Wendy has been watching me play a lot of Civ 6 lately. We have a new routine where I play the game and provide colour commentary while she alternately knits and watches the gameplay. One thing she pointed out recently was that my games consistently play out the same way. I expand as fast as possible, get in an early war, wipe out my opponent's army in my territory, then counterattack and take their entire empire. Once they are dead I get in another war and repeat until I own half the world.
Sometimes I just keep on warring until I win a domination victory, but more often I stop conquering once I have half the world and just chill, building all the stuff on my way to a science or culture victory. I like having huge, amazing cities so once I have so much territory that victory is assured I have fun messing around.
Wendy decided this was too predictable, so she told me that my new challenge was to win without any warring at all. I was allowed to defend myself of course, but no conquering cities and I have to always be at peace whenever possible. I started up a game, and America got all aggressive with me, forward settling multiple cities on top of me. I settled around them as best I could, but finally Teddy got all angry and came at me. As usual I fought a desperate war against a vastly more numerous army, wiped out everything he had, and then moved into his territory to pillage and plunder.
At this point I would have normally just steamrolled across the rest of America, taken everything they had, and then prepared for the next war. Wendy told me that since America had stolen my territory I could take just one of their cities, even though that wasn't in the original rules. However, Teddy begged for peace, offering me a pittance, and by the original rules I was obliged to accept.
The combination of these things really turned me sour on the game. I want to play as hard as possible, so having consistent rules is critical to me. Having the 'no conquering' rule be changed midstream sucks, and having to accept a tiny amount of gold to make up for a terrible, crippling war is frustrating as anything because obviously he was just going to rebuild his troops and come at me again.
So we ditched that game and started again with new rules, consistent rules. First off, no declaring wars on anybody, except to liberate city states that people attacked, and then only to take the city state. Second, I don't have to accept peace offers unless I want to, but I can't ever capture a city, and I can only raze one city each time a civ declares war on me.
This seemed like a much more enjoyable challenge, and it has worked out well so far. I decided to do a cultural victory leveraging America's late game unique building, the Film Studio. This time it was Genghis Khan who attacked me, with his swarm of horsemen attacking Boston, the city in the mountain pass. (If you don't remember the Mongols rampaging across Boston's highland vistas, take it up with your history teacher. It happened, I saw it.) Boston fell, but after a few centuries I recaptured it for America, and got Genghis to pay me to stop the endless slaughter of horses and their riders. The war was extremely costly, but at the end of it I had secured my borders and space for 8 reasonable cities.
I am still going to win, despite the fact that I can't leverage my expertise at war to grab half the world. The AIs have big bonuses, but they are terribly inefficient, building enormous numbers of troops to no purpose, planting districts in foolish places, and pouring resources into religious wars that accomplish nothing for them. I won't win like I usually do though, building all the wonders, and setting up to win every victory condition. Instead I will win by pushing hard for a cultural victory and focusing all my resources on that.
One thing for sure: Being peaceful makes the game so fast! Not having to micro manage troops and having only 8 cities to control cuts game time by 75% at least. Even if my win rate is much lower than games where I conquer everything, the wins/hour rate is enormously higher.
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