Why the warmonger penalty is unrealistic...

[Paszczak]

As far as I can remember, in vanilla Civ V rapid expansion (by settling or conquering) was very effective and pretty much the only way to play the game competitively because the game was so poorly balanced. Tradition was garbage and Liberty was (too) good. Melee units were too strong vs cities. Awkward tech tree and science slingshots with Great Scientists and Research Agreements gave military techs way too fast. Trying to turtle against an aggresive neighbour was pretty much a death sentence.

G&K removed all of these and promoted peaceful tall play by buffing Tradition and tweaking early conquest in the right way, which was reworking the way combat worked, although you can argue they missed the mark and made ranged units too strong this time around.

BNW has made further attempts to dissuade early warmongers so that everyone could enjoy later eras, idelogies and World Congress, but this time they've done it in the worst way possible. Instead of making early game conquest actually harder by further improving combat AI or city defenses, they took the easy route and slapped artificial warmonger penalties all over the place. As things stand right now, taking a city early carries extreme diplomatic penalties while late game conquest - which is already much easier tactically - is often overlooked as minor offense.

This made warmongering hate in its current form completely disconnected from reality and the reason it is argued every day in this forum. In the actual human history wars and conquests were plentiful in ancient era and were often a measure of how successful an empire was. As humanity progressed into later eras world became more civilised and war was frowned upon. What we have in Civ 5 now is a strange alternate universe where early conquest is a no-no, while modern war and genocide is totally acceptable as long as you keep everyone else happy by denouncing some other guy.

 

[CivAddict2013]

In my most current game, I attack Russia and took ONE CITY.

After that, it's just a DoW from Hiawatha every 10 turns.

The warmonger penalty is ridiculous.

War is how great empires like Rome and Greece were made.

But the solution is easy. Make it so that after X amount of years the penalty goes away.

The game is already good, but fixing the warmonger penalty will make it great.

 

[LoneRebel]

BNW has made further attempts to dissuade early warmongers so that everyone could enjoy later eras, idelogies and World Congress, but this time they've done it in the worst way possible. Instead of making early game conquest actually harder by further improving combat AI or city defenses, they took the easy route and slapped artificial warmonger penalties all over the place. As things stand right now, taking a city early carries extreme diplomatic penalties while late game conquest - which is already much easier tactically - is often overlooked as minor offense.

This made warmongering hate in its current form completely disconnected from reality and the reason it is argued every day in this forum. In the actual human history wars and conquests were plentiful in ancient era and were often a measure of how successful an empire was. As humanity progressed into later eras world became more civilised and war was frowned upon. What we have in Civ 5 now is a strange alternate universe where early conquest is a no-no, while modern war and genocide is totally acceptable as long as you keep everyone else happy by denouncing some other guy.

This is a very good post, and one I can agree with. In general the late game was always Civ5's best time for conquest because of artillery and rocket artillery and bombers and all that. Early game conquest was always more difficult (at least to me), and now they've gone and made it even more difficult.

I imagine it's an indirect nerf for civs with early game UUs, for one thing.

 

[Aristos]

In my most current game, I attack Russia and took ONE CITY.

After that, it's just a DoW from Hiawatha every 10 turns.

The warmonger penalty is ridiculous.

War is how great empires like Rome and Greece were made.

But the solution is easy. Make it so that after X amount of years the penalty goes away.

The game is already good, but fixing the warmonger penalty will make it great.

YOU attack Russia -> DoW warmonger penalty
YOU take a city --> Conqueror warmonger penalty

They accumulate.

YOU are a warmonger. What do you expect? A reception like the terrified Austrians gave to Hitler?

The WP penalty DOES go away after X years, I showed the code to you already somewhere in one of the many twin posts about this... will not do it again. Use search.

I, and others judging from many posts. have absolutely NO problem whatsoever in managing OUR warmongering... we are using the same game, same version, and breathing the same air. That means the difference can only be in our gameplay. In other words, if WE can, YOU can too. You just need to convince yourself, open up and try and learn something new (by testing, the most fun way of learning).

Right now, I am about to attack and conquer my northern neighbour (Poly); I already Dow them early on to prevent them from spamming cities in a beautiful valley between us. That succeeded, with only a minor penalty with Arabia, the powerful neighbour to the west, because I just kept Poly in check (and took his settlers )... now comes phase two, and I will finish him; I expect a major warmongering penalty for that, but will compensate in time with other means (diplo mainly). The conquest of the northern part of the continent will leave me with enough powerful cities and resources to aim at anything for victory. This is Immortal, mind you. It can be done.

