Warring in BNW - is it a no-no?

[greygamer]

I often play as the Mongols so early 'Medieval' war is my strategy and I am often at war with 3 civs at once. While getting cities in a peace treaty is possible the AI can often be difficult even when facing complete destruction. I get embargoed, but if you plan for it I can stay in positive gold without having trade routes with CS. A strong military can be useful bullying CS for contributions as well.

With a strong military you will overcome much of what the AI can throw at you, I often fall behind in science as well but not too far behind. Flight is an issue, at that point you need to consolidate while you catch up.

I don't find war tedious, the terrain is often the biggest challenge. Nothing worse than trying to capture a city with the Great Wall in the middle of a Jungle/Mountain region but it can be done.

As regards the diplomatic hits ... "Kill them all and let God sort them out."

 

[PreLynMax]

In short, the answer to is warring in BNW a no-no, is no.

No. While the no-no is a no, no no-no is no no.

Get it?

 

[gingerbill]

While I'm only up to Emperor difficulty so things might be differnt higher, I'm not having too much problem warring in BNW, even with the new patch. The key seems to be to not overdo early warring. Take one or two cities, maybe three at most, don't eliminate any Civs or CSs, cut down on your DoWs - one or two max - and try to develop your empire as much as posible. Focus instead on later wars - industrial era seems a good time to begin serious conquest, assuming you're not trying to take advantage of a strong earlier UU.

that's my thought as well on Emperor.

 

[nokmirt]

To me the whole fun of Civ is fighting. I hope they have not made that impossible now. Now you can't take enemy cities without penalty. Domination victory is my favorite VC. I am not sure if I care for these changes to warring. Still I have to try out a game post patch. I'll post what I think during that game. Perhaps it is not as bad as people think.

 

[Polisurgist]

To me the whole fun of Civ is fighting. I hope they have not made that impossible now. Now you can't take enemy cities without penalty. Domination victory is my favorite VC. I am not sure if I care for these changes to warring. Still I have to try out a game post patch. I'll post what I think during that game. Perhaps it is not as bad as people think.

You can still go to war. You can still go to war early. You can no longer completely ignore everything except going to war, which is appropriate as Civilization is not a pure war game.

 

[Barghaest]

Yeah, I've been having quite a fun game. Didn't do much early warring... helped Poland and CS destroy England back in Medieval (and captured London and Hastings myself). Had a few early Renaissance skirmishes on the other continent:

First with Brazil (destroyed over half of their cities, each still saying Minor penalty and captured Rio and Sao Paolo) and the only modifiers I had were with Brazil and the Aztecs (even though Russia was Neutral to me didn't upset by my conquests - in fact we became friends shortly after although she was not a part of the war) and both merely had "early concerns" and overlooked modest warmongering.

Second with the Aztecs (possibly because they hadn't founded a religion and shared Brazil's) a short while later and decimated them down to three cities (after sacking Tenochtitlan) then they gave me two of those in the peace treaty (leaving them just one). Still the modifiers remain unchanged (even the Aztecs only had "early concerns" still).

In the Industrial I eliminated the Aztecs (Major penalty for the only city they had). Brazil had escalated to considering me a global threat after I DoWed Aztecs but before I took the city and was attempting a sneak attack on one of my cities so I DoWed them to decimate their army and ended up sacking one of their two remaining cities (they'd lost most of the rest to Russia after I'd made peace with them last era) at a Major penalty. I beat their final city down to help Russia eliminate them from the game and it wasn't until I was about to enter Modern that Poland and Austria dropped friendship and now list me as a global threat (although they've taken no actions) since Austria dislikes warmongers and Poland hates them.

Korea had DoWed Aztecs with me (although they sent no units) so probably weren't impacted as much by my elimination of them and Russia was at war with Brazil (and took their last city).

