AI getting away with warmongering, this NEEDS to be fixed.

Txurce said:

Yes, and every single time experienced players have shown how the "problem" can be avoided. Just because people keep posting about it doesn't make it any more of a coding issue. This particular thread hasn't even focused on the various diplomatic solutions to AI aggression... or the fact that some AI tend to denounce all serial aggressors (including Askia). There are more than enough resources in CFC to show anyone how to deal with situations like the OP's. You don't have to use them, and you have every right to complain over and over again... but don't expect Firaxis to address your problem just because you do.

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exactly. I used to have a problem with the warmonger penalty until it was explained to me how the AI thinks and works and then I had no problem with it. It's another part of the game, to be played with from the word go so in the event of war, the world is on your side. On a logical basis, Browd as nailed, as he usually does.

In any case, all OP and apocalpyse seem to do is complain about the warmonger penalty, so even if there was a problem, it's a boy who cried wolf scenario

LoneRebel said:

The warmonger penalty is higher for taking cities (even if you didn't start the war) then for actually declaring war in the first place. Yes, I know it can seem unfair. I'm the sort of person whose way of thinking is "I want to live peacefully with everybody, but if someone attacks me despite that, I'll make them pay for it." So I can see the merits of making it so that other AIs are more tolerant of you taking enemy cities if said enemy started the war. They were asking for it!

However, Browd's post above humorously illustrates the problem with that way of thinking.

So yeah, one way around it is not to take his cities, and only defend yourself. If your defense is good, his constant wars will mean nothing but free XP for your troops, and may even slow down his progress in other areas. For example, I had a game where I was Persia on a Pangaea, and settled a city in a very good spot coveted by Russia, Greece, and Japan. The result was literally millennia of constant warfare, with all three civs declaring war on me, making peace after a while, and then declaring war again. Japan in particular was worrisome - they had a massive empire that covered most of the center of the supercontinent. However, none of them ever sent enough force to take that city.

But I see the problem there - what if you don't want to fight the same guy over and over again for three thousand years? If you don't take his cities, he'll just rebuild and attack you again. So I can see both sides of the argument.

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If Japan was involved, no surprises there. I found out that only way to permenantly end war with Japan (which usually starts at turn 15-20 ) is to capture all of his cities and leave him with one snow city. If not, Oda will either keep attacking every ten turns when peace is off, or keep spamming you with his cities, placing them right next to yours (which is even more annoying them war itself).

Burn (Y)Oda, burn!

NOBODY gets away with anything. There is NOTHING in the code that discriminates human from cyber players. NOTHING (well, to be truthful, only two small things, one of them in favour of the human, but none of them influencing general diplo behaviour).

Your timing is probably wrong in many senses. When to do more aggressive things and when not, and especially, how much to wait to see the effects of ALL actions in the game. DoW's do not entail as much Warmonger penalty as taking cities, for example. Yet the effects are there, and if the AI civ continues to be aggressive, in time the other AI civs will deal with it. You just need to know, wait and use the situation.

Be patient. And learn the mechanism to use it to your advantage.

CivAddict2013 said:

I guess so. But based on what you guys have said, maybe next time I'll just fight him off and not take his cities.

I do feel that it's unfair he gets away with the DoW though. There's something wrong if he DoW's me, bullies a city state and gets off scott free.

So next time I'll probably just not take his cities.

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Basically, yes, not taking a ton of cities by force is the right strategy. Two things, first of all, you get a relatively big warmonger penalty for taking cities, and a very minimal one for declaring war. Having someone declare war on you is not, I repeat, NOT an invitation to conquer all of their cities. The world sided with Askia because your army came in and conquered their cities, not because Askia was an AI.

Secondly, being completely passive diplomatically or making declarations of friendship with everyone are ways to eventually become ganged up on. Doing nothing on the international stage means that most civs won't hate you at first, but also won't feel overly compelled to stand up for you in international disputes. One way I manage diplomacy is by immediately choosing civs I like and civs I don't like at the start of the game, and that can form a pretty good alliance until ideologies come in to play. Give the civs you like your excess luxury resources when they ask for it after you declare friendship, try to bribe them in to any wars you plan on getting in (or bribe the guy you're going to war with to declare war with them), try to share a religion with these civs, and trade with them often. If a civ you haven't interacted with much sees you warmongering, the warmongering penalty will be very strong, but if they like you for other reasons, that can offset their dislike of your warmongering.

