How is the (early) warmonger penalty different than human reactions in multiplayer?

[Josh123914]

Tbh, I agree largely with Other Josh, y'see while I CAN plan ahead of conquests, befriending other civs and sometimes paying them to DoW first, it is a logistical nightmare up and until at least Guilds is researched, and it seems sort of needless in an attempt to appease more peaceful players (which I can be on occasion)

The problem comes when an AI settles within your sphere of influence (hypothetical area you claim as yours, that should probably be introduced) and when you take out the Pop 1 city half the planet denounces you.
This not only labels you a warmonger for ~200 turns (which will in reality be forever because the second you don't have it the same AIs will hate you anyway for ignoring them half the game) but completely obliterates the point of most of the game's UU tactics.

Whats the point of even playing the Huns or Assyria anymore if in the time taken to befriend most of the map you have teched passed your siege weaponry.
In fact why is Siege weaponry a thing if the so called new way of warfare is to stand in a field and obliterate the opposing force's army. I use CBs for that type of fighting, not catapults!

I also wholeheartedly agree with whoever said warmonger penalties scaling with eras.
Ancient, Classical and MAYBE Medieval eras should have non-existant penalties. In a TSL Europe map all 21 civs should NOT denounce me for wiping out the Celts in the year 1000BC.
Hell, England conquered Ireland and attempted to exterminate the populous in the 1600's and no outside force seemed to give a sh!t. Aside from Spain, but they were using Ireland more as a forward base to attack England from rather than to actually assist the Irish.

Now, while this definitely would make more peaceful civs more vulnerable, I hate to put it like this but that's life. If you have 2 cities and only 3 units total to defend them while surrounded by Shaka, Attila and the Khan, you should perhaps reconsider whats important: getting that Great scientist in 8 turns and bulbing an Academy, or building a few CBs to garrison in your cities as defence. Because thats what happened IRL, the most dangerous time for peaceful civs is at the very start, and the game is built around early warmongers getting their lead at that point. You see it clearly in most games today. Unless the likes of Atilla doesn't conquer another civ before renaissance, he becomes out-teched by even the barbarian camps.

It should scale up the later you go, e,g in Europe, if say, France DoW'd Spain in the Renaissance or Industrial eras, half the map took a side because of how important it was to keep their allies. And I mean proper armies, not the BS the current AI pulls, were we mutually agree to DoW someone, and all they bring to the fray is a scout or two to pillage the land.
Going into the Modern Era warfare can be looked down on the way it is currently in the game, which would befit the game since aside from Germany (go figure) most UUs at that point are geared more towards defending the homeland than anything else.

And going into the Future Era it should be nigh-impossible to do without justification. I mean look at the Syria conflict today. The US was getting hatred from tonnes of places for PLANNING to attack Syria (which in Civ terms would be them placing units at Syria's borders) without UN consent.

So as a pipe dream, I'd love the above to happen in a patch, but more likely I'll have to wait until Civ 6

 

[limluigi]

Don't conquer the city near you. Just get it in a peace deal. No population wipe, no extra warmonger penalty aside from the early warmonger penalty which disappears in a few turns. Not to mention you're exaggerating things...taking 1 city won't get you to be denounced by other civs. Maybe the civ you attacked and his friends would denounce you but that's how diplomacy works.

 

[Makavcio]

Whats the point of even playing the Huns or Assyria anymore if in the time taken to befriend most of the map you have teched passed your siege weaponry.

Why don't you use your unique siege weaponry before you befriend or even discover the whole map?

You get diplo penalties for warmongering only from civs that already know you. If you wipe your continent/island clean before you meet other players, there's no penalty in relations with your new friends. They are not going to ask why one of your Assyrian cities is called a very strange name like London or Kyoto.

You could also use a trick I like a lot when I play on continents.
Warmonger from day 1. Wipe 1 civ, cripple the other and block the remaining one. Then when you meet other civs, bribe them into liking you and this way any hostile actions towards you will be viewed by them as atrocities. You get relation boost with your new friends and you also drive a wedge between them and your old enemies.

 

[Josh123914]

Snippity

Well its weird, civs I haven't met yet denounce me after meeting me purely on the grounds that someone met them first and I dunno, told them somehow about what I've done.

That's another problem: Chain denouncement.
Maybe only 2 civs hate this one guy but next thing you know it snowballs and the entire map denounces this one guy just because the first 2 had a problem.
I won't detail it much more than that because everyone already knows of the issues but its an issue nonetheless.

I was also exaggerating a bit earlier, since Assyria and the Huns are to be played without ever worrying what others think of them, but replace those with I dunno, Babylon and Korea, just with some neighbours they'd rather be rid of.
Should they get permanent warmonger statuses for wiping out Rome in the BCs after Rome forward settles both of them?

