Warmonger status now involves chain DOWs?!?

[Anarchist]

You definitely don't want to DoW someone you have a DoF with, but you get a diplomatic hit nearly as bad for denouncing someone you have a DoF with. If possible, you should probably just wait for the DoF to expire before you attack (or don't make the DoF in the first place if it's someone high on your list of civs to conquer).

Fair enough. I will test these scenarios at some point, just for giggles.

 

[Yzman]

1. Agree fully (and it's kinda fun).

2. I disagree, and there are many posts that also disagree. I will try the 'don't denounce before attacking' on a save one day and see what difference is made, as you may be right. BUT, when you have a DoF, you MUST denounce, as it breaks that DoF. If you still have one and attack, I think AI civs regard you as untrustworthy. Again, I have no proof yet, so may test it.

3. Agreed. It is also beneficial (as I wrote above) to create alliances with civs that have lost their capitals, so you can take them without additional penalty. I also like to gather my friends around me and attack the strongest civs first. That leaves me an easier job of picking off my *ahem* friends (hey, all's fair in love & war, eh?)

Denouncing while having a DoF with someone is considered backstabbing by the AI, which is one of the worst diplo hits you can get. NEVER do that.

 

[Arachnofiend]

Ah, so if Monty takes London before you do, you don't have to declare war on England in order to win. I can see the sense in that, but if I'm doing that to avoid getting Elizabeth mad, it's kind of a lost cause because either she'll be too weak to help or I won't care because I planned to have the world against me at some point anyway.

It's situational advice but I actually had a game recently where it helped. Was originally going for science as Morocco but I saw that the world was about to go to hell (super-packed pangaea with a lot of wide spread warmongers) and I'd need an army so I might as well use it. Shaka had taken Caesar's capital, who had been my friend for much of the game despite me taking Cumae early (it was settled on the exact tile I wanted to put a city, I could never pass up such an opportunity). So, I declared war on Shaka and even though I took control of Rome I didn't get the penalty for taking their original capital; in fact, I got a diplo bonus for fighting against a common enemy. Caesar had gone wide enough that they were still pretty formidable despite losing Rome and made for a viable trade partner for the rest of the game.

 

[Anarchist]

Denouncing while having a DoF with someone is considered backstabbing by the AI, which is one of the worst diplo hits you can get. NEVER do that.

More than declaring war?

 

[Dark Paladin X]

I'd say going to domination victory is usually the hardest victory you can get. Because the longer the game goes, the more diplomatic penalties you will get from other civilizations (particularly AIs that are designed to hate warmongers like Washington, Gandhi, and Kamehameha. Not to mention, as a lot of people tell you, the biggest difficulty with domination victory late game is mostly having to deal with large amount of unhappiness from the number of cities you own AND the number of occupied cities you captured. This can easily be mitigated be destroying the said cities, but you're going to get a lot of civilizations hating for that (but it really doesn't matter then you are already a warmonger). Gold will also be the biggest issue for lategame domination victory since you need a lot of gold to maintain your army.

Thus being said, if you don't want to face a lot of diplomatic penalties yourself, reject all forms of declaration of friendship and stay neutral to them and denounce them whenver you have the chance. Your best friends for domination victory are AI designed to tolerate and can get along other fellow warmongers. Thus being said, don't expect the other warmongers to be allies with you for long, as most warmongers are also designed to have the lowest loyalty rating and try to backstab you for the same victory condition with a few exceptions (like Shaka, if you do manage to befriend him).

If you manage to be aggressive expand and claim all of the resources to yourself, then you are going have a significant amount of advantage over everyone without even considering the diplomatic and unhappiness penalties. In fact, domination victory requires you to aggressively expand your borders by building a lot of cities and capturing them.

 

[Polisurgist]

Thus being said, if you don't want to face a lot of diplomatic penalties yourself, reject all forms of declaration of friendship and stay neutral to them and denounce them whenver you have the chance.

This is such an abysmally bad piece of advice I hardly know where to begin.

