How can I maintain peace?

[JohnMK]

What is the best strategy, that you have tried and empirically proven personally, that results in a more prolongued peace than is typical?

I'm getting very upset with my two neighbors constantly declaring war upon me. I have a huge military, probably an average of 4 units per city, but that's still not enough to stop them from thinking they can take me on.

Can someone reinvent the wheel here, and tell me how I should go about obtaining a lasting peace?

[Lucilla]

Mayby you have something they really want. In my current game for instance, I researched literature as the first civ so that I can build the Great Lib. In all the other techs I stayed behind and didn't even try to get some by trade, because I knew that I would get them for free, once I had the GL.
Apparently, all other civs regarded me as weak, as I was scientifically behind. They constantly asked literature from me and when I refused to make the deal, they declared war.
If you have something, they desperately want, it's sometimes better to trade it at a good price as long as you are still able to do so.
Map size plays a big role as well. If there's not enough room, war will start early in the game.

Does that help?

[Boris Godunov]

Hmm, what difficulty level are you on? I had the opposite problem in my games: Too peaceful. No one ever declared war on anyone else. Finally I became aggressive and did some warmongering. Ever since then, wars broke out on a constant basis, most not involving me.

So, did you, in this early game, do something to irk these neighbors? Maybe you warmongered a while back and they're just sill peeved about it?

[JohnMK]

I've been nothing but peaceful. I have expanded rather aggressively though: I sent a settler to a chokepoint in the continent (Isthmus), and thereby prevented them from colonizing a (what I guess is, since I can't cheat and reveal the map) rather substantial part of the island/continent we're on. They seem to want to send settlers through it on a very regular basis.

Oh, and there is an iron mine on my side of the island, but it's not yet within my cultural influence. It will be shortly though . . .

Difficulty: regent.

[Boris Godunov]

Even playing Regent, I had to initiate warfare in order for ANY civ to start having wars. I was like, what gives?

If you're on a small-to-standard map that might be the issue. Limited expansion makes for earlier warfare. I tend to use Huge Maps.

[JohnMK]

I'm using a huge map.

[Boris Godunov]

Well, I would point to the limiting their expansion as a culprit. I am willing to bet that the AI is programmed to behave more aggressively when it cannot build more cities.

[zulu9812]

Absolutely - if you box 'em in they'll just come out fighting. Very early on in a game, I built lots of cities around the zulus so they couldn't expand; they hated me for it.

[Theseus]

A couple of thoughts:

- No one has discussed it so far on this thread, but which specific AI civs are you dealing with?

- Relative strength plays a HUGE role in the AI civs decisions. I think it's on a bell curve... the absolute weakest and the absolute strongest civs are targets.

- I wouldn't be surprised if Soren had marginally increased aggression across the board in 1.21.

- I forget where I saw it, maybe in one of the chats with Firaxis, but IIRC the entire tenor of each game is determined early on... either the AI civs get "mad" and stay that way, or the world remains peaceful. (I make sure they're mad!!)

BTW, JohnMK, 4 units per city is not a huge military. In fact, I'm pretty sure the AI doesn't even consider that ratio. Rather, it's absolute strength... either sheer number of units, or, as I suspect post-1.21, weighted strength of all military units.

[JohnMK]

Germans and Russians.

[Theseus]

Well, no surprise there... Bismarck is a bastard and Cathy can be, mmm, difficult.

[wohmongarinf00l]

germans have a huge aggression level and the russians are not entirely peaceful....
matter of fact, u can expect a war with the germans at some point in any game.

[Boris Godunov]

Germans? Aggressive? Who would have thought...

[Panag]

hi ,

try this ; peace through power , it works , 9 out of 10 , ...

have a nice day

[Theseus]

panag's right on target.

Dead civs don't declare war.
Vassals and punching bags don't declare war (if the do, no problemo).

In the Strategy forum, read a thread I started called The Care, Feeding, and Death of Neighboring Civs.

I guess my point would be that having a strong military is not enough of a deterrent to AI civs declaring war... that is just one element among many.