Bullying! Or..."You'll Pay for This in Time" Ad Nauseum

Scarpa said:

.....and lost the growth for over 100 turns until I finally put Mongolia down.

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Like a rabid dog.

Scarpa said:

I've only protected a CS *once* and I didn't even mean to, I thought it added influence instead of increasing the base. Anyway, the one time I did pledge to protect Mongolia came and bullied the CS about 3 turns later, I clicked 'you will pay...' and ended up in a war that lasted until I eliminated him. Was really irritating too because I had 'Swords to Plowshares' belief and lost the growth for over 100 turns until I finally put Mongolia down.

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Interesting, maybe I've been lucky. Or maybe you were unlucky. Or maybe Genghis is just an ass

mikeg said:

Interesting, maybe I've been lucky. Or maybe you were unlucky. Or maybe Genghis is just an ass

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#3 Unless I am playing as him.

I once swore to protect a CS and it was bullied by Attila (what a surprise). I got a screen from him saying "I bullied CS and you can't do anything about it and you and I both know that."

It was true. I don't know if I suffered any hits with Attila- i was already on the nose with him so it didn't matter.

Hehe, I've recently gotten into the habit of bullying CS for quick cash in the beginning. 2 Archers and a Pike or 2 Composites and a Spear early enough will do it and for 15 influence you get a nice wad of cash? yes please.

S.K. Ren said:

Hehe, I've recently gotten into the habit of bullying CS for quick cash in the beginning. 2 Archers and a Pike or 2 Composites and a Spear early enough will do it and for 15 influence you get a nice wad of cash? yes please.

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I must try that. I've never thought of bullying until late game when no one fears my military.

I do bully CSs early on, too. Particularly non-cultural ones. Some CSs are rediculously difficult to bully, though, even in the early game. I wonder if different CSs have different thresholds for giving in?

Still, I'd like to see protection mean SOMETHING when I offer it.

hobbsyoyo said:

This mechanic definately needs to be worked on. Maybe they could introduce some sort of sanction or embargo system to use against CS bullies.

The main problems IMO with the current system is that there is no 'justified war'. If a CS is bullied repeatedly and you are pledged to protect them - you still cannot go to war without risking a warmonger diplomacy penalty.

It really stinks. To make matters worse, if you try gifting units to the CS through the diplomacy screen, often the units will dissapear in transit (this has to be a bug ). So if you don't want to spend 30 turns sending guys across the ocean (being picked off by pirates and hostile civs all the way) or if you are pre-navigation/ocean embark, then you can't really gift units to beef up your CS allies to repel bullies.

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^^ This 100x Any word on if this will be fixed in the next game?

mikeg said:

Agree with the OP. To me it seems that this is currently quite a poorly implemented and (worse) easily exploitable system at the moment, one of the few things I don't like about G&K.

Aesthetics (from Patronage) + Pledge to Protect = lifelong friendship, which when multiplying the CS friends benefits by 16 (or however many CS in the game) is a huge effect.

In return, all you have to do is keep pressing the "You will pay..." button each time a civ bullies one of your CS pals. In my experience from multiple games, this does nothing to change an AI's attitude towards you no matter how many times you do it. I know you get the "you refused to look the other way" text (or whatever) but in practise it seems to have a negligible effect. I must have used this tactic at least 50 times in the last game I played and never once had a single AI civ change it's attitude towards me, have had similar experiences with previous games as well.

I actually think the idea behind this system is great (juggle CS affections against major civ relationships) but in practise it just seems that the negative effects on the AI attitude are so tiny at the moment that it makes it a no-brainer once you get Aesthetics to pledge to protect every CS on the map and then just spam the "you will pay" button.

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^ This is how I got my diplo victory, by far the easiest win in the game. I am hoping for a big overhaul for BNW

The game keeps track of all the slights, insults and conflicts that an AI feels you have committed against them, so it should keep track of the ones they commit against you, although I don't see this anywhere. Having a hostile AI tell you that you're not going to do anything when they bully your CS is pretty aggravating, especially the fifth or sixth time. They get casus belli against you, but you never seem to get it against them.

if u got a big military it will make it harder for them to bully CS that u have protected, check ur soldier rateing on the demographics tab compared to the guy doing the bullying

Mrdarklight said:

The game keeps track of all the slights, insults and conflicts that an AI feels you have committed against them, so it should keep track of the ones they commit against you, although I don't see this anywhere. Having a hostile AI tell you that you're not going to do anything when they bully your CS is pretty aggravating, especially the fifth or sixth time. They get casus belli against you, but you never seem to get it against them.

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If it does keep track of it someone forgot to add the line telling it to do something with the info.

Spaming "youll be sorry!" for an easy cult vic is boring and bad.

hobbsyoyo said:

This mechanic definately needs to be worked on. Maybe they could introduce some sort of sanction or embargo system to use against CS bullies.

The main problems IMO with the current system is that there is no 'justified war'. If a CS is bullied repeatedly and you are pledged to protect them - you still cannot go to war without risking a warmonger diplomacy penalty.

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This. Anyone who bullies a CS under your protection more than once after you tell them to stop, should be a free shot for a DoW from you with NO warmonger penalties. Their behavior should make attacking them give you a favorable international +diplo bonus with the rest of the civs (at least the ones not already in a DoF with the buggers), not a negative. The way it works now, is stupid and not worth even bothering with. It's about the same as Alex going hostile on you and denouncing you on turn 10, planting a settler right on your 3-ring edge, and telling you what a weakling you are and that he should take your puny civ away from you. All fine for him to do, but attack him in self defense to keep from being buried alive? Then YOU'RE the bad guy of the world. What utter BS. Just two examples of how CiV diplo is utter crap in so many ways.

Why should you be getting free DoW's?

The bullying doesn't hurt the city state much, if at all. It doesn't get the bully all that much and it barely costs you anything. That all seems pretty in balance to me. It's also very realistic. The penalty for a large nation getting heavy handed with one of the small nations of the world is very rarely war with the large nation and is almost always just a diplomatic incident of some kind and a "heightening of tensions" or some vague thing like that.

Most of the complaints about the way its implemented seem to be not so much that it doesn't work as that it doesn't do this totally different thing they would prefer.

A true "justified war" system would be really neat, but that's a massively complicated thing. You would need to write an AI that could read all kinds of subtle clues about the way you play to discern your motivations. Any time you think the AI isn't acting reasonably enough, you have to ask yourself what system the computer would need to understand to act reasonably. In this case you're asking it to have a deep understanding of your motivations (something computers already suck at) on the level of a fairly perceptive human mind.

The point of the bullying mechanic is not to create excuses for starting wars, it's to allow you to interact with city states in a way other than sucking up to them. Also, the city state decides if it will give in to bullying based on the strength of its armies. If your concern is really the wellbeing of the city state gift them units and the bullying will stop.

TyBoy said:

Why should you be getting free DoW's?

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Put simply, because the AI gets free DoWs. When you aggravate them it is kept in a list, and they use that list as justification for war. You should get a list too.

The core problem as I see it is that you never get a true casus belli against the AI. If you declare war, for any reason, it is a big diplo hit against you. The only way to get into a war, no matter how justified, without a diplo hit is to wait until they declare on you. Even that would be tolerable (if gamey), but the problem with THAT is that they won't declare on you typically unless they totally outclass you. Generally if you wait for them to declare, they are so powerful that you don't have a prayer. At least at Emperor level.