The best strategy games to play as a pacifist

Key foods

• Civilization 6 offers peaceful victories with a focus on culture, religion, and diplomacy.
• Anno 1800 allows players to expand peacefully through diplomacy and economic influence.
• Stellaris offers a space strategy game with different play styles including a pacifist approach.

As challenging as this genre can be, strategy games can also be fascinating. It can be very satisfying to see a plot come together as you gain more territory, gain resources, and scatter enemies across the battlefield. But for some, the joy of conquest is fleeting. Merging resources to have the best and most reliable arms? This is a fairly predictable strategy.

What if they want to outthink their opponents in other ways? Outmaneuver them without having to send in troops, convince them to work together for a common goal, or simply focus on your own survival and advancement. If players want to test their wits by adopting this or other pacifist approaches, they can play these strategy games.

1 Civilization 6

Rule the earth through peaceful means

Classic historical strategy series civilization It has always allowed players to achieve non-violent victories. by Civilization 6Players can win by having the most widespread religion, the best scientific technology (i.e. landing a man on the moon or launching a satellite), producing the most inspiring culture through their art and wonders, or the most diplomatic points, along with mastering the Earth. Through sheer force However, doing all this without having a strong army is usually not very easy.

There will always be a more aggressive civilization on the player's doorstep, and appeasing them can cause them more trouble. That's without getting into the difficult nature of balancing enough policies to help cultivate enough surprises and geniuses against your rivals for that victory. Pacifists should still invest in their military because no one will listen to them unless they carry the proverbial big stick.

2 Anno 1800

Benefit from peace

in contrast, Anno 1800 And its predecessors were more focused on building cities, increasing the economy, and creating trade and trade routes. You can go to war and war on land and sea to create new colonies. But, with smart play, people can get ahead in the series without firing a single shot. Through careful diplomacy, trade, and investment, players can expand their influence.

For example, instead of owning an island, they can become majority shareholders and gradually take it over as the driving force of its economy. Then, if it aggravates any opponent, players can find a way to lighten their mood by sweetening the deal a bit. It's both a stupid form of capitalism and a peaceful approach to becoming an economic powerhouse.

3 Stellaris

Spread peace throughout space by any means necessary

Stellaris Moves into space, where the player's civilization can use its faster-than-light (FTL) technology to find habitable planets to colonize and expand its influence. At the same time, be sure not to irritate your competitors through mutually beneficial deals and detailed agreements. or through external invasion and conquest. Players can shape their civilizations into different types: spiritual or materialistic, authoritarian or egalitarian, xenophobic or xenophobic, and militaristic or pacifist.

They can be mildly one or the other, or fanatical about them, with each path offering different advantages and disadvantages. Peaceful civilizations offer more stability, but cannot engage in any aggressive approach. Their military power can only be used for defensive purposes. No indiscriminate orbital bombardment, and no aggressive initial contact protocols, which when coupled with other parameters can lead to interesting results. Players can be ultimate space hippies or something more sinister.

4 Endless space 2

The universe is big enough for everyone to live in

Once upon a time, the world was ruled by an advanced race called the Endless. Their scientific knowledge was so extensive that they were able to achieve immortality by uploading their minds into machines. But this created a gap between those who embraced this new technology and those who did not. This sparked a war that ultimately destroyed both sides, leaving a handful of Endless survivors grateful for the irony of their fate.

Tens of thousands of years later Endless space 2it is up to the player to choose one of the twelve factions and create his own galactic empire. They can learn by making peace with their competitors and avoiding endless mistakes. There are even in-game achievements for winning a session without participating in a fight or winning a battle. As complicated as it sounds, it can be done with the help of the cloaking technology of the Umbral Choir, enough resources to make trades, and knowing where and where not to step.

5 The fate of the world

Protecting the environment through politics and diplomacy

• Developer: Red Redemption Ltd
• Platforms: PC, macOS
• Publication: February 2011 (PC), September 2011 (Mac)

Things can still go wrong in it Stellaris, Anuand Endless space 2, and lead to a situation where a pacifist is forced to take up arms for self-defense. So what if there was a strategy game that didn't involve combat at all? The fate of the world The focus is on how to make the planet more sustainable by putting the player in charge of a fictional international organization set in modern times.

Through them, they can shape social, technological and economic policies to prevent climate change (based on real data from Oxford University), improve poor areas, etc. But it's not as easy as it sounds, as they have to keep their public polls high in all twelve regions. If players aren't careful, these polls can drop low enough to ban them from an area for the rest of the game. People don't want to give up gas cars or fund social programs without the player thinking about the future.

6 vertices

Use giants to build society or watch it fall apart

The god game genre has been kind of quiet since those days Black and white 2. failure of Godus It probably didn't help either, fortunately. vertices It gives fans of those old games something to sink their teeth into. This time, they guide four elemental giants around a 2D world where they can give resources to the humble humans. It is not so civilization or The fate of the worldSo where is the strategy?

It lies in the arrangement of the giants and their boons. They cannot directly control humans and can act in different ways. Without enough minerals, plants and animals, they will die out. Give them too many resources, they can get greedy and fight over them. This is a fascinating challenge for a pacifist because they have to find the right balance between helping everyone to progress equally without forcing them to fight.

7 was exiled

Help a group of people survive without picking up a gun

was exiled It offers another out-of-the-box option as it offers city building and resource management civilization With no competing civilizations it's all about building homes from scratch in an isolated society and making sure they survive. To do this, they must manage the economy, assign jobs to citizens to help them provide the people with what they need, and grow the city in both territory and population over generations. .

It's a fascinating idea, and one was exiled Gets More Right However, once players got to grips with it, they realized that the game became less of a survival game and more of one. Sim Cityalong with risks such as natural disasters and economic recession. However, like verticesgiving peaceful players a completely non-violent alternative to the likes of civilizationwhere keeping people happy and prosperity of their hometown is the name of the game, not war and training of soldiers.