What is the alternative if they either always threaten to steal my population, or actually do steal my population?

In the Ancient Era, if I start next to one in a Small world, a peaceful strategy would Zap my population very low (near 0, I feel) per city, compared to over a pop of 10 (I feel) after each time they steal 1-3 pops.

I feel its annoying playing against the Harrapans and the Celts, specifically.  By stealing my pops that hinders my development (Industry, Money, Science) as well as Influence (or Food) resource used for Military units and Expansion.

How many grievances should I tolerate before I demand payment for stealing my pops?  Warscore??

I dont really want a War with them, but I often feel there's no other recourse.

And, when they continue to steal my population - I am at a disadvantage when fighting them.

Is there a good defense to a culture that always steals my population?

Good question: I had to deal with that just now, and decided that enough was enough and conquered the Celts. I had no alternative because power ratings were similar so they wouldn't accept demands.

I guess the way to "pseudo-stop" them or at least make them pay is to really have much more power so that they are forced to accept demands and maybe stop enslaving. The other is War, which could be limited wart if you use that civic that takes 1 pop for every ransacking, so your economic warfare also becomes population restituting warfare.

I like to use the civic "war slaves." What this does is give you 1 pop for each time you ransack. Then you can ransack outposts (without having to declare war) and get your pops back. That's if you don't want to have war.

But I'm perfectly fine having war - and that means, the more grievances the better. As long as you're not trading with them, then turning grievance into demand doesn't have a downside. And it helps you during the war to have more demands than the enemy.

They are annoying but they can only use their ability once every 10 turns and it will only take population from neighbouring cities and only from those cities that are neighbour to the city that is targeted by the ability. In a game in which you may have population in the hundreds or thousands, the ability to take maybe 10 pops every 10 turn is not as impactful as you may think it is. Like I have not noticed ai agarian cultures much.

I like when agrarian culture steal my pops because the grievance value is huge.

Don't pardon , Declare war to them to benefit of a nice gold boost .

It's like a "forced" Force labor... It's like "selling" your population for production but the production boost is largely better than the Force labor one

Gwanelle wrote:

I like when agrarian culture steal my pops because the grievance value is huge.

Don't pardon , Declare war to them to benefit of a nice gold boost .

It's like a "forced" Force labor... It's like "selling" your population for production but the production boost is largely better than the Force labor one

Yes it is an interesting way to take advantage of the fact they create a grievance for you.