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To Win Without Fighting
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A situation where one side wins by putting the other side at such a massive disadvantage that the issue of fighting it out never comes up. Named for Sun Tzu's recommendations in The Art of War, it is often the mark of a Badass Pacifist or sometimes a Guile Hero, and particularly of the All-Loving Hero, and it often can happen on a small scale as well with one group putting the other at such a disadvantage that they give up without ever coming to blows. Colonel Badass has the Evil Army surrounded. It's a no-go situation for the villains. The Ragtag Bunch of Misfits have completely disabled their supply lines. The Cavalry that were expected to have arrived have been distracted by La Résistance and have failed to arrive. They're low on ammunition, starving, and exhausted. The Redshirt Army mounts the ridges on all sides of the Evil Army, just about ready to launch into a brutal melee in which many of the good guys' soldiers will probably die, but after which the Evil Army will be utterly annihilated. But the charge never comes… instead, a single soldier marches out of the allied ranks. The Hero gives the enemy a chance to surrender themselves, explaining that this is a Last-Second Chance and that failure to relinquish their weapons will result in their painful and bloody slaughter. And it works. General Ripper is ignored as men throw down their weapons and surrender in droves to the good guys. Drill Sergeant Nasty desperately tries to restore order but is defeated and maybe even murdered by the soldiers he has been oppressing the spirits of for so long. The Evil Overlord screams in frustration and indicates for his allies to defend him, only for the Token Good Teammate to be the first to break ranks, followed shortly by the rest of the group and finally, to the Big Bad's horror, even his faithful dragon. The matter is completely resolved and the Evil Army disbanded without anyone getting killed by the good guys. Related is Talking the Monster to Death, where a character lacks overwhelming tactical superiority but instead wins by diplomacy. Another possibility for non-violent victory is Victory Through Intimidation, in which the character is weaker than the total enemy force but can bring down whichever one of them makes himself a target by starting a fight. It may also go along with Shaming the Mob — what kind of army are you to keep fighting a losing war for this bad guy? This is opposite to Violence is the Only Option, where any attempt to resolve the situation peacefully either fails or turns out to be a trick by the villains. For obvious reasons, The Dreaded is often invoked. This trope is a powerful tool; it leaves the impression of a powerful, impressive hero or sympathetic antagonist who has defeated his or her enemy so completely he could crush him with a signal… yet he doesn't, because he knows that it is not necessary. Sometimes the greatest sign of power is not having to use it. It is particularly powerful when combined with Character Development; a hero who was previously merciless and hot-headed, yet impotent, who grows into this wise, merciful, and yet powerful figure by story's end is someone who will leave a lasting impression on any audience. Compare Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing This frequently serves as the Sister Trope to the No-Harm Requirement where the characters aren't allowed or willing to cause violence and thus have to win without fighting. |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_12300cc3 | type |
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The North Vietnamese and Vietcong surrendering when Dr. Manhatten intervened in the Vietnam War. | |
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In Worm, Villain Protagonist Skitter successfully pulls this off several times when fighting her Hero Antagonist opponents, such as when she was captured by Flechette but managed to get her to leave Skitter to look after her friend Parian to ensure that Parian was not walking into a trap. Another example occurs when Skitter is cornered in a high school cafeteria by Dragon and Defiant, her secret identity exposed, and uses her status as a Villain with Good Publicity to convince the high schoolers to side with her and nonviolently walk out of the building with her — the heroes refuse to attack innocent civilians just to get Skitter. |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_179e4fcf | type |
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"The Mayors": Anacreon sends a fleet of ships to capture Terminus, including an enormous cruiser they've recently repaired, so that they have exclusive access to the Foundation's high-level technology. However, the Mayor of Terminus instructed the ever-present monks, a religious order taught to operate the atomic technology, to stop the fleet and incite mass riots across Anacreon just before they arrive at Terminus. The monocracy quickly crumbles in the face of revolting citizens and they never actually fight the Foundation. | |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_184dc16f | type |
