Civ 5 Equivalent to America's Modern Wars

I've been doing more reading recently about America's post WWII wars, and how different they are than the wars that we were traditionally in. They may have some historic context (kind of colonization or putting in puppet governments to lesser developed countries or city-states), but the idea is that we've been fighting tons of "wars" where they're really us going in, dismantling a government, and then failing to rebuild their government, creating tons of fringe groups who hate us.

I'm kind of wondering what the equivalent to this is in Civ 5. I've thought of it as an empire fighting a city that was under puppet status from another empire (and it was a defeated empire), and then we go in and liberate it. It's just interesting that in the game, everything is peaches and roses when you do it, but in real life, it seems like these wars make you a warmonger.

Thoughts?

Iraq as barbarians to level up our soldiers.

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The movement of armed conflict to peripheral nations definitely took off during the Cold War. After atomics came online, the stakes were too high for great powers to fight directly. So we fight indirect wars in countries like Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan. As far as the foreign policy consequences that you speak of - I don't know. People hate being occupied, even if the occupier is there to "help".

I think the civ equivalent actually does happen. I DoW civ x because they are friends with my enemy civ y. I can't take out y (they have nukes and better tech) but I cripple their friend, civ x, and steal a march on civ y. It's not a common event, but the dynamic is there occasionally.

Late game control of WC votes required investment in city-states, as well as CS allies acting as naval bases, or being important for strategic resources (like BP in Iran, until a Soviet spy enacted a successful coup). This simulates Cold-War competition for control over strategically important regions and diplomatically important polities. Neo-colonialism is well represented by giving CSes big benefits to their allies and lots of strategic resources.
The tactical aspect I think is the most well-represented of any Civ title currently. The importance of a navy, and carriers, and the overall dominance of air-warfare over any other type are very representative. Politically speaking, the importance of a naval base is very stressed late game. I had a recent MP game as the Netherlands where I had a fair amount of isolation and thus had built no naval cities in the assumption I wouldn't need to attack anybody and was better suited protecting myself from frigate rushes. However late game, Maya player overtook me and I was beset by two of his coastal CS allies that were close to me. I took those out first and let an ally deal with the majority of Maya's land army and then I sent a bunch of internal trade to one of the newly annexed coastal CSes and hard built a carrier (a painstaking task). I was then able to launch a coherent offensive and I took a coastal city of the Maya, and used it as an airfield. My ally (Russia) and I were then able to push back the Maya from their conquered lands and we each divided the country. It was the most realistic modern war I'd ever experienced, with A) a gradual transition from importance on land troops to an importance in sea and air troops, B) proxy wars against CSes which gave me valuable naval bases, and C) a race to the atom bomb (Maya got there first and nuked a Russian city and army; I didn't get a chance to retaliate before sweeping Mayan lands with planes).
Overall, I think the OPness of planes, carriers, nukes, subs, battleships, and fortified infantry positions, all things that people complain about, are very historically supportive. My happiness and gold suffered as a result of the above war, but my production soared as I began to transition internal trade routes from food to hammers, representative of wartime industry and the effects of total war on a nation's domestic economy. Then, had the game dragged on, I'm sure CS would've been more important because of their huge resource advantages, strategic importance geographically, and votes in the WC. Invading a CS to remove a strategic resource and vote from an enemy is extremely representative of post-WWII proxy politics. I think the game overall does a good job, tactically, strategically, and politically, of representing modern warfare.

America, the Western nations in general don't really fight wars any more.

At this point, it's hard to say what we try to do, if you are looking at it in a cold-blooded Clausewitz kind of way.

We are perfectly happy to do drone strikes and kill people. More or less randomly if you are cynical about how good our field (and strategic intelligence is). If intelligence gathering involves any kind of "wetworks" or human interaction, well we suck at it. Aces at Satellite imagery and tapping phones. Suck at everything else.

So our drone strikes are of dubious use. And the War Nerd had a pretty convincing article once, that things like drone strikes... well far from being a deterrent it's actually what the Taliban/Isis/whatever actually want. If you are curious as to the rationale, he's an easy google.

The problem is our insular and myopic Western world view is. The world is full of Dido's, Genghis Khan's, Attila's, etc. But Westerners want to think that every world leader is Gandhi, and comes from a population and culture of Gandhi's.