Finally, I think your strategy is dastardly clever on Continents, I might try it, I mean compared to the 'obliterate army and get cities in peace deal' it doesn't rely on any AI surrendering on your terms.
Because unless the AI has a significant drop in troops there's no way that they'll give up a city unless its pop 1 and right on your borders. And then where does that leave you? With a spiteful neighbour that will most likely forward settle again or get revenge at the first opportunity.

P.S. Sorry for the wall of texts people, its just I feel like I just describe in detail why I think something's a problem, and not just me being butthurt that steamrolling half the map with no repercussions is impossible.

 

[bbbt]

The warmonger penalty only applies to people who know you when you Dow/take a city/civilization - if you're on a different island/continent/other side of a mountain range (as in my last game where Egypt spawned a little too close to me), when you take a capital, you're basically home free. I'm not sure if other city states know if you take a city state on say, an isolated island though.

A denouncement will last and newly met civs will know of it. However, if you also denounce the denouncing civ, and become more friendly with other civs, sometimes they'll side with you.

Honestly, I hadn't really intended to make this yet another discussion about the pluses/minuses of the warmonger penalty - I was more interested in comparing it to human behavior in multiplayer. With civ it is a bit of dilemma with the AI - should they act more like 'human players' or more like historical civilizations.

 

[Socratatus]

So many people get in a twist about the warmongering penalty.

I believe the problem here is people get too involved with the numbers and not how it feels to reality or even playing multiplayer. with Humans we don`t get a number telling us what penalty that human has put on us, but with Ai we do, so it`s easy to whine at the AI.

Try playing and ignoring the penalty:

What I mean is, play like you`d play a Human, do what you think you can get away with; don`t do what you reckon will upset it. If you get to the point that the AI Civ makes you angry that you do whatever anyway, then go ahead, but don`t worry about the numbers.

I just think, `I hate this Civ since it`s been messing me about so long, I`m going to attack. This will probably make me look bad to other Civs cos I`m starting a war. Also, i`m so annoyed, I`m going to take his last capital city. I`ll find a way to make it up to other Civs later... if this doesn`t start a huge war." Bear in mind I play very peacefully and almost never make unprovoked attacks, so i tend to come off quite well even after starting a war or killing a Civ.

Or a variety of. I don`t constantly check the numbers. when I do it like this, the AI does tend to respond in a much more expected `Human way` imho. Sometimes, I wish Firaxis had removed the ability for Players to see the `penalties`. I don`t like seeing the `Friendly`, `Angry` writing on leader screens as it is.

I know no one cares, it`s easy to blame the AI, but whatever.

 

[Gort]

The AI is dumb. A warmonger who isn't going to win the game should be less hated than a peacemonger who IS going to win.

Otherwise the AI is just playing to lose, and penalising a playstyle unnecessarily.

A good human player doesn't care HOW you got to the point of being able to win, all he cares is that you're going to win.

 

[PaleJackal]

I think the warmonger penalty should be based on the population of the city captured relative to the empire's entire population, thus reducing the penalty for taking small useless cities.

Additionally, the warmongering penalty should remain as it currently is EXCEPT that it decays much faster. After all, just because you have a large standing military in the Classical era, and you're perceived as a threat then, doesn't mean that same force is a great threat during the Modern era.

 

[LeTigidou]

I agree with how long it remains. I mean i just can't see how the diplomatic world would be pissed at (Present day Iran?) for the destruction of Babylon. I know it's a game but still it's annoying.

 

[NeoNio]

Meh, I don't have problems anymore since i discovered how it works, in my most recent game as Austria, France settle a city 4 hexes away from my cap and 2 more fairly close, i annoyed him to the point he DoW me, i proceeded to roflstomp his army, take the 3 citys and burn them , i had to pay the other 2 civs on the continent to DoW him or i would have stopped at the second city probably, maybe in pangea maps this is harder to control, i dont play pangea thou

What buggs me is that if you take a capital at turn 100(or so) everyone wants your head on a pike, but if you do it at turn 300 with the map full of cities no one cares much, unless you've been warmongering a lot, imo it should be the same penalty, no matter when you do it (or some AI does it)

 

[EK834]

What buggs me is that if you take a capital at turn 100(or so) everyone wants your head on a pike, but if you do it at turn 300 with the map full of cities no one cares much, unless you've been warmongering a lot, imo it should be the same penalty, no matter when you do it (or some AI does it)

A capital or a normal city are no different for the calculations, it's how many cities a Civ has left, and how many of the estimated total cities the map could contain are currently settled that matter.

The whole idea behind this penalty is to delay large scale wars of conquest until later in the game, when taking a few cities from a Civ is no longer enough to cripple it completely. It lets the AI focus more early game on building up its infrastructure so it doesn't completely fall behind the human and offer a totally boring challenge when the new mid-game/late game mechanisms like Ideologies and WC kick in. The WP came alongside tweaks to make the AI more likely to produce its key buildings.

