War Weariness Mechanics

one more question:

could this 207WW be the sum of all WW I was getting at that point in the game from the 4 wars I was fighting? because it makes little sense that I have reached that high war weariness against Genghis rather quickly? I captured 4-5 of his cities and killed around 30-40 units... Well I lost some actually... but according to this article, on huge maps, my WW should be cut by half. Perhaps this 207 is the number before the 50% huge map multiplier kicks in?!

VirusMonster said:

one more question:

could this 207WW be the sum of all WW I was getting at that point in the game from the 4 wars I was fighting? because it makes little sense that I have reached that high war weariness against Genghis rather quickly? I captured 4-5 of his cities and killed around 30-40 units... Well I lost some actually... but according to this article, on huge maps, my WW should be cut by half. Perhaps this 207 is the number before the 50% huge map multiplier kicks in?!

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The 207 is the war weariness related to this opponent. Note that this number is not the same value as the war weariness points discussed in the opening post in this thread. Your war weariness points which you can see ingame will go up by a lot more than 1,2 or 3 by a battle and a lot more than 6 for capturing a city. There probably a ratio of something like 5 between this ingame number and the war weariness number mentioned in the first post of this thread.

This doesn't (necessarily) mean that the calculation of war weariness in your cities as the result of war has changed in BTS. It just means that the value used to signify this war weariness has changed. It wasn't actually shown in versions before BTS.

Roland Johansen said:

The 207 is the war weariness related to this opponent. Note that this number is not the same value as the war weariness points discussed in the opening post in this thread. Your war weariness points which you can see ingame will go up by a lot more than 1,2 or 3 by a battle and a lot more than 6 for capturing a city. There probably a ratio of something like 5 between this ingame number and the war weariness number mentioned in the first post of this thread.

This doesn't (necessarily) mean that the calculation of war weariness in your cities as the result of war has changed in BTS. It just means that the value used to signify this war weariness has changed. It wasn't actually shown in versions before BTS.

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What you are saying is there could be a scaling factor introduced in BTS that changes the 1,2,3, and 6 WW addition to a multiple of these numbers. That makes sense.

If Krikkitone does not have the motivation, he can't be private messaged, I want to dig into the code of WW calculations. Can you guide me which file I should open up with which software? You obviously know what you are doing in decyphering CivIV code.

VirusMonster said:

What you are saying is there could be a scaling factor introduced in BTS that changes the 1,2,3, and 6 WW addition to a multiple of these numbers. That makes sense.

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It isn't necessarily introduced in BTS. It could be a factor that first multiplies the value by 5 and then later when calculating the actual unhappy people in a city, it again devides by 5. Krikkitone could easily have left that number out of his first post to simplify things.

Such a factor could be introduced in the code to avoid rounding issues when working with only integer manipulations.

VirusMonster said:

If Krikkitone does not have the motivation, he can't be private messaged, I want to dig into the code of WW calculations. Can you guide me which file I should open up with which software? You obviously know what you are doing in decyphering CivIV code.

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Sorry, I guess you might think that I looked into the code when writing those two game mechanics articles, but that's not the case. The Software Developers Kit wasn't available then and the formulas in those articles were reverse engineered from game data and not read in some code lines. It shouldn't be too difficult to read the code, but I'm really not experienced in that. I should learn to do that some day, but sorry, not this day. It would take a lot less time to read the formula in the code then to reverse engineer it.

I have looked into xml-files, but those don't contain formulas. They do contain various modifiers which are used in formulas, but you won't know how and if they will interact with this specific formula. It's like having the values of 1000 variables and knowing that if you combine them in some way, you might get the right formula with 5 of those variables.

If you read back a few posts, to post 110-113, then you'll see that the article could use an update as culture has a different effect on the war weariness formula now. I guessed the effect correctly, but Refar actually looked into the code to confirm this. You might want to ask him if he feels like looking into the code for you. He apparently knows where to look.

yea I read those posts... I am private messaging Refar now...

207 Raw-WW from 5 taken cities + ~50 Battles on foreighn soils sounds quite realistic.

It basicly works like this (i think quite like it's described in the OP):

You collect Raw-WW - that's the 207 you see - The amount of actual you got in your cities then depends on Raw-WW and some other factors - Buildings, Wonders, Civics and City Size.

Raw-WW is accumulates as Krikitone described: Each action has a "Price Tag" defined in the XML (global Defines).

The only thing new to BTS is the Raw-WW value actually beeing displayed and (i think) the WW beeing divided with culture. Fighting on a plot where you got 30% culture and your enemy 70% culture you will get 70% of the "Price" while your oppent get 30%.

