Soooo... war all the time? Why choose any other victory path?

[KingMackem]

The mongol empire was partially in russia, so yeah

That may be true but Mongolia isn't China. Mongolia conquered China under the Khans but they're two separate entities.

 

[bryanw1995]

Well, pick a country, any counry in this world that shares a border with another country and tell me if they never fought a war against each other.

US and canada. though they're both relatively new countries so that's almost not fair.

 

[Tale]

US and canada. though they're both relatively new countries so that's almost not fair.

I'd count the war of 1812, personally.

 

[aimlessgun]

Oh one thing I forgot to mention: you can still bribe people into wars

But yeah the danger of one AI dominating those wars and leaving a behemoth to deal with is quite high.

 

[Abegweit]

Russia and China? Not too sure but don't think so...

The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was largely fought over the question of who was going to get to get to beat up on Manchuria and Korea. The Russians had already started and then the Japs took them out.

While the war itself was between Russia and Japan, the lead-up was a Russian invasion of China. What's more it was fought almost entirely in China.

I'd say it qualifies.

 

[King Jason]

Making real life comparisons is difficult because of the term civilization.

In a civilization sense, technically... Canada and America have had a war.. in a Nation/Country sense, they haven't. In a Civilization sense... it was really a British/British war (with some french and other nationalities tossed in), in a country sense, it was the U.S. vs British..

Quite simply from a game point of view, the people who are most likely to attack you are those that share a border. A defensive force is more necessary than ever and you can choose to destroy the nuisance of beat them up a couple of times until they leave you alone (which has happened in my games). Plus, if you do sit back and beat them up, they usually give you so much in peace treaties (not talking about cities) that the war winds up be economically beneficial to you. So all that micro of defending your border ends up paying off.

 

[Airey]

LAtest game I thought I had Hiawatha diplomatically appeased, being on the same continent with nice talk and trade agreements with a continual research pact. Even though we shared a large border and I STOPPED expanding towards him after an early BC city he DOWed on me out of the blue.

I understand war is a part of the game, but is should NOT be completely unavoidable when you share a border.

Have you try looking at power rating? It could be opportunistic war from Hiawatha if the two nation's power discrepancy is too large. Because I have play games with him boarding me too, but I kept my power up early on deity, so never got DOW by him...just speculation, coz right now nobody knows the game mechanics for sure.

But ya, going for the offensive is way too easy on Civ V as of right now.

 

[drlake]

The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was largely fought over the question of who was going to get to get to beat up on Manchuria and Korea. The Russians had already started and then the Japs took them out.

While the war itself was between Russia and Japan, the lead-up was a Russian invasion of China. What's more it was fought almost entirely in China.

I'd say it qualifies.

You don't need to go that far back. The Soviet Union and the PRC fought a border war over some islands in the Ussuri (sp?) River back in 1969.

 

[Collic]

Warfare does feel inevitable at the moment. I can't help but think this is down to some needed tweaking in the diplomacy system that governs how leaders feel about you.

They do have personalities like in civ iv, but at present they don't really feel that different. I would imagine this is the reason why, and why so many are currently complaining about civ 5's diplomacy.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Military is way far the easiest and best victory to go for... They should fix this.

That's only part of the problem. The rest of it is that there is little to no benefit at all for peaceful existence with neighbors. Removing 'Foreign Trade' did most of this... Previously when playing Civ4, I HATED being stranded alone on a continent/island (or worse, alone with Monty or Toku). You had a hard time generating foreign trade and thus your econ was more stagnant. Also, in Civ4, you have a 'tech bonus' for knowing AIs that had a specific tech (might be in Civ5 too for all I know). You also had to connect to the other Civ to trade resources with them.

In Civ5, none of those dynamics exist. About the only benefit you can from a neighbor is Research Agreements and you can just as easily make those with people far away as close. Ditto for resource trading...as soon as you know they exist, you can trade resources so a desire to keep a close neighbor early in the game diminishes further.