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It is mentioned in the The Salvation War that sieges of demon castles often went along these lines, if the defense felt they were outmatched and would just surrender. The war itself was fairly bloodless...on the human side. | |
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Frank Herbert's Heretics of Dune. In the Back Story, Miles Teg was a famous Bene Gesserit military commander. | |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_247422c7 | type |
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David Weber's Honor Harrington series deconstructs this trope, by presenting us with the Solarian League, who the Manticorans and Havenites spend 10 books tiptoeing on egg shells around to prevent bringing them into their war against each other. Eventually, tensions erupt between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore, where everyone realizes that centuries of winning without fighting has resulted in the Solarian League's military growing horrifically antiquated due to their complacency. Also Averted in several cases where the Solarians go ahead with their attacks despite the RMN demonstrating that they possesses utterly overwhelming superiority (Imperial ships can hit at several times the effective range of League ones, and the Solarian defenses are utterly useless against Imperial missiles. Although it can happen in the aftermath of battles, a general policy held by assorted star nations in the Honorverse is that when an enemy force holds the orbital zone of a planet, the planet surrenders. This is due to the fact that once a fleet holds the uncontested high ground, they can launch precision kinetic strikes on the planet at will and there's no planet-based weapons in the setting that can strike back. |
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In Sight, Ichigo wins control of his Inner Hollow by choosing not to fight him. Ichigo reasons that the hollow is a part of him and will not allow the baser aspect of himself to control him by deeming him a threat that he must fight. This act figuratively and literally disarms the Inner Hollow. | |
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Atop the Fourth Wall: This is how Linkara defeats the Entity the second time around. At the climax of the Sleepwalker Arc, he eventually realized that the "game" the Entity had been playing the entire arc wasn't to win - it was just something to do. The first time they fought, Linkara defeated the Entity by making it realize its own existence was meaningless and the goal it had been pursuing was a dead end. Thus, it made fighting against him its sole purpose. Once Linkara realizes this, he simply quits, and refuses to keep playing along. Robbed of its last semblance of purpose, the Entity sadly submits to quietly fading from existence. | |
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In The Last of the Mohicans — as well as in the actual incident that inspired it — the French commander offers the British fort a chance to surrender; they accept, knowing that they don't have a chance against the French mortars. | |
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In Double Homework, when the protagonist, Morgan, and Rachel go to the bridge to forcibly remove the "captain", he surrenders without a fight. | |
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At the end of Luminosity's sequel Radiance, Siobhan wants to go on hunting humans for their blood. Bella forces her to give up on this, not by fighting her, but by using Elspeth's "honesty voice" to persuade her that (with Siobhan now subject to Allirea's Perception Filter) any further attempt to harm humans wouldn't end well for her. | |
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The Many Dates of Danny Fenton (Danny Phantom, Western Animation, TV Series, and Comic Books.): Danny beats Katie Kaboom not by using his powers, but by calling her out on the damage she's caused and making clear that he's not interested in her. | |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_3b34143f | type |
To Win Without Fighting | |
| To Win Without Fighting / int_3b34143f | comment |
This is often how Harry Potter operates, hence why his Signature Move is Expelliarmus, which disarms an opponent before a Wizard Duel can even begin. Disarming an opponent, or just murdering them outside the context of a duel, is also apparently a way to defeat the nigh-unbeatable Elder Wand, thereby securing the wand's loyalty until someone else does the same to you. | |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_41645a44 | comment |
Harlan tries a similar move in Space Cases, but his bluff is immediately called, most likely because he is facing off against Warlord Shenk, who, being portrayed by George Takei, would totally know the Corbomite Maneuver. | |
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At the end of Mysteries of the Sith, Mara Jade faces Kyle Katarn in a Duel to the Death. The fight is unwinnable, but an image on one of the chamber walls gives the key to winning: deactivate your lightsaber. Kyle moves in for a killing blow, but comes to his senses, realizing he had lost himself to the Dark Side. | |
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| To Win Without Fighting / int_467773a6 | comment |
