Perhaps my most hated feature of both civ5 and civ6 is warmongering penalties. You conquer some random civ nobody cares about and everyone is neutral about, in the ancient age, and the world hates you for it. For ages. Even better, you defend yourself from foreign agression, enemy (whom nobody cares about) just stubbornly refuses to peace out (or it's obvious he'll threaten you again even if you peace him out), you pre emptively take him out, the world hates you for your it.
This is enormously frustrating from gameplay perspective, one of the most infuriating and game ruining things in both games, but I especially hate it because it is one of those deceptively smart, realistic ideas, that always get defenders no matter how frustrating and nonsensical they are, because supposedly they are how history works. Well, it isn't. I am absolutely convinced that warmongering relations penalties as they work in civ5-6 are completely unrealistic and this is not how history of foreign relations works at all. It is a frustrating gameplay mechanic which has absolutely no basis in reality before 20th century, and even then mainly among democracies. It comes from the horrible mistake one can do regarding history, namely using modern day moral constructs and ideologies such as modern day millenial liberal pacifism and assuming they are some sort of universal constant, just one of culturally universal human approaches to stuff.
For almost the entire human history nobody gave a damn if countries conquered each other as long as
1) They didn't encroach on our vital geopolitical interests
2) They didn't attack our really beloved buddies, brethren etc
3) They didn't became a threat to our immediate surroundings
Using civ5-6 logic: Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great, Maurya, Chinese dynasties, Roman Empire, Islamic Caliphates, Mongols, Timurids, British Empire etc should have faced global moral outrage, almost everybody should have hated them, refused to deal with them etc. This has never happened. This hasn't even happened with Napoleon and Hitler. All those empires and conquerors had a ton of allies, a ton of faraway third state actors that didn't care, a ton of admirers who respected their might etc. They have only faced hatred from countries that felt threatened by them, or whose very specific emotional triggers were activated (ruining our religion, attacking our traditional allies, breaching our taboos etc).
The moral outrage of civ5 - 6, where every historical leader is a universal millenial woke liberal pacifist who hates war for purely moral reasons is simply not present in the history of geopolitics of empires, and in the history of morality in general. In Christian Europe there were in theory some rules against attacking fellow Christians, but most of the time everybody disregarded them anyway, and there were barely any vestigial theories of international law regarding dealing with 'pagans' at all. Revolutionary and Napoleonic France faced coalitions because they destabilized status quo and endangered other monarchies, not because of love for pacifism; they also had a lot of supporters and allies (for example Polish people adored Napoleon), while the way it works in civ5-6 is universal moral outrage. This is simply nonsense. What does matter most 90% of time is realpolitik of what is in our political interest, and remaining 10% is other historical moral values, mainly religious and loyalty stuff, but definitely not some universal pacifism which is a modern day liberal philosophical construct which shouldn't be applied before the modern era. And said modern era featured two world wars and like 150 other wars.
So, here is my suggestion. Let's remove all warmongering penalties, the very concept itself, in the sense of 'moral outrage at the very fact someone conquers someone, no matters whom and where, because war is bad'. Countries which should hate 'warmongers' should be precisely those that feel threatened by them, which are their direct neighbours, which have conflicting interests, which are rivals - and this should be done using entirely different diplomatic subsystems, not blanket 'war is bad the world hates you'. The rest of the world should largely not care at all, just like in real history and even real modern world. In fact, some countries should admire grand conquests and congratulate for them, if we are going to be realistic.
"But Krajzen, what about curbing snowballing, what about balance?"
1) The present system already sucks and doesn't work in this regard at all, it is just enormously frustrating and immersion breaking, all those countries that denounce you from across the globe are just annoying and ruining the mood, they were never capable of stopping snowballing anyway. So we don't lose much, and we don't lose anything if instead there are coalitions but only of neighbors who feel threatened, who are the only ones actually capable of invading the player anyway. We don't gain anything in balance from the hatred of emppires 5000km away because you conquered somebody they never cared about.
2) The real soul of snowballing is the development system and lack of internal stability mechanics, which make large empires perfectly stable and countries behing incapable of catching up and reaching major players. The only real way to deal with snowballing is by designing fundamental mechanics in those areas - civ6 has already proved that you can slap however many shallow 'anti snowball mechanics' on top of the game as you want (hello golden ages and emergencies), they don't change anything if this very core is not designed around dynamism, instability and catching up.
