edit - Yeah I play video games with violence too, my point is that video games are a mirror that exposes a less brutal image of ourselves than we are convinced of. The truth of what we desire is as often silly or altruistic as it is selfish or violent, even in the realm of fantasy where the violence is unreal as everything else.
Whenever I play Civ I try to go for a peaceful victory. Then someone picks a fight with me and that escalates with me going for the world domination victory.
I feel like Civ always punished you too much for being too successful in repelling another civ’s attacks. Like, what do you mean they can take a couple of cities but when I do it it sours my relations with every single civilization on the map? Always pushes me to a domination victory when that happens. Sometimes I can manage it without gaining too much of a warmonger reputation, but it’s too much of a balancing act
I usually play as Victoria so I like to do themes. Like if there are a lot of other woman leaders I’ll do a Girl Power game and form alliances with them and kill all the men.
Or if there are a lot of colonizer countries I’ll do a reverse colonization playthrough and conquer them with the help of colonized nations.
Then there’s the genocides I’ve waged for the most sacred resource to the English: Tea.