Smarter Anti-War Protesters For Civ V

Lets face it: the effect of a war at home in your cities isn't very well done in Civ IV. People mindlessly protest whether your troops march into enemy territory just to be slaughtered or you attack enemy cities without taking any casualties. This isn't why people protest in real life, and they are affected much more by civics than the game shows. IMO, the legal and government cities should affect how your people protest. Furthermore, when going to war, people protest over these ideas:

1. Reason: Of course, when someone declares war on you, you have a reason right there. Basically, this tones down backstabbing against civs at which your population likes (friendly or pleased, same religion/civics) while pushing for the idea of a fight against other religions (if you aren't in FR), other economic systems (e.g., Free Market vs. State Property), to "rescue" their people (Emancipation vs. Slavery, Serfdom, and Caste System), because of history (we fought each other recently, let's go another round!) or because of differing governments (Representation/Democracy vs. Police State). Also, populations will be more opposed to an overseas war if you are the aggressor. Finally, people will be less opposed to fighting a war if they have allies.

2. Momentum: If you're slaughtering the enemy, people won't be too upset. If, however, you're bumbling your troops and losing battles, people will begin to protest.

3. Where the war is fought: If the war is fought on your home soil, people will be less willing to protest whereas if it is on foreign soil, people will be more willing to protest. Note that this doesn't actually cause people to protest, just changes the effects of the other two to be more or less effective (if a war of liberation is fought on foreign soil and your troops haven't lost a man, people won't protest because its not at home).

Please comment!

Signed under....

I always wondered why the citizens of Civ IV cities treat all wars the same. I understand that the current War Weariness mechanism was designed to somehow control the war parties ( not that you can't the malcontents :/ ), but I always wanted a "just war" mechanism.

Well, they do this to an extent. If someone declares on you, and all your battles are within your cultural influence, then you don't get war weariness.

And they tried a little with the "we don't want to go to war with our brothers and sisters of faith" penalty, but it would be nice to try other things.

Maybe they need to have a slightly more complex happy model with war. Make it so that when you go to war, if you're not already at war, you can get anywhere from -5 to +5 happiness right off the bat. Anywhere from being invaded by an enemy(+5 for "we want to defend our homeland from these evil barbarians"), to joining a friend in war (+3 for "We want to help our allies in their struggle"), to declaring against an enemy (+1 for "We want to free these people", for anything from being in different civics to being in different religions, to whatever). Then on the other side, having a friend declare war on you or declaring against a friend (shared civics, shared religion, even if you have lots of + modifiers for good trade) should cause some negatives. Maybe even have it so bad that some cities will refuse entirely to go to war, and not let you build military units there ("We do not want to be part of this struggle"), or maybe not let you move the military units built from the city outside of your own territory (or just give extra unhappiness to those cities when you move units to the war front).

Make it so that when you go to war, you sometimes get a big boost right off the bat (since often right at the start of a struggle, you do gets lots of pride and sentiment), and combined with the suggestion to base war weariness with an extra measure on how well the war goes, that makes sense to me.

UWHabs said:

Well, they do this to an extent. If someone declares on you, and all your battles are within your cultural influence, then you don't get war weariness.

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Oh really? I didn't know that. However, I know that war weariness depends much on the fact that you lose troops or not.

So with both your remark and mine, i think the OP should be surprised.

The silly thing that goes with my remark, is suicide catapults. Since you have to use catapults against every AI, and suicide them, the war weariness can grow crazy some time, and that's a thing i dislike greatly.

UWHabs said:

Well, they do this to an extent. If someone declares on you, and all your battles are within your cultural influence, then you don't get war weariness.

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This is not true. The only ocasion when you don't get WW is when your unit defends in your land and wins. All the other battle situations ( including mop up in your lands ) generate WW and this has nothing to do with who DoWs.

I'd say WW needs a "tweak" rather than a full "overhaul".

Any sort of a VICTORY should, if anything, reduce WW. "Damn right, we're kickin' *ss yo!" That's the reaction of the common man, to VICTORY.

