Can I play as a peaceful empire?

[McPizza]

You know how India is supposed to be a peaceful civilization mainly because of its religion? Well India is always one of those civs that shares open borders with me. We sign a research agreement. We become friends. Then BAM. We're in a vicious war that upsets a delicate balance that forces the relative peace I shared with other civs to turn to chaos across the globe.

The reason I bought CivV was because I was sick of playing games like Sim City and Total War and Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour. I wanted a game where you could start a city/nation (in this case, a civilization) and play however you'd like. Unfortunately, it seems CivV is also heavily reliant on war. I understand the need for a defensive military, and I understand that as long as there's competitive developement (especially military) and religious and territorial disputes there will always be war... but why can't I play as the civ that brings peace to the world (not by knocking down every other civ)?

Anyways, before I ramble on, can I play this game relatively peacefully WITHOUT changing any settings that forces the AI to act fake? I don't have any DLCs and am about 60 hours into the game. Would the DLCs add to the experience?

Thanks a bunch.

[Forblaze]

If you have a big enough military they'll be less inclined to go to war with you, but that sort of defeats the purpose. In my experience, anyone you share a border with will randomly declare war on you at some point.

[Queengoth Sparklebitch]

Its possible, but its reliant on alot of things, starting location and your choice of opponents most of all.

There are many outwardly aggressive nations and more than a few passive aggressive nations, by that i mean i once had a game where Korea and i fought a cold war over city state allys cause both were trying for a diplomatic victory.

We were all the way over the otherside of the map from each other making a military campaign inpractical, but eventually it did lead to skirmishes on islands between our nations.

Its very hard to go through the game without having to defend your interests at some point, the diplomacy system and the whole warmongering penalty system needs drastically overhauling for the next one.

There was a time when i playing as france hadnt fought anyone the entire game, id got a big military because my nation was very big and my main trading partner was the turks.

The zulu's declared war on the turks and began sinking turkish trading ships, which destabilised my economy. Shaka had been conquering people virtually from turn 1.

At that point i would have liked the option to go to Shaka and say, you keep doing this and france will intervene, or better yet id have liked the AI to have the common sense to acknowledge that taking action which would send my economy into -income, would lead to consequences.

The AI in Civs4 was smart enough to acknowledge things like that but not in Civs5 unfortunately, and after a long bloody war i wiped out Shaka in the proccess liberating the capital of mongolia, capital of carthage, 2 city states and returning Songhai to life.

In my books and in most peoples books that should have made me loved the world over, but no, Ghandi, Atilla and my old buddy Sulieman all got really wary of me and went from Close to "afraid".

As if that wasnt bad enough, about 20 years later the Turks decided to team up with Hitler (Mod) and attack the mongolians, who were like my only friends in the world now after saving them.

Id shed blood sweat and pixels to liberate those guys and i wasnt about to lose my only friend, and the Turks and Germans should have realised that.

They didnt, and i was forced to explain it to them in excruciating detail.

And after all that i got messages from Ghandi and even Songhai who were only around because of me, saying that my warmongering had not gone unnoticed. :(

Anyway yeah, system needs work.

[CidDaBird]

Well, look at it this way. I'm been play strategy games since Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari, and I can tell you how the AI is in Meier's games...Annoying, since day one. They are never the fun loving peace keepers we have seen in the world, and frankly usually all peace ends badly in the world so you pick and choose but the AI is always the asshat. We just need to destroy one or two to keep the others in line.

[L4Diarrhea]

Originally posted by Forblaze:

If you have a big enough military they'll be less inclined to go to war with you, but that sort of defeats the purpose. In my experience, anyone you share a border with will randomly declare war on you at some point.

There are many facts which will have a effect on this. If you have : strong army, same ideology, experience in war with same enemy, tradinig with those neighbours + not buying terrotory close to neighbours and propose good things on World Congress, your neighbours will not attack you. However if you live close to fastly expanding Civ, whcih has adopted Autocracy, Liberty and Army policies, all said above will still not work and they will attack you, because they will want to get your lands.

