Is it truly plausible to win without warmongering?

[CBR1100]

I play on Emperor and it's essential to avoid war mongering coz you get your ass kicked most of the time. It's more of a challenge to win when your always coming from behind

[Unimatrix11]

In my first (or second ?) game of Civ4 the Chinese had only 4-6 (not sure anymore) cities on a large world and beat me in the space race... And that's one feature i like so much about civ4 as opposed to its precursors: you dont need to be big to be good - that you had to be huge to win in Civ1-3 always had bugged me... but finally they fixed it. Hooray !

[One_more_turn]

When you go to war, you drain lots of resources from economy and research, and you will be playing catch-up for many turns. The AI is very good at developments.

Warmongerings make late games extremely slow as you have to manage hundreds of units, it's quite painful sometimes.

[Vynd]

It is definitely possible to win on the higher difficulty levels without attacking people. It is not possible to win every game this way, though.

A lot depends on how much of the map you can secure for yourself early on. I've had games where I get boxed in with barely enough room for three cities. And I've had games with the same map settings where I could comfortably build 6-7 cities around my capital. If you get unlucky and are surrounded quickly then you will have to go to war. But if you have half a dozen cities with decent resources then you should be able to compete.


On higher difficulty levels at least, I think that warmongering is as likely to hurt you as it is to help you. The idea that the more cities and territory you have the more you can produce is undermined by a lot of factors:

-- A newly captured city won't produce anything for several turns while it is unrest, but will cost you gold, often a lot of gold, to own.

-- Newly captured cities have no culture and no culture generating improvements. As a result their cultural boundaries are quite small early on, and you have to spend quite a few turns after unrest has been squashed building theatres and the like if you want to change this.

-- Small cultural boundaries mean that captured cities with high populations are prone to starvation.

-- If the city you captured borders on another civilization's empire then that other civilization's culture will typically expand to take over a lot of the territory that used to belong to your newly captured city. In a worst-case secnario, your captured city ends up getting culturally flipped to the other civ.

-- Captured cities initially have little or no population that matches your culture, leading to high levels of unhappiness.


To sum up: Cities tend to be dead weight for at least a dozen turns after you capture them, sometimes for considerably longer. By the time unrest and culture issues are under control you are lucky if they are as large as 7-8 population on account of starvation. That population is usually pretty unhappy; you'd better have a lot of luxury items and whatnot available.


Last but not least, during the whole time that your new city isn't really adding anything to your war effort its upkeep costs are slowing down your economy. Now consider, as people have already pointed out, that you're already behind in tech because you've been busy building barracks and Grenadiers as opposed to Universities, Banks, Wonders, etc.

Sure, eventually all of your new cities and territory will start to pay off. But will it pay off soon enough? I think ultimately the effectiveness of warmongering depends a lot on how many other civs you're up against. Conquer one of your only two opponents and you should be able to overwhelm civ #3 with sheer numbers even if you are behind in tech. But if you then have to take out another 4 or 5 civs... By the time you get to civ #5 he'll have Mechanized Infantry and be halfway done with his spaceship and you'll still be relying on Riflemen.

[The keeper]

In my present game, on Monarch - I have tried my best to be completely peaceful.

I am India, and only built 2 cities on my small continent. I spread my state religion to every city on the continent. 1 city flipped to me early on. Ghengis is just to the north of me, but I have kept him happy. He doesn't like America and Germany to the north of him, so he has left me alone.

Using only 3 cities, I am at the top of tech of all the civs. (I have recently colonized an island getting 3 more cities) I am researching democracy right now and have never been in a war. I am pretty good friends with everyone.

Things are looking good right now. Perhaps they will end up that way too.

[Hauptman]

Playing two Monarch games at present (1 at home 1 at work... ) Both of them I am playing in a warmonger kind'a way. I made no workers, sniped rival workers early game (since they start with 1) and spent the time making units instead.

Game 1 (home) as Isabella. I was very agressive, starting wars to capture cities. 5 rival civs destroyed, only 2 by me. Allied with Kubli, Tokagawa and Montezuma, agreed to join wars with them (as long as they different religion) I founded Hinduism and every city on my continent holds it, only France remains christian on main continent, english, persia and egypt destroyed by Kubli/tokagawa. I hold 30% of land area AND population. thas alot of land.

Game 2 (work) as Alexander. Again sniped workers with first warrior. And spent the time making units instead. However subsequent wars I have not started. Montezuma repeatedly declared war, and I have beat him back to 2 cities. Most of my cities were once his. captured 3 cities from france when he went agressive wich destroyed him (rome took the others). I have a small empire with no more than 7 cities and Tenochticlan is situated in the middle of my lands (why monty keeps declaring war with me... I encompas him) I founded Confucianism and it is the ONLY religion on my continent (Asoka on the other continent swiped all the others). I am in a much smaller empire and having a harder time keeping up with the other AIs. Everyone is friendly with me except Montezuma and Tokagawa (who is just xenophobic, not hostile). This game is semi-warmongerish. And I'm struggling.

Now the point is... because I sniped workers with early wars I was actually ready for wars when they came (prior I used to be woefully unprepared, and in danger of dieing to an invasion) But now war declared on me equals a larger empire for me rather quickly. France sent a HUGE invasion force at me in my greek game wich required a reload to reposition forces (not making new ones, just moving exsisting) But he paid with his life. Paris has 2 gold and 3 food specials, a fine addition.

Warmongering makes the game EASIER and alot more entertaining. On marathon thats alot of "hit return" boredom without a decent war or twelve. So warmongering makes the game more fun too!

[Rook]

In my latest game, Marathon/Noble I started right out of the gate as a war monger. I am playing as rome and I made a beeline for iron working. I got lucky and found a source right inside my capital's borders. From there I just started attacking. First Elizabeth went down and then Isabella, but i spread too far too fast and I went bankrupt. My armies evaporated and I thought it was over, but I held on, worked on the economy and now I am at the top again. Everyone is a bit farther in tech than me though, so making war now would not be wise.

[Dis]

yes! I've been able to do it up to noble level. Not sure about any difficulty levels higher than that. But I can win quite easily on noble level with peaceful means. I really should move up another level. But I like winning.