In any case, if I decide to finally go Domination, then I am basically declaring myself a Warmonger, so I can only expect a treatment accordingly.

Logical. May need some fine tuning, but works as expected. And much better than the suicidal G&K and Vanilla AIs that made the game a walk in the park.

 

[baptismbyfire]

I really don't see it as a problem. I've warmongered in many games and suffered no unbearable penalties for it. If I am powerful enough, no civ is going to dare DoW me, so my trade routes are protected. If my trade routes are protected, I have the CS allies needed to prevent any embargo. Finally, if I think someone is going to vote to embargo me, I take them out of the game and they have no vote accordingly. Besides all that, I always liberate CS, because it is a free ally and I like them being in the game for all they can do for me, especially in the WC. The liberation bonus is pretty nice for that, even though it is generally not enough to rehabilitate my image since I'm clearly playing for blood.

 

[GhostSalsa]

YOU are a warmonger. What do you expect? A reception like the terrified Austrians gave to Hitler?

YOUUUUUU are the oh wait every AI conquers constantly at every opportunity. Oh wait we're applying human logic to a sociopathic flowchart. If the AI has any humanity it is complete evil. Every AI no matter their warmonger hate stat DOWs the moment someone else is weak.

It's ludicrous to dump the human player in this environment and punish them for playing along. It's a stressful and unpleasant player experience.

It's double-ludicrous to scold them like the game involves real morals. Tone down.

Logical. May need some fine tuning, but works as expected. And much better than the suicidal G&K and Vanilla AIs that made the game a walk in the park.

There were 1000s of other ways to make the game "not a walk in the park" before. Intentional slow teching, using under-power UUs for flavor, role-playing to help weaker AI friend civs. Making yourself weak before BNW was fun because if you got backed into a corner early game, you conquered your way out - which is not a walk in the park when you tech sub-optimally - without the world going nuclear on you.

This is all silly stuff, I know, to Deity players who are glad to have a new scam to play (setting up enemies to take down while pillaging same enemies constantly for 0 consequence) but the new warmonger penalty shuts off other players' ways to make the game fun.

It makes even-strength pre-industrial warfare completely impossible in the game. The only way to engage in even-strength pre-industrial warfare before BNW was to play on lower difficulties, tech slower, and attack a strong opponent. Which now currently will bring a warmonger penalty that destroys your entire diplomacy. Now the only way to war early is to tech efficiently and make an AI weak and well-hated, which is not even-strength and involves no use of period units like siege. It's completely un-immersive.

 

[CivAddict2013]

YOU attack Russia -> DoW warmonger penalty
YOU take a city --> Conqueror warmonger penalty

They accumulate.

YOU are a warmonger. What do you expect? A reception like the terrified Austrians gave to Hitler?

The WP penalty DOES go away after X years, I showed the code to you already somewhere in one of the many twin posts about this... will not do it again. Use search.

I, and others judging from many posts. have absolutely NO problem whatsoever in managing OUR warmongering... we are using the same game, same version, and breathing the same air. That means the difference can only be in our gameplay. In other words, if WE can, YOU can too. You just need to convince yourself, open up and try and learn something new (by testing, the most fun way of learning).

Right now, I am about to attack and conquer my northern neighbour (Poly); I already Dow them early on to prevent them from spamming cities in a beautiful valley between us. That succeeded, with only a minor penalty with Arabia, the powerful neighbour to the west, because I just kept Poly in check (and took his settlers )... now comes phase two, and I will finish him; I expect a major warmongering penalty for that, but will compensate in time with other means (diplo mainly). The conquest of the northern part of the continent will leave me with enough powerful cities and resources to aim at anything for victory. This is Immortal, mind you. It can be done.

In any case, if I decide to finally go Domination, then I am basically declaring myself a Warmonger, so I can only expect a treatment accordingly.

Logical. May need some fine tuning, but works as expected. And much better than the suicidal G&K and Vanilla AIs that made the game a walk in the park.

My problem is that if I take one city, just to expand my empire and I'm a warmonger, then I can't focus on anything but military.

If I want to go for a Science victory? No way. If I want to go for a culture victory? No way. If I attack one city, then the only thing I can do is focus on military. Or else, I can't keep up with the AI.