In current canon, the Death Star nearly worked: as shown in Rogue One, just finding out of the Death Star was so terrifying that most of the Rebel Alliance just gave up, with the ones that stole the plans for the Death Star and continued the fight being the last unyielding ones that Tarkin had already accounted for and planned to kill to show the galaxy what fate awaited those who'd rebel against the Empire. It's not until the Death Star is destroyed that the Rebel Alliance reassembles itself — and the indignation about the destruction of Alderaan drives people to join the Rebellion. | |
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Invoked by the "loser" in the Discworld book Night Watch. Vimes' realizes that he cannot win against an incoming mob of angry oppressed citizens, so instead he orders the Watch house brightly lit, totally open, and all Watchmen disarmed, while he stands in front of the building holding a cup of cocoa in one hand and a cigar in the other, thus obviously not holding a weapon so that even the most belligerent mob member could not be confused. All this completely deflates the mob because their once-hated target was now obviously and completely harmless. Vimes' decision not to fight saves everyone by persuading the mob to not destroy the station, and avoids the impression that the police are arming themselves against their own people. Considering the Patrician at the time was trying to violently quell a city-wide revolution, Sun Tzu would approve as well: "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding." In Guards! Guards!, Carrot, being told that the Watch's authority stops at the doors of any guild house and thus he must leave if refused entry without resorting to any violence, manages to gain entry into the very paranoid and terrified Fools' Guild by using some very specific wording. As an absolutely flabbergasted Sergeant Colon thinks to himself, "He had seen people bluff with a bad hand. He had never seen anyone bluff with no cards." |
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Robin (1993): Tim revived Lady Shiva after he stopped her heart when given temporary superpowers, so she gave him a favor. He later used the favor to get her to leave Connor Hawke alone when she was about to kill him, rather than have himself and Dick try fighting her. Shiva assumed this meant Tim was out of luck when she showed up to fight him to the death a year later in return for having trained him with a bo staff, but Tim poisoned her ahead of time as he knew he had no chance in a straight fight against her. | |
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In Wish Carefully, rather than battle them, Harry decides to make a deal with the Death Eaters: they'll no longer have to deal with Muggles, Muggleborns, squibs, and those that support the Light Side, and have control over Wizarding Britain, just like they wanted. As the title itself states, the Death Eaters really should have been careful what they wished for. As a result of the Magically-Binding Contract, the Light has been thriving with the Death Eaters withering on the vine, their entire society on the verge of collapse after showing just what their pureblood supremacist ideology would lead to. | |
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A minor example in With Strings Attached: When the four are first being escorted through the Idris' castle, they ask about some grimy tapestries on the wall. Fi'ar explains that they depict how the Idris conquered Ketafa, and how the city-state of Focan capitulated rather than get massacred. Unfortunately, while the Idris spared the leaders' lives, angry rebels assassinated them within a year. | |
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Irresponsible Captain Tylor. The fleets of Earth and the Raalgon Empire stand poised for a climatic and bloody battle, likely the first of many. Tylor orders the Earth fleet to advance slowly towards the enemy. The enemy commander orders his forces not to fire until Earth's does. In a tense game of chicken, both fleets pass each other without firing a shot. Maybe all-out war will start someday, but for now they remain at an uneasy peace. A key piece of evidence for Tylor being a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass. | |
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In Maoyu, The Hero and Demon King actively try to avoid battles and fighting whenever possible, as they are trying to end a war in such a way that all the factions win. They have limited success because of their opponents being Proud Warrior Races or ruthless generals with We Have Reserves-like mindsets, but they still have their bloodless victories, as when Hero managed to free Gateway City without a single casualty. In fact, The Hero initially has quite a bit of Wangst over the fact that beating people up is all he's good for, when his meeting with the Demon King has taught him that doing so never actually solves anything. Starting with the Gateway City events, however, he starts to realize that his tactical insight and raw power can be applied towards this trope — using intimidation and psychological warfare to shift the strategic situation without actually killing anyone. | |
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Witness: The end has the Amish aid Book in defeating Schaeffer simply by bearing witness to his misdeeds. He's unwilling to try murdering them (and probably couldn't, even practically speaking). Instead, he gives up to Book. | |