Add all that to the fact that in Civ5, eventually the leaders will attack you (since you have no info for how to react diplomatically) and add in the benefits for, and ease of, conquest and you see the game we now have - more of a wargame than a civ game.

The fact that the only drag on conquest is happiness and the higher AIs have effectively unlimited happiness means that the AI civs can and will (and probably should if they are trying to win) pursue a campaign of conquest. So the player will generally be forced to follow suit or fall behind.

 

[R3dKnight]

To be honest, culture victories are easier achieved by managing a smaller empire to trim the policy costs - but...it's too boring in my opinion.

Science is a combination of research and industrial power. However, in this game there's no point going for that if you can simply go for Diplomatic Victory.

Simply tech up through the Electricity field - slight detour for Mechanized Infantry might be necessary for self defense, if you're really fast, you can just ignore rifling altogether and forgo tanks. Go for Globalization, plop up United Nations, save up cash to buy all the city states to you side. Win. Much faster than Science victory.

The problem here is, the rival Civs see no urgency to fight back unless you go for Domination Victory. The AI should have reacted when they see UN vote countdown by attempting to bribe city states to their side, or take it over completely. That way, Diplomacy is slightly more challenging than splashing cash around.

This is why other victories seem hollow to me. I'd rather just kill everyone by Early Modern Age and have my fun dominating medieval age battles than passively build stuff up.

 

[Surgeon]

Currently trying a mostly peaceful game Pangea/Ghandi. Not doing so well as my army was weak due to lack of connected iron. Eygypt saw I was 'weak' and went for me (took a city too!). Siam was too close and had to be 'removed'. Washington plonked a city down next to my capital, I assumed it was a gift from him

BUT once my borders are secure I'm planning on defense only.

Australia and New Zealand

Australia is an island nation so we dont really share a border with anyone. Considering both are part of the British Empire as well I'd say it doesn't really count.

 

[R3dKnight]

I'd love to play Mr. Nice guy, but there's a limit to how much I can take the AI stupidity when he just settled near my borders, then telling ME to back off from his lands. What the heck, Gandhi?!

 

[oddtail]

I would suggest that the problem is less that the AI always attacks you- anyone who played Civ2 had more than their fill of it- but rather that there's not enough balance between the AIs to keep the warmongers from eventually rolling over their neighbors. Almost every single one of my games (on Pangaea, or other land heavy maps) has followed the same pattern, whether I REX early or not: everyone plays fairly nice with each other up until the late Medieval era, then one of the militaristic AI (often Bismarck) slowly starts grinding up neighbors and city-states until they control half or more of the world. Even the other military AI have trouble slowing them down, as I've seen Bismarck just crush Caeser and Monty in different games, in situations where the smaller civ still had a fair amount of resources.
So the issue is that war isn't just the only option for the human player, but that it's the only successful strategy for the AI as well. When every end game- or at least a lot of them- are going to involve a late game human vs AI showdown, there's just not a lot of reason to avoid getting an early leg up on the eventual competition.
I'm not sure what a fix would look like. Different AI to AI diplomacy? Different mechanics for CS getting involved in AI vs AI wars? Allowing CS to expand to two cities each, so that all that empty space on the map doesn't go to aggressive AIs? Just don't know.

I completely agree with this, especially the "not enough balance to keep warmongers from defeating their neighbours" part. I've played a few games on Huge maps (my favourite size since Civ 3, at least) and one or two civilizations just keep grabbing more and more and more cities. Who cares if they have incredible amounts of unhappiness? My small, cultural (and often very scientific, too) civilizations stand no chance when they are attacked by a huge empire that usually has units one tier more powerful than mine.