It's absolutely no surprise to me that the people who I see complaining about how mean the game is to warmongers are the same ones who say that you should avoid declarations of friendship at all costs because they're just going to backstab you anyway. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The best strategy is in fact to start with good relationships with some civs, build a bloc, join them in their wars and make some damn friends. Your diplomatic penalty for warmongering is greatly reduced with civs you're friends with, and those will be the ones you'll rely on for trade. Stay friends with those civs until the endgame; yes you're going to betray them. Yes, when you do that people will stop liking you, but by then it will be too late to matter.

 

[Socratatus]

Nothing to do with your warmonger status per se, but with a fine-tuned opportunism of the AI. Code has been specifically added to BNW dll to account for opportunism; it checks how many wars you are in and the probability of success of your enemies; if the check is successful, the AI adds a weight to WAR approach (more likelihood).

That's why you see a lot of ganging on a civ that seems to be in military trouble, including the human.

I`ve noticed this. Even weak AIs will `gangbang` you if they see all the other big Civs are at war with you. This is actually quite realistic even though it`s unfair. If you`re lucky you might get ONE strong Civ stand by you if you keep pleasing him. I don`t know if any Civ is programmed to be `just` by sticking with you against the whole world because it knows you`re right or feels `sorry` for you- I don`t think there are any. I wish there was such a `good samaritan` AI.

However, I play a peacful game and I tend to see the AI declaring war enmasse against a single AI, so it works both ways.

The OP has to be a lot smarter about declaring wars of domination just because you want to, nations don`t like it and even those who`d do the same will act against you because it suits them in the long run.

If you have a lot of financial reliance on other cities then starting war isn`t a good idea.

 

[Dark Paladin X]

The best strategy is in fact to start with good relationships with some civs, build a bloc, join them in their wars and make some damn friends. Your diplomatic penalty for warmongering is greatly reduced with civs you're friends with, and those will be the ones you'll rely on for trade. Stay friends with those civs until the endgame; yes you're going to betray them. Yes, when you do that people will stop liking you, but by then it will be too late to matter.

The problem is that those who are willing to declare friendship with you are those who are going to hate warmongers themselves, and those who are willing to tolerate/befriend warmongers who are warmongers themselves actually have one of the lowest loyalty ratings when compared to more peaceful civilizations (with the exception of Shaka, Harald, and Genghis Khan; who are warmongers themselves, but have the highest loyalty rating). Even so, it's relatively difficult to befriend warmongers since they usually have relatively low friendship willingness.

Simply put it, domination victory is meant as a "high-risk, high return" early game victory. Late game wise, if you are trying to get domination victory, you're going to get a lot of diplomatic penalties, gold problems, and lots of unhappy citizens. Domination victory will have less and less relevance late game than other victory conditions (unless if you like to throw a lot of warmongering AI or those who love to backstab each other).

 

[superliminal]

The problem is that those who are willing to declare friendship with you are those who are going to hate warmongers themselves, and those who are willing to tolerate/befriend warmongers who are warmongers themselves actually have one of the lowest loyalty ratings when compared to more peaceful civilizations (with the exception of Shaka, Harald, and Genghis Khan; who are warmongers themselves, but have the highest loyalty rating). .

Is this true? Every game I've had with Harold in it, he inevitably betrays me.

 

[bcaiko]

There are no long-time benefits to being the friend of a domination civ. There is no second place in CiV.

There's the benefit of being the warmonger's trading partner and being left alone to focus on defense and your victory style. While the other Civs are getting slaughtered - removing their ability to interfere with your victory type - you may well run away with your victory before the warmonger can come back to you.

If the AI is at Friendly status and has a DoF with a warmonger, it should weigh against backstabbing that neighbor very heavily. But the AI seems to dislike warmongering to such a ridiculous extent now that it can't seem to do that.

 

[Disgustipated]

You had every civilization in the game declare war on you simultaneously. I'd say you were.

Or at least this is another +1 on the tired old "I'm playing a domination strategy and it's unfair that I'm being treated like I'm playing a domination strategy" whine.

Maybe it's based on difficulty level? I just finished a game similar to his. A domination victory with the Zulus. My first use of the zulus. Tough in the beginning. My happiness, gold, and research were down most of the game. But I got it. I never fought more than one civ at a time. I was playing a lower difficulty level, so maybe that's why?

