Is BNW anti warmongering?

BNW basically took any competitive value away from early war and wide empires. Look at this forum for instance, nobody here believes in having more cities than luxuries, every player will berate you if you play wide and not 4 cities tall. Then when it comes to early war mongering, if you don't have a trade neighbor you can't build a army. Trying to build a army means -23 gold and no science. This completely kills civilizations like the Huns that are reliant on having 6-8 horse archers, a horseman, and a few battering rams in the first 75 turns.

yea it sucks that because of the way they made BNW some of the early game civs like Huns, Mongols etc kind of have a rough time actually using any of their bonuses and staying competitve. Remakes?

Trading with city-states is still an option if you want to war, y'know. You won't get quite as much gold out of it but it should suit your needs until you can get some gold buildings up.

plokoon9619 said:

BNW basically took any competitive value away from early war and wide empires. Look at this forum for instance, nobody here believes in having more cities than luxuries, every player will berate you if you play wide and not 4 cities tall. Then when it comes to early war mongering, if you don't have a trade neighbor you can't build a army. Trying to build a army means -23 gold and no science. This completely kills civilizations like the Huns that are reliant on having 6-8 horse archers, a horseman, and a few battering rams in the first 75 turns.

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BS. I play wide every game since BNW, and I love it. I only ever take the opener from Tradition anymore if I can help it. Not founding more cities than you have luxes is just common damn sense. You want your new cities to start in unhappiness? Either found cities near new luxes or get some CS allies if you want to go wide, because if you can pull wide off, you end up with way more than a tall empire. It just IS harder to pull off because of unhappiness, but this has always been a problem, and it has largely been solved in BNW. New Order/Autocracy makes it more viable to go wide than ever before, because extra happiness from buildings means it works on a per city basis. You can even go wide with Freedom, it just works best for Tall.

Also, my most successful game has been wide with early warmongering Huns. My secret was that I got a mercantile CS ally fast and used them for my trade routes. Less initial science, but having my own continent has been worth the wars, and I am now science leader despite Autocracy being "bad" at science victory. Reports of the impact of the science penalty are greatly exaggerated by people just repeating hearsay. As long as you grow your cities, the science penalty doesn't impact you at all.

oPunchDrunko said:

I don't have the expansion yet, but I have been lurking around a couple forums. What I've gathered is that BNW somewhat penalizes players that like to make war and conquer cities. The world congress can vote a standing army tax, which can pretty much be a game killer if you're going for domination. And the other thing is science gets reduced for every city you have. That would cripple a warmonger also.

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I wouldn't recommend getting the expansion yet, not because of the new system but because the AI is still extremely broken. You will get some games where everyone attacks you so in that aspect no it's not anti warmongering.

Assuming you are playing on deity.

Vidszhite said:

What BNW penalizes is pure warmonger at the expense of all other things: no CS, no culture, no trade routes, no caring about diplomacy. You have to take more things into account before warmongering, but the actual wars can bring you great wealth.

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I agree with this. BNW punishes people who only focus on one aspect of the game. You have to take care of everything, even if you are warmongering. You have to build some culture, some faith, some (much) happiness, you have to cultivate some friends, at least for a while, and so on.

That's pretty cool as far as I'm concerned.

elijahfire said:

I wouldn't recommend getting the expansion yet, not because of the new system but because the AI is still extremely broken. You will get some games where everyone attacks you so in that aspect no it's not anti warmongering.

Assuming you are playing on deity.

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It really isn't that broken. I'm enjoying BNW greatly. It could do with tweaks, and yes, the issues with the AI do need to be fixed, particularly how slow warmonger hate decays, but it is still loads more fun than GNK.

I love BNW and the fact you can effectively live in peace. This is the most fun I've had in Civ ever. You'll still (have to) wage war sometimes, but the AI is no longer a maniac who just kills everything just because he has the resources to do so.

The QC said:

I agree with this. BNW punishes people who only focus on one aspect of the game. You have to take care of everything, even if you are warmongering. You have to build some culture, some faith, some (much) happiness, you have to cultivate some friends, at least for a while, and so on.

That's pretty cool as far as I'm concerned.

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This.

Warmongering is the only victory that provides much of a challenge as the AI actually works against you and tries to prevent you from winning. If you're going for any other victory, they just sit by and watch or even actively help you win the game. When I won a tourism victory because the last other civ I wasn't influential over offered me open borders, I just rolled my eyes.

Securion said:

People who call Civilization a "wargame" have obviously never heard of, and even less likely played, Total War. Thats a Wargame. A real wargame. With military strategy and tactics unrivalled in the genre. As a military historian and analyst im mightily impressed with the realism and detail in Total War! If you can lead troops in total War, you could, theoretically, lead troops on a real battlefield. Compare that to Civilization if you dare and then call Civilization a wargame. Its an insult to wargames...

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With the greatest respect, Total War games do NOT in any way prepare someone for military leadership. The games (seeing as they are games) too often encourage 'gamey', ahistorical approaches at every level of war. I've played Rome extensively, I could not lead a Legion across to Sicily or North Africa and fight a successful campaign.

