Making war less usefull.

[Tarquelne]

A number of people (and I include myself) keep making noises about warfare/conquest being too often the way-to-win in Civ3. So, what are we doing about it?

I've made all the offensive units more expensive. An obvious move. (I increased the costs by, IIRC, 30% or so.)

I've made Cultural boundries exapnd faster (trying to make Culture more important.) I don't know if this helped.

I've tried making the maintiance cost for all non-Anarchy units 2, rather than 1, along with giving every gov 2 more "free" units. (I need to test this more to see if it helps. I crashed and burned due to the increased unit cost in the one game I tried it in.)

[siredgar]

I think you're in the minority, because most people seem to think it's too difficult to start/wage/win a war in Civ 3.

[The Andy-Man]

its difficult to avoid a war i the bloody game, and even harder to stop one before war weariness sets in.



war is the only way to win, for all the winning options require a massive empire, and even if you dont play for the win, the AI will walk over you unless ypu churn out more warriors then he does.

[GePap]

War can't be avoided, not the only way to win

Makign a pacifist game is impossible, preiod. All states, in all period of hisotry, have fought wars. Long term peace was always the result of one power beating all the others into submission for long preiods of time. Thus, I think Tarquelne's attempt are futured to fail, if he seeks a warless world- remember, the A.I./ight just attack you with masses of spearmen and other 'defensive' units hten, or even bring up catapults/cannons.

I do agree though that war is not the be-all end all, and that many players do over-emphasize it.

[nato]

War kind of is the end-all-be-all in this game, at least for me. The reason it is, is the simple question: what else is there to do?

Diplomacy win just isn't satisfying. Maybe it is to some people, but I don't think it is to most. I turned it off after my first win with it.

Culture win is pretty dull also. It is just a matter of getting a lot of cities, and getting lots of Temples/Libraries etc. in them.

That leaves space ship win. I understand that may be fun to a lot of people. To me it is just building 10 city improvements. I can understand if you disagree with me on this.

However, I look at the space ship and culture like this ... you build things in cities (SS parts or culture buildings) and the game is done. For war, you build things in cities (military units) and the game has just started. That is why I feel war is superior.

So really I think war is all there is to do. War just seems like the only option that requires a little bit of thinking. No it does not require brilliant thinking, but certainly more thinking than building city improvements.

Just how I see it though.

[Worthingtons]

Sucess on the field is much more satisfying than Sucess off it, IMO.

[Ironikinit]

I personally don't see much of a difference between diplomatic and SS victories. Diplo wins were sure things. I haven't lost a vote since the first time I built the UN.

I do rely a lot on war. I may try to avoid it for much of the game, but sooner or later I need a war to expand enough to place me in the top ranks so that I can win a diplo vote.

[Carbon Copy]

Well...

I would agree that war is a much more interesting route to take, strategically, with the stipulation that it's before steam power, and preferably prior to cavalry.

Once you have all your core cities railed up and factories in place, you can spew out units from anywhere on your map and have them on the front lines THIS turn, and the AI just can't cope with it. Once you're to the point where tanks roll off your line once every two to three turns, you're never more than 20 turns away from taking any world power out of contention for any victory condition you choose (except maybe diplo). Even if you don't wipe them out, a stack of 20 tanks razing half their core cities will hamstring them for good, even if you allow them to rebuild their cities on the same spots.

[Andrew Cory]

War is a lot of fun, but honestly, I prefer to take cities culturaly. I got pretty good at this, to the point that I had to turn off cultural victory. Don't care for the space race one, so that leaves just conquest and Diplo. The diplomatic vicory always seems too abrupt. I wish that the UN was more like it was in SMAC. Since it isn't, I tend to build the UN just so I can refuse to hold the vote. I dunno, I want to see what happens once I build everything, have my empire set up perfectly...

So I kinda don't like to actualy win, I guess. I just want the thrill of holding on...

[Ironikinit]

Well, there's not a whole lot that can be said based on a single game's experience, but I just played the ancient period under the new patch. IMO, war has become more difficult, and not just because pop rushing has greater penalties. That is a factor, but not in that I had a harder time using pop rushing. I didn't use it at all.

The AI used it a good deal. That made their cities reduce to size one and therefore unless their culture boundary expanded, the city was destroyed. This problem was increased by the fact that I made use of catapults. BTW, two catapults probably isn't enough. If I can afford it next game, I'll use four.

Further, the cities were unhappy when I took them. I'll be bringing settlers next time, too.

Losses were a good deal higher due to the new retreat rule.

Ancient era war at least has become a less easy way to expand, although still quite viable.

Please mentally tack on "IMO" where needed.

[notyoueither]

Make war less useful?

That's blasphemy to a Roman, dude.

God is on the side of the big Legions.

Although, they are good ideas for a mod. Call it the Civilized mod

Salve

[The Andy-Man]

i think war is a boring root. and in Civ3 a hard and unrealistic one (for me). i mean, how does a massive roman empire that is not connected by road to every where, pluss it is mainly pop 1 cities, build 100 roman legions. the human wold never manage this, i tried, but it didnt work, i had 20 knights at most (using unit mania).

also, civ3's combat feels to random, its like, who ever sttacks first will win, cos he takes a HP, then the next guy takes one of his. i mean, how come a knight (4/3/2) of mine never seemed to beet the roman legion (3/3/1) yet the legion always smashed mine? they werent even veterans either.


also, i feel more proud in a game where i have like 10 massively populated high production happy cities, living in a contenented republic, in civ3 i have no choice in the matter, cos the AI seems to always have 500 stupid units that are invincible.

[Tarquelne]

Well, I'm going to close my eyes and pretend that all the previous posts were from the people saying "war is the too often the best option", and not you guys and mention:

Inreasing the number of conscript hit points. Even if you don't want to give conscripts as many hit points as green units (3), increasing all hit points by the same amount will still help. Presently, for example, a vetern unit has twice as many hits as a conscript. Increase all the hits by 2 and the veteran unit will have only 50% more hits.

[Ironikinit]

It does strike me a little odd how different people criticize the game in different ways. Some say that war is the only way to go, others complain that warmongers are unfairly limited by corruption.

To make war harder:

Reduce attack values or increase defense.

Make razing not an option (doubt that's possible with the editor, but it really would hurt warmongers).

There's been some talk that under the new patch starving out captured cities annoys the civ you captured it from. I don't know if that's a big enough penalty. I do know that it's odd that you are rewarded for starving out population. Just make them all specialists and they're happy campers, no matter how much you rushed or what the war effects on happiness currently are. Frankly, it smacks of exploitation but I'm not about to stop.

Make iron and horses less common with the editor.

[The Andy-Man]

the SMAC/civ2 combat engine would be best. i dont like this new elite thing. its stupid. on civ2 a veteran unit was precious, and they didnt instantly go out of date with an age change (a vet artillary was still usefull even when you had howies). in civ3, whoever wins the battle seems to be a random decisin that has no effect on which unit is better. and veteran/elite units are just to tupid. with 5 hit points and civ3's combat engine, i seen a warrior (elite) beet a regular sworsmad. in civ2, once the first military unit had been discoverd, warriors were obsolete, on a game i just deletedm you could still capture a cty with MR warrior in the medievial period.