War is useless!?!

[Re/\/\eDy]

I'm at a loss as to how going to war with anyone, weak or strong, early or late, can be benefitting whatsoever. Okay lets analyze the negative and positive facts (from my perspective at least):

NEGATIVES:
1.) Going for a domination victory? Hah good luck, seems impossible to me. Going for a space race, cultural, or technological win seems much easier.
2.) The time it takes to train war units could be wisely invested in other more productive things (ie. wonder construction, libraries, forge's, etc.).
3.) There are also trading implications, meaning ceased trading, no trade routes, sucky/unfair trades, etc
4.) Disgruntled citizens ("What good is war?").
5.) Even if you win a war it will put you behind other nations who don't go to war, therefore conquering them will be harder, if not impossible with your outdated technology.
6.) Your soldiers will cost maintenance which can leave lasting implications on your technology research.

POSITIVES:
1.) You uhh, get some free plundering gold from captured cities.
2.) If you capture and keep a city you save yourself the time of building a settler, tile improvements, etc. (although you ALSO have to worry about city maintenance, so in a way even this positive quality is a double edged sword).
3.) You gain access to a few key resources that might not have been accessable earlier.

There's my take on war. Basically the way I see it is the con's outway the pro's greatly and if you go to war, whether you win or lose, it will bite you in the ass later. The whole point of going to war is to conquer land, correct? Well if you conquer cities and are forced to pay maintenance then that sucks, but then again if you conquer cities and destroy them then what do you get in return? Well unless you count gold, SQUAT! In conclusion I want a take on you guy's opinion on war in general - is it worth it or not and explain your reasoning behind your choice, thanks.

 

[Geostrophic]

I'm at a loss as to how going to war with anyone, weak or strong, early or late, can be benefitting whatsoever. Okay lets analyze the negative and positive facts (from my perspective at least):

NEGATIVES:
1.) Going for a domination victory? Hah good luck, seems impossible to me. Going for a space race, cultural, or technological win seems much easier.
2.) The time it takes to train war units could be wisely invested in other more productive things (ie. wonder construction, libraries, forge's, etc.).
3.) There are also trading implications, meaning ceased trading, no trade routes, sucky/unfair trades, etc
4.) Disgruntled citizens ("What good is war?").
5.) Even if you win a war it will put you behind other nations who don't go to war, therefore conquering them will be harder, if not impossible with your outdated technology.
6.) Your soldiers will cost maintenance which can leave lasting implications on your technology research.

POSITIVES:
1.) You uhh, get some free plundering gold from captured cities.
2.) If you keep the city you save yourself the time of building a settler, tile improvements, etc. (although you ALSO have to worry about city maintenance, so in a way even this positive quality is a double edged sword).
3.) You gain access to a few key resources that might not have been accessable earlier.

There's my take on war. Basically the way I see it is the con's outway the pro's greatly and if you go to war, whether you win or lose, it will bite you in the ass later. In conclusion I want a take on you guy's opinion on war in general - is it worth it or not and explain your reasoning behind your choice, thanks.

I used to think the same way you do... playing a defensive strategy on noble I'd usually end up somewhere in the middle of the pack, and usually lose the space race (I'd be close, but not quite there). then I tried an aggressive civ and really went after my neighbors. I ended up with a whopping (for me) 6500 points and won a domination victory around 1850.

eliminating rivals is just good business. less competition for resources, religions, expansion space, techs, etc., plus the free gold and cities you get from taking them out. a poorly planned war CAN cripple your economy, but not if you're smart about it. I usually build up a huge invasion force, send them off to enemy territory, and by the time they get there I'm already working on my economy and infrastructure again. the enemy is usually too busy dealing with my army ripping up their empire to send anyone into my territory. that lets me take a city, rest and heal my units, and repeat as necessary.

 

[Gato Loco]

1) Well, you have to plan carefully for a domination victory, but you have to plan carefully for space or diplomacy as well.

2) There's a diminishing return on buildings. Only certain cities really need aqueducts, theatres, markets, temples, etc. Ditto for wonders. Depending on your play style some may be nothing but an expensive source of GPPs.

3) If nobody's willing to give you trade routes, just use Mercantilism. And tech trading's an iffy proposition anyway. On the flip side, staying neutral while your friends fight can also lead to hurt feelings. Sometimes it's best to have one good friend rather than three suspicious neighbors.

4) Only with a long badly planned war. Once you get calender/mmonarchy/drama the happiness worries start to go away.

5-6) A short, decisive war will leave you with lots of plunder, letting you finance higher research rates.

 

[duezeone]

You also have the chance of obtaining many wonders and multiple religions with holy cities, you also obtain more cities which means more science research. Even if you do end up putting your science slider down to 40% during war times you are better off in the long run if you manage your cities well.