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One major event in the Primordial War in Exalted was a Solar taking She Who Lives In Her Name, an Eldritch Abomination capable of astonishing displays of power, out of the fight for a century...by writing her a letter describing the death of another Primordial, causing her enough distress to make her withdraw for longer than a mortal lifespan in order to grieve. Solars also have access to a lot of social-fu mind-whammying that can convert potential enemies into firm allies or even virtual slaves. | |
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Batman: Soul of the Dragon: An arrogant Bouncer starts to pick a fight with Richard Dragon in what seems to be a clear Bullying a Dragon scenario. But then Richard tricks him into a gated area on the pretense that they'd fight there and just locks the bouncer inside when he enters it without a thought. Richard then casually leaves the area while ignoring the man's angry screams. | |
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The Lost Fleet: For 'Black Jack' Geary, the best outcome would be to exit Syndic space without ever confronting the armed forces of same - his subordinates feel very differently. | |
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The General Series: Raj Whitehall's life's ambition is to win a war without actually fighting a battle. | |
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In Suikoden II, this is how Highland was able to conquer Greenhill. Highland freed the Muse soldiers and sent them to Greenhill which doubled the Greenhill's entire army. Then Highland decided to lay siege without attacking it. This resulted in food supply cut short for Greenhill, a lot of mouths to feed, and erupted a Civil War. | |
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In Jackie Chan Adventures, one of the lessons Jackie would try to impart on Jade was "The greatest victory is the battle not fought." | |
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In Dæmorphing, the Guardians of the Galaxy don't have the technology to fight the Andalites who are planning to blow up Earth, so they stage a diplomatic meeting instead. It works. | |
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Grenadier: It's the entire teaching that Tendou Rushuna abides to. Her tactics involve disarming enemies in such an awesome display of skill that the enemy would be so utterly discouraged to continue fighting they would simply surrender even with no lives lost. The tactic served her so well that during the entire run of the manga/anime, her kill count is essentially zero despite having skills rivalling that of Trigun's Vash. That being said, she relies on kind words, hugs, and warm smiles as much as she does physics-defying gunplay. | |
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The end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is part this...though the Dominion is ready to fight to the death in the Cardassian system, an act of compassion from Odo to the lead female Changeling is enough to end the war. This saved the lives of billions of Cardassian civilians that would have been caught in the crossfire (having recently turned on their Dominion allies/oppressors) | |
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In Endride, this is the ultimate aim of the rebel army, the Ignauts. If they build enough allies, they think they might be able to sit down and negotiate with King Delzaine to step down and prevent things from coming to bloodshed. | |
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In the Forgotten Realms setting, along with diplomacy this is the preferred way to solve conflicts of the followers of Eldath, the Goddess of Peace. Up to exhausting their enemies to the point they'll forget why they were fighting and will give up. | |
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All of the Mass Effect games have situations that allow Commander Shepard to resolve them via Charm or Intimidation, often by convincing their opponent to back down before a shot is fired. For example, in the first game you encounter a pair of armed warehouse workers while storming a crime boss's hideout, and are caught in a Mexican Standoff. One resolution is to convince the workers that this would be a good time to leave their jobs, another to point out that you just slaughtered 15 soldiers who were far more capable than they are. | |
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In Black & White 2, playing as a Good god involves building up a Shining City so magnificent that your enemies have a Heel Realization and join your forces. With strong enough defenses, your citizens and the enemy armies never see a hair of each other before that point. Or you could just turn them into livestock, which is also non-violent as far as the Karma Meter is concerned... | |
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In The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the baron, having come back from the dead, confronts the Right ordinary Horito Jackson. Horito's troops suddenly switch onto the baron's side and let all the people out, revealing the war was long over. | |
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Sabaton's "The Art of War" is a full reference to Sun Tzu's own writings on the matter. | |
