How to avoid war fatigue and defection?

[lancealot]

Hi there, I got a couple of question regarding war. I am currently wiping the Ottomans out of my way. I took their capital and about half their cities but then trouble began:

1. Many cities went into a state of disorder and its getting worse every turn. now this is a known effect of wars and i decided that its time to pursue peace and its time for me to regroup. But the Damn Ottomans won't even see me so icant but any peace with them. how can i force them to to see me??
2. Some of the conqured cities defect back to my enemies after a few turns. how can i stop it??
3. So if none of the above is do-able, i tried to change my goverment back to monarchy or something (i am in the end of the middle ages) - is this a good idea??

Thanx in advance.

[Master Zen]

let's see...

1) try and take more cities or wait more time. I don't think there's much you can do if he doesn't want to talk to you. Usually after you capture some of his cities they'll sue for peace, or after some time passes. but that could be a while.

2) well, there's a couple of things you can do although you can't really avoid the flip altogether. Depending on their cultural value you will know if they will flip more often, if they have more culture than you, be prepared for the worst. The bad thing about flips is not the flip itself but if it flips when you have many units inside. What I do is heal the attacking units (takes 1-2 turns) and move them outside, cities never flip in their first couple of turns, after that if it does flip, you can always recapture it.

Note that a flipped city always get one defender, this defender will be the best available to that civ considering its resources. If a city is still connected to a resource, say iron in the middle ages, then you'll end up with a pikeman defender instead of a spearman, so if you fear a city will flip, try and disconnect it from a resource and you'll get an easier defender to kill.

Starve the city, all the way to 1. Every new citizen will be a citizen of your own country thus decreasing the probability of a flip. Building a cultural improvement like a temple also helps.

3) If you started the war as a republic or democracy, then the war weariness will hit you hard. Try and get other civs to declare war on you, or make alliances to crush your enemies. That takes less of a reputation hit, and also decreases war weariness as technically your civ didn't start it so aggressivly.

-MZ

[bongo]

They will not accept your envoys the four first turns of the war.

The only way to stopp ALL CF's is to wipe them out completely. There are a lot of factors deciding the possibility of a CF, the biggest risk is when the AI's culture radius overlaps the 21-tile city radius of your cities.

Monarchy has no WW-problems but unless you play a religious civ you shouldn't bother with a revolution.

[cumi]

Hi,

1. If you are attacking with Modern Armor, it is possible to reach all this in the first turn. You can even not dream about contacting the AI in the same turn, when you declared war! You have to wait a few turns or eliminate him (as Master Zen already wrote).

2. Again, I can only aggree with Master Zen.

2.a.) My strategy is to decrease the size of the city DRASTICALLY in a few turns, by picking up the workers (in the city window). In the first few turns, there is a resistance in the city anyway, so why to feed them ?!?! Simply, make entertainers from all the workers.

2.b.) Later, when the order is restored and the resistance ends you will have less unhappy faces.

2.c.) When the resistance is over and there is no civil disorder (yet), buy some nice improvements, like Temple and Cathedral.

2.d.) Later, if the people in the conqered cities (or even in your motherland) are still unhappy (or beginning to be) you have to play with your luxury slider or buy some luxuries.

2.e.) Be sure, that the new cities are connected to your capital, so they can enjoy all the luxuries, that you core cities enjoy.

2.f.) If you reached the point 2.d.), you can contact the AI to offer him a peace (enough turns has been gone from the beginning the war)

2.g.) The number of units stationed in the newly conqered cities should be only enough to beat the resistance. The best units should wait/rest outside of the city.

2.h.) You can also make an "ethnic cleansing". Make some settlers in your core cities ("ethnic clean" cities) and join them to these "ethnic foregn" cities.

hope this helps

cumi

EDIT: The "wiping out completly" strategy is also very considerable, when none of the strategies above helps.

[Master Zen]

Pretty barbaric game ain't it? Having to do ethnic cleansing and destroying culture which has existed for millenia!

[bongo]

Well, it's better to do it in a game than in the real world

[CerberusIV]

Avoiding CF's. I usually don't have much of a problem because I generally have more culture than the AI I am fighting. Best way to do this is to avoid early wars and build temples and libraries. Go to war after the initial expansion phase is over.

WW in Republic. I have been fighting a long (60 plus turns) war in my current game without serious problems. The trick is to avoid losses and not leave large numbers of your units in enemy territory. You should try to have happiness improvements in place and marketplaces and trade for luxuries even at extortionate cost to yourself.

[inca911]

I like a nice early war where Swordsmen are the best unit in existence. I find it is far easier to conquer the AI cities than build Settlers like crazy. So, culture-flips are of great interest to me.

Generally, in a freshly captured city I pick up workers to starve down the population of the city. I do this while pop-rushing improvements to maintain happiness and minimize the foreign compliment in the city. I have only my experience to support this theory, but cities with happy citizens filp less frequently than cities with unhappiness. I use the Luxury slider to bump up the happiness factor while I'm capturing the rest of the AI's cities. Once I begin a war against an AI, it's generally to the death (theirs). If they have island outposts and a capital on my land, I'll contact them for peace, demand all their other cities, wait 20 turns, and then wipe them off the map. Waiting the 20 turns is well worth the game pause since you don't have to go city hunting. Just keep happiness in effect while you wait and culture flips won't be an issue.

Remember that units stationed in the city do help minimize the chance of a flip but if the city does flip, you'll lose them. I do station units (i.e., one obsolete unit per citizen in culture-rich cities I must keep) and coupled with high happiness, this results in very very few flips.

Finally, the amount of culture generated in the city by the other civ plays a factor in determining culture flips so quickly work down those culture centers if you want to keep them.