The wars are quite a bit more fun in BNW, in my opinion, and the diplomatic modifiers require some tact to manage but are far better than they were pre-BNW. I'm looking forward to antagonizing Poland into a war during the modern era through World Council actions (he seems to like banning luxuries, I suppose it's time I stopped abstaining from his proposals)... since I have a solid economy and most of the AIs do not, I'm already taking steps to cripple them further in case they all turn against me (namely Standing Army Tax... even if I drop all my trade routes I can still maintain a positive income with it in effect and the AI is struggling to remain positive now because they rely too much on my support for their economy and use most of their trade routes internally) and I have access to all but three luxuries within my own empire (Salt is controlled primarily by Poland and one CS while Russia has all the Cotton in the world and I was ninjad on the Furs by Korea and Russia, but I can get that through several friendly CS).

I was planning on a culture victory for this game, but now that I control half of the capitals (8 starting Empires) I think I may go for Domination when I get Zeroes....

 

[boghog]

If you look at how warmonger hate is calculated you will see that it is important how many cities the other civ has left when you conquer one of his. Taking one of 8 cities is forgiven much more easily than taking the last city - that's also why conquering CSs is diplomatic suicide as it's always their last city you're taking.
BUT: There's an upside to this. Liberating a city counts as negative conquering (not just with the civ you are liberating but with all). So all you need to do is make sure to liberate a few cities, preferably resurrect a civ or a CS (because last cities count more) - and that should balance out a lot of warmonger hate.
If your intended victim has never conquered anything you can liberate, you can do this: DoW a small civ, strip it of all its defenses and then bribe your future victim into conquering. Then DoW, take their capital and liberate the city of the small civ. You'll come out smelling of roses. Rinse and repeat.

 

[EK834]

If your intended victim has never conquered anything you can liberate, you can do this: DoW a small civ, strip it of all its defenses and then bribe your future victim into conquering. Then DoW, take their capital and liberate the city of the small civ. You'll come out smelling of roses. Rinse and repeat.

I too love how "machiavellian" this has become. You really need to factor in things like how much each city will be worth in science and if it has the right luxury resources to help your happiness, or those horses for a circus, and calculate if you can bear or not the diplomatic effects of that conquest. Is it the right time, would I be better to wait later in the game, should I let it go and wage war on someone else as those captures will be worth more to my strategy?

Then you need to outwit the AI, convince or bribe civs you wish to keep your friendship with to come with you as war allies, yet rob them of the prize of your choice by signing peace first. Or like you did (and I did in a game), you wage war to weaken solidly a civ and its cities without taking, then invite a warmonger to take them by sacking, both harming its diplomacy and opening the door for a future liberation by you... or for getting that/those cities in a future war yourself, as being the last ones of a civ they were diplomatic suicide but now as part of someone's large empire, someone stamped as a major warmonger and black sheep, they'll give a small diplo hit only...

I guess the new system is the most fun for players who liked playing more "peacefully" but were already using mechanics like bribing others to wage war and such, adept at finding ways to harm the diplomacy of others. Finding strategies to war and gain cities by finding ways to do it without massive diplo hits is like a natural extension of that play style now.

Polisurgist sums it up best: " You can no longer completely ignore everything except going to war, which is appropriate as Civilization is not a pure war game."

The new mechanics now reward the players who already did that and who find ways to use limited warmongering strategically. And "limited" is relative. In my last game I ended up with 12 conquered cities incl. two capitals and the worse I got for it was one denouncement and one refusal to renew a DoF I no longer needed anyway. Honestly, it's probably more conquests than I use to have in my pre BNW games where I found warmongering too straightforward and boring, being essentially about using the units and terrain well as in a pure war game.

 

[Mudrac]

Just posted here to say how interesting I find when some things in the world change 180 degree. Prior to BNW people were complaining : "Domination was the most fun type of victory" , "There were too much wars", "AI was too aggressive" etc. And now: "it is too peaceful", "AI is too peaceful", "Waging wars is not so fun anymore" etc.

This was just an observation on philosophical side of how people are never satisfied.
I don't mean anything bad, but I like seeing people complain, it is what makes us human, a simple observation.

 

[Browd]

As Lily Tomlin said, "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."

 

[Mudrac]

As Lily Tomlin said, "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."

That really is a good saying. Gonna mark it in my brain.