Refar said:

207 Raw-WW from 5 taken cities + ~50 Battles on foreighn soils sounds quite realistic.

It basicly works like this (i think quite like it's described in the OP):

You collect Raw-WW - that's the 207 you see - The amount of actual you got in your cities then depends on Raw-WW and some other factors - Buildings, Wonders, Civics and City Size.

Raw-WW is accumulates as Krikitone described: Each action has a "Price Tag" defined in the XML (global Defines).

The only thing new to BTS is the Raw-WW value actually beeing displayed and (i think) the WW beeing divided with culture. Fighting on a plot where you got 30% culture and your enemy 70% culture you will get 70% of the "Price" while your oppent get 30%.

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The reason why I think a multiplying factor is used (and maybe later negated by a divisor when calculating the effects in a city) is that I looked at my War Weariness score before and after a single battle in my first BTS game and it went up with something like 5 or 10 and not 1, 2 or 3.

I just did some ingame tests. It seems like the ingame war weariness is something like Krikkitone's active war weariness number with the modifiers that calculate the effect in a city already applied (except of course the population modifier) and then multiplied by 5.

Global Defines lists a BASE_WAR_WEARINESS_MULTIPLIER with a value of 5 and a PERCENT_ANGER_DIVISOR with a value of 1000. I guess that in the final formula which calculates the war weariness in a city it is divided by 1000 and Krikkitone's divisor of 200 is just 1000/5.

So the value mentioned ingame is not Krikkitone's Active WW, but a value already modified by some of the modifiers mentioned in the article (like the map size modifier). It makes the value more meaningful as it has the same effect on cities when playing the game on different map sizes. 200 ingame war weariness points will make an equal number of people unhappy on a huge and a tiny map. You will just accumulate the 200 ingame war weariness points with less battles on a tiny map than on a huge map.

It's all just a guess as I didn't look into the code. Just did some battles and looked at how my war weariness value went up.

Another issue: I strongly think the war weariness from combat actions has a small mistake just by testing the effect on war weariness from combat ingame.

I think the war weariness effects from combat should be:

Your unit attacks their unit=+3 if you lose, +2 if you win
Their unit attacks your unit =+2 if you lose, +1 if you win

This changes the effects of war weariness even more to: defending gives lower war weariness than attacking.

Yes there are some multipliers, scattered over multiple places... - i did not looked for those specifically tho, as i was only interested in the "Home Soil" / "Foreighn Soil" definitions. I will look up more carefully on ocasion.

sorry for the newb question, but where can I find the warweriness info in the game? I looked through all the menus in the game and most of this thread and can't seem to find it. The only thing I see is the +8 unhappiness and war, what is it good for? absolutely nothing!

also, I just played a game and started war too early and was down to 0% production and my first turn of strike when luckily I conquered my opponent. But how long does it take for war weariness to wear off? I've waited like 100 turns before and got immediately war weariness of like +3 on turn 1 and +8 by like turn 10 or so. I've gotten in the habit of capuring a city and declare peace, regen my power and regroup for 10turns and capture another city, declare peace, etc... war takes forever this way.

Thanks for the very informative info
-=Mark=-
ps. I just loaded a saved game and changed to police state and all my war war unhappiness went away! woot. now to figure out my war weariness to keep it better in control until I reach police state.

I've found one of the most important resources in BtS is ivory. Even beyond copper, iron, or horses. It's an early game +1 happy; it allows faster production of Statue of Zeus; and it allows war elephants, which in sufficient stacks can wear down any enemy that doesn't have a similar emphasis on pikemen.

Back to WW: BUILD STATUE OF ZEUS. If for no other reason, to deny it to your enemies. It won't reduce your own WW, but it increases your enemy's WW when fighting in your culture zone, which brings up the next major element of WW strategy:

FIGHT AT HOME FIRST. Even if I'm the aggressor I usually don't launch into an invasion of enemy territory right at the outset of war. AIs fight a lot smarter in BtS than in vanilla or Warlords, but there's still one thing they do in a "not very bright" way: they throw huge stacks into human territory right at the outset of the war, and if that gets annihilated by the human, they throw smaller (easier to annihilate) stacks time after time, after that. What you want to do is wait until the AI's big stack(s) of doom have been eliminated in YOUR zone before doing any fighting at all in HIS. This means being prepared with large stacks of catapults (to weaken large numbers of units in a stack) and mounted units (to gain flanking damage bonuses on siege units which are normally immune to catapult collateral damage). Any catapults that survive this homeland defense campaign can join your offensive stack later to help your trebuchets wear down city defenses (though I probably wouldn't use them to attack units in the city unless you just need to reduce maintenance costs, as they're guaranteed to die).

