The benefits of warring without mongering

[Laurwin]

Well if there was the possibility of razing any city, it would make warfare more useful.

Back in good old Civ4 if you wanted to "claim land", you would just kill the AI and BE DONE WITH IT. You stop the AI shenanigans by killing them and developing the land at your own leasure. (it works well enough in civ5 continents maps admittedly)

You would kill the AI early game because you could (and should). Killing the AI off, is the only way you can exert pressure on the AI for certain actions, like spreading missionaries, settling too close, befriending too many city states for luxuries...

Presto, all land free except for barb encampments.

That's one thing I never liked about civ5, cannot raze capitals (neither raze city states?). It means sometimes you will suffer from war by the keeping the unwanted capitals.

I wish you had more diplomatic options though, like stop missionaries, stop settling in my borders, stop befriending city states under my protection. (well you can kill the city states themselves, which would work perfectly IF YOU COULD KEEP MERCANTILE CITY STATE LUX for yourself)

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I wish when you were negotiating peace that those "demands" were options that you could include in the peace deal.

Like, "stop converting my cities". You should be able to impose that as a condition of peace, or "stop settling near me", or any of the other demands.

AI should put a value on them like anything else and not necessarily agree--in which case you can keep fighting the war!

I also wish that upon capturing a city you could "sack" the city instead of capturing or razing it. This would give you the gold bonus from capturing it, destroy the defending unit, reduce the population, throw the city into unrest for N turns, give you the opportunity to sell one of the buildings--but then return it to the AI, for a much smaller warmonger penalty. If it were a holy city, you could use THAT TURN to remove heresy and eliminate it as a holy city.

 

[Walter R]

I wish when you were negotiating peace that those "demands" were options that you could include in the peace deal.

Like, "stop converting my cities". You should be able to impose that as a condition of peace, or "stop settling near me", or any of the other demands.

AI should put a value on them like anything else and not necessarily agree--in which case you can keep fighting the war!

I so wish this was the case, and it seems strange to me that it isn't. Example: Pacal sends GP into your borders, so DOW and capture/kill GP. After a few turns he's after peace so you accept. Next turn you see another GP coming in...
So basically nowadays if Pacal is in my game, once he starts doing his thing I DOW and we stay at war. You really ought to be able to let the AI know your propensity to war.

 

[Majestic Emu]

I've only recently tried the early war tactic, and I have to say it can work wonders. In an archipelago game as Greece it started me on the same landmass as Nebby with Babylon being only six or seven tiles from my cap. I sure wasn't dealing with that for the whole game so I got an archer and a couple warriors to stop any workers/settlers he tried to send out until I got the forces needed to take the city. Eventually got it after maybe 70 turns and from there it fairly smooth sailing to an Emperor diplo victory... aside from having to keep the Ottomans in line a couple times

 

[Cromagnus]

This is one of my biggest frustrations with the current state of diplomatic penalties. No penalty whatsoever for bullying an AI for 100 turns, taking his workers, settlers, pillaging, killing his units, taking multiple cities in a peace deal. No penalty. But take one city early and you're a pariah. This = broken. It heavily nerfs every Civ that has advantages for early city capture. Assyria, the Huns, Rome, Genghis. (because of the CS capture penalty being Extreme)

Etc. etc. blah blah I hate it.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

This is one of my biggest frustrations with the current state of diplomatic penalties. No penalty whatsoever for bullying an AI for 100 turns, taking his workers, settlers, pillaging, killing his units, taking multiple cities in a peace deal. No penalty. But take one city early and you're a pariah. This = broken. It heavily nerfs every Civ that has advantages for early city capture. Assyria, the Huns, Rome, Genghis. (because of the CS capture penalty being Extreme)

Etc. etc. blah blah I hate it.

Just eat the cake and give gold to the rest.

Remember the ai are slaves under the might of the coin

 

[Barghaest]

This is one of my biggest frustrations with the current state of diplomatic penalties. No penalty whatsoever for bullying an AI for 100 turns, taking his workers, settlers, pillaging, killing his units, taking multiple cities in a peace deal. No penalty. But take one city early and you're a pariah. This = broken. It heavily nerfs every Civ that has advantages for early city capture. Assyria, the Huns, Rome, Genghis. (because of the CS capture penalty being Extreme)

Etc. etc. blah blah I hate it.

Didn't have this issue with Mongolia. I wasn't globally hated until Modern era when there were just 2 AI left (Inca and Egypt who hated each other) and less than half of the CS from the start. I had personally wiped out 3 Empires and 5 CS, only liberated one city ever (a Mayan one just for them to serve as a distraction while I was gaining a foothold on the other continent in Egyptian territory). Both France and Songhai were allies of mine until their destruction by Egypt (couldn't assist them at the time because I had expanded too quickly and was in dire situation both in gold and happiness).

 

[MrBlobby]

Unfortunately this harassment tactic is something I've had to use a number of times in BNW due to the introduction of missionaries/prophets, with their complete disregard for your own religion.

I think religion is definitely an area that needs re-working.

This is one of my biggest frustrations with the current state of diplomatic penalties. No penalty whatsoever for bullying an AI for 100 turns, taking his workers, settlers, pillaging, killing his units, taking multiple cities in a peace deal. No penalty. But take one city early and you're a pariah. This = broken. It heavily nerfs every Civ that has advantages for early city capture. Assyria, the Huns, Rome, Genghis. (because of the CS capture penalty being Extreme)

Etc. etc. blah blah I hate it.

Not to mention the fact that the AI can take over half the globe and still hold hands with other civs :\

 

[Barghaest]

Not to mention the fact that the AI can take over half the globe and still hold hands with other civs :\

Not always. Depends on what other diplomacy they do. I've seen every other AI turn on the AI leader. They're hesitant to attack because the leader usually has a higher "pointy stick" rating, but once I whittle their units down some, it's easy for me to gain allies against them.

Now they do tend to have a few allies of their own who join them in denouncements and wars... and that is how they keep them - by preying on mutual targets. But a few choice shared intel can break even these (cause inevitably the lead AI is plotting against his "friends").