Also, in BNW, you can make a rough calculation of warmonger hate whenever you take a city. The game will tell you whether you're getting a minor or major diplo penalty for taking cities. If an enemy has a small number of cities and you want a city, try your best to destroy their army and make them feel hopeless, and they will give you the city in a peace treaty. Since you don't commit slaughter (killing half the city's population) while getting cities in peace treaties, you will end up with much better cities and no diplo penalty this way.

redwings1340 said:

One way I manage diplomacy is by immediately choosing civs I like and civs I don't like at the start of the game, and that can form a pretty good alliance until ideologies come in to play. Give the civs you like your excess luxury resources when they ask for it after you declare friendship, try to bribe them in to any wars you plan on getting in (or bribe the guy you're going to war with to declare war with them), try to share a religion with these civs, and trade with them often. If a civ you haven't interacted with much sees you warmongering, the warmongering penalty will be very strong, but if they like you for other reasons, that can offset their dislike of your warmongering.

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agree. It's a good choice to pick either "friendly" civs like India, Byzantium or pick those that are far away from you (like Huns being on the other side of the map).

btw, why does AI sometimes refuses to accept peace? I played with Zulu, Germany was above me. We clashed about territory - he spawned near mt. Kilimanjaro, so I rushed settler to take that spot (Impis with Altitude ) and naturally we clashed about the territory\boarders.

So Bismark declared war on me, but of course my Impis\Composites grind his armies and I knock down Berlin to red. I tried to offer him peace, but he simply refused (he just kept telling me we have score to settle). I waited few turns, but he still won't sue for peace, even tho Berlin was dropped to 1hp, he had no army, I pillage all of his titles and I conquered his second city and burned down 3rd?

and it's not like I asked for peace after 3-4 turn, we fought around 15-20 turns?

So I decided to take Berlin and eliminate Bismark. I plan to take over the world anyway, it doesn't matter if I get "warmonger" penalty now or 20 turns later. (Byzantium and Ottomans spawned next to me, and they are doing nothing as usually)

Browd said:

Two scenarios:

1. Your next door neighbor punches you in the mouth one morning. In response, you punch him back, knock him out, sever his left leg, gouge out both of his eyes, and announce to your neighbors that you're going to keep the leg and the eyes. When neighbors express alarm, you reply "He started it, and I was just defending myself." Neighbors begin talking about how to deal with you before you turn on them.

2. Your next door neighbor punches you in the mouth one morning. In response, you punch him back, and after some skirmishing, he agrees to give you his new riding lawn mower and $1,000 in cash. The rest of your neighbors think your next door neighbor is nuts and got what he deserved.

You can manage other AI reactions by exercising calculated restraint. Review this thread for a great discussion of how to war without diplo penalties: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=516305

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+1

There is no better analogy to describe this thread than this.

njmfff said:

agree. It's a good choice to pick either "friendly" civs like India, Byzantium or pick those that are far away from you (like Huns being on the other side of the map).

btw, why does AI sometimes refuses to accept peace? I played with Zulu, Germany was above me. We clashed about territory - he spawned near mt. Kilimanjaro, so I rushed settler to take that spot (Impis with Altitude ) and naturally we clashed about the territory\boarders.

So Bismark declared war on me, but of course my Impis\Composites grind his armies and I knock down Berlin to red. I tried to offer him peace, but he simply refused (he just kept telling me we have score to settle). I waited few turns, but he still won't sue for peace, even tho Berlin was dropped to 1hp, he had no army, I pillage all of his titles and I conquered his second city and burned down 3rd?

and it's not like I asked for peace after 3-4 turn, we fought around 15-20 turns?

So I decided to take Berlin and eliminate Bismark. I plan to take over the world anyway, it doesn't matter if I get "warmonger" penalty now or 20 turns later. (Byzantium and Ottomans spawned next to me, and they are doing nothing as usually)

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Sometimes the AI hates you enough - prior wars, amount of damage done, or something else - that they would rather die than make peace. It doesn't happen a lot, though.

thelesserevil said:

They like Askia, they don't like you. Other Civs' opinion of you can make ALL the difference when it comes to whether or not they'll denounce you, or if you'll even get a significant warmongering penalty.

In a fairly recent game, I played as China and got into a war with Mongolia repeatedly, once because Assyria suggested it, and later on because I didn't like where they'd settled one of their cities. The denunciations came pouring in from all over the world, but all of them were aimed at Mongolia. I conquered most of his cities, but he got all the hate simply because they liked me a lot better.

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Hmm, so is there less of a penalty for taking cities if everyone hates the Civ? I might try to attack the guy everyone hates then.

CivAddict2013 said:

Hmm, so is there less of a penalty for taking cities if everyone hates the Civ? I might try to attack the guy everyone hates then.