When conquering, try to avoid a strategy of "a little here, a little there". If you're rampaging in one AI's zone, wipe it out TOTALLY before moving on to the next AI. When an AI is destroyed, all the WW against that AI is eliminated as well, which shifts you back to a more viable position for going on to the next "victim". If the AI you're fighting is too strong to do that do without enormous cost, consider negotiating for vassalage, so that the WW can switch to happy citizens (although at the cost of some extra maintenance, and once a state is a vassal you can't decide to just turn around and conquer it later--it has to declare independence first! Plus there is nothing more annoying in the entire world, than bullying an AI into vassalage, and then having that VASSAL conquer YOUR cities through CULTURE! So... be careful with vassalage!)

Also, in the later game, make maximum usage of any air power available to weaken enemy units prior to allowing land units to fight them. Engender an aversion to risk. Myself, if a land unit doesn't have at least 75% combat odds, my theory is that the unit hasn't been bombarded enough (by airships, fighters, or bombers) yet.

Don't fall into the trap of unit-exchange piecemeal battles in an enemy's zone. (You see a single pikeman so you indulge in the temptation and kill it with a maceman; then the AI sends in a crossbowman to kill your macemen; and so on, and so on...) All you're doing there is racking up WW without the reward of taking cities. An exception to this is if you can take out, say, city defense longbowmen with your mounted units (knights, etc.) while they are outside of a city (for example, when they're moving toward some other city to garrison it). With 2 movement points you can move your cavs back into your stack (for defense) to prevent it escalating into a unit-swap-loop.

I always build jails whenever I get the chance, in every city. I try to avoid switching to Police State if I'm not "spiritual" (the cost in a turn or more of anarchy can sometimes be greater than your savings in WW!) The more immediate gain with Fascism is that you can build Mount Rushmore. But then, if I have Fascism and pretty high WW, and am either spiritual or in a Golden Age, then yeah, I flip it to PS.

Skallagrimson said:

I've found one of the most important resources in BtS is ivory.....

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Very nice tips for effective WW management! I am a jumbo fan myself I think in my recent 500k game, the one I advertise relentlessly, one of the reason no AIs DoW to me after early game was the Statue of Zeus Consequently, I could concentrate my military focus on a single enemy and his vassal.

thanks for the info, that will be very helpful.

I've already been learning to send workers to work a tile even if it's outside my city zone and build a road to it as I read you will still get credit for owning that resource, just you can't have the city work the tile. I didn't know about the elephants happiness bonus. I guess I better start looking up the resources benefits so I know which ones will help the most for my particular strategy I'm using.

but is there no way to check on your war weariness? or do I have to just keep track of it myself?

MarkJohnson said:

Where can I find the warweriness info in the game?

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Hover your mouse over a leader's name in the scoreboard. Below their attitude toward you it will say "War Weariness: xxx".

I'm besieged with WW in my current game. I've taken very few losses, but my cities are experiencing 8-12 at 1221 WW even with Jails and Mount Rushmore! I've had much longer wars with more casualties and never had this much WW -- max 5 or 6 unhappy at the worst times.

Does anyone know if WW is altered in Bruic's Unofficial Patch, as I'm using it?

EmperorFool said:

I'm besieged with WW in my current game. I've taken very few losses, but my cities are experiencing 8-12 at 1221 WW even with Jails and Mount Rushmore! I've had much longer wars with more casualties and never had this much WW -- max 5 or 6 unhappy at the worst times.

Does anyone know if WW is altered in Bruic's Unofficial Patch, as I'm using it?

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Bhruic's patch doesn't change the war weariness mechanics. I suspect that you've conquered many cities and have killed lots of enemy soldiers. Both of these elements cause war weariness as is explained in the article in the first post.

Your only options are to stop the war, to destroy your opponent or to use the police state civic.

If you want to suffer less war weariness in a war with an enemy with many units, then draw their units into your territory, kill them there and only then go onto the offensive. You only get war weariness for killing units in areas where you don't have 100% cultural influence.

Roland Johansen said:

I suspect that you've conquered many cities and have killed lots of enemy soldiers.

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I had only taken 3 cities when it got ugly, lasting maybe 10-20 turns, and killed roughly 20 units in their territory. The AI kept attacking my destroyers with airships, some of them intercepted. Do those kinds of bombing runs get factored into WW? Oh, this is my first Immortal game except for a HoF game quite a ways back.

Roland Johansen said:

Your only options are to stop the war, to destroy your opponent or to use the police state civic.

