no war

[Calouste]

Main source of early game is luxury & strategic resources trading ...
Later in the game (past Economics) trade post spam becomes the main income source for most empires (unless you are Arabia) ...

Both those income sources are directly dependent on the amount of tiles (cities) you have ... (you cannot get 30 luxury copies in 30 tiles, you cannot place 200 trade-posts in 100 tiles)...

No wide empire -> No (need huge area to get large amounts of ) -> No huge army (need lots of to produce and maintain huge army) -> No wide empire (need army to conquer land ) {circular dependence list}


HUGE ARMY = REQUIRES CONQUEST WARS to provide the huge amount of tiles required to generate the huge it consumes ...
---------------

In the vast majority of cases you cannot expand too much without conquest (peacefully - unless you are Austria perhaps) ....The more aggressively you settle early the more likely you are to cause incoming DOWs ..

Oligarchy - does nothing to alleviate the huge & costs required to get a huge army in the first place ...

You don't need a huge army if you play defensively and have Oligarchy and defensive buildings. An attack is not going to get very far if you can kill units in two shots.

 

[peddroelm]

You don't need a huge army if you play defensively and have Oligarchy and defensive buildings. An attack is not going to get very far if you can kill units in two shots.

This is what I was arguing with

...
Building a huge army is a great way to discourage war.
....

No - you need successful expansionist wars to be able to build, keep upgraded and then maintain a huge army in the first place ....

 

[Cymsdale]

This is what I was arguing with



No - you need successful expansionist wars to be able to build, keep upgraded and then maintain a huge army in the first place ....

I repeat: "Of course, if you have that huge army, you might as well use it..."

Why are you trying to manufacturer a debate out of this?

 

[peddroelm]

I repeat: "Of course, if you have that huge army, you might as well use it..."

Why are you trying to manufacturer a debate out of this?

I'm not ... I was merely pointing out that your are not going to have that huge army WITHOUT going to war first. Thus you cannot use a huge army as a war deterrent in a peaceful game non conquest game - its not economically feasible (this thread is titled NO WARS) ...

 

[Vatras]

You can do it without going to war. You are thinking armies of the size in the 30-years-war under Wallenstein, which needed to plunder & pillage all the time. But a solid army does not have to be that big in size

 

[gunslinger6792]

I've found on King that the AI is hyper agressive. I've had two maps one with the USA and Russia and another map with germany. by turn 25 all 3 had declared war

 

[fenwayb]

I've had no war for at least 300 turns (normal speed) now simply by befriending my neighbors...My military has been exclusively what militaristic city-states give me (Small army), and my 2 cities housed 18 world wonders (Juicy target), and I bordered the most aggressively expanding civ (Inca), but he loved me so I had peace the entire game

edit: I just reread that and realized that it sounds like I'm on settler difficulty or something...I'm not. It's prince, I was just incredibly aggressive with wonder building and didn't have Egypt on the map.