In my perfect 4X game you can do pro gamer Alexander the Great move and create very big empire very fast, and most of the world doesn't hate you just for that, but the real challenge is actually keeping it together and managing to benefit from it, and that factor curbs snowballing.
This is enormously frustrating from gameplay perspective, one of the most infuriating and game ruining things in both games, but I especially hate it because it is one of those deceptively smart, realistic ideas, that always get defenders no matter how frustrating and nonsensical they are, because supposedly they are how history works. Well, it isn't. I am absolutely convinced that warmongering relations penalties as they work in civ5-6 are completely unrealistic and this is not how history of foreign relations works at all. It is a frustrating gameplay mechanic which has absolutely no basis in reality before 20th century, and even then mainly among democracies. It comes from the horrible mistake one can do regarding history, namely using modern day moral constructs and ideologies such as modern day millenial liberal pacifism and assuming they are some sort of universal constant, just one of culturally universal human approaches to stuff.
For almost the entire human history nobody gave a damn if countries conquered each other as long as
1) They didn't encroach on our vital geopolitical interests
2) They didn't attack our really beloved buddies, brethren etc
3) They didn't became a threat to our immediate surroundings
Using civ5-6 logic: Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great, Maurya, Chinese dynasties, Roman Empire, Islamic Caliphates, Mongols, Timurids, British Empire etc should have faced global moral outrage, almost everybody should have hated them, refused to deal with them etc. This has never happened. This hasn't even happened with Napoleon and Hitler. All those empires and conquerors had a ton of allies, a ton of faraway third state actors that didn't care, a ton of admirers who respected their might etc. They have only faced hatred from countries that felt threatened by them, or whose very specific emotional triggers were activated (ruining our religion, attacking our traditional allies, breaching our taboos etc).
The moral outrage of civ5 - 6, where every historical leader is a universal millenial woke liberal pacifist who hates war for purely moral reasons is simply not present in the history of geopolitics of empires, and in the history of morality in general. In Christian Europe there were in theory some rules against attacking fellow Christians, but most of the time everybody disregarded them anyway, and there were barely any vestigial theories of international law regarding dealing with 'pagans' at all. Revolutionary and Napoleonic France faced coalitions because they destabilized status quo and endangered other monarchies, not because of love for pacifism; they also had a lot of supporters and allies (for example Polish people adored Napoleon), while the way it works in civ5-6 is universal moral outrage. This is simply nonsense. What does matter most 90% of time is realpolitik of what is in our political interest, and remaining 10% is other historical moral values, mainly religious and loyalty stuff, but definitely not some universal pacifism which is a modern day liberal philosophical construct which shouldn't be applied before the modern era. And said modern era featured two world wars and like 150 other wars.
So, here is my suggestion. Let's remove all warmongering penalties, the very concept itself, in the sense of 'moral outrage at the very fact someone conquers someone, no matters whom and where, because war is bad'. Countries which should hate 'warmongers' should be precisely those that feel threatened by them, which are their direct neighbours, which have conflicting interests, which are rivals - and this should be done using entirely different diplomatic subsystems, not blanket 'war is bad the world hates you'. The rest of the world should largely not care at all, just like in real history and even real modern world. In fact, some countries should admire grand conquests and congratulate for them, if we are going to be realistic.
"But Krajzen, what about curbing snowballing, what about balance?"
1) The present system already sucks and doesn't work in this regard at all, it is just enormously frustrating and immersion breaking, all those countries that denounce you from across the globe are just annoying and ruining the mood, they were never capable of stopping snowballing anyway. So we don't lose much, and we don't lose anything if instead there are coalitions but only of neighbors who feel threatened, who are the only ones actually capable of invading the player anyway. We don't gain anything in balance from the hatred of emppires 5000km away because you conquered somebody they never cared about.
2) The real soul of snowballing is the development system and lack of internal stability mechanics, which make large empires perfectly stable and countries behing incapable of catching up and reaching major players. The only real way to deal with snowballing is by designing fundamental mechanics in those areas - civ6 has already proved that you can slap however many shallow 'anti snowball mechanics' on top of the game as you want (hello golden ages and emergencies), they don't change anything if this very core is not designed around dynamism, instability and catching up.
In my perfect 4X game you can do pro gamer Alexander the Great move and create very big empire very fast, and most of the world doesn't hate you just for that, but the real challenge is actually keeping it together and managing to benefit from it, and that factor curbs snowballing.