early war cripples everything - not fun...

[Stilgar08]

First of all: I checked and searched for "early" "war" "cripples" "economy" - found a bit in CiV and lots in the Civ IV - forums but still I have no idea what to do about it. (BNW)

Ok I'm more of a builder, but I'm not new to CiV - nevertheless playing on king.

In my recent game I just got into an early war with Netherlands, I had 3 cities just up, he went wide and Pacal asked me if I would DOW Willem with him. I killed them with Bowmen, Hoplits and one catapult and kept their cities as puppets - makes 6 cities total after the war (I usually try to play immersive and not just burn all cities I captured to the ground - no one would do it, right?)

I know that it's normal, but I don't know what to do about it: I got about -15 / -20 unhappiness, -20 / -25 GPT, therefore no growth and lots of penalties.

And since I originally planned to go diplo and faithful I got a religion up and took all those happiness-bonuses which only helped marginally of course..

How do I avoid this at best and if that's not possible: What's the best way to get out of it again?
I have really no idea - I'm just trying to build up my infrastructure and happiness buildings, but not really with a strategy - it seems like I don't know what I'm doing (which is kind of true...) and it took ages getting in balance again... So what would be the BEST thing to do in such a case??

 

[Catalytic]

The mechanisms of the game don't allow for early war to be feasible when combined with your own expansion.

1) Happiness is an omnipresent limiting reagent.
2) War penalizes happiness severely - You either have to raze and take the temporary happiness hit, puppet and take a moderate happiness hit w/ no control, or annex and take a happiness hit and an economic hit from the courthouse build time and maintenance.
3) If that town you just smashed doesn't have a new unique luxury to offset the happiness penalty, it's gotta get razed.
4) You're getting an essentially permanent and always severe diplo penalty the moment you take a city. They'll forgive you trashing their army. They chain denounce you the moment you actually take a city, even if you raze it, liberate it, or give it away.
5) And while you're happily smashing and thrashing, Hiawatha and Ramses are happily playing SimCity on the other side of the world running away while you clean up all his opponents.

I'm not much of a fan of the latest iteration in terms of warmongering. It's hard enough to do early on because you have to take such huge risk production-wise and science-wise. It's hard enough because of BNW's reliance on easily pillage-able, expensive units for gold. It's hard enough because you sacrifice your early growth game for military. It's just so much easier to do a traditional 3-city rapid expansion start, build NC and Circus Maximus, establish your religion for additional bonuses, then start your warmongering in late medieval or renaissance.

I think that balance needs to change, personally.

 

[joncnunn]

#4 isn't when you capture an AIs city as long as they still have at least one more; that description however applies against however applies the coup de grace to a civ (OR A CITY STATE) no matter how many other cities some other civ took first.

However, everybody except for Pascal will be somewhat upset that you joined in at all.

Wars of attrition are indeed bad; you need to arrange it so you ideally don't lose a single military unit. (Bring ranged weapons) A common tactic is set up a killing zone in your own territory and only after that AI force is crushed move in to take their closest city (now that they have no defenders other than the unit inside), then set up kill zones around that city, rinse repeat.

 

[TyBoy]

The warmonger penalty has changed for BNW. It is now triggered by taking cities in general rather than taking the last one. The penalty for taking a city is smaller when the map is larger, the person you're taking it from has more cities, or the map as a whole has more cities.

Liberating a city now has an anti-warmonger effect, cancelling out the same amount of warmonger penalty that you would have gotten for taking the city from the person you liberated it to.

What you're describing has been a problem for a long time. I would like to see them retool the honor tree to help address it, trading off some combat bonuses for puppet bonuses.

 

[tokyochojin]

I really don't understand what I am supposed to do if a rival Civ is bullying one of my City States, declares war on an allied Civ or indeed declares war on me? If I attack and take any of his cities I am the wrong with all of the other Civs, even my allies. Needs fixing.

 

[General Tso]

While there are exceptions to every rule I usually make sure that I'm generating extra gold and happiness before starting any war.

Figure out which cities you want to take and make sure you have enough excess happiness per turn to take them without causing to many problems. As far as I know the relevant unhappiness in a city is caused by the number of cities, population of that city and whether or not it's Occupied. If you don't have enough happiness then you have to limit the number of cities you can take. If you puppet instead of annex you can usually take an extra city or two, but I usually try to keep my conquest rate slow enough so that my civ can assimilate all conquered cities that are worth annexing. Also - don't annex a Occupied city, you get penalties but no bonuses.

So early war is totally possible. Early large scale conquest not so much. A small civ with a limited infrastructure (buildings etc...) has more trouble conquering a large number of cities at one time while a large civ has less of a problem. I think that "feels" realistic. If a small civ with 3 cities conquers a single city that's a 25% increase in the number of cities. If a large civ with 20 cities conquers a city that's an increase of 5%.

I hate to bring up my own mod because it makes me feel like so tawdry, but... I often use it when I want to do rapid conquest early in the game or when playing at a higher difficulty level than normal. I usually just scatter a few extra luxuries around my starting location.

 

[The QC]

I'm playing the Assyrians on Emperor at the moment and I'm having a reasonable amount of success. I've built 2 cities of my own apart from the capital and I've conquered 3 others, including the Egyptian capital. I guess this info would be more relevant if I also remembered what turn it is, but sadly I don't . Anyway, I'm slightly behind the top scoring player at the moment (Kame), but my towers have not become obsolete yet, so I have some more conquering to do.

