Ah new warmonger hate.

Yeah, a casus belli system might help to justify some of the wars, like if the enemy was forward settling, or spreading his religion too aggressively, or, worst of all, actually declared war on you first. The warmonger penalty should be less in those cases. (I think it already is if the enemy declared on you first, but I'm not sure about that).

Then again, as Victoria 2 illustrates, wiping out a warmonger is a good casus belli in itself.

Actually, there was a period there around G&K (either just before or just after) where you saw numerical modifiers when mousing over AI status (like -3 for Asked them to not Settle near you and +1 for Declaration of Friendship).

yeah, which they removed to make the system less gamey, and more like you're interacting with people who aren't quite as transparent. And that's fine. My real issue is with justification of war.

I had one marathon game not long ago, I was peaceful all the way up until the industrial era. Then someone within my group of "allies" declared war on someone else within the group, backstabbing them in the process. Because I had a defensive pact with them, it called me into the war as well, which was fine. The trouble was, it registered as me declaring war on the aggressor, not as me being called into a defensive war. Because they had been a friend, it qualified me as backstabbing them.
As a result it ruined my spotless reputation and plunged the world into a global war as their paragon of peace had apparently turned into the biggest tyrant in the world for legally entering a war against a dishonest state on an ally's side.

Like, that isn't right at all. If they're going to try and control diplomacy with these kinds of things, they need a set of laws for nations to abide by, like the casus beli system. Otherwise it's just a chaotic nonsensical mess.
People's opinions of things should be nebulous, but the rules, or laws should be precisely stated and wars should be qualified based on their justification in such a way as to remove any doubt as to the declarer's intention. Whether countries agree with that justification, and whether the declarer abides by that initial goal to maintain their integrity and keep the war "legal" is up to them. But at least then it's clear when someone is a rampaging monster, or a reasonable civilized nation.

These warmonger penalties have no idea what's going on.

Actuallly, the issue in that case isn't the warmonger penalty, it's the one for backstabbing.

well, yes, but what I'm saying is, Firaxis needs to implement a solid system to govern these dynamics rather than these individual patchwork exceptions which only accomplish what they were intended to in very simple and basic circumstances.

LoneRebel said:

Yeah, a casus belli system might help to justify some of the wars, like if the enemy was forward settling, or spreading his religion too aggressively, or, worst of all, actually declared war on you first. The warmonger penalty should be less in those cases. (I think it already is if the enemy declared on you first, but I'm not sure about that).

Then again, as Victoria 2 illustrates, wiping out a warmonger is a good casus belli in itself.

Click to expand...

I never palyed europea universal but I heard that you need a reason to go to war you can't just declare war or else you get a penalty

I would like to see something in civ 5 like when the AI :
atacks you're city states you can declare war
ignores a promise like : not settling near you , keeps sending missionaries, Keeps stealing you have the option to declare war withouth penalty.

Makes sence right? And the world will know why you did it.

It could olso be easy fixed to let AI ignore warmonger penalties if the AI and you have denouced the target. a common enemy.

Abraxis said:

Has Firaxis ever mentioned anything about implementing a casus belli system into future iterations? Before, I could understand them not wanting to do it in order to keep diplomacy relatively simple. Now, adding in all these messy exceptions to try and patch up the problem areas is just creating more problems that need more jury rigging...

If they havn't already considered reworking it... I hope they do. Wars and diplomacy just feel so empty compared to Europa Universalis, and this warmonger stuff is awfully contrived for what it offers to the experience.

Click to expand...

They've undoubtedly seen it requested; I can't imagine it would complicate diplomacy since, say, CK II has a cassus belli system, but its diplomacy system is so rudimentary it makes Total War's seem sophisticated.

It would help with AI prioritising and decision-making if cassus belli could be announced against specific cities, and peace breaks out when the objective is achieved (this is why CK II implements it - it avoids AI problems by removing AI decision-making), but there's a more fundamental constraint set simply by the way the Civilization series works.

Why do you go to war in Civ? To capture stuff - that's it. It might be a nice resource, a key Wonder, or an attractive city. There is no player advantage to going to war just because the other guy attacked a third party, or because he won't stop spamming missionaries at you, characterful as it may be - a cassus bellis that allowed it would be functionally pointless. About the only practical exception is if you can declare war to protect a city-state (and I'm not sure how the new system implements it, but in G&K you could declare war without a universal warmonger penalty if you asked a civ to stop bullying a city-state and they refused).

Nor is there much point to wars that don't capture territory. And most of the valid reasons for going to war - to seize territory - are things it's quite reasonable for the AI to dislike you for.

Fundamentally, Civ needs a more sophisticated warfare system before a cassus belli system would be more than entertaining roleplaying (not that entertaining roleplaying is not a reason to implement it in itself).