How do I not be an evil warmonger?

[ThaddeusAlexander]

Originally posted by Random Passerby
I dunno. I just find rolling conquest boring. A real war, where both sides are desperately struggling for survival, sure, those I like to play. But building 800 modern armor and conquering the world in 20 turns? Snore. In general, I leave most of the AIs alone and let them build up until there are plenty of world powers aligning themselves into 2 or 3 prevailing alliance groups, so that if war does break out it'll be a nice proper world war rather than some ridiculous annihilation romp.

I have to agree totally.

Also, this is suppose to be a post on ways to NOT be a warmonger ... am I the only person who helped out here?

C'mon guys. If someone posts the question "How do I not be an evil warmonger?" then i think flooding this place with "yeah kicking ass rocks" and "conquest is the best" replies doesn't really help any at all...

Cheers
~Thadalex

[vmxa1]

There are too many war mongers here, that is why not much help was given, we don't know how to not make war. Simlies here..

[Ethelred]

How not to be a warmonger. By Ethelred Hardrede.

Don't start wars.

Its that simple.

-------

Oh so you,ThaddeusAlexander, want someone to help him learn how to play successfully as a Builder then. Thats different from not being a warmonger.

Don't play on Deity. I found it hard enough to win as a builder on Emperor.

REX you must Rex if you are going to expand through warmongering. Since most of your cities will be built by you there is no choice in this. You will need to approach the optimum number of cities to do well. Notice how you haven't seen any threads on One City Challenges since the first patches came out. You can't do it by rapacious trading only anymore. You must produce and you must research. That requires a fair number of cities. The higher the level you play on the more cities you are going to need to make up for the AIs discounts.

Do not disable the peaceful wins. This should be obvious but it is possible to win by domination or score without actually warmongering. All you have to do is take advantage of the AI when THEY start a war. There is no dishonour in wiping out your enemy even as a builder. I call this Builder-Oportunist to distinguish it from an attempt to win without a war of any kind, something that is not soley up to you so you can't force a peaceful game. However if you are honest, keep your aggreements and don't warmonger the AI will normally behave more like that or at least it did so prior to 1.29f.

Trade with the AI. They like that. Do not horde your resources or your tech. One of the reasons an AI civ will start a war is the same as many warmongers will pick a particular target. The other civ has something you or they want and are not willing to trade for a reasonable rate. Many is the time an AI civ has been annoyed with me and trading one tech will make them happy. Even Bismark can become happy that way although you shouldn't count on his staying peacefull.

Make MPPs with the other civs. They like it when you do so and it can give you an excuse to wage a war without being a warmonger. Even if you don't need more territory it will give the opportunity to prune the more sucsessful civs. The judicous use of bombarment can make land taken by your allies worthless for long periods of time. So help your allies by destroying the enemy roads and mines so the enemy will no longer have the capacity to produce defensive units. You need not of course do this to territory that you chose to liberate from the evil warmongering enemy. This too is well within moral behaviour for a builder-opportunist.

Research the important lines. Shooting straight for Cavalry may sound like something only for warmongering but a builder can use it to make good trades and it never hurts to have a rapid defense force before anyone else does. The Theory of Evolution - Hoover Dam line is pretty much vital on Emperor especially as a builder. If you don't get that you will have little chance of getting the tech and production lead you will need to win the game as a builder.

You can't depend on Great Leaders so you must have the production lead. The AI doesn't like to build factories till they have the anti-pollution techs so they are the key to this. Don't research Nationalism. Go for steam power then industrialization then the Hoover Dam line. Good for warmongers as well of course but vital for a builder.

In the Modern Age I go straight for Computers as a builder. This will allow you to maintain the advantage gained by the TOE-Hoover manuever. The next depends on whether you want the crappy Diplomatic victory. You will want to get the UN either way so you can control the vote and be one of the candidates since as a builder you are not all that likely to be the biggest power in the game. To me the proper builder win is the Space Race. It possible to finish the last Space Race tech and launch on the same turn by prebuiding something so as soon as you get Lasers you can switch to and finish the Party Lounge. I have won the game that way when one of the AI civs had 9 of the 10 components and was very few turns away from the win. That was an iteresting win to beat India from behind with less cities.


This on topic post number 1000, no spamfest to reach King for me thank you. Where is Coracle when I needed him? Replying to his nonsense is what got me to Prince.

[ThaddeusAlexander]

I'm not the one who needs help here ... I think I've won by conquest a good .. ummm zero times since Civ3 came out although I did go to war a lot a few games to get a domination victory (and a diplomatic one as well).

I thank you however for lending more help to Demerzel who this thread was suppose to help.

Cheers
~Thadalex

[Ethelred]

Thadeus, look again near the start of my post.

Oh so you,ThaddeusAlexander, want someone to help him

help him not you.


What a come down from post 1000.