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Subverted in The Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf marches up to the Black Gate and demands that Sauron surrender; he wants Sauron to think that he has the Ring, and only someone with the Ring would be powerful enough to be so brazen. (This point is lost in the movie; despite that Merry and Pippin say that "the enemy thinks we have the Ring," there's no mention of Sauron later thinking that Gandalf or Aragorn having it — only Aragorn having the sword of Elendil, which gives him no special power against Sauron's armies.) Played straight when Númenor marches on Mordor and the orcs flee at the sight of the Númenorian army, forcing Sauron to surrender. Although that was a gambit on Sauron's part. |
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In Fail Safe, a political scientist (Walter Matthau) recommends that the president (Henry Fonda) allow an accidental nuclear strike to proceed, since it will cause the Soviets to simply surrender as a matter of ruthless efficiency. | |
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In Vinland Saga, Thors defines being a "true warrior" as being this. Having grown sick of violence and renouncing it altogether, his son Thorfinn eventually strives to become like his father. His efforts start to bear fruit when he convinces Drott to let him see Canute after withstanding 100 of his punches, after which Drott has nothing but respect for Thorfinn. | |
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Rome: When it becomes apparent that Julius Caesar has crossed the Rubicon with his legions intent on installing himself in Rome as its absolute ruler, the Republican faction in the city discuss how they can stop him. Pompey has to concede that an adequate defense cannot be mustered in time to stop him, and they must retreat from the capital. Even though he is adamant that the city can simply be retaken later, Cato mercilessly chews him out for this. | |
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An insurgent force against the US in a Middle Eastern country abruptly stopped fighting when Superman showed up (even though he was just there to evacuate Lois Lane, who was wounded while covering the combat). | |
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Happens once in the Hand of Thrawn duology. The Big Bad Triumvirate are using a scheme to make it look as if Grand Admiral Thrawn, the greatest military genius the galaxy has ever known, is Back from the Dead, and the galaxy's not sure if this is a trick or not. One group sends a small force against him as a test. The Triumvirate manages to figure out who they are and start the opening move of one of Thrawn's responses against these people, a response which had the last time totally decimated their taskforce. Convinced, the small force flees. No small part of luck was involved for the Triumvirate, as the group in question was concealing their identity by using unmarked ships of a type not normally associated with them. But the actual Thrawn imposter, seemingly the least important member of the Triumvirate since any actor with the right body build and some cosmetic surgery could look like Thrawn, had underworld connections in his previous job as a con-artist and was aware of the planetary government in question having recently bought ships of that type on the black market as an unauthorized expansion of their navy. Thus, with the attackers' identity revealed, the Triumvirate's tactician knew exactly what tactics Thrawn had used against them before. |
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Wargames might be the last place you expect this trope to appear, but it is in fact part of the canon of BattleTech, and enacted by the Proud Warrior Race Guys known as the Clans no less, who believe firmly that honorable victory on the battlefield is the apex of achievement. It says something, then that Clan Wolf manages to spare themselves the cost of men and materiel in invading the heavily defended planet of Gunzburg by meeting with the defending commander and convincing him that while the defenders might be able to put up a fight, they would ultimately lose even a battle of attrition, and that his people would suffer. This realization touches the defending commander, who turns over the world peacefully for the sake of not bringing war to his people, and leading to the legend of a Clan warrior single-handedly capturing the planet. The Battle of Coventry, where the Jade Falcons attack the planet Coventry in an attempt to salvage some dignity, get hamstrung when Khan Vlad Ward of their longtime rivals, Clan Wolf (who is in a secret alliance with the Lyran Alliance) declares that they're going to be marauding through their now thinned rear ranks. Honor-bound to continue the assault on Coventry, the Jade Falcon leadership is caught in a bind. Katrina Steiner (the other half of the secret alliance) calls for aid from Comstar's Com Guard. Her brother (whom she hates) Victor Davion joins up with the task force, along with several regiments from across the Inner Sphere. How does Vic solve the Coventry crisis? With advice from a Clan warrior on loan for counsel, he offers Hegira, a Clan custom of honorable withdrawal. The Falcons are off of Coventry, and the Falcons can now bring the force of their (still somewhat weakened) armed forces upon the Wolf marauders. Katherine is furious that Victor extricated himself from a bloody fight that she was hoping he would have been killed in. Not only that, but Victor's bloodless victory gave him the political clout to call an interstellar meeting to unify the entire Inner Sphere into a second Star League against the Clans. |