But really, it wouldn't be that bad if it weren't for one thing. The AI being able to get the newest units out of nowhere. It's like the game just gives the AI units out of nowhere to attack you with. I built the Terracota Army and still can't keep up on military.

Perhaps Hiawatha is just one of those Civs I should take out early?

Or maybe I should just wait until the later game to do warmongering?

 

[Aristos]

Well, first of all, the penalty applies to ALL civs, human or AI, without any distinction. It's in the code, and it's also easy to see during gameplay.

As for your approach, that "one city" you take may be a city too soon... early on, with a few cities, every city counts for a huge amount of "conqueror" WP... which adds to the DoW WP penalty if you were the one declaring war. If you are not playing for Domination, I would say that is a big no-no EARLY. Early wars should be wars of containment, not of conquest, with very few and specific exceptions (Domination V, or trying to secure a lonely island before other civs meet your island). Wars of containment are an indirect way of territory conquest, in which you fight to prevent the settler spam from succeeding (and taking some slaves in the process). That way, you keep your nasty neighbour at bay, feed from its human meat labour, and prepare for the second wave (conquest) by keeping him small and weak. In this way, you avoid the "conqueror" WP and only absorb the DoW penalty worst case, which is manageable.

Once in secondary phase, conquest of the neighbour, you can take all you want provided you have managed the rest of your diplomacy well enough to minimize the effect of the conquest WP. This includes, if possible, any liberation of cities or CS you do not want. Liberations are the counter to WP; if you can combine the liberations with an attack on a nasty neighbour, the better: you take what you want from the neighbour, and liberate the rest. Magic!

Bottom line, you just need to think a little more time, be a little more patient, and not just pull the trigger the moment you see something you want (territory). Keep the neighbour checked, at bay, small and weak, until the moment comes when the penalty will be diluted among a higher number of world cities. The end effect in terms of territory is the same, but without facing the world coalition.

Try out this and other ways. You will surely find one that fits your gameplay (only exception being the "happy trigger" approach of previous versions of Civ5).

One more thing: AI does not get new units "from nowhere". They are better at handling their money now (much better), in part thanks to the code making AIs more aware of their financial situation before declaring war silly nilly... they are probably buying the newest units when in need, or built them in advance planning an offensive against you. In this sense, use the UI mods available that make key information available to you (without cheating, only information that is normally available to you): that will make you play much better. Check out Enhanced User Interface (no cheating) and Global Relations (no cheating). If you want to really enhance your gameplay, try avoiding InfoAddict (cheating, presents information that is not even used by the AI when calculating strategies/plans/etc).

Hope it helps.

 

[nokmirt]

If you want a challenge against the new warmonger penalties try this...

Feed the Beast

The special rules for Feed the Beast are:

The game is played in phases:

Phase 1
- You have to become the absolute ruler on your own continent. This means you have to own all cities and be allied with all independent city states on your continent.

Phase 2
- In the first turn that you finished Phase 1 and have met all opponents, the "Beast" is defined. The Beast is the strongest civ at that turn (general score).
- You have to conquer all other civs except the Beast and gift all captured cities to the Beast in the same turn that a city is captured.
- This phase is finished when all cities on the other continent(s) are in possession of the Beast or they are independent city states allied with the Beast.
- If you are attacked by the Beast in Phase 2, you may defend but you may not take any cities from them.

Phase 3
- In the same turn that you finish Phase 2, you have to declare war onto the Beast and win a domination victory!

The ultimate goal
- Achieve world domination victory!

General remarks:
- The game is played on continents map, any size, pace or difficulty.
- Islands belong to the nearest continent.

I wonder if it is possible to win this now. It was with vanilla and G&K.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I don't know how to do it, therefore it is impossible because noone could possibly know more than me or be better than me at anything.

This sort of tom-foolery really detracts from legitimate issues like the one Paszczak raised, vis a vis the real world vs civ game violence/time graph.

 

[Aristos]

I wonder if it is possible to win this now. It was with vanilla and G&K.

No.

Now you have to own each capital, no matter who holds it. No more feeding the beast.

 

[LoneRebel]

Interesting. So would it be correct to say, based on all the discussion in this thread, that early conquest in BNW really isn't such a good idea anymore - even if you play peacefully for the rest of the game?

Because something I sometimes do in vanilla, is conquer a city or two in the early game, then play peacefully for the rest of the game. The purpose of the early conquest is not to go after a domination victory, but simply to improve my position early on, keeping in mind that the benefit of a city to you is greater the earlier you get that city. Especially capturing a capital early on is nice, given that capitals are usually in good places. Having gotten this early advantage through one early conquest, I then play peacefully and defensively for the rest of the game. So it seems this strategy wouldn't work so well in BNW, I suppose?