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I went for the second option: jack up the culture slider to 40% (later 50%), and take down his last 4 cities ASAP. It's amazing how quickly you can recover once all that WW disappears the next turn.

Roland Johansen said:

If you want to suffer less war weariness in a war with an enemy with many units, then draw their units into your territory, kill them there and only then go onto the offensive.

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I've done that before, and it's a nice tactic. I'm playing on an archipelago this game, however, and the AI doesn't seem to be all that effective at aggression, even on Immortal. It's sad because it makes for interesting maps and slower expansion.

EmperorFool said:

Hover your mouse over a leader's name in the scoreboard. Below their attitude toward you it will say "War Weariness: xxx".

I'm besieged with WW in my current game. I've taken very few losses, but my cities are experiencing 8-12 at 1221 WW even with Jails and Mount Rushmore! I've had much longer wars with more casualties and never had this much WW -- max 5 or 6 unhappy at the worst times.

Does anyone know if WW is altered in Bruic's Unofficial Patch, as I'm using it?

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Thanks for the WW location. Is 1876 WW very much? lol Peter doesn't seem very happy with me.

I have noticed quite a few things this game and was able to play the whole end game at war. It was very late when I started, 1876ish.

I first noticed raising my culture slider to overcome unhappiness. Stranhe I didn't notice this before as people are always taking about. I guess it never clicked as I focus on research the most and declare peace if WW gets too bad, but I was short on time and couldn't stop.

second, I found on my previous gave that Police State + Jail + Mount Rushmore = no WW at all!!! So I of course beeline Facism and build Mt. Rushmore. I already had the Pyramid that enables all Gov civics but forgot about Mt. Rushmore.

OK, my war was now back on full, with no worries except yearning to join the motherland which usually isn't so bad and only temporarily did I have unhappiness for long. I also notice you have to build jails fairly quickly after capture. not sure how long, or they start getting WW fairly quickly.

now, my economy is getting bad. My cities are strung out as the island is L-shaped and costs for maintenance is high. Luckily I hadn't built the forbidden palace, but it didn't help a lot. What did help was the State Property civ and it eliminated the distance from palace cost and gave me like a 33% boost to my economy. The extra hammer and food was a nice bonus as well.

It was funny though, after eliminating Peter and Isabella I was at peace and had enough for a domination victory as soon as my borders expanded, so I turned off the war civics and my economy went from 750 gold per turn to 19 lol.

and funniest thing was I lost the war. I let Victoria control the AP as it was one less thing to deal with. The last proposal was for a diplomatic victory and I thought it was for control of the AP. I voted for Victoria and she won -lol. I was too tired and bored at this point to load my last save to get my victory back.

next game I'll have to try to implement these things earlier.

Hope this helps
-=Mark=-
ps. I find the later in game the more WW accumulates, especially after constitution and jails are available and Facism after Mt. Rushmore.

MarkJohnson said:

I first noticed raising my culture slider to overcome unhappiness. Stranhe I didn't notice this before as people are always taking about.

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The culture slider only helps cities with Theaters (+1 per 10% ) and Coliseums (+1 per 20% ).

Most of the game I solve my happy/health issues with resource trades. Keep an eye on the Foreign Advisor for new trade possibilities (or use a mod that includes Civ4lerts like The BUG Mod in my sig).

The best way out of a war is always to eliminate your opponent -- no more WW or motherland to rejoin. This obviously isn't always an option, but when it is, it's often worth a little sacrifice at high culture for a short while.

EmperorFool said:

I had only taken 3 cities when it got ugly, lasting maybe 10-20 turns, and killed roughly 20 units in their territory. The AI kept attacking my destroyers with airships, some of them intercepted. Do those kinds of bombing runs get factored into WW? Oh, this is my first Immortal game except for a HoF game quite a ways back.

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That's weird. Maybe you killed some units in the area where both civilizations had some culture (and then both parties get some war weariness) or maybe some war weariness from a previous war which reactivated once the war started again. I can't understand it otherwise.

Of course, lost airships by the AI also cause war weariness.

EmperorFool said:

I went for the second option: jack up the culture slider to 40% (later 50%), and take down his last 4 cities ASAP. It's amazing how quickly you can recover once all that WW disappears the next turn.

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Hmm, 40% is a lot. I hope your economy wasn't based on commerce or this must have hurt a lot.

EmperorFool said:

I've done that before, and it's a nice tactic. I'm playing on an archipelago this game, however, and the AI doesn't seem to be all that effective at aggression, even on Immortal. It's sad because it makes for interesting maps and slower expansion.

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It's the lack of hammers on such maps which hurts the AI. Plus it doesn't realise the great importance of some of the wonders on this map type such as the Colossus and the Great Lighthouse.

