Why i want the war-weariness back in the expansion!

Calouste said:

Conflicts tended to last in the olden days. It took the Spanish almost 8 centuries before they booted the last Moor over the Strait of Gibraltar. England was under attack by the Vikings for almost three centuries before they succumbed in 1066. The Crusades lasted almost 200 years. And then you have the 100-year war and the 80-year war. Even later on, France was pretty much continuously at war with the rest of Europe from 1792 to 1813. Of course there were years when nothing really happened during those conflicts, but it wasn't really pace.

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But in these wars you talk about the majority of the time nothing was happening. It wasn't a WWI style stalemate where the war was constant. And WWI only lasted a few years, not hundreds of years.

What I don't like is these WWI style stalemate that happen in the classical, medieval or renesaince era.

I don't mind it as much in the later eras because each turn represents less time. Also in the later eras warfare tends to become much more dynamic and stalemates are easier to break.

jjkrause84 said:

I think, unfortunately, you're professing the modern ideology of game design (which is deeply flawed). Wars should not be able to go on forever without consequences. It is not about 'punishing' the players for 'doing well'. It is a logical restraint system which forces the player to choose: shall I continue being a war-mongering dictator ruling over a repressed and less-productive populous, or should I listen to my people and make peace? It provided excellent tension and, yes, immersion in Civ 4.

Trade-offs lead to interesting decisions, and sometimes 'trade-offs' mean having 'negatives' in the game. The idea that games should only be 100% positive (just with "more" positives and "less" positives) is a passing fad, and nothing more.

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I agree with you (like always ), but to be fair, I don't think that your and Arachnofiend's assessments are mutually exclusive. The way I interpreted his statement that you shouldn't be punished for doing well did not mean that games should be 100% positive or have no negatives. In the context of war weariness his post was rather silly of course, since it is a sign of NOT doing well if you let a war drag on forever. But the statement in itself does not exclude the possibility of having trade-offs which have negatives, since "good play" implies choosing the "better" option in a trade-off, meaning that the benefits will outweigh the negatives, which, in my perception, does not fulfill the definition of being a punishment.
On the other hand, an example of being punished for good play is being victorious in war and capturing enemy cities, and, as a result, have your whole empire become unhappy and stop growing, as is the case in Civ 5.

The original poster's problem (enemy civ wages a useless war against you forever) is an AI problem, not a systems problem... the problem is that the AI doesn't know when to stop a failing war. Adding war weariness will not fix this problem... it will make it worse, because now you will be beset by war weariness that you have no way to prevent, because the AI still won't know when to stop the war.

You could have the AI automatically stop when war weariness reached a certain level, but then you could also just have the AI automatically stop after a certain number of turns, which would amount to the same thing.

AriochIV said:

Adding war weariness will not fix this problem... it will make it worse, because now you will be beset by war weariness that you have no way to prevent

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This is an important consideration. If war weariness got too harsh in Civ 4, you could raise the cultural slider, which in combination with certain buildings (colosseum, theatre, broadcast tower) would lessen the unhappiness in your empire (which is a remarkably clever way to depict propaganda efforts made by the government to satisfy their people in times of war). If war weariness was re-introduced in Civ 5, there would need to be some way to weaken its effects.

aluelkdf said:

But in these wars you talk about the majority of the time nothing was happening. It wasn't a WWI style stalemate where the war was constant. And WWI only lasted a few years, not hundreds of years.

What I don't like is these WWI style stalemate that happen in the classical, medieval or renesaince era.

I don't mind it as much in the later eras because each turn represents less time. Also in the later eras warfare tends to become much more dynamic and stalemates are easier to break.

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Be careful with painting WWI as a 'stalemate'. This is a perception that normally comes from the Western Front alone. Most of the other fronts saw significant 'movement' (even the Eastern Front).

If we look at the Western and Italian Fronts what we see is really just a siege of continental proportions (and several WWI leaders saw the war as just that...Joffre certainly did). Seen in that light, there are countless parallels throughout history. The key difference, of course, being the enormous size of WWI operations.

Funky said:

This is an important consideration. If war weariness got too harsh in Civ 4, you could raise the cultural slider, which in combination with certain buildings (colosseum, theatre, broadcast tower) would lessen the unhappiness in your empire (which is a remarkably clever way to depict propaganda efforts made by the government to satisfy their people in times of war). If war weariness was re-introduced in Civ 5, there would need to be some way to weaken its effects.

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This, of course, takes us back to global happiness, a system wholly unsuited to Civ. Previously citizens became more or less happy for fairly logical reasons. It felt more fluid and representative of an actual population (highly abstracted, of course). Happiness in Civ 5 is strictly linear and thus never feels "real". It just feels like another output, no different than science or culture.

Funky said:

I agree with you (like always ), but to be fair, I don't think that your and Arachnofiend's assessments are mutually exclusive. The way I interpreted his statement that you shouldn't be punished for doing well did not mean that games should be 100% positive or have no negatives. In the context of war weariness his post was rather silly of course, since it is a sign of NOT doing well if you let a war drag on forever. But the statement in itself does not exclude the possibility of having trade-offs which have negatives, since "good play" implies choosing the "better" option in a trade-off, meaning that the benefits will outweigh the negatives, which, in my perception, does not fulfill the definition of being a punishment.
On the other hand, an example of being punished for good play is being victorious in war and capturing enemy cities, and, as a result, have your whole empire become unhappy and stop growing, as is the case in Civ 5.

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Ah, the Cheney/Rumsfeld doctrine of warfare where occupying troops "will be greeted as liberators with flowers". Turns out most people don't particularly like being occupied.

jjkrause84 said:

Be careful with painting WWI as a 'stalemate'. This is a perception that normally comes from the Western Front alone. Most of the other fronts saw significant 'movement' (even the Eastern Front).