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Yes, attack the hated civs first, and the others won't hate you as much for it. I don't specifically know if the penalty for taking cities is less against a hated civ; perhaps others can answer that. Of course, if you're going for domination, you'll have to attack everybody eventually, so yeah...

And try to get allies before declaring war. I think this works even if they declared war on you first; try to get a third civ to join you. They can't very well denounce you for warmongering if they're in the war themselves. Have you noticed that the AI often asks you to join them in war, even if they can easily handle it on their own? This is what they're doing. Try to do as they do.

Oh, and another thing, denounce a civ before you declare war on them. That seems to help.

njmfff said:

If Japan was involved, no surprises there. I found out that only way to permenantly end war with Japan (which usually starts at turn 15-20 ) is to capture all of his cities and leave him with one snow city. If not, Oda will either keep attacking every ten turns when peace is off, or keep spamming you with his cities, placing them right next to yours (which is even more annoying them war itself).

Burn (Y)Oda, burn!

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This game I mentioned took place in vanilla. Good to see that Oda's warmongering, forward-settling ways haven't changed.

But njmff's post raises another question that I'd like to see answered by the veterans here (although it's probably material enough for a different thread all on its own). How do you deal with the forward settlers? You know, those civs that have the temerity to plant cities near yours, and THEN declare war on YOU? And even the ones that don't declare war on you - those are actually worse since you have to do it yourself and get the penalty.

Either way, the problem is the same. The only way to get rid of those forward-settled cities is to take them from him, which will hit you with the warmongering penalty, despite the fact that he settled right beside you in the first place, which is something the other AIs should be able to understand, since they don't like it either when you (the human) do it to them. How does one deal with this?

LoneRebel said:

But njmff's post raises another question that I'd like to see answered by the veterans here (although it's probably material enough for a different thread all on its own). How do you deal with the forward settlers? You know, those civs that have the temerity to plant cities near yours, and THEN declare war on YOU? And even the ones that don't declare war on you - those are actually worse since you have to do it yourself and get the penalty.

Either way, the problem is the same. The only way to get rid of those forward-settled cities is to take them from him, which will hit you with the warmongering penalty, despite the fact that he settled right beside you in the first place, which is something the other AIs should be able to understand, since they don't like it either when you (the human) do it to them. How does one deal with this?

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This basically falls under the category of tough luck. Having said that, your choices are to 1) accept their encroachment, 2) get them to DoW you, and then take the city either by treaty or in a war where you have allies, or 3) capture the settler.

Option #3 is by far the best, since it gets you a free worker and cripples the AI's expansion, and there is very little diplo penalty (or none, if you haven't met anyone else yet). This is an argument for building an extra unit or two if you notice Mr. I Like To Sit On You Lap spawning a bit to close to you.

LoneRebel said:

The only way to get rid of those forward-settled cities is to take them from him, which will hit you with the warmongering penalty, despite the fact that he settled right beside you in the first place, which is something the other AIs should be able to understand, since they don't like it either when you (the human) do it to them. How does one deal with this?

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Txurce said:

This basically falls under the category of tough luck. Having said that, your choices are to 1) accept their encroachment, 2) get them to DoW you, and then take the city either by treaty or in a war where you have allies, or 3) capture the settler.

Option #3 is by far the best, since it gets you a free worker and cripples the AI's expansion, and there is very little diplo penalty (or none, if you haven't met anyone else yet). This is an argument for building an extra unit or two if you notice Mr. I Like To Sit On You Lap spawning a bit to close to you.

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Nope.

Option #4 is the best: proactively working to block any incoming settlers. I do not mean blocking with culture, but with maneuvering units. You may use a rule of thumb: minimum 3 units per potential forward settler... it takes work and scouting, but it pays tenfold its price in units and micromanagement. No need to attack, no need to take cities and burn them, and control of the real estate you aimed for after scouting phase is over.

This is based on the "I-am-not-sure-if-well-known" fact that settlers cannot pass through other units.

THIS is the way to go.

It seems the only way to avoid the AI ganging up on you is to just not go wide. No matter what you do in this game, the AI will flip on you eventually if you're doing better than them. I'm friends with Ethiopia and Brazil the whole game.

Late game? They suddenly turn on me.

It's unavoidable. I think I'm just going to go with the mindset of "screw diplomacy" and I'm just going to have a huge army defending my borders.

can anybody confirm this by the way

I had assyria steal a second from me a third time while I asked them not to spy on me and they agreeded there was a option to denounce them
a few turns later it happens again and i have the option to declare war I did .

I know can take cities with minor warmonger penalties suddenly.

Does this means if the Ai lies about tech stealing you have a less warmonger penalty?

