Should there be more benefits to warmongering?

OmniPotent42

OmniPotent42

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I think BNW did a good job at making peaceful diplomacy viable with trade routes and less aggressive AI, but I think that they might have significantly reduced the viability of warmongering.

For one thing, they added a 5% :c5science: cost to every tech per additional city you have. For small empires, that's not much, but for sprawling militaristic giants it can effectively nullify your conquests.

That's why I would propose that razed cities will have their leftover population from capture travel to your cities (which is historically accurate as slaves and various public officials were taken back to the empire) to give them a slight research and city boost, and so that militaristic empires won't necessarily have to expand to gain the benefits of sacking a city.

Wartime gain is also significantly less apparent because your trade routes are either plundered or in danger of being plundered, which can mean the difference between 100 GPT or even negative GPT. I'm not saying that this is bad, but I think there needs to be something equally appealing to warmongers to keep their armies updated and their gold in the positives.

I think buffing the city plunder :c5gold: would help a bit, like maybe the gold the city generated for the past 25 turns? I'm not sure, but there definitely needs to be a higher financial gain to be comparable to trade routes.

TL;DR add population relocation to razing cities, and more :c5gold: to city plundering.

Thoughts? Criticisms?
 
I am on my first 150 turns of my first game so I can 't comment too much . But with the information given and my current understanding of the game I also see that warmongering is going to be what you try not to do in this game . Early on . Maybe . But as the game gets into the modern age that gets more and more sticky . But that is also history . You had the great Empires of Rome etc who had world conquest and domination as a possibility , so they thought . Only to be stopped by the force of wow this is very very very hard to do for many reasons .
So taking over the world by force is supposed be really really really hard or impossible . Civ has done a great job of simulation of the real world . But the good thing is domination victory just mean taking the capitals . You have to be judicious in how many blocks you knock off and when that 's all .
 
Cedbird said:
I am on my first 150 turns of my first game so I can 't comment too much . But with the information given and my current understanding of the game I also see that warmongering is going to be what you try not to do in this game . Early on . Maybe . But as the game gets into the modern age that gets more and more sticky . But that is also history . You had the great Empires of Rome etc who had world conquest and domination as a possibility , so they thought . Only to be stopped by the force of wow this is very very very hard to do for many reasons .
So taking over the world by force is supposed be really really really hard or impossible . Civ has done a great job of simulation of the real world . But the good thing is domination victory just mean taking the capitals . You have to be judicious in how many blocks you knock off and when that 's all .
Click to expand...

I'm not just talking about domination victory, though. I'm talking more about the broad sense of declaring war, which is to create a gain for your civilization through conquest, which benefits are rather limited as of now when compared to the trade-offs.
 
I usually played warmongerer in vanilla and G&K. I agree with the OP's view that warmongering seems to be less worth it now. Relocating population is a fun idea, and extra plunder is something I've been wishing for ages myself.
 
I think it is fine. The mechanics before ended up snowballing into huge gains. Wasn't that much of a problem since the game ended regardless, but now it kind of balances out the numbers.

If you have any experience with Domination games in vanilla or G&K, you'd know how high of a science base you can get and how little time you get to use late-game military upgrades. Every late-game tech would take like 3 turns. The GS's from Hubble alone would finish up the entire tech tree if your science base was large enough.

Gold is the same way. City connection formula is partly based on number of cities. A wide, sprawling domination empire has way more GPT than it needs making external trade routes obsolete.
 
I'm not a fan of the 5% penalty. Then again, I'm in a game where SIam has sprawled like crazy through conquest and is still way ahead on tech.

Yes, there should be definite rewards for going to war. More to the point, there should reasons and objectives for warmongering.

Most of the folks complaining so harshly about the AI being too peaceful now seem to be of the opinion that being DoW'ed is a sensible punishment for being weak, even if your neighbors have been your long-standing friend. The AI should literally be a psychopath on the prowl, befriending you for centuries while patiently hoping for your guard to drop. So it's just pure opportunism guided be the overall creed that can be summed up as "war is more fun than peace".

The only real objective to warmongering beyond domination victory is to capture cities, and it's dubious why anyone needs more cities. A city is lucky to have even one luxury, which doesn't offset the unhappiness caused by capturing it. Strategic resources and production capability seem to be the prime assets, and their tendency to obsolesce can really tarnish their luster (oil being the major exception).
 