 

[Re/\/\eDy]

I used to think the same way you do... playing a defensive strategy on noble I'd usually end up somewhere in the middle of the pack, and usually lose the space race (I'd be close, but not quite there). then I tried an aggressive civ and really went after my neighbors. I ended up with a whopping (for me) 6500 points and won a domination victory around 1850.

Eliminating rivals is just good business. less competition for resources, religions, expansion space, techs, etc., plus the free gold and cities you get from taking them out. a poorly planned war CAN cripple your economy, but not if you're smart about it.

Yea I'll agree with those above points and Gato's as well, but Geo, you were going for a domination victory, what about someone who isn't going for a domination victory? As for capturing a bunch of land from your enemies, a good civilization seems to thrive with as little as four cities (very first tip in condensed sticky for beginners: Build fewer, quality cities.), so why make war with an opposing nation for extra space if you have plenty of land to build four cities from the get go? Okay maybe they have a resource you might want or you want to make their score lower and throw them off their game, but I hardly see how taking the risk of going to war and possibly receiving a hit on your economy would justify that. While you train units for war a nation elsewhere is constructing wonders, granaries, forge's, and growing strong.... stronger than you.

I dont know, win or lose, from what I see all war seems to do is make you weaker than other nations who are NOT at war. Even if you're going for a domination victory, the more technological nations who weren't at war will have a higher technology than you and probably slaughter you with a few quickly pumped out technological units. Its true the gold you get from winning wars will help prolong your technology rate, but the more prosperous nations are the ones who didn't go to war who were sitting on their asses with a 100% technology rate from the start of the game - there's no way a nation who was at war, win or lose, could catch up to compete with those nations. No amount of gold can increase your technology rate past 100%, therefore a warlike nation will be behind no matter how much gold they have. Maybe there's something I'm missing here because whatever it is I dont understand it yet, lol.

 

[Draetor24]

I don't understand why people feel fewer cities is better than many due to maintenance costs. At the beginning of the game, yes, but as you advance in tech, gain new improvements and improvement +'s from research, along with city buildings, you can create a ton more from 20 cities than 4, including researching at 90% and a huge + to income as well.

My last game, I had about 10 cities alone with most city improvements and creating mech inf or modern armor each in 2-3 turns.

 

[lastchance]

A short decisive war (especially early) wins enemy cities, allows to produce and fund more, and increases land size by a lot.

Very useful when you know the AI can steamroll you in Peace on the higher levels.

 

[Tactician Zhao]

the only times I have had problems going to war was in a game where I went early against Gandhi with certain key techs missing, and no religion.. sure, I wiped the floor with him, but I was having problems with funds, as I had no religion to help balance out my happiness (had to restrict my city growth) and lack of economic technologies.. added on to that was the military unit support..

so it was an error for me to go to war at that time, in that situation.. every other time I can recall that I have gone to war, it was with a specific objective in mind, and with a sufficient backbone at home.. and have not had any of the cons you mentioned..

so I think that with close scrutiny paid to reasons, settings, and the particular details surrounding the game at the time, you can enter into a war 9/10 and come out on top.. I find the key is, if you have to cut down on your science rate you might be overextending yourself.. if it is worth that for your goal, then you will have to make that decision

overall, I like it very much, and since I have learned how to run a war in Civilization 4, I find it to be one of the most rewarding experiences in the game

 

[Gr3yL3gion]

Far from it, early game war can be really beneficial, as noted above.

Normally you don't keep cities from early wars, razed it for some cold hard cash that would finance your research even when you are deep in the reds.

By then, you can eliminate enemies and settle the place when your have better finances.

 

[CivCorpse]

Okay maybe they have a resource you might want or you want to make their score lower and throw them off their game, but I hardly see how taking the risk of going to war and possibly receiving a hit on your economy would justify that. While you train units for war a nation elsewhere is constructing wonders, granaries, forge's, and growing strong.... stronger than you.

QUOTE]

You fall behind temporarily, but if you had four cities and your opponents have four cities, when you conquer one civ, then you have eight and they still have four. Your research and production base is doubled, so in the long run you will clobber them in tech, and if they have a problem with that....then you have twice as many cities producing units.

 

[Dragonlor]

War is very essential at times on the higher difficulties. Starting at probably Prince if you plan for anything other than a cultural victory then war is probably going to be needed one way or another.

Just a couple of scenarios I come across on Prince+ games:

Scenario #1: What if you get boxed in early by the AI and can only build 3-4 not-too-productive cities? While some people would just start over, I prefer to play my games through. With only 3-4 cities, basically the only victory condition you can hope to acheive is cultural. But with such little research capability, there is little guarantee you can get everything you need before some AI either wipes your puny civ out or wins by some other condition. War becomes necessary.