My early wars were waged before I found most of the world. So only the 2 other civs remaining on my continent disliked me (they were at Guarded). It wasn't until the very end most people were at guarded, but no one attacked. I think because my military was so much greater than theirs.

 

[Yzman]

Is this true? Every game I've had with Harold in it, he inevitably betrays me.

Yes it is true. Shaka is a strange one too. Maybe its just my play style, but I never have an issue with him. I have had him in the majority of my new games and he has never declared war on me ever. I usually get him to friendly and he stays there all game while conquering everyone else. Its jerks like Egypt that will backstab me twice in a row.

 

[Dark Paladin X]

Yes it is true. Shaka is a strange one too. Maybe its just my play style, but I never have an issue with him. I have had him in the majority of my new games and he has never declared war on me ever. I usually get him to friendly and he stays there all game while conquering everyone else. Its jerks like Egypt that will backstab me twice in a row.

From my experience, it's usually Wu Zeitan who is the worst offender on backstabbing.

Generally, warmongers have the highest rating of backstabbing and lowest loyalty rating. But from what I heard, Shaka, Genghis Khan, and Harald usually have highest loyalty ratings. This is usually one of the main reasons why you're not going get a lot of friends as a warmongers and even if you manage to befriend a warmonger, they're going to backstab you anyways to gain the same victory condition.

I think the biggest issue with domination victory is more of the fact that you get a lot of diplomatic penalties with other civilizations and city states and they will eventually embargo you. If you can find other source of gold income to maintain your needy army, then I would be surprised. Most of the playthroughs I done, most of my gold comes from trade routes with city states and other civilizations. Unhappiness is also problematic late game if you are aiming for domination victory.

 

[Halcyan2]

Warmongering (with good diplomacy) is still viable in BNW. In fact, I feel that in many ways it is *easier* to warmonger in BNW while still maintaining positive relationships.

HOWEVER, it does require a very, very different strategy than Vanilla and G&K. From what I'm seeing, the main problem is that people are playing BNW with obsolete strategies and aren't adapting to the new mechanisms that are in place.

The main thing I've found with BNW is that you can do lots of DoW'ing and warmongering, but you have to be careful in how many cities you take, and it *really* helps to do lots of liberating.

Currently playing a Huge Pangaea with 13 AI's. Currently control 7 other capitals (Marrakesh, Berlin, Paris, Ulundi, Gao, Karakorum, Tenochtitlan). Have DoF's with Morocco, Germany, France, Songhai, Mongolia, and also Denmark. Had a DoF with Polynesia before they got wiped out. And "had" DoF's with Portugal, Carthage, and the Netherlands, but I let those lapse (they keep asking me if I want a DoF) because I am considering them as my next targets....

 

[northernscribe]

I play on emperor/immortal and war mongering isn't that bad. I don't expect to have a lot of friends. I expect to sell my lux's for 2 gpt and have no research agreements. It's ok. I shoot for forbidden palace to get more votes in WC so as to not get embargoed. Pledge to protect plus consulates means I'll be friends with every CS for culture and happiness. Multiple DOW sucks. It happened to me in my current game, but most civs were too far away to get to me. Fended it off easily enough and continued mongering. Even if the AI hates, however, they will always take your trade routes, so money isn't a problem. For me, it's about geography. I conquer the civs nearest me and move across the map. that way I always have safe trade routes. I generally don't wipe out civs (leave some cities to trade with). One thing that always gets me is I usually break a promise to not invade (why are my troops near your border? just passing through...yeah, that's the ticket..) It's hard to mobilize troops without getting that " or get off the pot" message from the AI. If I declare war (and not take the dip. penalty for breaking a promise), the AI gets the initiative and gets first attack on my border troops. If I lie, and invade when I'm ready, I get a huge diplo hit. It's realistic enough, I mean, if Canada massed troops along the u.s. border, they'd hear about it. But still, i wish the diplo hit for simply fibbing a little about my intentions were reduced. But hey, like anything in life, we can do whatever we want as long as we're willing to accept the consequences.

 

[Halcyan2]

I'd say going to domination victory is usually the hardest victory you can get. Because the longer the game goes, the more diplomatic penalties you will get from other civilizations (particularly AIs that are designed to hate warmongers like Washington, Gandhi, and Kamehameha.

