Polisurgist is the only poster I know of that actively supports the warmonger penalty, virtually everyone else hates it- for good reason. But it isn't going to get changed unless we let Firaxis know.
He's far from alone. It's more that those who find it works generally fine have run out of arguments or interest to defend the inclusion of that system, while others have now gotten used to it This affects mostly players who love early conquest with early Units much more than late game Domination or conquest, and yes BNW ruined it for them. There's an easy solution to that: mod the penalties out, or change their logic completely so they increase with eras. IMO this would totally unbalance the game but keeping the peaceful aspects balanced shouldn't really be a top priority for players going for Domination as early as classical, with the goal of finishing the game as early as possible.
But for players who play more peacefully or who don't mind or enjoy finding ways around the penalties, or who didn't wage large wars before artillery anyway generally find the new system ok (al lot of the complaints have come from misunderstanding the atrociously explained system and frustrations when people found themselves screwed in-game after playing it as they used to. Once they understand how it really works and the various ways around, it's not so bad). The main thing I would really change personally is to correct the collateral damage of the penalties, in that it brought back the chain of denouncements, and unlike warmongering penalties that go down if slowly
those feed on themselves to the end and makes all but minor warmongering, the one you might get for seizing one or two cities, too costly for too long.)
It's not likely to change any time soon except for tweaks. Fireaxis has globally re oriented the game in that new direction, where the player (and the AIs) are encouraged to play the early game more peacefully, and to start their large campaigns (domination or not) by the mid or late game (much like the peaceful VC, Domination now really starts mid-game, and before it's preparations...). It's not only warmongering penalties, they've developed new rules and systems all working together in synergy and all going in the new direction.
- Gold comes mostly from TR. TR are expensive to build and important to keep, thus precious. Military units are better used dealing with barbarians and generally protecting TR, in other words in protecting what you have rather than engaged in early conquest. Early on the players are very limited by the range of their TR, another encouragement to keep your immediate region at peace to have trading partners. Neighbors now benefit more concretely from one another, diluting motives for pure conquest. Later on, the player has discovered more of the world, and the range of TR is much longer, it becomes easier to get into conflicts with immediate neighbors to grab their territory you've wanted for a while.
- The AI is now more likely to work on its infrastructure early on (it won't neglect key buildings anymore), which makes it a bit more competitive in the more peaceful aspects (gpt, science, Wonders etc.) for longer in the game. It's now not rare that all AI civs (but one, or two) survive into the Renaissance and Industrial and that most aren't so far behind that when Ideologies come in, the new system
matters. Same for tourism, there's enough successful civs left by the midgame for the system to work and offer some challenge. Quite logical since BNW is most of all oriented in ameliorating the late game.
- The high unhappiness costs also discourage early fast expansion by conquest, while wide expansion by settling require quite a bit of planning and skill, and timing, to be viable. It's again by the time the players reach various late SP (eg: Naval Tradition, Protectionism, Cultural Diplomacy) and even more the happiness tenets in the various ideologies that "modern style" large wars become viable. It's then you really might have to stop a tech leader, or tourism leader by war. Pre-BNW you saw a Civ that you knew usually became culture or tech leader and simply eliminated it preemptively...
- Early culture is also scarce now and the high cultural cost of expansion force too large early Empires to become socially backward (which is logical.. you can't develop an intricate social and political system like Venice's when you have the wide Mongol or Roman empire to manage) and makes large expansion much more viable culturally after Guilds, late SP and later Wonders. It's then that large Empires USSR style or large Civs USA or Germany style can really prosper. Earlier on, the more tightly-knit the nation, the more powerful (in the real world large ancient empires had their day of glories, but they
all fell apart. The game (alas) currently doesn't have systems that could make too early large Empire become unstable and implode as they should. Large Empires used to grow larger and lead straight to early Domination victories, period.) .
- The Civ 5 game never encouraged players (but the Mongols, Attila, etc. that as AI are in the game to be stopped or banked. By the renaissance and beyond it's Civs like Venice and Austria that become pests with the CS) to get rid of CS, always encouraging the players and AI to fight over their "political" control instead. The new rules simply made this even more important, but also provided a bonus to their liberation that a clever mid-late game warmonger will use to his advantage.
Reducing the penalties for the early game would defeat their very purpose, as well remove them altogether with a mod then. Reducing them to the point they have little to no diplomatic impact until the late game would also defeat their real purpose to limit early conquest campaigns both for the AI and the human player.
The warmonger penalties follow the same global logic in BNW of encouraging a much longer phase of building and slow expansion, and encourage more limited wars only for the first 2-3 eras (and yes, they're a bit lackluster and we could hope for something far more intricate with crusades, ideological alliances, mechanisms like the elimination of civilians or piracy without having to declare war first, the ability to sell/exchange/occupy and capture tiles instead of just cities to give early etc.).
Players are now encouraged to wage early wars in which they'll
slow down, not eliminate other players. They can still pillage tiles, wipe out armies, capture and destroy trade routes and even get the cities they want from the AI through peace deals, but they're discouraged from dealing
early on definitive solutions to destroy their neighbors (unless they act fast enough to do it while the rest of the world won't know about it, or are ready to face large consequences and "total war" for most of the game). They can still deal with an early forward settling neighbor by war and get
that city through a peace deal, but not use the opportunity to wipe out that neighbor for good. The alternative is to slow him down so much it doesn't matter he's so close and dislikes you, until mid-game you can finally seize that city without major diplomatic impact. Players planning Domination can still prepare for mid-game and later wars by getting massively promoted early units that upgrade to powerful mid-game and late game units. It's just players who love full-on warmongering from early on, and players whose idea of expansion start with absorbing their immediate neighbor that got screwed.
Meanwhile as the mid-game is reached, more and more mechanisms have been introduced to make it increasingly difficult to maintain good relations with the AI. The best WC resolutions have a high diplomatic cost, the Ideologies make keeping friends from differing ones a challenge. The friendly AI come and start demanding you to choose between them and another friend which you'll lose. All this encourages wars, and the warmongering penalties are at the same time much lower than earlier in the game.
To players like me BNW was a huge improvement over G&K, incl. the warmonger penalties which made me like waging a few wars in my games again. I still find diplomacy massively lacking in scope and intricacy (it's my main gripe with the game right now) , but that's another story. I think removing or reducing too much the penalties would be very unbalanced, with the AI not encouraged to be more aggressive while the player now has free reins to be. If the AI are made more aggressive to compensate, this would rapidly become ultra-annoying to those wishing to play BNW as originally designed.
I sympathize with those who played the game to get a Domination victory as early as possible and now must turtle it up, which they dislike, and with those who loved the easy solution of conquering to stop the AI. For them BNW is a failed expansion and that's fine. But why not mod this so it's more like G&K plus the BNW systems if you believe it would be more fun and still balanced?