 

[yasinbin]

this is what I'm recently doing for dom victory starting in medieval era, I built up a decent army , look for a nice target, see if any CS are near, then I buld some more mil units and start gifting them to CS so there now I have strong CS allies who can fight my war, I try to work my way toward capital, if i can take it , i just sit quietly , defend and pillage , and I wait for the CS or allies to take/burn other cities.

 

[Wodan]

If your intended victim has never conquered anything you can liberate, you can do this: DoW a small civ, strip it of all its defenses and then bribe your future victim into conquering. Then DoW, take their capital and liberate the city of the small civ. You'll come out smelling of roses. Rinse and repeat.

Except that your victim will still hate you. And so will the small civ that you liberated (they don't value the liberation much at all, and remember all the negative modifiers you accumulated with them, though I've seen posts from people saying that needs to be changed, which I agree with).

So, rinse and repeat, as long as you realize that you're making two AIs into enemies each time you do it, and pretty soon they're going to outnumber the ones that think you smell like roses. I suppose you could double up occasionally by "re-using" your small civ.

 

[nokmirt]

You can still go to war. You can still go to war early. You can no longer completely ignore everything except going to war, which is appropriate as Civilization is not a pure war game.

That makes sense and is how it should be.

 

[boghog]

Except that your victim will still hate you.

Of course they will. And it would be a sad state of affairs if your enemy in a war would still love you. You can live with that - you're going to weaken them terribly anyway so they won't really matter.

And so will the small civ that you liberated (they don't value the liberation much at all, and remember all the negative modifiers you accumulated with them, though I've seen posts from people saying that needs to be changed, which I agree with).

As it's a small, weak(ened) civ that wouldn't matter much either. But in my experience that's not the case. Declaring war without taking cities (as long as it's not a backstab) carries much less negative modifiers than the positive modifiers you'll get for resurrecting them. A resurrection usually gains you an ally for life.

So, rinse and repeat, as long as you realize that you're making two AIs into enemies each time you do it, and pretty soon they're going to outnumber the ones that think you smell like roses. I suppose you could double up occasionally by "re-using" your small civ.

The important thing is that all the other strong civs you haven't (yet) fought against don't hate you - that's the warmonger hate that people complain about.
Even if you leave a chain of broken crippled civs behind who do hate you - they don't really matter since they have no military and you hold their capitals.

 

[Wodan]

A resurrection usually gains you an ally for life.

That's not my experience. A resurrected AI brings back any and all modifiers you had before he was wiped out. So, you get an ally for life but ONLY if you already had good relations with him. Hardly much of a benefit. But again, that's something I think they should change. A resurrection should get you an ally for life... and currently does not.

 

[Walter R]

That's not my experience. A resurrected AI brings back any and all modifiers you had before he was wiped out. So, you get an ally for life but ONLY if you already had good relations with him. Hardly much of a benefit. But again, that's something I think they should change. A resurrection should get you an ally for life... and currently does not.

Totally agree...or at least for a helluva long time; currently the mechanic is ridiculous.

 

[crabe]

Wide domination play has always had an advantage (especially against the AI's) in civ games, and IMO tall and peaceful play has been progressively been buffed to compete over the life of civ 5. Since going wide and waging war is no longer the "dominant" strategy, people say it has been nerfed. The peaceful empires have more ways to defend themselves against it now. So people are complaining that it isn't easy enough...maybe they haven't figured it out yet?

 

[Polisurgist]

Wide domination play has always had an advantage (especially against the AI's) in civ games, and IMO tall and peaceful play has been progressively been buffed to compete over the life of civ 5. Since going wide and waging war is no longer the "dominant" strategy, people say it has been nerfed. The peaceful empires have more ways to defend themselves against it now. So people are complaining that it isn't easy enough...maybe they haven't figured it out yet?

This is basically it. Pre-BNW, it was pretty easy to follow a particular formula and win a domination victory before leaving the Medieval era, while all other types of victory had inherent limitations that required later eras.

To put it another way, for a certain type of player, Civ5 was at one point a war game in which your opponents would only fight back half the time. This appeals to a lot of people, and they feel like they've had that taken away.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

What happens if you take a city but return it (for gold, resources, ect) as part of the peace treaty?