So in essence even though the military gap between first world nations and say Afghani's (or Syrians or Iraqi's...) might be larger than in even the Maxim gun days, it's essentially useless.

Because unless you are going to be fairly ruthless, what we do and the weapons we use really aren't more useful than an AK-47.

If for some reason you ever wanted to see a full blown war with modern weapons, the only place it might possibly ever happen is India/Pakistan. Otherwise you see a whole lot of stuff like American misadventures in the Middle East, or something a little more interesting like the Ossetian incident a few years ago.

Then we get to nukes... Civ gives people the absolute wrong idea. Totally unusable weapons (yeah I know, could argue for pages and pages - but tell me the situation you think you could use a nuke to practice "diplomacy by other means."), but if both sides have them it makes things... so awkward.

But in Civ you can nuke away, like these are just a little higher damage conventional weapon with some fallout.

The thing is, you have to remember that most things in Civ are an abstraction. If you wanted a Civ5 representation of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, it would look something like this:

You're playing a powerful civ, probably 1st place in most demographics, and you attack the last place civ and quite easily destroy their military and conquer their cities. In doing so, however, your happiness plummets to below -10 and some rebels spawn. Then you have to deal with the rebels.

In fact, you could even construe the turns of civil unrest upon city capture as your local troops quelling the remnants of an insurgency. Civ5 doesn't directly deal with asymmetrical warfare, really. There's no Civ5 representation of using apaches to hunt down men running around in robes, carrying AKs. Civ only really depicts conventional warfare, and to some extent, nuclear war, with the one possible exception being barbarians/rebels.

Would be an interesting game mechanic if you got to control the units "gifted" to a cs to help their war effort. They would fight under the cs's banner but be under your control.

Callonia said:

Iraq as barbarians to level up our soldiers.

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For some reason my last response to this was removed so I'll repeat myself. Labelling an entire country as barbarians is very offensive. This forum is for Civ fans all around the World and you need to be careful in not labelling people from this country or that country as 'barbarians'.

Trackmaster said:

I've been doing more reading recently about America's post WWII wars, and how different they are than the wars that we were traditionally in.

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Your raise an interesting question. I think V is pretty much set in an alternative universe where war did not much change because of WWII.

I've thought of it as an empire fighting a city that was under puppet status from another empire (and it was a defeated empire), and then we go in and liberate it. It's just interesting that in the game, everything is peaches and roses when you do it, but in real life, it seems like these wars make you a warmonger.

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This begs the question, in games terms, of who did we liberate Iraq from?

For the sake of argument, using game terms, lets suppose Ottoman wiped out Persia, but a hundred turns later, all that is left of Ottoman is three cities in Iraq. America goes in and liberates those three cities, recalling Persia to life.

America gets some warmonger penalty reduction, but not enough to matter, given our earlier warmongering behavior in the game. Our friends like us more, and our enemies still hate us -- different ideologies and all that.

In game terms, peaches and roses as you say. Life in Persia sucks though, they are 100 turns behind everyone else. The game does not show you that, except that their city strength is so weak.

beetle said:

In game terms, peaches and roses as you say. Life in Persia sucks though, they are 100 turns behind everyone else. The game does not show you that, except that their city strength is so weak.

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Doesn't it, though? If a civ is wiped out in the Industrial Era, but then gets liberate in the Modern Era, don't they just pick up where they left off in the Industrial Era?

shaglio said:

...don't they just pick up where they left off in the Industrial Era?

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Yes, exactly. It kind of sucks to be either the Ottoman or Persian player in my example. The American player is fine. The real life scenario is terrible for everyone involved, but -- as much as it is all abstracted into civ 5 game play -- is there any noticeable impact for George Washington?

noto2 said:

If you wanted a Civ5 representation of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, it would look something like this:
You're playing a powerful civ, probably 1st place in most demographics, and you attack the last place civ and quite easily destroy their military and conquer their cities. In doing so, however, your happiness plummets to below -10 and some rebels spawn. Then you have to deal with the rebels.
In fact, you could even construe the turns of civil unrest upon city capture as your local troops quelling the remnants of an insurgency.