[ThaddeusAlexander]

Okay me speak bad no

See I read it that you were going to help me explain to him which I thanked you for. What I was commenting about was how other seem to all be warmongers around here.

Oh well ... it doesn't matter now we're almost spamming messages here so I vote to drop it

Cheers
~Thadalex

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Ethelred
This on topic post number 1000, no spamfest to reach King for me thank you. Where is Coracle when I needed him? Replying to his nonsense is what got me to Prince.

Responding to Coracle probably gave me 75 or so on topic, non spam posts.

There is spam and then there is SPAM.


Everything else you say I would agree with, I have turned to the dark side and become an early warmonger, but used to be a builder, and I still am later in the game.

Late game I try to outbuild the opponents I knocked down at the beginning.

[SpencerH]

What hasnt been mentioned is why to not be a warmonger.............. cos combat in Civ3 sucks. Fight wars when you have to (of course), but IMO it takes more skill to beat the AI without conquest than with it. MP will be a different ball of wax.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ethelred

This on topic post number 1000, no spamfest to reach King for me thank you. Where is Coracle when I needed him? Replying to his nonsense is what got me to Prince.

E, if you could reduce the length of your posts you'd probably be an emperor by now

[Arrian]

The major dangers of playing "builder" style:

1) AI attack
2) AI beats you to wonders/tech
3) No GLs
4) Smallish empire w/only a few luxuries

There are ways of dealing with each of these. The best way to deal with #1, in my opinion, is to have a good-sized mobile force of attack troops at the ready, so that if you are attacked, you can hurt your attacker badly within a short time frame, and get the hell out of the war. There really isn't much counter to #2, but playing an industrious civ will help with your early development/production and thus wonder building, and playing a scientific civ will help with science (so will playing a religious civ, actually). There ain't nothin' you can do about #3, 'cause you're hoping NOT to fight. #4 is the kicker. You will not be expanding much beyond what your REX phase gives you. Some culture flips and perhaps a couple of cities captured in counterattacks, but not whole empires. Therefore you must be an astute trader and micromanager. You must keep your reputation spotless (which can be hard, since it can be sullied through no fault of your own). If you do have to fight, aim for the enemy's luxuries. They are the most valueable thing in the game.

-Arrian

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Arrian
There are ways of dealing with each of these. The best way to deal with #1, in my opinion, is to have a good-sized mobile force of attack troops at the ready, so that if you are attacked, you can hurt your attacker badly within a short time frame, and get the hell out of the war.

I concur. Though we may not seek war, we must be prepared for war. If the enemy attacks, he must be made to pay. Either parry his attack and cause him to lose forces through attrition, or take the attack to his lands and destroy his ability to fight. Once he is subdued, return to your peaceful ways.

[vmxa1]

One of the things that I have seen in posted saves is how #4 leads to a killer AI that you can not defeat or will be very hard pressed to do so. It is one thing when they have 10 and you have 4 small cities, but when they have 80 and you have 30, you can expect they will have close to twice as many troops as you and will soon be looking for you.

[ThaddeusAlexander]

Does nobody else aquire cities through culture here? The way I play I always grab at least 6 to 10 cities a game through cultural adsorbtion. I remember one of the funnest games I ever played was babs on monarch where I built only 4 cities and adsorbed about 14 by the end of the game (long after i'd already won a cultural victory for babylon's culture 20k+)

All you hafta do is be FAST early on to grab luxuries and trade for the ones you don't have ... and no GLs? Well that I hate but you can live with. If you play the AI, it seems they much prefer to build armies anyway ... i've played against an AI that had 6 armies on the field, and they didn't finish a single wonder the entire game... smal wonders i can't vouch for however, but that had no impact on me whatsoever.

So don't feel you're gonna have a small empire with no resources, luxuries or whatever else just because you don't kick @$$ to get them... there are many, many more ways of getting what you want and winning the game that are far more intricate, involved, interesting and stimulating that building a crapload of cavalry and unloading them all in a city, taking it, and razing those around it for fear of the city being reabsorbed.

Hope to see you in civ heaven, not civ hell

Cheers
~Thadalex

[ThaddeusAlexander]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I concur. Though we may not seek war, we must be prepared for war. If the enemy attacks, he must be made to pay. Either parry his attack and cause him to lose forces through attrition, or take the attack to his lands and destroy his ability to fight. Once he is subdued, return to your peaceful ways.

I agree with this totally. If you don't have a good military, then nomatter how much better you are than the AI in everything else, they'll walk ALL OVER YOU. Ask them to leave your lands? They'll just declare war on you and as a peacekeeper, you don't want that.

The best thing any peacekeeper can do? Build nukes but never use them... its simple!

Cheers
~Thadalex

[dworkin]

Cannot one be a good warmonger? Helping out poor benighted civilisations from their evil neighbours. Punish the guilty and culture flip the innocent.

Just think of it as the 'Human Player's Burden' to bring civilisation to the AI savage.