Conquer or accept surrender?

[margalus]

Still on my first playthru of the game. The Danish were being rather rude in the game. Kept getting smart with me, then kept demanding tribute from one of the city states that I pledged to protect. Then he attacked Korea, another friend of mine and took 2 of their cities. So I marched in and attacked him, went from city to city conquering him. After I conquered the city right before getting to Copenhagen he offered to surrender. I didn't much like the weak terms, but I was feeling generous so I just added that embassies should be put in both capitals, he felt that wasn't fair so I marched on and conquered Copenhagen and then the rest of his cities, with the last cities being the ones he had captured from Korea. I conquered those and then returned them to Korea.

Several of the city states are now very happy with me, Korea likes me. England on the other hand has rebuked me, along with somebody else.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of accepting surrender or conquering?

[Eifersucht18]

If the AI offers a Surrender - it means it is losing - ignore it and press on

If the battle is going well, the only reason to stop your advance is if you have already taken the capital, the AI is stuck in his last city in the tundra portion of the map and you are feeling generous enough to keep him alive - If you completely destroy him you get a pretty heavy WARMONGER/unhappiness penalty

[zxcvbob]

I will often accept a surrender peace deal if I have taken a few cities already. That gives me 10 or so turns to catch my breath and burn down the cities I took or start building trading posts before declaring war again. If you take too many cities too quickly, your happiness will tank.

[rabureta]

Originally posted by Eifersucht18:

If the AI offers a Surrender - it means it is losing - ignore it and press on

If the battle is going well, the only reason to stop your advance is if you have already taken the capital, the AI is stuck in his last city in the tundra portion of the map and you are feeling generous enough to keep him alive - If you completely destroy him you get a pretty heavy WARMONGER/unhappiness penalty

You get a damningly huge warmonger penalty for taking ANY city, which is why everyone but Korea hates him now. The proper way to wage war is to kill their units and raze the countryside and bombard the city, but only take the city itself as part of a peace deal.

[ajhartman65]

Depending on how late in the game you are the warmonger penalty may not matter one bit. I find that once into/past the industrial era you can pretty much count on the other civs starting to denounce you just if you are doing well without conquering, so if you are in or near the lead around this point and it's time for war, just take whatever you want and burn the rest to the ground (or give to civs your like as gifts so you don't take the happiness hit if you can't afford that). Another option is if you have city state allies involved in the war, any cities near them you can bombard to zero defense and let the CS take it and raze it for you (gift them a few melee units to get the job done if necessary).

[Andarvi]

Not true, if you play for the culture victory, it is very possible to be friendly or at least neutral with everybody.

But you have to :
1. Be neutral. No friendship pacts, no going to war just because somebody asked you
2. Stop expanding early. Build 3-4 cities, then stop and concentrate on growth/turism
3. Maintaing a standing army, just enough for other civs not to see you as a target.
4. Play the politics game. A gift there, matching ideology/religion with your neighbours go a long way

Also the biggest warmonger penality is for eliminating a player, second biggest is for taking a capital.

[Velvet Waltz]

Decline the first offers, ravage the area, later send them a peace offer which makes them yield all their gold, ressources and cities to you (if you need them - you will get them without warmogner bonus)

[leandrombraz]

Originally posted by rabureta:

Originally posted by Eifersucht18:

If the AI offers a Surrender - it means it is losing - ignore it and press on

If the battle is going well, the only reason to stop your advance is if you have already taken the capital, the AI is stuck in his last city in the tundra portion of the map and you are feeling generous enough to keep him alive - If you completely destroy him you get a pretty heavy WARMONGER/unhappiness penalty

You get a damningly huge warmonger penalty for taking ANY city, which is why everyone but Korea hates him now. The proper way to wage war is to kill their units and raze the countryside and bombard the city, but only take the city itself as part of a peace deal.

The warmonger penalty of completely destroying a civ is considerably bigger than from getting a city. Also, the city warmonger penalty vary depending on size of the map, amount of cities in the match and amount of cities your enemy have, so depending on the match you might become a warmonger after getting one city, while in other you might get several cities without any serious consequences.