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

[gunter]

Usually on my quite easy Prince level games I am forced since old eras to make preventive wars, they are boring indeed, despiting results are good.

When I notice within the diplomacy screen that a civilization has a total score much higher than mine I am forced to organize a good attack to him to mitigate him, otherwise his power will grow to a level that it would become to hard to defeat later on.

Usually I also organize a war with another civ, paying for that, but not always that's a valid option.

Doing that the most powerful civ will loose few cities due to my attacks but I think this tactic is as effective as boring.

How do you suggest me to avoid this tactic but at the same time to prevent other civs to become too powerful ?

Thx

 

[Trickster7135]

Well if you want more of a challenge from the high-score civ without being overpowered against them... just raise your threshold before you declare war. Instead of attacking them when their score is simply greater than yours, set a hard 1.5x score minimum before you allow yourself to attack them.

 

[alpaca]

I don't think you can. Maintaining the balance of power is a fiddly but necessary thing to avoid a run-away opponent. You could try gifting units to city-states and other civs but that's probably not a very good option because they won't use them effectively.

 

[Alki]

You can turn this on it's head. Instead of limiting the AI leader's score you could seek to maximise your own score.

 

[Ahriman]

On Prince you can get away with whatever. On the highest difficulty levels, I find that pre-emptive wars to keep another AI from getting a runaway lead is crucial.

 

[Bandobras Took]

On Prince you can get away with whatever.

Great! So I can build no units, buildings, or tile improvements and win on prince?

 

[bluedevil99]

This is often an issue in continents games, where you can be happily in control of your own continent only to find later than an AI conquered the other continent and you have a runaway train on your hands.

One (partial) solution is to always prioritize Astronomy. As long as you have contact with all the AI civs rather early, you can use diplomacy to try and limit the runaway train effect. You ally with city states and try to keep the AI at war with each other. Don't be afraid to declare a phantom war with an AI on another continent as long as you can convince the other weaker AI civs to join in- an AI does fairly well against a single, weaker AI opponent but has trouble fighting a war on multiple fronts. The key is to develop a strong economy, selling open borders and luxury resources to opposing civs so that you can afford gifts to city states, research agreements, and wartime bribes to keep everyone in line. This is also useful training for higher difficulties where diplomacy is crucial.

 

[vicious.quan]

Great! So I can build no units, buildings, or tile improvements and win on prince?

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.

 

[factorial]

Great! So I can build no units, buildings, or tile improvements and win on prince?

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.

 

[Ahriman]

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.

Easily, especially if you're allowed military city state alliances, and stealing workers.

You'll still need some buildings and improvements though.

 

[gunter]

On Prince you can get away with whatever. On the highest difficulty levels, I find that pre-emptive wars to keep another AI from getting a runaway lead is crucial.

This is just the point.


Do not consider the Prince level, I mean, I understand while I play that my potential is far from simply control this and that, sometimes using pre-emptive wars just in case.

The issue is clearer on highest levels you play, you are basically witnessing the same. Is pre-emptive war the only way to avoid the runaway train therefore loosing the game ?

I think this tactic is as good as boring cause I am forced to attack this and that each period and I am now trying to focus on capitols only to avoid such boredom, otherwise it would be easy to mitigate them with damages here and there ( pillaging or conquering small cities ) just to keep the AI on the edge while it is weakening turn after turn.

 

[Ahriman]

Is pre-emptive war the only way to avoid the runaway train therefore loosing the game ?

Yes. But I don't think this is a bad thing, I think its the result of *good* design.

In previous Civ games, the late-game has often been lame because the other AIs aren't able to conquer each other effectively. The best chance that the game has of offering you a decent late-game challenge is if, by the late-game, the other AIs have gone on conquering rampages, and a few of them have set up superpowers. The game is much tougher if late-game I face 2 superpowers rather than 8 mediocre powers.

So, logically, the best strategy is to prevent them from doing this by attacking whoever is getting ahead.

It also requires you to respond to events, and not just sit off on your own and build up. Which is a good thing.

If you don't like it, what do you think is the alternative design? If leaving the AI to itself doesn't hurt you, then the game isn't very interactive.

 

[Bandobras Took]

So, logically, the best strategy is to prevent them from doing this by attacking whoever is getting ahead.

It also requires you to respond to events, and not just sit off on your own and build up. Which is a good thing.

If you don't like it, what do you think is the alternative design? If leaving the AI to itself doesn't hurt you, then the game isn't very interactive.

If the only way to beat the AI is to attack them, I'll go play a wargame, not an empire-building game.

 

[Rohili]

Well on Prince my score is usually higher than the AI without me having to declare war on them. So my answer would be to build up your civ so that your score is higher... that way no preventive wars are necessary.

 

[bluedevil99]

Couple more points...

1) Score is not that meaningful in Civ 5. I've won several times on Immortal (including one game where I didn't go to war at all) while being behind in score the entire game. Population/tech and gold income are far more important than score.

