Preventing war is always boring, how to get rid of it ?

[Bandobras Took]

Easily.

1. Tech straight to iron while you level you warrior on the nearest city state.
2. Your warrior should be as least level 5 (you need medic and march) by the time you research iron. Get the iron from any city state or from the AI.
3. Upgrade your warrior and voila. The AI will have no chance against your level 5+ sm. By the time you get siege and blitz you will be destroying any city in one turn specially after you upgrade it to lsm.

Add another warrior and an archer and you can beat up to immortal without any additional units, buildings nor tile improvements.

I believe I'd like to see that game. Huge Continents, if you please -- remember, you can get away with anything on Prince. And as soon as you build a unit or building, you lose.

Ignoring the obvious sarcasm, it's not really possible to not build any units or buildings, since you have to build something and building wealth or research aren't possible until later in the game. It might actually be possible on Prince as Germans to win without building any units, and just use your original warrior to claim units from barbs. Actually sounds like a semi interesting challenge.

Put something in production until it's one turn away from completion. Then switch to something else. The key is to always have something new to switch to while allowing previously invested production to degrade. Yeesh, you're saying you can get away with anything and don't think it's possible to get away with not building anything?

 

[Bandobras Took]

War is the only way in which Empires really interact in a competitive manner. If you want to play a game where you can ignore war all the time, then yes, Civ5 is not the game for you. Nor are the previous Civ games, where the AI would invade you if you were on a decent difficulty level and fell behind on military.

That's not noticeably accurate. Several leaders in Civ 4 would never attack you so long as you maintained a "friendly" level diplomacy with them.

 

[CarloTheCurious]

Put something in production until it's one turn away from completion. Then switch to something else. The key is to always have something new to switch to while allowing previously invested production to degrade.

You can leave cities idle if you really want to - just force end turn (shift-Enter).

 

[Sainhann]

I would much prefer to just build my Empire.

But things happen and ususally end up needing to teach some other Civ that peace would have been better for them.

Current game as Greeks.

Small Continents

I had on my continent India, Japan & the Ottomans.

Gandi just had to beat me to a Wonder by one turn so by doing that he signed the end of his Civ.

Japan just had to go to war with the City State of Seoul who were friends of mine. So they had to go.

The Ottomans decided that building a new city just right outside of my Culture border was okay. Well its not. He gave a good fight but that city had to go and now I control his capital. The only thing that kept him alive was that I ran into America and I have decided that having them as a buffer is better.

I wanted to try for a Culture win but they forced my hand and now I have 7 Cities two that are still Puppets.

 

[aimlessgun]

I wanted to try for a Culture win but they forced my hand and now I have 7 Cities two that are still Puppets.

Forced your hand eh? Sounds like some post-conquest rationalization to justify your unjust imperialism. You are trampling all over the Greek ideals of democracy and changing the culture of your nation, much like what happened to Athens in their imperialistic adventures. History repeats itself, sadly.

 

[gunter]

I just completed an Emperor level large pangea where I let Japan and persia expand as much as they wanted. In the end Japan and Persia and me (russia) were the only civs left. I did not declare war and fought a couple of good ones. In the final centuries everyhting was a stalemate as no party could penetrate anothers defenses (plus i finally got nukes). Japan was HUGE but there was no way they were going to get past my defensive wall.

Just what I say, we have to deal with an extreme weak AI. If I do not go at war I agree that despiting the opponents' size the AI will be never able to penetrate the human defence, except few cases where the AI is extremely overpowered.

Told that, the usage of pre-emptive wars can be somehow managed in terms of boredom when dealing with a neighborhood on lands but when you are forced to cross an big ocean with lot of units just to mitigate the opponent , well, IMO , that's silly.

Someone asked me what is my alternative idea ?

Good question, the flatness of the tech tree doesn't allow any tactic or particular paths so exploits are not an option. This is good and bad in the same time IMO.

An alternative to avoid wasting tons of time could be " hacking " . A special tree step with computer remote ways of hitting the enemy ...... or converting gold into something like a global power that force the enemy to save money deleting his units.....or some other way to help ( not substitute ) the human player on micromanaging dozens of units across the ocean conducting boredom wars across the ocean for each civ became powerful, usually 3 or 4 in an average game !

 

[avandol]

I would much prefer to just build my Empire.
...
I wanted to try for a Culture win but they forced my hand and now I have 7 Cities two that are still Puppets.

And where is the problem with that? The puppets dont count against politics, so its five cities.
And only four of them are actually indestructible.
Get rid of your second city or just start building culture.

Right now I play on King as Ramses II (Egypt), as of last turn mid 1900s and going for the culture win. It is my second game with Civ5.
8 Starting civs, 16 city states, corresponding kontinents map size. Speed is epic.
I have pretty much every wonder there is with the exception of Stonehenge and Machu Pichu, which someone beat me to. The others are distributed so as to make sure every city has at least one real wonder.
I have 10 cities controlled and numerous puppets.