The idea isn't to remove warfare from the game or make it uniformly impossible even in the late game (in fact the late game makes it hard to keep friendships and avoid grudges - it's designed for an increased number of conflicts and wars AI vs. AI and AI vs. human...), it's simply to limit seriously how much conquest is viable in the first 2 eras, and then to gradually make wars and the start of a Domination campaign more and more possible as the game reach the middle-phase, and yet even more when it's in the late game. It goes hand in hand with other changes like making your gold income rely heavily on having peaceful relations with nearby cities for TR (late game you can send the TR far away, early game you can't) and the heavy happiness cost of expansion/conquest.

Wars are still quite possible early game, but city captures are less frequent.

The penalty for taking out the last city of a Civ remains exactly the same in all eras. It simply has far less diplomatic impact in the late game, theoretically, because the warmonger is now strong enough to "intimidate" the other civs that do not dare denounce him or declare war on him for his warmongering.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

A capital or a normal city are no different for the calculations, it's how many cities a Civ has left, and how many of the estimated total cities the map could contain are currently settled that matter.

The whole idea behind this penalty is to delay large scale wars of conquest until later in the game, when taking a few cities from a Civ is no longer enough to cripple it completely. It lets the AI focus more early game on building up its infrastructure so it doesn't completely fall behind the human and offer a totally boring challenge when the new mid-game/late game mechanisms like Ideologies and WC kick in. The WP came alongside tweaks to make the AI more likely to produce its key buildings.

The idea isn't to remove warfare from the game or make it uniformly impossible even in the late game (in fact the late game makes it hard to keep friendships and avoid grudges - it's designed for an increased number of conflicts and wars AI vs. AI and AI vs. human...), it's simply to limit seriously how much conquest is viable in the first 2 eras, and then to gradually make wars and the start of a Domination campaign more and more possible as the game reach the middle-phase, and yet even more when it's in the late game. It goes hand in hand with other changes like making your gold income rely heavily on having peaceful relations with nearby cities for TR (late game you can send the TR far away, early game you can't) and the heavy happiness cost of expansion/conquest.

Wars are still quite possible early game, but city captures are less frequent.

The penalty for taking out the last city of a Civ remains exactly the same in all eras. It simply has far less diplomatic impact in the late game, theoretically, because the warmonger is now strong enough to "intimidate" the other civs that do not dare denounce him or declare war on him for his warmongering.

I think their goal is to make it so the VCs are achievable right around the same time. It used to be commonplace to win a domination victory in the Renaissance or Industrial. This is their attempt to slow it down.

Having the warmonger penalty is also a balance thing.

What do you lose by warmongering? You get poor trade agreements, fewer RAs and you might get sanctions against you in the WC (I tend to beeline the Forbidden Palace or capture the city that has it and buy out CSs to avoid this). If you're a real warmonger and have a fearsome military you shouldn't be threatened by invasion but I suppose that can be a negative too. Oh and an annoying robot who feels like it has to constantly remind you that it doesn't like you

What do you gain by being a warmonger? Prime spots to expand, sometimes nicely developed cities. Cities with wonders you didn't have to build. Some wonders have instant effects you miss out on but most of them are just as good captured as if you built them yourself. Captured works for culture and tourism. Gold and resources from peace treaties (I used to just try to get even peace treaties but more often than not I find that if I prolong the war they'll be willing to offer stuff). I think lucrative peace treaties make up for poor trade agreements. Finally, warmongering greatly slows down your enemies on getting their own VCs.

That's what I don't get about how upset people get over the warmonger penalty. It's a trade off. You get a bad rep but you also get a lot of what really matters for winning the game.

Always denounce before declaring war. Always try to bribe other civs into joining you in the war or join them in wars of their own. Never wipe a civ out completely. Do those three things and the warmonger penalties are much more manageable, even in the classical era.

 

[Gort]

That's what I don't get about how upset people get over the warmonger penalty. It's a trade off. You get a bad rep but you also get a lot of what really matters for winning the game.

Except that's not actually the case. I find it far easier to win if I have plenty of space to build 4 huge Tradition-fuelled cities of my own than I do if I'm boxed in from the word go and am forced to conquer to expand.

There should be no warmonger penalty. There should be an "Oh look, you're winning!" penalty, instead. The AI should be concerned about your chances of winning, not about what you did to get to your current state in the game.

 

[zukenft]

the problem is early warmongering don't snowball enough to give you a clear edge.
taking big cities, wonders and great works is a great incentive, but before industrial, the enemy won't have many of these yet.

 

[Aristos]

There should be no warmonger penalty. There should be an "Oh look, you're winning!" penalty, instead. The AI should be concerned about your chances of winning, not about what you did to get to your current state in the game.

It's in there all right, you just don't see it anymore as a modifier because most people hated to see the "They think you are trying to win in the same manner...blablabla".

Code is there to check for victory conditions and react accordingly. It can be better implemented/adjusted, but it's there and quite sophisticated after BNW.