I think introducing a few or all of these changes would be more than enough to make non-military victories possible:

1) Make AIs better defenders. On a map with numerous civs that can defend their borders no one will eat up all the cities and send 200 tanks to my borders.
2) Civilizations should be reasonable in their alliances and animosities. A civilization that eats their neighbours one by one would be stopped if other civs realised the danger and teamed up against them to take them down a notch. It worked in Civ 4, it COULD be implemented again.
3) Unhappiness penalties should go beyond just a hefty penalty to production and military. It's simply not enough. Past a certain point, dunno, additional cities should stop working altogether? As it is now, the "can't build Settlers anymore" just ENCOURAGES civs to attack more.
4) Small civilizations could use a way to make their cities much stronger. I think bringing back cultural defense would work like a charm. Small civilizations tend to have incredible culture by the 19th century. If it added them 30+ points of strength, it'd be possible to defend them with a relatively weak garrison.

Really, I love the changes introduced into Civ 5. It's a great game... for multiplayer. I don't share many of the common complaints about the game - overpowered and money-based city-states, cities too weak, 1upt... it all works very well... but it is easily broken by the fact that one AI always dominates the map.

I'm hoping this will get improved eventually, but frankly - I'm counting on mods more. But so far, I don't like that most mods change things a little too much for my tastes. I'd prefer the same game with a tweak here and there... and modders try to rebuild game mechanics in ways that don't convince me. Am I alone in that?

 

[The_Reckoning]

People, you're missing the point of this:

Well, pick a country, any counry in this world that shares a border with another country and tell me if they never fought a war against each other.

He said pick any COUNTRY, not pick two/a specific border.

Even though it's very badly phrased.

 

[aguds]

AI's hate on you if you conquer other AI's it seems. I did basically the same as you, having 1or2 of my neighbours DoW'ing me for no reason and defend only. I managed to get paid for peace after they had spent their armies trying to take my cities. A short time of peace later, the Romans come up and starts a fight. Now this time I have horsemen, so I chase the puny legions all the way back to Rome, and razing all their newly settled cities on the way(about 4 I think).
He pays me what he has left, and I leave Rome alone.

Then just a few turns later Russia, England, Arabia(Romes neighbours) and China and Ottomans(my northern neighbours) all DoW me with only a turn or so apart. None of them had any pacts with Cesar and he had been at war with all his hood earlier.

So it seems the hate increases the more ass you kick. I'll try now to just hang back and defend until their armies are spent again, to see if they just give up and leave me alone. .

 

[biohazard72]

I think the proper dynamic is kill first, build later. If you let them live, they just fill up all your space with their crappy cities and eventually out tech you.

Regardless of win condition, I find this the best strategy.

 

[Mokupo]

Well, I just played the demo, and I don't think that is so "war friendly". Right at the beginning, I made a pact with Egypt (he came to me and asked it). The only nation that I find really stubborn is Germany. He asks a lot of things to make something as trivial as Open Borders and if you get any closer he thinks you are a threat and attacks...

 

[RaptorCommander]

First time poster long time Civ player.

As I see it one of the bg problems may be that the AI 'plays to win' so if the AI "sees" that the general trend of the game is going to lead to your victory it must act.

Except maybe Diplo as you could just save all your money to the very end and bribe all the City states to your side leaving the AI only 1 turn to act.

And out of the other victory conditions Space, Cultral Domanation.

As I see the AI is forced to choce warfare as you can't catch up cultrally without slowing down the winning player and the only way to do that is by DoW, even if they are at a strength disadvantage. And for science (unless evenly teched and both have done applo program) the same thing apllies.

A possible sollution to this would be to enable AIs to form "Unions" so both civs countinue to play but there winnning conditions are joined togther. e.g. there cultra per turn is joined they only have to build half the space ship each.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

Every single Civ V leader seems to have some Monty traits.

Worse, actually. I think it's literally impossible to keep them happy for the entire game. At least in Civ IV you could keep Monty at bay if he was friendly, there seems to be no way in Civ V.

I love the combat of Civ V and find it immensly satisfying, but at this time it does seem that the only way to win is to fight.