Since I control (almost) all wonders this means that each city has its culture output doubled. Well, with the exception of Memphis which I placed to accomodate the increasing costs of my empire rather late in the game (pearls, 2x fish, cows, furs, sea site).
I have one more wonder to go which will give me one free politic. Which leaves 3 more politics to research myself and build the Utopia in my capital which has all wonders that werent placed in another city for the bonus, including the eremitage and such to maximize its output.
Culture gain with 2 allied culture cities went just a couple of turns ago over 500, meaning those 3 more politics will be mine in about 75 turns.
Radio towers are being built in some cities, but lots of them are still busy with museums or even operas. Since I practically built nothing else in my capital but wonders the radio tower there isnt finished either

I didnt want all those cities, but as I HAD to start on the continent with Japan, Germany, Osmania(sp?... Süleyman) and Russia I had to develop a taste for bloodshed early on. That I accomplished with just a couple of swordmen(2), crossbowmen(2), archers(1), and the egypt War-chariots(5). The latter I promoted to knights, but only two survived the "Dark Ages". The crossbowmen I lost in toto. The archer was promoted and died in the last big war vs Süleyman due to me being dumb.
Süleyman himself was steamrolled by my 5 cannons, 3 knights and 2 longswordmen.
He swarmed me with his despiccable Janitschars, but cannons ... well, lets say those Janitschars got stuck in the territory (river and hills mwuahaha).

Anyway, long story short meaning - 5 controlled cities is nothing if you want to go for culture.
You need one city for wonders, pure wonders, nothing else.
One city for military. Pure and until later, nothing else.
Depending on the map one or two cities to block choke points and grab resources.
Build up research and money in those and the occasional extra unit.
The other leaders dont look kindly on you if you grab all those wonders.

And I recommend taking out at least 2 civs early on to get some breathing space, but that REALLY depends on the map.

I could have left Katharina and Süleyman two or three cities, but for two points:
1. They kept sending me messages on how much I suck, how stupid I am bbla bla bla. Now while I dont give a damn about their opinion those messages made long turns even longer and Civ5 already deserves the slowest game of the decade award. And yes, 10 seconds every 3 turns sucks when its taking sometimes a minute to load.

2. They kept making research treaties, went to war and cheated themselves ahead. That happened 5x so I put a stop to it since their partners were the actual strong Romans and Americans on the other continent with the big guns available.

What totally blew the Americans away, and this is a REALLY weak point in the AI is that they spoon fed land units via sea way into the guns of my frigate and caravel.
Two units per turn and they just kept coming alongside. Washington pretty much would have pasted Caesar with 10+ riflemen, 8 minutemen and 5 pikemen and those were just the ones I destroyed on sea on my side of their continent.

So the AI kept sending them where my ships were placed, I didnt even move them as they kept a-knockin at me door, harrr.

 

[avandol]

Caesar pasted the Arabs instead and expanded over 2/3 of that continent. Since he doesnt have that much going else, he is out of the loop now with the unhappiness. Until he has managed to make anything in all those towns, the game is over.

America lost the mainstay of its army and only controls five cities on the backend (and not just literally) of that continent. Any sea attack will be repelled by my cannons. Although the first thing he will do is attack a city state I grabbed due to it having dye, bananas and gems, which I were missing still.
That city is right beside him and I have filled msot of the available space with units. So the second he attacks my cannons will blow away half his army, condemning him once and for all.

Caesar actually controls the sea with 5+ frigates, but to prevent an invasion I have my military city producing cannons/arti now. Every city is garrisoned, the sea cities with cannons. Which still means I dont own more than approx 30 military units or so. Its really the smallest pile in my costs.
Building costs eat me up though. So much so that I had to swallow that 30% culture cost-bitter pill and built a cash city.

Generals were used for golden ages. Scientists 50/50 for techs and improvements. Those two early on, they were my first two GPs, which, counted against 1000+ turns bought me more than a couple of techs. Artists I converted to improvements and culture shock also 50/50. Where the first shock was just to see how it works and the second shock used to claim the gems near the americans.
And of course all engineers were used for wonder building.
I had only one merchant, which went to a culture city state to get them back as allies.

I declared war on Japan while they still had one city and later on Russia and Süleyman before they declared on me. I declared war on America when Caeesar asked me, that also to ensure that I stayed on Caesars good side due to a couple of treaties with him.

None of those wars were declared just to put them into perspective. Well, maybe with Süleyman, but since our 10 hex border was filled with Janitschars two rows deep I dont think that was actually a declaration per se. Of course, you can always wait until you are attacked ...