EmperorFool said:

MarkJohnson said:

I first noticed raising my culture slider to overcome unhappiness.

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The culture slider only helps cities with Theaters (+1 per 10% ) and Coliseums (+1 per 20% ).

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There is also a basic +1 happiness per 10% and in the late game you can also enjoy another +1 happiness per 10% culture from the broadcast towers. Just for completeness.

This was the second war with Jules, but the first one was over a single city involving maybe 10 units in total. I'll have to check it out again, but once I started watching WW, it would go up 150 points or more in a single AI turn, where all he did was lose a few units attacking mine. Anger from WW was jumping 2 at a time each turn.

I normally tend to build up a lot of troops before I start a war, and then drag it out for a loooong time, taking 10 or more cities before stopping to regroup. I don't shy away from suicide softening troops, either. And normally I don't have to deal with more than 4-6 citizens from WW. And yet in this game I planned ahead better, quickly achieved my objective and used few troops than normal, winning nearly every battle, and I was drowning in 10-13 citizens.

Like the base bonus you mention, I'm sure I'm just missing something obvious or wasn't paying as much attention as I thought.

Roland Johansen said:

Hmm, 40% is a lot. I hope your economy wasn't based on commerce or this must have hurt a lot.

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It was only for the last 4 or 5 turns of the war so I could maintain my production and not lose population due to starvation. Losing a few turns of research isn't so bad when you're up by a few techs. It's not uncommon when you want to do some upgrades to run research at 0% for a turn or two anyway.

Roland Johansen said:

It's the lack of hammers on such maps which hurts the AI. Plus it doesn't realise the great importance of some of the wonders on this map type such as the Colossus and the Great Lighthouse.

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While I agree with all of that, the biggest factors I'm seeing are a) simply not being adept at shuffling troups around the islands and b) not prioritizing Fission given that the only Oil is in the sea and Plastics is a long way off. Even then, they didn't prioritize Plastics, leaving me the run of the seas.

They're building the normal level of units (i.e. more than me) -- they're just not using them effectively. Writing AI is difficult, and making it strategic is even harder. Dealing with moving troops in boats must be a PITA.

Roland Johansen said:

There is also a basic +1 happiness per 10%

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I thought they had removed that in Civ4 and required a Theater, Coliseum or Broadcast Tower. I had waited to kick up my until I had built a significant number of Theaters. Thanks for the heads-up.

EmperorFool said:

This was the second war with Jules, but the first one was over a single city involving maybe 10 units in total. I'll have to check it out again, but once I started watching WW, it would go up 150 points or more in a single AI turn, where all he did was lose a few units attacking mine. Anger from WW was jumping 2 at a time each turn.

I normally tend to build up a lot of troops before I start a war, and then drag it out for a loooong time, taking 10 or more cities before stopping to regroup. I don't shy away from suicide softening troops, either. And normally I don't have to deal with more than 4-6 citizens from WW. And yet in this game I planned ahead better, quickly achieved my objective and used few troops than normal, winning nearly every battle, and I was drowning in 10-13 citizens.

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It sounds very weird. The last thing that I could imagine is the map size factor. Killing 10 units and taking 3 cities causes a lot more unhappiness in your cities on a duel sized map than on a huge map. This is of course a compensation for the fact that wars will involve more cities and units on huge maps than on duel sized maps. Maybe you're playing on a smaller map than usual?

EmperorFool said:

It was only for the last 4 or 5 turns of the war so I could maintain my production and not lose population due to starvation. Losing a few turns of research isn't so bad when you're up by a few techs. It's not uncommon when you want to do some upgrades to run research at 0% for a turn or two anyway.

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Yes, I guess I fight in a similar fashion to you. I don't like to declare war multiple times because each time you'll get a negative diplomatic modifier with their friends which makes future diplomacy that much harder, so I try to finish a civilisation in one go and if necessary I'll increase the luxury slider. Usually I don't need 40% luxuries though, but I often do start the war with some extra happiness which means that it takes a while before I need to increase the luxury slider.

I also play many immortal level games and the number of enemy units plus the number of cities that you have to conquer on a huge map make it tough to get through a war without war weariness problems. When I start an offensive war, I know that I can win it and my main concern is to keep war weariness in check.

EmperorFool said:

I thought they had removed that in Civ4 and required a Theater, Coliseum or Broadcast Tower. I had waited to kick up my until I had built a significant number of Theaters. Thanks for the heads-up.

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The culture slider is of course not available at the very start of the game. You need to develop Drama first. Maybe that caused some of the confusion.