I’ve seen a few Deity pacifist runs before, and a lot of my runs end up being pacifist as well when I want to focus more on city building and less on combat. Managing the diplomacy with AI civs is surprisingly not that hard in Civ 6, and surprise wars can be uncommon if you’re comfortable with building military units as a deterrent even if you never actually use them.
My favorite run that I’ve seen of this was actually with Khmer, using them to rush a culture victory as quickly as possible. It’s an interesting play pattern of managing relations to avoid wars and keep trade routes open (for bonus to tourism), city planning from the start for good natural park spots, etc.
Regardless, I definitely recommend a mod for map ticks. For the early game city planning, it makes such a huge difference and makes pacifist runs much more viable. You usually have more resources (naturally) for city building, so planning it from the start makes the turns go by much faster.
Edit: I should also add that there’s the barbarian clans game mode that makes it possible for them to turn into city-states. If you allow defensive combat, then that’s an option, and you can let the camps naturally turn into city-states or get pillaged by another player later on.
Published Nov 1, 2016

I thought its discussion of how much Civilization focuses on conquest, colonization, and combat over most other systems, to the point of it becoming a bit ridiculous if you try to go pacifist, was interesting. The year it was written didn’t seem a detriment.
not at all! it’s an ageless topic. just wild to read an article from almost 10 years ago that feels like it was written yesterday. Esp when Civ 7 is the new hotness, but Civ 6 still has more players.
Ah! Totally misinterpreted your comment then, sorry 😅
It’s okay, I understand it came off a little snarky. I have a hard time not adopting the “reddit” tone in my comments. Lol