2) I don't think you should ever declare war on an opponent simply because they are ahead of you in score. The exception to this is, say, if you're next to Bismark and he's about to hit the medieval era, or especially Napolean just before he hits the renaissance, when he will spam musketeers and go completely psycho on all civs and city states in the area. Normally, though, you declare on someone because they have assets (cities, resources, etc) you want and have concluded it costs less hammers (and/or turns) to build the requisite number of military units than it would to build/acquire those assets peacefully.

3) As a rule I generally don't move up a difficulty in Civ until I can win, at least on an Archipalego map say, without declaring war for an entire game. War is an important tool, but there are other tools and it is important to use all of them effectively. Please don't pay heed to these "it doesn't matter what you do at Prince" remarks. It is true that some strategies, such as early wonder spam, that can work on prince will generally fail at higher difficulties. But there are just as many if not more principles that transfer as you move up.

 

[carlisimo]

You NEED a runaway AI for the game to be any good.

Maybe Civ takes it too far, but in this genre of game the human player is always better in the mid and late game (in part because if you lose, it's usually early on). If the AIs keep each other in check, they don't grow while you do.

In theory the ideal would be for AI players to slowly conquer each other so the survivors grow at the same rate you do. I'd say the two earliest Total War games managed to do that, but the later ones (starting from Rome) had too much balance and no AI growth. It's common in turn-based games. Having one ballooning opponent is better than none.

 

[Ahriman]

If the only way to beat the AI is to attack them, I'll go play a wargame, not an empire-building game.

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.

Declaring war isn't quite the only way - you could gift units to other civs to try to help them defend - but its the most efficient way.

I don't think you should ever declare war on an opponent simply because they are ahead of you in score.
...
Normally, though, you declare on someone because they have assets (cities, resources, etc) you want and have concluded it costs less hammers (and/or turns) to build the requisite number of military units than it would to build/acquire those assets peacefully.

I disagree. Often in this game you want to declare war on another player to destroy their army, so as to prevent them from carving out a massive empire out of the other AI players that will allow them to get such a lead that you won't be able to fight them off later. This isn't just a rare occurrence limited to particular AIs. Every AI leader will go on a conquest rampage if it can.

You NEED a runaway AI for the game to be any good.
...
If the AIs keep each other in check, they don't grow while you do.

This is precisely my point. If you don't get runaway AIs building up to superpower status, then no AI is every going to be tough enough to challenge a human player who does this.

 

[aimlessgun]

This is just the point.


Is pre-emptive war the only way to avoid the runaway train therefore loosing the game ?

It's doesn't mean you lose.

You can just let them runaway to their hearts content. I've had AI's with quadruple my score, quintuple my size, in the modern era, with slightly better tech even. Didn't matter, they still lost the war. But it was pretty exciting!

PS: This runaway AI was connected to me via land, and not just with a chokepoint (I was in the middle east, AI had europe/north asia/africa). Even without being confined to a chokepoint or blocked by an ocean, the computer can still do enough dumb stuff to lose with superior force.

 

[Surgeon]

Usually on my quite easy Prince level games I am forced since old eras to make preventive wars, they are boring indeed, despiting results are good.

When I notice within the diplomacy screen that a civilization has a total score much higher than mine I am forced to organize a good attack to him to mitigate him, otherwise his power will grow to a level that it would become to hard to defeat later on.

Usually I also organize a war with another civ, paying for that, but not always that's a valid option.

Doing that the most powerful civ will loose few cities due to my attacks but I think this tactic is as effective as boring.

How do you suggest me to avoid this tactic but at the same time to prevent other civs to become too powerful ?

Thx

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.

I guess I could have maximised my score by flattening japna/persia early but I like winning by space race (I could have won by diplomatic but thats too lame). BTW Russsia is a production powerhouse if you get lucky with strategic resources.

edit: BTW Russia was between Persia and Japan which is why Japan didnt flatten Persia. A pity, a HUGE war with Japan would have been fun.

 

[bluedevil99]

I disagree. Often in this game you want to declare war on another player to destroy their army, so as to prevent them from carving out a massive empire out of the other AI players that will allow them to get such a lead that you won't be able to fight them off later. This isn't just a rare occurrence limited to particular AIs. Every AI leader will go on a conquest rampage if it can.

I'm not sure it is possible to have this discussion at this level of generality. But I would claim that outside of special cases (mostly renaissance era Napolean) I will always prefer to invade a nearby, ideally weaker, AI whose assets I covet than a more distant AI that just happens to be ahead. I really believe I'm better off parleying those assets into tech advantage/parity than attacking an opponent for no immediate gain, especially given how much of a slog I find tech-parity or disadvantaged wars in Civ5 (the AI just fields SO much more units at high difficulties).

I understand the pre-emptive strike argument, but I just haven't seen that many examples of a distant enemy attacking with a large force in Civ5, in a sample of a dozen or so Immortal wins and as many half-played games plus one win at Diety. Besides, defensive wars are much easier in Civ5 because the AI doesn't understand terrain or placement of ranged units. There have been Continents games where I wished I'd have had astronomy earlier and invaded an AI who'd steamrolled the other continent, but there's not one game where I'm sure I could have put together a viable invasion force in time to stop it.