What I've seen so far:
- No problems from the science penalty
- No problems from the culture penalty, in fact I'm better off than in G&K
- Money is a huge issue very early on, until you are able to set up 2 caravans somewhere away from your wars; it gets easier after that
- Warmongers do get one AWESOME financial boost, though, in the form of caravan pillaging; seriously, I've made very good money from this
- Happiness is the main factor that regulates your expansion speed; I was very methodical and didn't rush it, so I haven't had huge issues, although I did suffer through some low growth periods
-You can't go all-in with the war stance; you have to built a lot of infrastructure of your own and generally, you know, play the other elements of the game; even the Assyrians, in fact, need their own science and can't expect to pop science from enemy cities very regularly
-If you plan to be very warlike, the warmonger penalty is a given; everyone will hate you quite soon... so there's no point in even bothering to counter it; I'm not sure yet how I feel about this

 

[NukeAJS]

I'm sure someone said this before, but raze cities that don't have something to offer. If there's no unique luxury, no strategics, or would be low food/production -- burn it. If you don't want to burn it for role-playing reasons -- give it back to the AI you took it from (and get a REALLY sweet concession) or gift it to another civ.

EDIT: Does anybody know if gifting a city back to its original owner decreases the warmonger diplo modifier? If not, it should.

 

[simonthesinner]

Civ should have a "casus belli" System, ehere you, if someone has bullied any combination of city stares you protect three times, or attack one, or attack a civ with whom you have a DoF or raids a caravan heading to you and probably more stuff I can't think of now, that you have 10 standard speed turns to declare war without a diplohit.

In these cases, as well as if that civ declares on you without a CB, you should also be able to take one city wihout further warmonger penalty.

Also, selling a civ back their conquered city should negate most of the warmonger for taking the city.

 

[simonthesinner]

Also. Raze the non-capital cities and keep the capital, or sell to a friendly civ, depending on wonders. if you have a weak but good ally you can sell/give them more cities. With the 5% research penalty per city, only keep very good ones (capitals with wonders, cities with natural wonders inside borders)

 

[Chiatroll]

-If you plan to be very warlike, the warmonger penalty is a given; everyone will hate you quite soon... so there's no point in even bothering to counter it; I'm not sure yet how I feel about this

I hate it.

I tend to raze anything that lacks a useful wonder.

I'm not here to collect everyone else's problems.

 

[VainoValkea]

When playing warmonger in G&K, I typically started with pikemen and trebuchets. I managed the same in my last game, although I upgraded to cannons and muskets before the war was over.

It's true that happiness seems lower now, but I noticed that money is a worse issue. In G&K, every city one took would be likely to turn in a small profit, at least - in BNW, holy moley am I running a deficit economy. It took me a while to get my puppet provinces to pull me back in the black.

 

[RealHuhn]

-If you plan to be very warlike, the warmonger penalty is a given; everyone will hate you quite soon... so there's no point in even bothering to counter it; I'm not sure yet how I feel about this

Not if you play on Continents.

Early wars only give you diplo hits against civs you've already met. You can conquer your whole continent before Astronomy without any consequences in late game.
Civs you meet on other continents will still love you.

And if you fight wars together with another aggressor, you can usually keep that civ on friendly or neutral, so you can trade luxuries etc for more gold or happiness.

@OP: You definately have to raze smaller cities. There's no point in keeping a size 4 city without any important building or unique luxury.
Good cities like capitals should be annexed after the revolt is over. With a courthouse, happiness is back to normal.
And I don't know. I never have money issues that I can't fix. Keep an eye on your road network, disband troops you don't need, micromanage your cities to work luxury tiles, send trade routes to city states etc..

 

[kaltorak]

Just after reading this post, I saw a picture on 9gag and I thought it totally belongs here

 

[VainoValkea]

Stalin had a good point there - and autocracy and order both offer decent happiness boosters!

 

[evilcat]

cut

Not sure if simulation/roleplay reasons work for you, but look at it this way: half of your empire is conquered nation, and your rule isnt even well structurized (happiness building). What would you expect?

In such situacion, if you are a peacefull ruler, then just stop after one city, and maybe pilage the rest of his tiles. Being military broken, and cut from one city generally makes enemy no longer a threat.

Other than that, take roleplaying aside and just burn useless cities. This is a game, and sometimes you need just fallow the rules even if that hits immersion. :-(

From more powergamer point of view, you went to bold. I would build just one extra city at good hammer spot, and probably burn 2 enemy cities. AI have tendency to build cities in all wrong places.

 

[jjkrause84]

You know Civ's war system is broken when 'genocidal maniac' is the optimal strategy (with the exception of cities that happen to have new luxuries or wonders). The fact is that Civ 5 put all its eggs in the 'happiness' basket. This one decision had many far-reaching consequences that, along with 1upt, completely shape the game (and for the worse, in my opinion).

 

[kaltorak]

I also dislike that razing in most cases is the optimal option. If I put the effort into capturing a city, I want my empire to be improved by those actions.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If you want to avoid warmonger penalties (diplo or happy) don't take cities.

 

[VainoValkea]

You know Civ's war system is broken when 'genocidal maniac' is the optimal strategy (with the exception of cities that happen to have new luxuries or wonders). The fact is that Civ 5 put all its eggs in the 'happiness' basket. This one decision had many far-reaching consequences that, along with 1upt, completely shape the game (and for the worse, in my opinion).

Nah, tall peacemonger is the optimal strategy to me.

At least they did something to actually prevent ICS this time.