How to win peacefully ?

[Merlyn]

I have already tried being a more or less succesful warmonger but I want to know if it is possible to win peacefully in Civ 6 (and also in Civ BE and civ 5 but it is not the good forum for these two :) ).

[zxcvbob]

Are you asking about Civ 5 or 6? It is possible to have a game with no wars in 5, but it doesn't happen often, and it's usually boring when it does. I don't know about 6, I haven't played it much.

[donald23]

This is about Civ5, be sure to have the topic be about winning peacefully in Civ5.

[Merlyn]

oops : I think I was on the Civ 6 forums not Civ 5, but since I have also Civ 5, the question is still valid :)

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

I don't own Civ 6, but as to Civ BE and Civ 5 the answer is yes. It is practically the only way I win anymore because I don't like protracted wars once I spend so much time placing and building up my own cities. However, you need to keep your military science up and your military updated and a good size standing army available to move to any of your border areas on short notice, hence, roads and railroads as quickly as possible because no matter how friendly you are with any other civ, they will turn on you as you get further and further into the numerical lead.

Also, I rarely EVER play with spying turned on because no matter how much you try to protect yourself, once you get ahead scientifically, EVERYBODY steals techs from you and often no matter how much you tell them to stop or what you do to protect yourself. To me, the frustration is not worth my time in game play, for other people I guess you have to make up your own mind about that aspect. I am more like "reasearch you own f**king stuff"! LOL

If I could turn off religion I would do that too because I find civ's that constantly spam religion onto you just plain game enjoyment destroyers, especially since you cannot make them stop withour going to war with them and destroying them. If you stop war with them before completely destroying them, they just go right back to doing the same crap of spamming missionarys onto you.

It all depends on how much frustration you personally are willing to put up with to play the game and thus what you turn on or off in your game presets because diplomatic dealings with AI CIVS is definitely not something that makes much sense most of the time, especially once you begin to pull ahead point wise. You essentially have no way to tell an AI CIV to back off from some action or some action you are capable of doing will have serious consequences for their CIV. The only non war threat you can pose is if you completely control the voting in the UN so you can impose total trade bans on them or the luxury items they use! And by that I mean, you control so many votes that you do not have to depend on any other civs in the game to back you up when voting for or against an item.

Of course, all this is just my opinion and how I choose to play the game, your choice of how you want to play and enjoy depends on you and whether you are looking to play esentially as a city builder or want a series of frustrations to deal with in your game!

[Ghadaro]

Originally posted by HEAVY FIRST RATE:

If I could turn off religion I would do that too because I find civ's that constantly spam religion onto you just plain game enjoyment destroyers, especially since you cannot make them stop withour going to war with them and destroying them. If you stop war with them before completely destroying them, they just go right back to doing the same crap of spamming missionarys onto you.

If you want to stop missionaries close borders and block their path, they lose 250 strength every turn in territory they dont have permission to enter, the ai isn't that smart so its easy enough to make them wander around in your territory away from the cities until they die of attrition.

With that said you can actually use their religion against them for culture, let an AI force their religion onto you and you get the shared religion modifier to tourism output.
By aggressively pushing their religion they also help you get shared religion with some of the other civs while you can save up faith for great musicians.




Cultural victory synergises well with peaceful play, you want a trade route, open borders and shared religion with the AI to maximise tourism modifiers, you also want to trade great works for theming.
Another reason for open borders is to allow for easier spread of religion (closed borders cause missionaries to weaken every turn) and to allow great musicians to culture bomb later on.

On the other hand if you choose a more aggressive strategy you have the option of wiping out high culture enemies.

Science victory likewise synergises with peaceful play, if you can buddy up with multiple AI and create research agreements you can generate a large tech boost.

Diplomatic I find the hardest to do peacefully within the timelimit (other than domination which is impossible to do peacefully in BNW). Somebody like Atilla or Boadicea will usually start offing my city state allies creating the need to either liberate the city states or persuade other civs into giving their vote. The latter requires a large military as they basically need to fear you to consider handing you the win.

[Blind]

Ive had peaceful games before. Although avoiding denouncing all game is very very tough.

[dcain3456]

Set up your trade routes, rake in the money, buy up city states, profit.