Any sort of a LOSS should have the effects we presently see, in WW. "War, huh, what is it good for?" And that should be about double in foreign lands than the hit it would be on one's own soil.

If a war STAGNATES for a very long time, there should be a SLIGHT WW represented, over that time. "What are we doing over there? Bring the boys back home!"

If an enemy declared first against "us", any WW should be reduced by 50% before other modifiers like jails, etc.

If "we" declared against an enemy, any WW should be increased by 25% before other modifiers.

If war was "automatic" due to vassalage, it should be neutral to base WW.

There should be an additional WW modifier for the attitude of the citizenry about the enemy civ, similar to diplomacy scores. When an AI declares war against "us", that should obviously anger the people, and have an effect on WW, over time, even if in a subsequent war "we" DoW "them". The PEOPLE like revenge too, y'know. If the AI razed a city, another boost of citizen anger against that AI. Any pillaging should also boost anti-that-AI citizen attitude, thus reducing WW in any wars against that AI.

I'm sure there are other factors but these are the most obvious.

And of course Free Speech, Representation, and Universal Sufferage should have modifiers that increase WW. Keep the Police State reduction of it, and let the rest remain neutral to it.

Although Theocracy should get a reduction of WW against "infidels".

I don't think who DoW first should have such a dramatic impact on WW. The single biggest factor should be the two civ's diplomatic relationship. Let's say that your civ has a -20 relationship with India, you probably will get a happiness bonus for DoW, especially if the enemy has committed serious transgression against you.

Dida said:

I don't think who DoW first should have such a dramatic impact on WW. The single biggest factor should be the two civ's diplomatic relationship. Let's say that your civ has a -20 relationship with India, you probably will get a happiness bonus for DoW, especially if the enemy has committed serious transgression against you.

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True, although your people's attitude toward India (in this case) might be different from YOUR attitude. Religion, civics, and the past behaviour of India toward your people, would be the primary factors, IMO.

In that sense there needs to be a "people's diplo" score to track what your people think about the various AIs (and even about you, for domestic political stability factors).

Skallagrimson said:

True, although your people's attitude toward India (in this case) might be different from YOUR attitude. Religion, civics, and the past behaviour of India toward your people, would be the primary factors, IMO.

In that sense there needs to be a "people's diplo" score to track what your people think about the various AIs (and even about you, for domestic political stability factors).

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I totally agree. Under this system one can get happiness penalty for not declare war. Example would be where your religious league has called for a holy war against the infidels or a close ally with whom your civ shares cultural and political heritage were being slaughtered by aggressors. Your population may really want you to go to war.
Generally "people's diplo" should closely track the diplo relation that we currently have. There can be huge divergence of course, for example where you as the leader adheres to another religion from the majority of your people.

And there are certainly historical examples of that. Elizabeth hanging onto the Church of England when most of her subjects were still Catholic, comes to mind.

One element of MTW that added realism which might help in Civ were assassinations and civil wars. Assassinations put a strain on your royal line succession (and if you ran out of heirs to the throne, YOU LOSE, so you don't want that), and civil wars would split your empire into loyal and rebel territories, with the likelihood increasing with a larger empire (the main MTW balancing factor against overpowered warmongering). But domestic relations could be more of a driver for those events.

Skallagrimson said:

I'd say WW needs a "tweak" rather than a full "overhaul".

Any sort of a VICTORY should, if anything, reduce WW. "Damn right, we're kickin' *ss yo!" That's the reaction of the common man, to VICTORY.

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I think it makes sense for the WW to go down with a victory, or maybe you get a happiness boost for victories. However I think it should be something that faded over time. The smashing victory you won from your surprise attack on turn 1 of a war would probably be forgotten by your people eventually.

duckstab said:

I think it makes sense for the WW to go down with a victory, or maybe you get a happiness boost for victories. However I think it should be something that faded over time. The smashing victory you won from your surprise attack on turn 1 of a war would probably be forgotten by your people eventually.

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True. Memories are short, especially of "the good things".