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The only problem with your example is that leaves America with puppet cities in Iraq. Now, maybe that is fair representation of real life a much as the game abstraction allows for, but I don’t think so. Far-away puppet cities causing Global Unhappiness for the empire fits, but the civ model has puppet cities becoming active contributors and full members of the conquering empire.

beetle said:

Yes, exactly. It kind of sucks to be either the Ottoman or Persian player in my example. The American player is fine. The real life scenario is terrible for everyone involved, but -- as much as it is all abstracted into civ 5 game play -- is there any noticeable impact for George Washington?

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I think I misinterpreted your post:

beetle said:

In game terms, peaches and roses as you say. Life in Persia sucks though, they are 100 turns behind everyone else. The game does not show you that, except that their city strength is so weak.

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By "that" I thought you were referring to "they are 100 turns behind everyone else" rather than the paragraph above that one.

If for some reason you ever wanted to see a full blown war with modern weapons, the only place it might possibly ever happen is India/Pakistan.

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I hope the world leaders don't operate under this dangerous assumption. One unforeseen major disaster and a regional power grab is all it might take.

But in Civ you can nuke away, like these are just a little higher damage conventional weapon with some fallout.

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Their in-game impact is on that order, so the in-game reaction/usage is appropriate. They wouldn't be so taboo in real life if their effects were limited to that; they'd be viewed on the same scale as any other major bombing. From a play balance perspective, they are outcome-altering as-is, so a case could be made to tone them down, but between bombers/late game units in general they're probably ok.

As for wars in the past 60ish years, the game doesn't represent them well, and arguably in a title that covers all of human history and given their significance wrt changing world borders, you can basically abstract them out. We're talking about a game where having more than 10 cities is rare-ish until a mid-late conquest spree, representing limited war with no cities changing hands that would last a scale of a couple turns in-game isn't something that works well within the design.

beetle said:

Yes, exactly. It kind of sucks to be either the Ottoman or Persian player in my example. The American player is fine. The real life scenario is terrible for everyone involved, but -- as much as it is all abstracted into civ 5 game play -- is there any noticeable impact for George Washington?


The only problem with your example is that leaves America with puppet cities in Iraq. Now, maybe that is fair representation of real life a much as the game abstraction allows for, but I don’t think so. Far-away puppet cities causing Global Unhappiness for the empire fits, but the civ model has puppet cities becoming active contributors and full members of the conquering empire.

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Lol actually I was thinking more along the lines of razing them. Either way, you're right, it doesn't fit, but razing for a few turns and then handing them back in a peace deal is probably a closer analogy

You could re-enact Iraq in a scenario but a world scenario would probably be too large for the game to handle well.

Also considering that nukes in civ 5 have no real adverse effects and going nuke happy is often a winning strategy I don't know about realism here.

An interesting scenario might be to play as Iraq as of 2012 or so. But historical scenarios like ww2 might be more interesting anyway.

TheMeInTeam said:

I hope the world leaders don't operate under this dangerous assumption. One unforeseen major disaster and a regional power grab is all it might take.



Their in-game impact is on that order, so the in-game reaction/usage is appropriate. They wouldn't be so taboo in real life if their effects were limited to that; they'd be viewed on the same scale as any other major bombing. From a play balance perspective, they are outcome-altering as-is, so a case could be made to tone them down, but between bombers/late game units in general they're probably ok.

As for wars in the past 60ish years, the game doesn't represent them well, and arguably in a title that covers all of human history and given their significance wrt changing world borders, you can basically abstract them out. We're talking about a game where having more than 10 cities is rare-ish until a mid-late conquest spree, representing limited war with no cities changing hands that would last a scale of a couple turns in-game isn't something that works well within the design.

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I don't know, I think that nukes really suck in the game. You're rolling along, doing well, and then all of a sudden at a moment's notice if they have a city in range, they can level half of your population of a city, take out all your improvements, and take a swipe at your military. I think it mimics real life that they usually won't use nukes against you unless you really have them cornered and they have no other option.

And in real life, the Cold War had us thinking that there was this one Dr. Evil device that would take out the world, but really the idea of ending the world was really off of a domino theory. Practically, nukes could take swipes at some cities, but it would really take a lot to take out the whole world. And seeing how the entire world freaks out and changes their FB picture when just 10-20 people die from terrorism, I think that 1/2 of a city losing its population scare people enough to really put down arms.