To war or not to war: Is playing peaceful the better option?

[RaidandTrade]

Diplomacy is a big part of the game. Don’t overlook the leader agendas as some of them will play for and against.

E.g., if you’re in desert and Amina’s next door, she’s going to hate on you so look elsewhere for your ally (and get ready to stomp on her). But if you’re in tundra, she’s could be a potential ally if you’ve no designs on desert settles.

Take the tundra example a step further:
If you have prime settles within 10 tiles of her capital, war.
If you have prime settles that will give you “borders touching”, you may have small obstacles.
If she’s picked a government, can you pick the same one or is her choice a game breaker?
If she has a neighbour in the desert, she may hate them more than you do then figure out if you like her or the neighbour more.
Etc…

Not sure you decide “peace or war” in isolation. You need to play the map. Sometimes peace is easy. Sometimes not. War is always easy (diplomatically speaking).

 

[Sagax]

That's interesting. It's hard for me to believe that an old ally is going to stick with you despite -160 from different ideology. This really happens? If it's true it will definitely change the way I play, and this thread already has me convinced to make some changes.

Yeah, I managed to keep alliance with leaders of opposite ideology with agreements and trading, at least for some time.

Emphasis on “for some time” - so no, they don’t really “stick with you”, at least not for a prolonged period of time. My understanding is that the relationship modifier from ideologies ramps up over time, so eventually you’re guaranteed to lose your ally if the ideologies don’t match. You have a better chance at delaying it by being already allied with said AI.

 

[chazzycat]

I always avoid alliance.

I started out playing similarly. I think I was subconsciously a bit hung up on the mindset of being locked into war from playing the previous civ games for 20+ years lol. But yeah, now that you can decline to participate in an allies war, the downside is far less severe. And also often times, joining an allied war is not a big deal. If they are not right next door with scary military, sometimes you can use it to your advantage by opportunistically sniping an island or some such shenanigan.

 

[Serenya]

I started out playing similarly. I think I was subconsciously a bit hung up on the mindset of being locked into war from playing the previous civ games for 20+ years lol. But yeah, now that you can decline to participate in an allies war, the downside is far less severe. And also often times, joining an allied war is not a big deal. If they are not right next door with scary military, sometimes you can use it to your advantage by opportunistically sniping an island or some such shenanigan.

I was the same, and I still generally won’t ally if they are already at war, but it’s mostly been better to accept and end then not. Though it’s amazingly annoying when two allies go to war with each other it hasn’t been much of an issue to stay neutral

My most recent game Simon hated me and declared war early on which led to Amina and Augustus becoming my allies. That’s resulted in multiple wars that included napoleon and Charlemagne - and I ended up with several settlements to end wars I did essentially nothing in

 

[Serenya]

I was the same, and I still generally won’t ally if they are already at war, but it’s mostly been better to accept and end then not. Though it’s amazingly annoying when two allies go to war with each other it hasn’t been much of an issue to stay neutral

My most recent game Simon hated me and declared war early on which led to Amina and Augustus becoming my allies. That’s resulted in multiple wars that included napoleon and Charlemagne - and I ended up with several settlements to end wars I did essentially nothing in

 

[Serenya]

To add to that - if the AI are heavy into warring I’ve noticed you can ask for every settlement they captured in a war!

 

[sixty4half]

I have the same problem. Usually, when I pick a warmonger leader and a Military civ my game just falls apart. But if I'm picking science/culture themed then I'll end up accidentally pissing someone off and having to go all scorched earth on an alliance and rule most of the world.

I also have the problem of certain agendas are just always going to hate me. Tecumseh comes to mind as I see him a lot and his agenda about IPs just goes against how I always play, removing IPs for early yield and clearing expansion space. Hatshepsut too, but I see her rarely.

 

[MutilationWave]

I have the same problem. Usually, when I pick a warmonger leader and a Military civ my game just falls apart. But if I'm picking science/culture themed then I'll end up accidentally pissing someone off and having to go all scorched earth on an alliance and rule most of the world.

I also have the problem of certain agendas are just always going to hate me. Tecumseh comes to mind as I see him a lot and his agenda about IPs just goes against how I always play, removing IPs for early yield and clearing expansion space. Hatshepsut too, but I see her rarely.

