strategic resource or a luxury, or because your ally forced you into one ; it's up to you to decide whether you capture cities or destroy them.

You can give cities to civs, but because of a thing called "culture" and the way it works in Civ3, it's not as easy as it seems ; you'll understand it when you've played the game a bit. Basically, there's a chance the city you give to a civ will flip back to you, and some people found a way to exploit this.

Anyway, the diplomatic system is quite okay, even with its limitations. And military domination ensures two types of wins, "conquest" when you destroy everybody and "Domination" when you control 66% of the world's surface and 66% of the world's population, but there are 4 other non-military ways of winning : pure diplo, when you're elected leader of the UN, science, when you're the first to launch a spaceship, culture, when your entire civilization has so much culture that you win, or one of your city reaches a certain amount of culture.
Basically, among the 6 types of victories, only 2 force you to wage wars. It's perfectly possible (and I've done it) to win the other 4 without waging a war, ever.

So yes, I think you'll be quite happy with C3C

 

[Roso]

Interesting - when I make peace I try to take cities and not to return conquered. However I doubt that AI would have a lot gold after war where you win. As I am not enough experienced in C3C I don't know if the AI would accept its cities back. I've only noticed that they do not take money in exchange to a city. I had some wars in which none was conquered but that were often ballanced wars in which we had similar military strenght. And in this example that you have given I think France would conqer Germany if you don't do something to stop France (ally with G against F or someting like that) but if it is in the later part of the game I think the others would be involved in the war too most of them in the stronger's side (in this case you and F) so they will continiue the war without you and that would mean they will become stronger. Because of that I regret it's not possible to tell F that if it don't stop the war with G you will declare war on F .

 

[Scuffer]

Why won't Germany take back his cities? Can't I just offer them back for something? Or does AI not do that?

You can give them back alright, but you can't sell them.