Scenario #2: You are entering the space race era and you have no Aluminum. However, an AI who also is entering the space race does have aluminum. While you could send over spies and hope to slow their efforts down, chances are you are in big trouble. Seizing that resource would not only greatly slow your opponent, but it would greatly increase your ability to complete the race first.

Scenario #3: If you're not going for a cultural victory and you are falling well behind technologically, you basically have no choice but to go to war. Since the AI is terrible at waging war, you can easily overwhelm them with older units. You can sue for peace and gain some tech as well as research faster by having more land and cities.

Scenario #4: My favorite! My cities are just so cool and productive they have run out of buildings to produce. So I pile up a bunch of units and throw them at whatever opponent is first (or right behind me) in technology. My strategies easily overwhelm a couple of their cities and I then sue for peace. This quick war nets me more cities and productivity. There was no time for unhappiness to set and I have set back that opponent greatly while increasing the awsomeness of my empire.

The whole point of going to war is to conquer land, correct?

Definately not the case. I've gone to war without ever bothering to take any cities or land. One war I started I mearly sent a few knights into my opponents land and pillaged every single thing in sight over a large chunk of their land. Their tech lead quickly vanished and I took the tech lead. Such little effort on my part and such a huge reward for me. It'll take the AI ages to rebuild those Towns.

 

[Speciou5]

Well if you conquer cities and are forced to pay maintenance then that sucks

This pales in the long run. This is similar to complaining that "you have to pay more taxes when you start earning millions each year!!". You are actually gaining more, it is just that the drawback scales with your gains. And it is only temporary anyways.

And the entire point where you are removing potential competitors from the game is already enough justification for waging war. How is this a useless? This is probably the most useful thing anyone can actually do, especially since you usually gain from war (if you get their land).

If you fight a horrible war uphill while suffering other penalties then, yes, I agree the cons probably outweight the pros there. But that shouldn't be the case Fight wars that you will win.

 

[Harry_P]

I have to agree with Specious on this one. War isn't something you can intelligently talk about. Fighting a war can mean any number of things. If we take a noble game for example. I'm usually fighting with Cavalry (or Cossacks if I feel like dishing out some serious pain) against the AIs longbowmen or Musketman. In that situation I don't need artillery, my units moves 2 squares per turn so all I need is the right level of production and then I can steamroll an entire civ very quickly.

By the time I have Cavalry I have access to Courthouses, Banks, Markets, Grocers, and usually State Property shortly after I attack. I may run in the red during the war (Usually offset by pillaging gains), but once the war is done it takes me 10 to 20 turns to get everything back into the black and then I have more cities. How could you possibly lose in that situation?

The higher the difficulty is, the better you have to be at warmongering. I would think that most people should be able to wage a successful war with Cavalry against Longbowmen and Musketman, it would be a little difficult to lose it seems to me.

The whole point is that starting a war isn't something that is separate from the rest of your civilizations situation. I'm very careful with early wars, I make sure I don't take more cities then I can handle. Once you get access to Banks, and especially State Property there is absolutely no financial reason not to conquer the entire world. At that point it's just a matter of what you could easily win.

On the higher difficulty levels the ability to wage a successful war is basically what the entire game is about. Using seige properly, varying the units in a stack, avoiding the enemy siege weapons, pillaging quickly, knocking out your enemies resources, defending against pillaging in your area, guarding your coast, all of these factors impact massively on how efficiently you can wage a war. If you aren't profiting from any of your wars then you are starting too early and taking too many cities, or not fighting your wars properly.

There's no middle ground here, on the higher difficulties the AI receives bonuses that you don't have. The AI will outpace you if you don't outgrow them and you pretty much have to use a war in order to do that. I would take a step back and evaluate how you fight your wars and what your military goals are. 25 cities is always always always better than 4 as long as you're running a profit at a decent science rate. 8 cities is almost always better than 4. If for some reason that makes no sense to you then you need to revisit the way you play the game I think.

I don't mean this to be a directive telling you how to play, I'm just saying that if you see no advantage to any wars then you are missing a significant portion of the gameplay.

 

[Re/\/\eDy]

Hmm yea I guess I see you guy's points. I was under the impression that a good civilization should only build a few cities and be done with it. I was only thinking in the short term though. It's true no nation can sustain itself with more than 4 cities in the EARLY game; however, in the long term it seems 4 cities isn't enough. Well that's good then, that's mostly what I was looking for, an incentive to wage war, and that seems to be as good of an incentive as any. I'll definetely need more land to hold the many cities I'll be needing in the late game. Plus eliminating factions is a nice bonus .