Little things like this are funny. Hatshepsut is in more than half my games, always loving me for just a trade route or two. Napoleon is in 90% and hates me every time. But I've never faced Tecumseh.

 

[pmarc]

Something I found when looking in the game data files is that some leaders have an "Aggressive" trait that appears in leaders.xml along with the game-visible traits like Expansionist, etc. It's not the same as the Militaristic trait. For example in the base game only Trung Trac and Xerxes (King of Kings) have it, and from the DLCs, only Bolivar has it. Not sure what it does.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Something I found when looking in the game data files is that some leaders have an "Aggressive" trait that appears in leaders.xml along with the game-visible traits like Expansionist, etc. It's not the same as the Militaristic trait. For example in the base game only Trung Trac and Xerxes (King of Kings) have it, and from the DLCs, only Bolivar has it. Not sure what it does.

I have had all three of those in games and haven't noticed any particularly aggressive actions by them compared to other Leaders. In fact, in the game I just finished earlier today, Xerxes KoK was almost the only AI Leader who did not go to war with me in the entire game!

 

[MutilationWave]

I have had all three of those in games and haven't noticed any particularly aggressive actions by them compared to other Leaders. In fact, in the game I just finished earlier today, Xerxes KoK was almost the only AI Leader who did not go to war with me in the entire game!

For real, Xerxes seems to tolerate me pretty well and Trung usually wants to ally. Napoleon on the other hand- he's in 90% of my games and we have multiple wars every time. He also backstabbed me the most viciously of any leader so far in my current game. I needed passage through his territory to attack Augustus. He was friendly but declared surprise war when my army was all loaded up and attacked me from all sides.

I have a suspicion that there's some rivals system behind the scenes, because he's been fighting me since early antiquity in my first game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

For real, Xerxes seems to tolerate me pretty well and Trung usually wants to ally. Napoleon on the other hand- he's in 90% of my games and we have multiple wars every time. He also backstabbed me the most viciously of any leader so far in my current game. I needed passage through his territory to attack Augustus. He was friendly but declared surprise war when my army was all loaded up and attacked me from all sides.

I have a suspicion that there's some rivals system behind the scenes, because he's been fighting me since early antiquity in my first game.

Usually I can track what in-game event or action has caused relationships to deteriorate: forward settling, settlements blocking access to parts of the continent, good relations with somebody's opponent in a war, etc.

Haven't had either Napoleon in my games enough to spot any differences with them, but 'standard' deterioration of relationships has held pretty consistently for everybody else, including notorious War Mongers/Expanders like Augustus, Tubman, Xerxes/Ashoka Conquerers, etc.

 

[GPR]

If you don't want war, prepare for it.
There will always be an aggressor who wants to test you.

 

[Tuvok694]

I wouldn't survive one single antiquity age on level immortal if I would not be building and buying military units all the time. The AI is insanely aggressive, war weariness does somehow not affect them, and crazy forward settling has never been fixed. And IF I survive, I am so far behind in culture, science and legacy points that I give up just out of pure frustration. I go back to level sovereign and will stay there.

 

[Buckets]

war weariness does somehow not affect them

Ai is definitely affected by war weariness. I've witnessed their yields dropping, gold going negative, and units disbanding if enough war support is stacked.

 

[Tuvok694]

Ai is definitely affected by war weariness.

Thanks for the information, good to know.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Ai is definitely affected by war weariness. I've witnessed their yields dropping, gold going negative, and units disbanding if enough war support is stacked.

Earlier today, playing Antiquity, I saw an AI Civ try to found a new settlement in the middle of a war they were losing badly, and the settlement flipped to me within 3 turns. I have never seen any settlement flip so fast, and I wasn't even at war with them - they had settled next to my territory to get away from the invading forces, I suspect, but it rather obviously didn't work the way it was intended, if that was the intention!

 

[MutilationWave]

I wouldn't survive one single antiquity age on level immortal if I would not be building and buying military units all the time. The AI is insanely aggressive, war weariness does somehow not affect them, and crazy forward settling has never been fixed. And IF I survive, I am so far behind in culture, science and legacy points that I give up just out of pure frustration. I go back to level sovereign and will stay there.

Just for example, on deity, I rarely catch up to the AI on science and culture until modern, if I ever do. That's part of the fun, you're always the underdog.