[McPizza]

Originally posted by Queengoth Sparklebitch:

Its possible, but its reliant on alot of things, starting location and your choice of opponents most of all.
...
Anyway yeah, system needs work.

Wow, sounds like quite a campaign. Yeah, I just finished a 230 turn session with my Japanese Civ. I had a terrible starting location... a mostly snow-and-tundra-covered peninsula. The only city states anywhere near me were Tyre and Lhasa, but Tyre was under Greece's protection and Lhasa was an ally of Iroquois. Anyways, about 100 turns in, I'm friends with Greece, Iroquois, Rome, and the Aztecs. I had a strong defensive military, but I had been focusing on research and productivity. I settled one city (my seventh) a bit too close to the Iroquois' border and without warning they instantly declared war on me.

In about 3 turns they had an absolutely MASSIVE invasion force at my northeastern border. Scrambling to get my military over there, I lost one city in the process. I successfully fended off the attackers, but lost about a third of my military in the process. Then it went from bad to worse... Greece saw me in a crappy position and decided to declare war on me, too. I can tell it was planned out all along since he had about six loplights and three archers along my northwest border in a single turn. Now my entire northern borders were crawling with enemies and my southern borders closed off by ice caps.

Dipping into my precious reserves, I immediately hired several units to help fend off the new invaders. Apparently this war had upset a balance, since Rome and the Aztecs were at war, and several city states began fighting one another. After fending off Greece, my military was in a dire situation... Iroquios had a new invasion force ready, and Greece was not far behind. Then, to my favor, Greece attacked Lhasa, angering Iroquios. This plunged the two military giants into a massive war. Greece offered a peace treaty (with high demands...) that I was forced to accept.

With my nation in a deep financial deficit, all research was slowed. The other nations quickly advanced far ahead of me. Iroquios continued dominate my borders, taking two of my cities in the process. I was forced to begin looking for new places to settle... At about turn 230, Greece makes peace with Iroquios and declares war on me. My three friends, Rome, Persia, and the Aztecs refuse to help... I even have a defensive pact with Rome. Not looking good for my civ.
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Anyways, do the DLCs add to the immersiveness? Like do they make things feel more real to the point where it's worth the price?

If not, could you guys recommend any other good games? I've got my eye on Banished.

[zxcvbob]

I've played some almost totally-peaceful games. The last one was weird; Gandhi was the main warmonger* and Japan was peaceful -- I was friends with Oda the entire game. He had some minor skirmishes with the other AI's but no all-out wars.

*Gandhi denounced me after he invited me into a war with Germany and I took Berlin (Gandhi took most off the smaller cities, and my battleships helped him do it. I guess *he* wanted Berlin) I won a science victory before he got around to DOW'ing me even though he was 2 techs ahead because he was so focused on fighting Bismarck and Askia and Catherine he forgot to build a spaceship after doing the Apollo project.

[Matthew]

Military score/strength has a huge part to play in this, and the AI's will regularly target the weakest in strength. A clear example is when one nation gets trashed down to a city or two with no military; within the next span of turns, it is likely multiple other Civs will DoW that nation, because it is weak and easy pickings.

The AI doesn't "think" it just follows its programming. If playing on Prince/King levels, keep checking up on the demographics window and make sure you are somewhere in the middle of the pack for military. You should see a significant drop in the number of "surprise DoW's". On higher difficulties you cannot realistically keep pace with enemy military spam... but then, it is higher difficulties, so it should be more difficult to maintain peace :)

Some other things you can do to increase the chances of peace:

1. Watch Ideologies. They are purposely given big modifiers to encourage "wars" between differing ideologies.

2. Be careful who you sign a declaration of friendship with. If you get all buddy buddy with Mongolia, then they sack 4 city-states, all of a sudden you are friends with the world's most hated enemy.

3. Keep stacking those positive diplo buffs. Trade-routes, regular trades, open borders, shared religion, etc. They don't last long and are not huge modifiers, but it could be the difference between that Civ deciding to attack someone else rather than you. Some AI's have large backstab flavors so it isn't a guaranteed strategy.