So then what if you're playing in the early game then? Let's say I'm Julies Caesar and I have a good sum of Prateorians and I approach a city with, say... 6 population and I have 4 cities at my home with a gold net deduction of -6 and I have a treasury of, say, 40. Should I burn the city or keep it? Should I only capture/build cities when my net gold profit is +? Finally, since war units cost gold, should I kill off all or most of my war units once war is over? Sure I expose myself to getting attacked, but it seems pointless to keep soldiers at home who aren't doing anything except eating gold.

 

[Thalassicus]

If you're the Romans, have you read this thread? He gives great advice on the "Roman War Machine". One of the key things to do after taking a city is using a worker to chop-rush a Courthouse (chopping a forest for hammers). This reduces your maintainence costs by 50% right away, then you can use Merchant specialists to produce income until the city comes up to speed.

The key is, if your income in a city is at least equal to the maintainence costs, you're breaking even and that city is productive.

Generally, keep cities that are in very good locations (lots of grassland/hills/rivers or resources nearby) and that expand your territory without any major gaps. Raze all the smaller, more useless, or niche cities; you can rebuild these later.

Also, you don't have to go to war just to capture cities. I think the various levels of cottages produce something like 50g apiece when pilliaged

 

[thordk]

the benefit of war is if you're aiming at a domination or conquest victory

if you're shooting for culture victory you don't need to go to any war. in fact, avoid them, be friends with all civs as long as you get around 6 cities placed.

for space race you may want to eleminate some of the weaker civs to expand a little bit more. though you need friends to keep up with the tech race. also overexpansion could kill your tech rate.

never aimed for a diplomatic win, but it seems like you need to be friends with ~50% of the civs and exterminate the rest.
the combination of nearly domination and diplomatic seems nice though, electing yourself world leader

the last condition: time win. build a strong empire, crush everyone and keep them small without going for domination.
you won't stand till 2050 warless without massive sabotaging of space ships and the fear to loose diplomatic.

 

[AmnesiaA]

I disagree. I've won conquest and domination plenty of times, more than spacerace or diplomatic. If you're good at this game, then destroying every civilization is pretty easy, ESPECIALLY in the early and modern periods, even in the higher difficulty levels. I'll admit it is harder than all previous civilization games, but it still very possible.

 

[Cyberstar]

I just finished a game where my goal from the beginning was a conquest victory. I did this because I seem to usually only win either by Time or Space race. The only way I could acheive such a thing was to play Rome on a small world at chieftain level. (I guess I'm not that great at the game. Actually, I don't understand all the nuiances of the game yet and I don't like to micro-manage too much.) I did however, win a decisive victory in 1930 using mostly calvary and cannons (I used legionary early on, with no horses until much later). However, most of my game was spent in war taking out one rival after another.

I find that the AI's don't challenge me in a war if I'm way ahead of them, but if I'm not they'll pummel me.

 

[Demartus]

Running 80% science with 20 cities is likely generating more beakers than 10 cities at 100% science. That 20% Science rate won't make up for having twice as many cities (unless all the cities are super small - which means you'll just have to grow them).

 

[WackenOpenAir]

As far as i now understand, upkeep is capped at 6 per city.
I do not know how much exactly an extra city will add to the civic maintenance, but lets say its 2 or so.
That means that any city capable of producing 8 gold is imeadiately helpfull to your empire.

While in civ3, after cities were completely useless after a certain amount due to corruption, (we countered that uselessness by ICSing and making scientists, but that wasn't really fun) in civ 4, you can put the whole world to use.

I have only played like 10 hours of practice and half of gotm1 now, i cannot talk from experience yet, but in theory, i think conquest can still be very strong. We need to learn the game better so that we can more efficiently get started and be ready for conquest early. Then, i think you will some impresive conquest / domination games played. Conquering cities is now not only gonna provide you with land to ICS and make scientists, it is actually gonna provide you production. This should allow a snowball effect; you will have more and more cities to produce more and more units. The thing is that you need the right management to make this happen without either drowning in upkeep or having your captured cities building city improvements forever. This will take practice.

Making conquest a little harder was not a bad thing for Civ4. In civ3, military conquest was VASTLY overpowered. It was overpowered to the extend that the investment for conquest was more worthy than building wonders if you counted the captured wonders as the only benefit. It was more powerfull than libraries if you counted the captured ground for ICS as the only benefit. And of course, you did not get just one of those, you got those 2 benefits, resources, free stuff in peace negotiations. etc.

And this comes from a warmongerer. Military victories are the only real victories for me. When i first started civ4, i thought they killed conquest and i hated that. Civ however is supposed to be a game with a good balance between war, peace, culture and technology. It now looks to me that civ4 is exactly that.