Also discovered that you become a "warmonger" a lot quicker in BNW. I declared one war and all of a sudden I was the scourge of the world. It seems like the world has become a very sensitive place.
 
Matthew. said:
I think it is fine. The mechanics before ended up snowballing into huge gains. Wasn't that much of a problem since the game ended regardless, but now it kind of balances out the numbers.

If you have any experience with Domination games in vanilla or G&K, you'd know how high of a science base you can get and how little time you get to use late-game military upgrades. Every late-game tech would take like 3 turns. The GS's from Hubble alone would finish up the entire tech tree if your science base was large enough.

Gold is the same way. City connection formula is partly based on number of cities. A wide, sprawling domination empire has way more GPT than it needs making external trade routes obsolete.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, I think that the way it is set up now is a good base to keep civs from running away so quickly with so many cities, but now there isn't much benefit to taking cities, especially with the scarce happiness and low gold from limited trade routes. Couldn't you see the need for a slight buff?
 
I've played 3 complete games so far on BNW all were domination on Immortal different map settings. I'd second the opinion that the other civs to call you a warmonger quickly. Heck in the last game I never DOWed any civs and got labeled a warmonger for killing off Attilla and Lizzy. What I've found are that there are ways to get to tech parity even with a large puppeted empire mainly by flatting out your beelines and researching the least expensive techs and stealing the more expensive techs from other civs. Autocracy gives you a bonus to Spying that doubles their effectiveness, if I'm in a tall puppeted empire this makes NIA worth it.
 
As I suggested elsewhere, a good incentive to early-game conquest was if you could get Founder benefits from conquering a Holy City, or possibly if areas of religious tension generated a bit of Unhappiness that would promote you to actively try to eradicate opposing religions from the world. Also yes, the gold bonus from sacking cities should be increased, and possibly something in Honor should give you that removed Culture from plundering Autocracy used to have. That would make taking over a high-Culture city something you'd really really go for bashing early on since you could possibly end up with the kind of gains that'd get you a free Social Policy or two.
 
When I have five cities giving me 10 science each, I end up with 50 science per turn. If I have 16 cities like that I end up with 160 science. Assuming both work on a science costing 400 points, the smaller civ has to pay 480 (+20%), and the larger one 700 (+75%). The small one needs 10 turns (40x10) to pay that off, while the larger one needs 5 turns (160x5).

If I understand that mechanic right, this doesn't seem so terrible at all.
 
The Man Wood said:
Also discovered that you become a "warmonger" a lot quicker in BNW. I declared one war and all of a sudden I was the scourge of the world. It seems like the world has become a very sensitive place.
Click to expand...

I've noticed the same. The worst part was that I was getting denounced by countries were starting wars themselves.
 
I think reducing the by-city warmonger penalty would also help. The way most non-domination civs wage war is by doing a quick rush in the early game to remove a competitor and give them more breathing room. But because of the way the warmonger penalty is scaled, most civs don't have many cities when you want to do a rush, so the player gets a huge warmonger penalty to stick with them for the rest of the game. Warmongering would be a more viable general practice if the penalty were scaled down.
 
Vatras said:
When I have five cities giving me 10 science each, I end up with 50 science per turn. If I have 16 cities like that I end up with 160 science. Assuming both work on a science costing 400 points, the smaller civ has to pay 480 (+20%), and the larger one 700 (+75%). The small one needs 10 turns (40x10) to pay that off, while the larger one needs 5 turns (160x5).

If I understand that mechanic right, this doesn't seem so terrible at all.
Click to expand...

Yeah sure, every city is as good in science as your capital or your core cities. :lol:

That's what you are saying here. Your comparison is mathematically correct but your conclusion doesn't mean anything in the actual game itself.

The science modifier definately slows you down a lot, especially when you leave conquered cities as puppets (another -25% penalty). So if you need more science to win, definately try to annex as many big cities as possible and raze smaller ones.
 
The Man Wood said:
Also discovered that you become a "warmonger" a lot quicker in BNW. I declared one war and all of a sudden I was the scourge of the world. It seems like the world has become a very sensitive place.
Click to expand...

This happened to me and I never even declared war a single time in the entire game. As soon as you defend yourself against a DoWing civ by taking a city or two everyone else in the world acts like it isn't 500 BC and that happens every day. It seems like all of the leaders in BNW have a high-minded, 21st century idea of what constitutes over-aggression, which doesn't really make any sense because for most of history, that particular sensitive view didn't exist.
 