 

[nokmirt]

No.

Now you have to own each capital, no matter who holds it. No more feeding the beast.

In other words you can't give away capital cities?

 

[Browd]

Not if you are going for a domination victory. In BNW, dom requires that you own all of the original capitals. In vanilla and G&K, the requirement was just that you be the last civ in possession of your capital.

 

[nokmirt]

The rules state that you can get an original capital via diplomacy. Which means you can trade them if you wish.
So you can feed the beast via diplomacy the other capitals on it's continent. This will be harder because in the final war against the beast you have to conquer the three original capitals owned by the beast instead of just one. Before once you captured his capital you won a dom victory. Now you have to capture three to win.

 

[Aristos]

Interesting. So would it be correct to say, based on all the discussion in this thread, that early conquest in BNW really isn't such a good idea anymore - even if you play peacefully for the rest of the game?

Because something I sometimes do in vanilla, is conquer a city or two in the early game, then play peacefully for the rest of the game. The purpose of the early conquest is not to go after a domination victory, but simply to improve my position early on, keeping in mind that the benefit of a city to you is greater the earlier you get that city. Especially capturing a capital early on is nice, given that capitals are usually in good places. Having gotten this early advantage through one early conquest, I then play peacefully and defensively for the rest of the game. So it seems this strategy wouldn't work so well in BNW, I suppose?

It may still be a good idea but now you have to live (or in better words, plan ahead) with the consequences. Early conquest is not the easy ticket to victory anymore, that's probably why there is so much whining about it... but I would not discard the option as an absolute NO. Together with other factors, it has made the game much more situational, which is a good thing if you think "strategy game".

For example: say you see (because you are using heavy scouting, of course...) that some AI is clearly becoming the bully of the known world... pressing on CS, maybe attacking them, building up military... observing this, you may have a good bet on this AI conquering some CS or a city or two from another civ in the first half or earlier. That AI is now your "liberation campaign" target. Once you have a "liberator" target, you can also plan on taking that nasty neighbour's capital (even if he is not nasty ), and further down the road liberate a city or two from the "liberation" target to counter your initially huge WP... that is just one option of many.

Point is, player has to think more before just pulling the trigger and expecting an easy walk. That is good.

 

[sendos]

It would be nice if, paradoxically, there was also some diplo bonus for warmongering. For example, civs respect your might and would try not to piss you off until you got stronger. Or, instead of hatred, any civ that is near you would instead focus on building military in response to your warmongering but not consider denouncing you. As I mentioned a while back, Honor policy could be reformed to implement something like this or reduce warmonger penalty heavily.

 

[Aristos]

It would be nice if, paradoxically, there was also some diplo bonus for warmongering. For example, civs respect your might and would try not to piss you off until you got stronger. Or, instead of hatred, any civ that is near you would instead focus on building military in response to your warmongering but not consider denouncing you. As I mentioned a while back, Honor policy could be reformed to implement something like this or reduce warmonger penalty heavily.

That is already in the code, it's just not part of the feedback (well, it is in an indirect way), but the AI's change their stance according to military threat, among many other things. They are aware of your power (using exactly the same formula that the Military Advisor uses to suggest to the player, which is why I consider InfoAddict cheating), and adjust their stance accordingly.

 

[Ninakoru]

It's the same of always.

The penalty for conquering cities is a great idea, before we could easily work around warmonger penalties with two simple methods:

- Let the others declare war on you.
- Never conquer the last city of a civ.

Now we only have one way to work around:

- Get cities on peace deals.

Still if you go war by industrial and tie friends through ideologies, world congress and such, you can hold a minot hate within your allies.

However if you conquer a CS early, every other civ you know at that moment will hate you, same if you conquer one city early when most civs have 2-3 cities. To recover of that kind of hate you need to stay calm for about 250 turns, and of course be waiting with little to non-existant diplomacy, perma-denouncing and even some perma-war statuses.

They simply have overdone it, seems the game's complete now, so you only have the mods to cover that bad design. I made a "less warmonger hate" mod to make war more manageable for instance. Don't want to mod? play continent and war before meeting the other side, make use of the work arounds available... little more.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

However if you conquer a CS early, every other civ you know at that moment will hate you

That's always been there