Assyria now has a few more cities so taking 1 city wont matter that much. If you want to really know what the world thinks of Assyria denounce them. Any civs who don't like him will let you know, even if they haven't denounced Assyria themselves. Later on or even next turn those civs may denounce Assyria themselves. If that happens bribing them into war with Assryia should be cheaper, which results in half warmonger score with them when you do take that Assyrian city.

The way this mechanic works is actually super abstract. It's most definitely a "gaming" mechanism, it really can't be compared to reality. The AI doesn't act this way because it is trying to "win" but for the same reasons it "likes" you for doing stuff like spreading your religion to them, which is just something there to give the player a sense of a role playing experience. The AI is partially strategic but also partially playing a character. Whether the system works is a matter of debate. Personally I think it has a number of issues.

Some of the weirder nuances of the system that aren't obvious right away include:

If you conquer Civ B while you have a Declaration of Friendship with Civ A (or perhaps if you have a very good relationship in general), Civ B more less ignores your aggression, but only for the duration of the friendship. In actual fact, they will eventually be angry about what you did, but only once you are no longer friends. Maybe it's long term regret, who knows. But you don't really get a free pass on the aggression it's just not immediately apparent they are angry. So sometimes when a DoF drops you immediately get denounced.

You also get a 50% discount on how much hatred you earn if you conquer a city while Civ B is at war with Civ A. But they have to be in a literal war on the exact turn you take the city or you get burned. If you are one turn from taking a city and Civ B declares peace, you take the full penalty, unless you are also friends, in which case, see above.

If you are one turn from taking a city from Civ A and Civ B sails into view on the same turn and makes introductions, taking Civ A's city has a HUGE diplo hit because you have no relationship with Civ B yet at all. Players on Pangea are much less likely to experience this. On huge or Continents style maps it is very apparent. The worst is when you are close to taking a city and someone founds the World Congress. I once got World War declared on me this way, when someone founded the Congress and 6 new civs suddenly cared about my war with the Ottomans. AI civs blunder into this penalty constantly.

If Civ A has exactly one city, and Civ B has exactly 1 city, and they war with each other the world does not care... until the moment one or the other of them takes a capital, when suddenly they are a world villain. The AI is not smart enough to know not to do this and will blunder right into world condemnation, while simultaneously being angry at other civs that do the same thing. If the AI made any sense at all, it would never declare war on anyone with fewer than 5 or 6 cities until after around turn 200 when it has a firm relationships with the rest of the world. But the AI, as hypersensitive as it is about other civs taking cities, is oblivious to the sky high penalties it will incur when it does the same thing.

There is no special diplo penalty as far as I can tell for taking a Settler. Take the city one turn after its founded though and again you get world condemnation.

Taking a city state has an enormous diplo penalty, so big that you should basically never do it until maybe the very end of the game. AIs like Genghis Khan are somehow unaware of the penalty and will just go ahead and attack, usually losing the game in the process, because again while the AI is super edgy about people taking lone cities, its simulataneously clueless that when it takes a city it will get those same penalties.

I am still unclear on what happens if you take a city, the rival takes it back on the next turn, then you take it from them again, then they take it back again, etc. In particular, this sometimes happens when a player with a huge navy encounters a civ with a huge land based army. I'd like to think you don't the diplo get hit multiple times for capturing the same city, but I am not at all sure of this, or how long the window is between city recaptures.


Overall, IMO what most of this points to is that the system just does not work the way it is intended to. One would have to assume that it is an intent of the game that war should happen prior to the founding of the Compass tech during the Ren era. Even if the player can "game" this system, the AI cannot and constantly runs smack into the huge diplo penalties the system entails, particularly when it meets a new civ. It feels to me like the AIs is reacting about four-fold too strongly to skirmishes between civs it doesn't care about, and its current hatred levels are more appropriate to how it should feel about conquered civs with whom it has a Friendly relationship with. Guarded, Neutral and even Hostile civs caring so much about what happens to other nations really puts a damper on the gameplay, particularly early in the game when no one yet has much of a relationship with each other.