[Marbellous]

I've had semi-peaceful victories before. "Semi-peaceful" in that at some point it is ME who decides to declare war. Here's my formulae:

Firstly, geography. There is a bit of luck involved in where you are situated. Having aggressive friends nearby makes it difficult, and having weak friends makes it easier (as those who hate you are further away and thus likely to want to war with you).

Secondly, play nice. If someone denounces you, don't denounce back. If someone steals from you, forgive. If they ask for help, give. Or at least, only do the opposite IF you know you ecplipse that civ in military. The benefit of this is in time the majority of civs begin to like you more than their friends, so you could THEN, when you have a lot of support, denounce a rival. In a couple of turns your friends will denounce him to, which will make it more likely that they will war with him or sanction him without you having to do so.

--Case study: In a game with a friend my friend did the opposite of the above. He won wars, but the moment he was down militarily his former enemies immediately rushed to crush him. In a civ game you might have times when you're struggling. Having good relations with the AI will lesten the chance of them taking advantage of your position.

Thirdly, go for freedom. Make sure you make money and make sure you get that level 3 policy increasing influence with city states if you have a trade route. Diplomatic victory is the best peaceful way to go. Tourism is sometimes a bit difficult, though being peaceful and having open borders will help there as well. (Alternatively, if you're late to adopt an ideology, choose the strongest and most common one to further improve your relations)

Fourthly and most importantly, make sure you have a strong army, at least average size. You need the deterrence to keep opportunists away. If possible go for nukes, and maybe even pass the NPT if you got to nukes first. Remember, there is no development without security. You cannot be naive and think that you don't "really" need that extra unit. Just don't sacrifice your development for your security. Just make sure you have a balance. In a recent game Rome, my neighbour, kept warring with me. Eventually by making sure that half my cities focused on development (especially food) I was able to eclipse him in terms of sheer population size.

Lastly, play a shadowy game. Keep tabs on the activity of the strongest AI Civs through diplomats. If they plot against you, try to get them or another civ to war with that civ, distracting their attention. Don't let an AI grow too powerful. If needed, support your friends warring against that AI by sending units and subsizing their GPT (if you have freedom and you're reach you could bear sending like 100GPT to your friend).

Tl;dr Play smart, be aware, be friendly, don't be naive.

[Drunk Demoman]

Originally posted by HEAVY FIRST RATE:

I don't own Civ 6, but as to Civ BE and Civ 5 the answer is yes. It is practically the only way I win anymore because I don't like protracted wars once I spend so much time placing and building up my own cities. However, you need to keep your military science up and your military updated and a good size standing army available to move to any of your border areas on short notice, hence, roads and railroads as quickly as possible because no matter how friendly you are with any other civ, they will turn on you as you get further and further into the numerical lead.

Also, I rarely EVER play with spying turned on because no matter how much you try to protect yourself, once you get ahead scientifically, EVERYBODY steals techs from you and often no matter how much you tell them to stop or what you do to protect yourself. To me, the frustration is not worth my time in game play, for other people I guess you have to make up your own mind about that aspect. I am more like "reasearch you own f**king stuff"! LOL

If I could turn off religion I would do that too because I find civ's that constantly spam religion onto you just plain game enjoyment destroyers, especially since you cannot make them stop withour going to war with them and destroying them. If you stop war with them before completely destroying them, they just go right back to doing the same crap of spamming missionarys onto you.

It all depends on how much frustration you personally are willing to put up with to play the game and thus what you turn on or off in your game presets because diplomatic dealings with AI CIVS is definitely not something that makes much sense most of the time, especially once you begin to pull ahead point wise. You essentially have no way to tell an AI CIV to back off from some action or some action you are capable of doing will have serious consequences for their CIV. The only non war threat you can pose is if you completely control the voting in the UN so you can impose total trade bans on them or the luxury items they use! And by that I mean, you control so many votes that you do not have to depend on any other civs in the game to back you up when voting for or against an item.

Of course, all this is just my opinion and how I choose to play the game, your choice of how you want to play and enjoy depends on you and whether you are looking to play esentially as a city builder or want a series of frustrations to deal with in your game!

I mean, if you're getting techs stolen from you and you're insanely ahead in tech, you could just... you know, build the Great Firewall.