That said, what sort of military history do you do? Where are you based (if you're willing to say on a public forum)?

kaspergm said:

I think the biggest problem is not the World Congress, but the way Warmonger rating is calculated. Taking out one civ - even if they attacked you - can easily earn you Warmonger hate for many hundreds of turns, essentially entire game. That's pretty frustrating and doesn't seem well balanced.

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Yep. I'm currently playing a large terra game as Spain and one of my role-playing goals is to seize every natural wonder. The new world has 4 natural wonders, 2 within city-state borders (one is the fountain of youth). I inevitably conquered both. Now I'm the most denounced and hated civ in the game.

Meanwhile, while I'm playing Conquest of Paradise with my conquistadors and caravels, Japan is tearing half of the old world a new ass and only a couple civs have denounced them. Throughout my entire game, I haven't gone to war, denounced, or done anything aggressive. But, after cherry-picking 2 city-states, who had zero contact with any of the other civs, I'm global enemy #1. Fracking stupid.

Carmack said:

Yep. I'm currently playing a large terra game as Spain and one of my role-playing goals is to seize every natural wonder. The new world has 4 natural wonders, 2 within city-state borders (one is the fountain of youth). I inevitably conquered both. Now I'm the most denounced and hated civ in the game.

Meanwhile, while I'm playing Conquest of Paradise with my conquistadors and caravels, Japan is tearing half of the old world a new ass and only a couple civs have denounced them. Throughout my entire game, I haven't gone to war, denounced, or done anything aggressive. But, after cherry-picking 2 city-states, who had zero contact with any of the other civs, I'm global enemy #1. Fracking stupid.

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The city-state problem has to do with how warmongering is calculated

Part of the calculation is how many cities the controlling civ has - conquering a city from a civ with 30 cities is less impactful than taking one from a civ with four.

Since city-states are always one city, the hit tends to be pretty big, whereas taking over a city or two from larger empires will result in smaller hits

It DOES need to decay faster, though - someone did the math and a lot of more typical scenarios lead to warmonger hate that lasts upwards of 300 turns which is just too long given the game is only 500 turns on Standard.

Warmonging penalty should def be shorter, it's always been stupidly long in all the versions of Civ though.

Three hundred turns is ridiculous! It should be more like 50 turns, maybe 100 at most. Also, that calculation seems odd too. Does the warmonger calculation apply that way to just the Civ you fought with, or all of them? Because if it's to all of them, then that is also ridiculous.

I'm okay with warmongering penalty, but i don't like that there is no (they like warmongers) thing. People like Montezuma and Attila should actually be friendly and cheer you up when you wipe someone other than their friends out. And peace lover civs should try to help you when you get attacked. That will be more interesting, and you actually have to choose your friends.

katfish said:

I'm okay with warmongering penalty, but i don't like that there is no (they like warmongers) thing. People like Montezuma and Attila should actually be friendly and cheer you up when you wipe someone other than their friends out. And peace lover civs should try to help you when you get attacked. That will be more interesting, and you actually have to choose your friends.

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The latter is already simulated by leaders that have high flavors for both warmongering and warmonger hate. This includes Washington and Rammy.

plokoon9619 said:

BNW basically took any competitive value away from early war and wide empires. Look at this forum for instance, nobody here believes in having more cities than luxuries, every player will berate you if you play wide and not 4 cities tall. Then when it comes to early war mongering, if you don't have a trade neighbor you can't build a army. Trying to build a army means -23 gold and no science. This completely kills civilizations like the Huns that are reliant on having 6-8 horse archers, a horseman, and a few battering rams in the first 75 turns.

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Yeahhh, don't listen to this guy at all.

plokoon9619 said:

BNW basically took any competitive value away from early war and wide empires.

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The change that completly my strategy against ai. Time to find a new one

I don't like the warmonger penalty at all.you defence yourself from some enemies,counterattack ,take some cities and next turn half world is at war at you.also early expansion is a punisment now-you run out of happines easily.also the increase technology cost for each city,while not big to have a big impact,can seriously hurt you if you capture three-four cities in a row ,combined with the unhappiness ,made your empire useless for some turns.finally althrougth trade routes are great,a player will usually grow to dependant on then,making him vulnerable to a lost of then (embargo)and making army upkeep impossible

Thuellai said:

The city-state problem has to do with how warmongering is calculated

Part of the calculation is how many cities the controlling civ has - conquering a city from a civ with 30 cities is less impactful than taking one from a civ with four.

Since city-states are always one city, the hit tends to be pretty big, whereas taking over a city or two from larger empires will result in smaller hits.

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hold on--did they change this? i thought you only got a warmongering penalty for declaring war or for taking a civ's last city. now you get a penalty simply for doing well in war, even if you're the one who was attacked?

overall i quite like BNW, but seriously--do the civ 5 designers just sit around trying to come up with ways to discourage players from acquiring new cities? social policies, happiness, tech penalties, now this? this is civilization, right?