The warmonger penalty is very sticky. I DoW'd a civ around turn 100, conquered his 3 cities, but still have huge penalties from most of the civs on turn 300.

The penalty is extra annoying since the AI loves spamming cities close to yours. I'm not warmongering. I'm just liberating my cities' third ring.
 
I tried my first BNW attempt at warmongering last night and it was a disaster. Assyria/Emperor/Standard, and with Assyria you have to launch wars early before siege towers become outdated. To build up a military, I run bankrupt on gold, and have to sell a resource to China for 5 GPT at the cost of unhappiness. Poland expanded into the beautiful coast spot I wanted, so I went to wipe out Poland. I had to sustain near bankruptcy and -10 happiness throughout the short war, grabbed two cities and razed a third, and when Poland was eliminated I was barely even on gold on barely at an OK happiness. Then I invaded America because they left Boston undefended with 2 citrus right on my border. The resulting hatred from China, loss of a mercantile City-State alliance (because I couldn't afford to keep them), and then accepting the poison pill of puppet New York in a peace settlement, left me with a 15 GPT deficit and a -26 happiness.

So yeah, I think warmongering is a lot harder now. Nonviable? Maybe. It's certainly a lot tougher to play militaristic civs with ancient and classical era UUs. But it's realistic for an ancient civ to bite off more than it can swallow and end up dominated by the captured territory. I'd note that without the nerfs to militaristic civs, Assyria would be wildly overpowered.
 
OmniPotent42 said:
Don't get me wrong, I think that the way it is set up now is a good base to keep civs from running away so quickly with so many cities, but now there isn't much benefit to taking cities, especially with the scarce happiness and low gold from limited trade routes. Couldn't you see the need for a slight buff?
Click to expand...

War-mongering itself doesn't need a buff. The AI is terrible as is when it comes to the war-side of this game. And when you take one of its core cities, such as the capital, it generally is out of the game for good unless they were a massive runaway to begin with.

In other words, other than map control or role-playing reasons, war-mongering is more about tearing down your opponent's empires than building up your own.

I do think the war-monger penalty system needs a complete overhaul.

1. You shouldn't get any diplo hit for simply declaring war unless you have a declaration of friendship. Struggles happen all the time world-wide and they are typically not a world-wide concern until cities/land is actually taken. Not to mention if you declare war on a common foe, the Civ you are attempting to help will often label you as war-monger. You should have the freedom to help fight battles with your own allies--if no cities are taken, you shouldn't get penalized world-wide.

2. You shouldn't get any diplo hit for liberating a city other than from the one you are liberating it from. It is illogical that you can liberate 3 CS's from Genghis Khan and you end up as the war-monger.

3. war-monger penalty shouldn't be a simple yes and no scale. It should be based on something like city size. For example, you declare war and take a puny 3 pop. city in the middle of no where. Whatever. It shouldn't give the same penalty as taking another Civ's core city.

4. You should, however, get diplo hits if the enemy is attempting to sign peace and you keep refusing. To counter players from being at perma-war farming a Civ for exp and keeping it drained of military without penalty.
 
Matthew. said:
War-mongering itself doesn't need a buff. The AI is terrible as is when it comes to the war-side of this game. And when you take one of its core cities, such as the capital, it generally is out of the game for good unless they were a massive runaway to begin with.

In other words, other than map control or role-playing reasons, war-mongering is more about tearing down your opponent's empires than building up your own.

I do think the war-monger penalty system needs a complete overhaul.

1. You shouldn't get any diplo hit for simply declaring war unless you have a declaration of friendship. Struggles happen all the time world-wide and they are typically not a world-wide concern until cities/land is actually taken. Not to mention if you declare war on a common foe, the Civ you are attempting to help will often label you as war-monger. You should have the freedom to help fight battles with your own allies--if no cities are taken, you shouldn't get penalized world-wide.

2. You shouldn't get any diplo hit for liberating a city other than from the one you are liberating it from. It is illogical that you can liberate 3 CS's from Genghis Khan and you end up as the war-monger.

3. war-monger penalty shouldn't be a simple yes and no scale. It should be based on something like city size. For example, you declare war and take a puny 3 pop. city in the middle of no where. Whatever. It shouldn't give the same penalty as taking another Civ's core city.

4. You should, however, get diplo hits if the enemy is attempting to sign peace and you keep refusing. To counter players from being at perma-war farming a Civ for exp and keeping it drained of military without penalty.
Click to expand...

I agree with this whole post.
 
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