If we look at the Western and Italian Fronts what we see is really just a siege of continental proportions (and several WWI leaders saw the war as just that...Joffre certainly did). Seen in that light, there are countless parallels throughout history. The key difference, of course, being the enormous size of WWI operations.

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But a seige is always a prelude to an atack, without an atack to take something (a castle, a country or whatever it is) a seige is useless. For pretty much the entirety of WWI the western front lied approximately somewhere between Germany and France. The front line shifted back and forth somewhat, but never left that approximate area. Neither side was able to significantly punch through the enemy lines and advance far enough to bring the war to a decisive end. Hence it was a stalemate of gigantic proportions.

aluelkdf said:

But a seige is always a prelude to an atack, without an atack to take something (a castle, a country or whatever it is) a seige is useless. For pretty much the entirety of WWI the western front lied approximately somewhere between Germany and France. The front line shifted back and forth somewhat, but never left that approximate area. Neither side was able to significantly punch through the enemy lines and advance far enough to bring the war to a decisive end. Hence it was a stalemate of gigantic proportions.

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A siege is NOT always the prelude to an attack. Most sieges do not end in an assault...they most often end with one side realizing they can no longer remain where they are (usually due to a lack of supplies). If the town runs out of supplies they capitulate, if the besiegers do (or if they are threatened by an approaching relief army) they simply retreat. This is a simplification, of course, but not wildly off the mark.

The nature of sieges aside, the Allies defeated Germany through high-tempo attrition during the 100 Days. "Breaking through" the trench lines was never even needed to bring about a decision (and was probably impossible anyways). What is stalemated about victory?

jjkrause84 said:

The nature of sieges aside, the Allies defeated Germany through high-tempo attrition during the 100 Days. "Breaking through" the trench lines was never even needed to bring about a decision (and was probably impossible anyways). What is stalemated about victory?

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All wars come to an end eventually, but the western front for the majority of the war was a stalemate. I don't even see how this is debatable. If there was no stalemate then why didn't the war end in 1915 or 1916?

In late 1918 there was enough pressure on the Germans to make them agree to an armistice. So it could be argued that by late 1918 the stalemate was effectively broken (even if there was no "breaking through"). But there was no armistice prior to that because there was still a stalemate and both sides believed they could win.

Calouste said:

Ah, the Cheney/Rumsfeld doctrine of warfare where occupying troops "will be greeted as liberators with flowers". Turns out most people don't particularly like being occupied.

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Again, this is a problem inherent in global Happiness; the inability to distinguish between the unhappy conquered people, and your other citizens who may be very happy to have new subjects.

Personally i think the unhappiness that comes with conquering a bunch of cities is good enough war weariness. I don't mind when my well placed army can withstand 50 turns of attack because the units get a ton of upgrades!

I ditto with the OP on this. War Wariness should come back. Nothing enrages me more than having a DOW on me and I instantly rage quits. Warmongers will disagree with me on this, but then I could care less about those type of players. Not only should it return, it should be strong. Like 12 (that's my Civ IV WW level set at).

Im seeing a lot of people using long ancient era wars as examples of why there should not be war weariness , to them i say again, just like my first post that opened the thread: The War Weariness should only starts to count when the player has reached the Printing Press ( so that it will be tied to the media and how the population perceives the current war effort ).

To the people complaining that the CIV IV implementation of war weariness was bad, i have a question: Why they cant improve the system? They always have to implement the game features the same way?? Cant a game evolve and get better?

To the people saying that is a negative thing to punish good players, I do agree that the global happiness sucks and makes it hard to implement such a thing, BUT, just because war weariness is a negative factor that dosent means that it is not necessary, you just have do learn how do counter that and/or think better before starting bad/unplanned wars that drag on for centuries and costs a lot of lifes..

I have one more example to you "war weariness haters" and "eternal wars lovers", the maintenance cost of units in CIV V, it exists already, it "punish" players for having great numbers of soldiers and you guys think that it is bad too? Why not allow players (and the AI) to have infinite numbers of soldiers, it would be fun, dont?

I say it again, think about the maintenance cost, just because you dont like a game feature (im not saying that im against it, i do think its a must have too), that dosent mean that the feature "per se" is bad, some of them are real necessary, (like unit maintenance is) and thats the whole point of this thread. Me and some others around here miss the war weariness and think the whole game experience should be improved by a good implementation of it, if you dont like it, thats on you, but you cant deny that it is an important factor of "modern" world.

I rarely war during classical (9% of my Classical games above Prince had any offensive warring whatsoever), and even less during actient, but my reason for war weariness is more of a historical realism than punishing the skill less warmongers (though that is part of the reason).

I love war weariness. A game shouldnt only reward, reward, reward, but also punish you sometimes if you act as a complete idiot or are willing to reach a target whatever the cost. Example: When a barb kills you for taking too great chances and pushing your luck the game punishes you; and it's good game design. The fear of punishment makes things more exciting. It would be less exciting to explore without the leathal barbs.

When some people say that mechanisms should only reward players I have to have a huge laugh at their expence. Just like I laugh of Miss Universe candidates when they try to talk about politics. How they want to work for peace and harmony and stuff.

We need a healthy balance between wish for reward and fear of punishment in a strategy game, then they become the best. When it comes to warmongering in Civ5 I think the risk of punishment for declaring a war is all too small. Some war weariness wouldn't hurt to help us out abit. But there should be a forced white peace if a war drags out to long, so you can't abuse it to totally destroy a civ from inside by refusing peace in a war that has gone on forever.