I'd like to share a story about warmongering.
I'm playing a huge small continents plus map. 22 Civs. Playing as Assyria, I know that I am going to monger me some war, but I wanted to go about it in a smart way. So, after setting up camp, I scout rapidly to get a good feel of my continent.
It turns out I'm on a reasonably-sized continent with Washington and Al-Mansur. Washington has a nice port capitol on the opposite side of the continent, while Al-Mansur blocks off the entire southern bit of the continent, so I know both will have to fall. Quickly, I tech my way to Siege Towers, back them up with a few spears and archers, and within 20 turns, all of Washington's and Al-Mansur's cities have fallen. Two civs eradicated.
Now, sadly, I was unable to do so before meeting any other civs. Rome watched me from the first DOW all the way to the fall of Fes, Ghandi tuned in after the first city fell and Gajah Mada never saw Washington, but he saw me trashing Morocco.
After the deed was done (and I stole 7 techs), I started to explore rapidly. Finding the various other civs of the world. As expected, Rome and Indonesia both denounced me pretty fast, India joined in later, but he never turned truly hostile.
While I was out exploring and meeting the other fine folk, I got into a DOF with Portugal. At the same time, Rome decided to attack me. Being in an easily defendable position, I held him off, and that's where the ball started rolling.
Carthage joined me in a DOF.
Byzantium, seeing her BFF DOF with me, joined in as well.
Soon, I had 7 DOF's, all with folks who never saw me massacring Washington and Al-Mansur. Once the war with Rome was over, I denounced them, and all the DOF folks joined in.
Fast forwards towards the World Congress, which I got to found. Rome went in for a second DOW, Gajah Mada is still pissed at me, Ghandi does denounce but does nothing else, and for some reason Arabia joined them (probably because he's friends with Indonesia and prefers them over me). The world consists of 3 blocks now. There's Greece, the Inca, the Zulu and Spain, who quabble among themselves and have no impact on the rest of the world. There's Rome, Indonesia, Arabia and India who all seem to hate me. Then there's Portugal, Russia, France, Byzantium, Carthage, Siam, Songhai, Maya, the Ottomans, Babylon and Egypt, each of whom have a DOF with me and mostly among one another as well.
The moral of the story? Feel free to warmonger, just make sure you don't get seen and then quickly buddy up with those who haven't seen, all while making out those who attack you out as a pariah. Rome quickly crumbled once Embargo Rome passed, all while I ignore any requests to stop the war just so I can pillage any trade ship he sends out to city states.
THAT is how warmongering can work in your advantage.

Aristos said:

Nope.

Option #4 is the best: proactively working to block any incoming settlers. I do not mean blocking with culture, but with maneuvering units. You may use a rule of thumb: minimum 3 units per potential forward settler... it takes work and scouting, but it pays tenfold its price in units and micromanagement. No need to attack, no need to take cities and burn them, and control of the real estate you aimed for after scouting phase is over.

This is based on the "I-am-not-sure-if-well-known" fact that settlers cannot pass through other units.

THIS is the way to go.

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Uh uh. This requires more units and more micro-managing, for less results (no free workers or crippling of a guaranteed future enemy). I'd much rather take his settler with fewer units and less overall "blocking" effort, and make peace only after I've settled in the contested area. There's no comparison.

This approach makes more sense later in the game, when you may have the blocking units to spare, and starting a war is more trouble than it's worth. But not when we're talking about an early city site close to your capital.

The problem I have with this modifier that it doesn't decay. This means the Ai stays mad at you for something you did in the classical era?

Instead you need to liberate some AI to erase the penalty However the liberation mechanic doesn't work proparly because its usally in the late game the AI starts taking cities while the world hates you in the early game

CivAddict2013 said:

It seems the only way to avoid the AI ganging up on you is to just not go wide. No matter what you do in this game, the AI will flip on you eventually if you're doing better than them. I'm friends with Ethiopia and Brazil the whole game.

Late game? They suddenly turn on me.

It's unavoidable. I think I'm just going to go with the mindset of "screw diplomacy" and I'm just going to have a huge army defending my borders.

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Did ideologies come in to play? When you get in to industrialization and the modern era, world diplomacy now encounters a huge shift in priorities. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing this doesn't have to do as much with you doing better than them, and more to do with you choosing a different ideology than they did, which is somewhat difficult to recover diplomatically from (although not always impossible). Fortunately, the nations that choose the same ideology you chose will start to support you. Late game, when ideologies come in to play, world diplomacy completely changes, but still follows a system.

I think large part of the diplo problems is that it seems counter intuitive, if you are on a defensive war you might think taking the city where the invasion started would be fine. You learn the hard way that you have to beat the enemy into submission instead of taking the cities.

In that sense I'd like it if the AI was more involved in telling you this: Say you are in a defensive war and go on the offensive, and you are besieging a city, using the OP example it would be nice if a third party, say Sweden could ask you: "Hey you have Askia on the ropes you've already won, there's no need to take its city, make your demands", that way if you make peace with Askia, not only would you get what you want, but probably look magnanimous and have a diplo boost".

Maybe it could even play later on if Askia wanted to bring someone to gang up on you "he kicked your ass last time"