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"The Mule": After the Mule's fleet has begun invading the Foundation, the Independent Traders are suspicious of how the generals/admirals from the capital are surrendering as soon as combat begins. When his fleet invades the capital planet, Terminus, by surprise, his Extinguishing Field helped to take over the entire planet in one attack. However, it is never used effectively again, but he conquers Haven just as easily. Each Curb-Stomp Battle situation comes from him using his Psychic Powers to "adjust" people. In the battles where he couldn't be present or pre-program the officers, the combat is much longer and much more even. Bayta figures out from this that Magnifico is secretly the Mule, and his Visi-Sonar concerts were cover for when he programmed people into surrendering in battle. | |
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From Star Trek: The Original Series, there is of course, the Corbomite Maneuver, where Kirk is able to bluff his way out of a fight by convincing his potential enemy that to engage his ship would result in their immediate destruction in turn. Harlan tries a similar move in Space Cases, but his bluff is immediately called, most likely because he is facing off against Warlord Shenk, who, being portrayed by George Takei, would totally know the Corbomite Maneuver. |
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Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: | |
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A character that greatly embodies this trope is Lady Shiva, reputed as the greatest martial artist in the DC Universe. To any ordinary human (and even some supers), Lady Shiva is an Invincible Villain that they have to figure out how to avoid or survive — often while protecting someone else or trying to achieve a mission. In many cases, this is a test on Shiva's part, as she just wants to see what her target will do when faced with certain death and will go away if they show sufficient cleverness or bravery. The most common way to temporarily get rid of her, however, is to promise to face her in a fair Duel to the Death in one year's time. After which, they will need to train as if their life depends on it...because it does. | |
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Discussed in Worldwar: War of Equals. Shiplord Straha suggest that rather than sending soldiers to fight and die trying to conquer Earth, they just batter the planet with nukes until the Humans give in. The plan is shot down instantly due to a glassed planet not being a good place for the colonists. | |
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Happens on occasion in the Ultra Series. If the Ultras or humans believe the Monster of the Week doesn't deserve to be killed, they'll often try to "defeat" it in a different way. This usually involves taking it someplace else or fulfilling its needs. | |
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Spider-Man: A crossover with the Human Torch set during their earlier years of heroics showed Spidey's first encounter with one of the latter's villains. As soon as Paste-Pot Pete announced his name, Spidey fell over in laughter, and spend the next two pages relentlessly mocking him for it. Eventually, the embarrassed villain just gave up and left, resolving to change his supervillain name (which he did, to the slightly more dignified Trapster). | |
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Invoked by Seiya in The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious, who declares this to be his strategy to save Ixphoria. Indeed, he emerges victorious not by fighting the demon lord's forces head on, but through subterfuge and strategic assassinations. | |
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That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Rimuru's philosophy as a ruler is to try to avoid conflict as much as he can and possibly build friendly relations with those of other countries/powerful entities. To this end, he tries diplomacy towards those who would seek conflict with him and only makes a showing of his considerable strength to serve as a warning. He only resorts to violence if the opposition would be a danger to everyone including his subjects without chance of negotiation (such as the Orc Disaster and Charybdis) or if his subjects were attacked without provocation (like the Kingdom of Falmuth). | |
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Warhammer 40,000: Part of the reason the Tau are so effective is that they have an entire caste of their society dedicated to diplomacy, just as they have one dedicated to warfare, each working in concert for the Greater Good. Many Imperial worlds fall under Tau dominion simply by virtue of the Tau offering a better deal than the Imperium (instead of strongarming them into the fold as the Imperium inevitably tries to do). The Imperium does have diplomats as well, but they're only ever seen in fluff and novels (it's not called Peace Negotiations 40,000...). The Eldar are experts at getting their enemies to fight their battles for them, or sacrificing one enemy against another enemy to save Eldar lives somewhere down the line. |