4. If war does break out, try and pay off a fellow neighboring Civ to DoW your attacker. I believe there is coding to have a greater chance of signing peace if a Civ is in multiple wars. It isn't instantaneous, but it may help prevent those long, drawn-out 85 turn wars where Napoleon just will not sign peace. You can also pre-emptively pay off your neighbors to war, since if they are busy fighting their own wars they have a very low chance of turning their attention towards you.

Look out for the typical war-mongers to pay off. Dudes like Atilla and Harald will generally go to war for you at a very cheap price. Like 4 horses, and they are willing to die for you.

[Peaceful Sloth]

I've played plenty of games where I've never been attacked.
The thing you want to do is to switch off the domination victory option, and maybe the time victory option as well. If you want extra assurance you can choose to enable only cultural victory, because then the other civilizations have less incentive to want to attack you, since war can really slow down their influence on you.
For the AI choose civilizations that have relatively peaceful leaders. Don't choose gandhi as an ai player if you want peace, he is programmed to be nuke crazy later on in the game.

[L4Diarrhea]

Originally posted by O_O:

I've played plenty of games where I've never been attacked.
The thing you want to do is to switch off the domination victory option, and maybe the time victory option as well. If you want extra assurance you can choose to enable only cultural victory, because then the other civilizations have less incentive to want to attack you, since war can really slow down their influence on you.
For the AI choose civilizations that have relatively peaceful leaders. Don't choose gandhi as an ai player if you want peace, he is programmed to be nuke crazy later on in the game.

Is it rly fun to play not being attacked? Always put every victory option put on on, game feels much better=)

[zxcvbob]

I usually turn off timed victory and leave everything else on. Then sometimes when it's 2040 and I'm ahead but have no particular victory path, I wish I had left timed enabled.

[Red Bat]

I did it as Ethiopia while right next to both the Mongols and the Huns, so its definently possible. I DID go to war at one point in that game vs the Celts, but it only lasted about 10 turns and I only did it to keep Carthage on my side. I had to keep a massive defensive army to prevent the Mongols and the Huns from declaring war on me though, and I had to keep gifting units to city states to keep the Mongols from taking them while still staying peaceful.

[Matthew]

Here is a game I just played when testing out some mod stuff. You cannot see it in the first screenie, but the turn before, Siam had more troops on the border, some cannon. I kept getting messages of "planning against me". You play enough games you can predict nearly the exact turn an AI will DoW. I pay him off to DoW Washington. Then Russia. Then Washington again. Keeps both Siam and Washington off my back until I get more military.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267647943

Between RA's, voting for Siam for congress leader, trade-routes, etc., he didn't have a good chance to DoW for the rest of the game. Washington was too busy fending off everyone, due to committing genocide on the Russians.

No wars the entire game. Siam getting extremely close to a culture win. I manage to sneak in a 34/34 vote for a diplo win.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267647957

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267647980

[leandrombraz]

I can't speak for the game without the expansions, since I played only two matches on vanilla civV, but it's perfectly possible and relatively easy to have peaceful matches, at least with G&K/BNW installed. You can easily keep the AI from declaring war on you if you pay attention on who you are making friendship with. The only exception is when you start with a warmonger civ as your neighbor, then there's a high chance they will attack you eventually.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by Annro the Argonian:

You know how India is supposed to be a peaceful civilization mainly because of its religion?

Gandhi was always an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in Civ 3. Worse than Cesear, or Bismark.

War monger asshat Gandhi always was. So makes sense that he's STILL an warmonger asshat in Civ5.

Apparently the whole "reflect the historical person" kind of failed when it came to India...

[Twelvefield]

The most peaceful game I ever had, there was a brief war at the dawn of time, another brief war in the WWII era, and then I brought my country into war for the first time in the year 2000 or so. All the rest was complete peace across the world.

I lost the game. Mind you, that was vanilla V.