[zxcvbob]

I don't mind so much when I'm way ahead and they steal techs from me. It moves the game along. It pisses me off when I'm way behind in tech and they steal from me anyway.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

The trouble with the Great Firewall is that it is a looonnnng way down the tech tree and I am usually not THAT FAR ahead in tech. I dislike dragging every other civ up through the tech tree because one or two of them manage to constantly steal from me and then share it with every other civ in the game! This game has provided me with a lot of hours of entertainment but there are certain elements in it like spying and religion that I don't find "fun". Like I said in my post, everybody has a different idea about fun and the game allows you to kind of modify the play in the setup so you can adjust to your own level of "frustrating incidents". My personal opinion is that religious characters attempting to enter your lands to spread religion should be the same as soldiers crossing your borders without permission, i.e. a declaration of war. I think world history has more than one instance of this being kind of factual.

The same goes for spying in the game. There really is no penalty for other civs spying on you even if you catch them, nor any way for you to protect yourself from it effectively. Why don't civs get a huge diplomatic hit with all civs when they get caught spying? I don't find this aspect in my game fun, hence I choose to disable it and thank the developers for allowing me to do so. I wish they would have allowed the same for religion, or at least allowed some options to how religion operates in the game.

Playing this game is an escape from the frustrations and reality of real life issues, why would I want to drag a pile frustrations into my game playing? Just saying!

[Seraguith]

be rich and keep bribing city-states

[Doctor Pilk]

for civ 5 is is perfectly possible to have a fully peaceful victory, other than the occassional barbarian. I don't typically play true multiplayer, usually just some friends and several bots or sometimes ONLY bots, so this may not work for true multiplayer. Anyway just sit back, make a small military, (just to scare off potential attackers, I'm looking at you Shaka) and go for a nice culture victory. (at least I consider culture the easiest) Now in order to do this properly REALLY focus the culture, don't waster production building a barracks or anything. and TRADE TRADE TRADE, make everyone love you. become city-state allies, especially with cultured city states and militaristic, (then you don't even have to make your own troops and waste production in the process). get open borders, friendship declarations, spread your religon (but stop if they tell you to stop), do quests for city states, have spies as diplomats, just be the nice guy.

[zxcvbob]

I just finished an almost-peaceful diplomatic victory at immortal level. (let's see if this link works) https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959720256698624579/5D493EEBFBB11E5D0C31A5F5D0187F428E3C7A30/

I fought one defensive war; turned the tables on my attacker and captured two of his nice but not major cities. (I probably should have kept going and taken Thebes and Memphis too) Nobody wanted a piece of me after that. :) This was on a large map with 10 civs and 20 CS's, and quick speed. The early game (before ideologies) I was friends with everybody and had lots of research agreements.

[76561198799323534]

Originally posted by zxcvbob:

I just finished an almost-peaceful diplomatic victory at immortal level. (let's see if this link works) https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959720256698624579/5D493EEBFBB11E5D0C31A5F5D0187F428E3C7A30/

I fought one defensive war; turned the tables on my attacker and captured two of his nice but not major cities. (I probably should have kept going and taken Thebes and Memphis too) Nobody wanted a piece of me after that. :) This was on a large map with 10 civs and 20 CS's, and quick speed. The early game (before ideologies) I was friends with everybody and had lots of research agreements.

I had a similar experience recently with an almost-peaceful scientific victory at diety level with the Incas {LINK REMOVED}(https://steamcommunity.com/app/8930/discussions/0/1743346190284229678/). I played tall with only four cities for most of the game. I fought three defensive war against Isabella and turned the tables on my attacker in each case (reclaimed the bordercity that Isabella captured from me in the first war, captured Madrid with the Prora wonder in the second war and finally capttured Corboba in the last atomic era war).
If you are not on the domination path, playing tall has many advantages, but I noticed two disadvantages. Firstly, I did not have enough total production to win the first prize when building the international space station (Shaka beat me on it and tried to win the spaceship race himself!). Secondly and most important I lacked the "flat culture" of a wider empire to defend against Darius' tourism, which almost cost me my victory. Luckily I manage to build three late game cultural wonders (Eiffel Tower, Broadway and Sydney Opera House) before Darius took them, and "the great firewall" was built right in time when Darius discoved internet.
In conclusion: you can certainly win "peacefully" even on the highest difficulty levels but you need some luck.