Warmonger penalties can be countered through liberation.

You can get some really hefty diplomatic bonuses by liberating cities, restoring eliminated civilizations, freeing captured wonders, and sharing a common foe. Right now I'm playing a pseudo-Domination game (I control 8 capitals in addition to my own) but have massive lists of GREEN with just about every civ.

Feel free to read through the thread I wrote here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=507402

Not to mention, as a lot of people tell you, the biggest difficulty with domination victory late game is mostly having to deal with large amount of unhappiness from the number of cities you own AND the number of occupied cities you captured.

I would say that one of your problems is that you are conquering and keeping way too many of the cities.

This can easily be mitigated be destroying the said cities, but you're going to get a lot of civilizations hating for that (but it really doesn't matter then you are already a warmonger).

Liberate the cities instead. Or don't take them in the first place.

Thus being said, if you don't want to face a lot of diplomatic penalties yourself, reject all forms of declaration of friendship and stay neutral to them and denounce them whenver you have the chance.

No, DoF's are crucial in Domination. Perhaps more crucial than any victory except maybe Diplomacy.

Do plenty of DoF's, but think of most of them as "temporary." Let them lapse when you are ready to attack someone.

This is such an abysmally bad piece of advice I hardly know where to begin.

It's absolutely no surprise to me that the people who I see complaining about how mean the game is to warmongers are the same ones who say that you should avoid declarations of friendship at all costs because they're just going to backstab you anyway. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Agreed.

The best strategy is in fact to start with good relationships with some civs, build a bloc, join them in their wars and make some damn friends. Your diplomatic penalty for warmongering is greatly reduced with civs you're friends with, and those will be the ones you'll rely on for trade. Stay friends with those civs until the endgame; yes you're going to betray them. Yes, when you do that people will stop liking you, but by then it will be too late to matter.

You don't even necessarily need to betray them. One of the nice things, is that you can use behind the scenes diplomacy to get other civs to do the dirty work, DoW'ing your "Friend" and having them take the capital (which you then take yourself).

Do lots of DoF's. In some cases, you won't need to DoW them, if they lose their cap to someone else. And if you do need to DoW them, just think of the DoF as temporary.

 

[Polisurgist]

All in all, in every cultural or diplomatic win I've had since BNW came out, I was at some point positioned well to take out the remaining capitals; if I'm finding it easier to almost accidentally win a domination victory while focusing on other strategies than hardcore warmonger players are finding it with a tight focus on military, the only conclusion I can draw from that is that they aren't mixing enough culture and diplomacy into their domination strategies.

Likewise, I never would have been able to get any cultural or diplomatic wins by ignoring my military entirely. I like that you can't just cut out whole sections of the game and still win now.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Does anyone know if you get the warmonger penalty for wars you fought before you met?

I spawned on a continent with one other civ and wiped them out completely before astronomy. Seems there was no penalty?

I was starting in on city states, but when I started meeting others, I stopped. Dido sent a caravel just as I was taking down the second cs. At that point I had puppeted five cities and razed one. Dido briefly had the warmonger notice in her list but it didn't last long and I never saw it again, I assume because I captured one cs. I played nice after that, building up my cities and no one called me warmonger.

What if I had continued killing city states? Only the civ I met who saw me do it would think I am a warmonger?

What if my victim survived to talk about it? Indonesia, the civ I wiped out totally thought I was a warmonger when he was down to one city. I razed his last one just to shut him up so he couldn't denounce me when I met others, seemed to work?

 

[Polisurgist]

Does anyone know if you get the warmonger penalty for wars you fought before you met?

I spawned on a continent with one other civ and wiped them out completely before astronomy. Seems there was no penalty?

That is indeed how it works; it's actually a good strategy with some of the Ancient/Classical warmongery civs to use that early aggression boost to clear your continent of other civs before any others meet you, then to play a more or less peaceful game from there on out. You get the benefit of a bunch of cities you didn't have to build and no reputation as a warmonger. Your early UU advantage doesn't go to waste but it doesn't have to dictate your playstyle for the entire game.