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In Team Fortress 2, the Soldier references the Sun Tzu quote from The Art of War during one of his victory lines... and then dismisses it as nonsense. | |
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This is how the Doctor prefers to operate, being a Technical Pacifist and a Martial Pacifist. He tries negotiation, or Talking the Monster to Death, or if necessary, using Terror Hero tactics. But if all of those don't work...then The Gloves Come Off. | |
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Played straight and then deconstructed in Vatta's War, with the star system of Nexus being considered immune from attack due to their stranglehold on interstellar faster-than-light communication. At least until someone else figures out how to build their own and improve on them. | |
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Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Kircheis is sent with 2,000 ships to put down a rebellion on a planet, with the rebels having a network of Kill Sats that obliterated the previous 3,000-strong fleet that had tried. When he's finished preparing the battle, the Kill Sats are obliterated, and the rebels are surrendering (aside from their leader, who promptly gets killed by his own men). For this and the record time (scarcely two days), Kircheis becomes a hero. Yang Wenli goes one over when he captures Iserlohn fortress without a single friendly casualty, although he is forced to open fire due to the enemy admiral being a complete General Ripper. He even pulls off the same Kill Sat destruction as Kircheis, substituting ramjet-propelled blocks of ice for fancy imperial technology. He takes back Heinessen from the National Salvation Military Council with a grand total of human losses of two (one of which, being the man sent by Reinhard to cause the coup, may or may not count for this). They don't call him "The Magician" for nothing. |
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This is ultimately the goal in the various Hitman games. It is an option to just charge in, guns blazing, and utterly perforate your target, but this solution is always needlessly messy, needlessly difficult, and gets low at best scores. The ultimate goal of these games is to come up with clever and indirect means of killing your targets that make it look like an accident, without so much as disturbing any non-targets (let alone actually fighting them). Besides, why would you ever want to pull a trigger when you could broil Yuki alive in a sauna, feed Rico to a hippo, crush Tamara in a grape press, and the list goes on and on and on — the world is your oyster. | |
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The Book of Mormon: Captain Moroni arranges on several occasions to outnumber and outmaneuver the Lamanites so effectively that they surrender rather than fighting. He approaches a city where Nephite prisoners are held, and contrives to get the guards blackout drunk, then arms all the prisoners, then has his armies surround the guards. When they wake up (presumably with hangovers) and find themselves completely outmatched, they're quick to throw down their weapons. It takes several attempts, but he's able to persuade Zerahemnah's armies that they stand no chance and need to give up. Once Moroni has them surrounded, he tries to talk Zerahemnah down, offering freedom if they vow not to come back, but Zerahemnah rejects the offer and attacks him personally — and is promptly stopped and humiliated by Moroni's guards, after which many of the Lamanites take the deal. Zerahemnah is angry, and calls for the remainder to resume battle, but they start dying so fast that he reconsiders his position and asks for the chance to take the vow, which Moroni gives him. |
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In The Karate Kid and its sequels, Mr. Miyagi is a firm believer that the best defense is "no be there". This man can, and will utterly destroy someone if there is no other option, but if simply walking away means he doesn't have to that's what he'll do every time. | |
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In the Warrior Cats prequel Bluestar's Prophecy, Sunstar decides to take back Sunningrocks from RiverClan by walking into their camp with a patrol and announcing that Sunningrocks is ThunderClan's territory now, and that any RiverClan blood spilled in an attempt to re-claim it will be on their leader Hailstar's paws. As Sunstar had planned, every Clan knows how strong ThunderClan is at that point, and RiverClan doesn't make an attempt to re-claim it after that. | |
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How did Tet from No Game No Life become The One True God? Simple; the other gods killed each other off fighting for the title, and Tet (who refused participate in the war) ended up as the sole surviving god. | |
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The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: During the attack on Butane, Galatea calls Riboflavin out for not at least attempting this; they've got the Butanians at a seemingly hopeless disadvantage, and she favors simply scaring them into surrendering, to give them a bloodless victory. Riboflavin answers, "Bloodless victory? Where's the fun in that?!" She successfully leads a mutiny against him (well, a mutiny of the only other two people on the ship). | |
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The final battle in Everything Everywhere All at Once is this. Evelyn uses her multiversal powers to show kindness to her assailants, reconnecting them with things that bring them joy. | |
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In the third book of The Shadow Campaigns, Janus quotes his universe's equivalent of the Art of War, in which it states that the perfect battle is one where the winner is so obvious in advance that there's no reason to fight it. In the following book, it gets painfully averted when he sets a battle of this nature up, and the fanatics in the opposing army attack anyway and get slaughtered pointlessly. He then bitterly notes that the book didn't mention that such a perfect battle is depending on both sides recognizing and acknowledging how one sided the battle is before fighting it. | |
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Seven Kingdoms offers various victory condition aside of fighting other faction until there is one last kingdom standing such as gaining certain Economic or Population score or battling Frythans instead of the other kingdoms, having the greatest Frythan Battling score before a certain year passed. But even if those conditions were disabled and you absolutely have to be the last kingdom standing, there are other ways than just rushing to your enemy's well-fortified base and suffering the loss of reputation and fine soldiers. Such as: Bribing your enemy generals with spies until there's nothing left but the King. Then watch as you send another spy to assassinate him, and he named the successor that is your spy, bringing his whole kingdom to you; or you declare war on him anyway, but all of his generals and soldiers deserted aside of the men inside his own fort, therefore, leaving the fighting at minimum and hugely in your favor. It requires a lot of money, but it's doable. Not giving them access to natural resources by being keen in where natural resources spawn. When you possesses lots of money and can generate a lot of them, that means your people are well paid and well fed. Meanwhile, your enemy that has built such great military power... now lacked the funds and food to feed his men. This will result a huge drop in loyalty that their men and villages deserting them one by one and in the end, only the enemy king remains and he has no choice but to surrender to you. |
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In the Merlin (1998) series, this is how King Arthur wins the war against Lord Lot, and subsequently gains him as an ally. | |
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A season 1 episode of Babylon 5 has Sinclair do this with a bunch of dock workers, who are striking because they are being treated unfairly by the government. Sinclair wants to help, but the Earth government orders him to follow the "Rush Act," which forces him to end the illegal strike "by any means necessary," including violence. Sinclair follows orders, accompanies his army of security personnel down to the dock workers, and gives them the pay raise and safety updates they wanted; before the enactment of the Rush Act, he couldn't give them anything, because his hands were tied up by bureaucracy, but since he can now resolve the conflict "by any means necessary," he gives them the raises they deserve. | |
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Judging from his Wikiquote page, Carl von Clausewitz was not a fan; this perhaps should not be construed as saying that Clausewitz was a Blood Knight, however — he is likely more commenting on the fact that War Is Hell no matter what you did, and being an Actual Pacifist got you nowhere once war became inevitable. | |
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In Guards! Guards!, Carrot, being told that the Watch's authority stops at the doors of any guild house and thus he must leave if refused entry without resorting to any violence, manages to gain entry into the very paranoid and terrified Fools' Guild by using some very specific wording. | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Chain of Command", Captain Jellico has Riker navigate a shuttlecraft through the dense nebula where the Cardassians are hiding, preparing an attack. Riker sets up a massive network of mines along the hulls of the Cardassian ships. They're forced to comply with Jellico's demands and leave without fighting. In "The Defector", the Enterprise, having been given bad information by a well-meaning Defector from Decadence, walks into a Romulan trap. They are saved by a cloaked force of Klingon warships, who accompanied them due to Picard's suspicions. The Romulans, having hoped for an easy opening victory and now being presented with, at best, a Heroic Sacrifice, decide instead to retreat. |
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