Military Emergency After One Turn: A Recipe for Ragequits

[HiRezAudio]

Was playing a game where Brazil was implacably committed to being at war with me. They declared a suprise war, lost badly, sued for peace, and when left alone and treated amicably they nonetheless declared another surprise war maybe twenty turns later.

Second time around I decided to get punitive, their capital having no real buffer zone made it a sensible target. It's a tense situation. My units are beat up and on the defense, but finally I have some breathing against Brazil's belligerence. And then a military emergency pops up. Not cool.

Now with units in no shape to fight a war on multiple fronts, I'm at war with two other civ's with superior tech, not to mention nearby city-states happily suiciding their units against some unprotected coastal cities in order to raze them (more of those damn men-at-arms attacking cities way too easily). Time to retire for the evening. Maybe come back tomorrow and do some deep scum-saving to figure out if zero-delay military emergencies are the norm when capitals are cancelled. If so, to heck with this game.

The idea of the military emergency serving as a consequence to warmongering is a worthy idea, but not every capital grab is a break-the-bully situation. There seems to be no consideration of the accumulation of grievances between the two civ's, or the military strength of the taker. In fact, my experience is that if I'm militarily superior, the emergency members leave me alone rather than gang up. largely undermining the point a military emergency presenting of a united front against a bully.

Balance pass, please.

Another thing with these 'Emergencies' and also happens with Natural Disasters is that when it is me to be the beneficiary, the situation is declared as many as 50 turns later but if I am too be the target it is almost immediate.

The whole 'warmonger' thing is badly out of whack whatever way you look at it. Time and again I have had an aggressive AI nearby who will constantly try to attack me, but if I also feel enough is enough & punish them it is ALWAYS me who gets the diplo hit. And 'Go play Civ IV' is not a good response.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

There's no emergencies for burning down cities, committing genocide and pillaging. =/ Then you just let the capital willingly join your niceguy empire.

Hell, if I'm the aggressor in an ancient (possibly classical) era war I'm often happy to raze and resettle my neighbors land. You will always be able to fit in higher quality cities, and more of them than the AI.

 

[Vargas1]

walls are insurance and you didn't pay the premium

I really like this analogy. Walls are a pain because in 90% of games they're mostly useless (even with minor benefits from Monarchy now), but in situations where you don't build them but then need them, it hits you hard. So more or less exactly how insurance works.

 

[steveg700]

I found this thread fascinating because it's so far from my experiences with Civ 6. I've gone entire games without being declared on once, let alone having an emergency declared against me.

To the OP, would you mind sharing some of the details of your game setup and your style of play? I'm curious what the may be causing the differences in our experiences.

I play on huge shuffle maps. This one at Immortal.

I was frontier pass stuff: barb clans, corporations, secret societies, heroes & legends.

In my experience it's not really the strength of the aggressor, but it is related to "is this civ winning?" With the emergency much more likely if the "leader" is the aggressor.

Yeah, thing is I was still at the rear of victory rankings, which is how it tends to be in the early game.

The Op didn't build walls, couldn't even defend against a city state that was separated by a body of water, walls are insurance and you didn't pay the premium. These kind of posts remind me of the " I'm going to turn barbarians off because they are too hard". Like if you can't handle barbarians or city states then how do you handle starting next to Chandragupta or Alexander Or Ambiorix on Deity ?

A fine platitude, but as had been explained, the cities targeted by the city-state hadn't had a chance to build walls. Low-pop, single-digit-production coastal cities.

As for the barbarians tangent, camps appear and just start spitting out top-of-the-line units each round. Sometimes two a round. Civ's don't do that. And of course, when repelling the barbarians, you *don't* get much in the way of opportunities out of that event, unlike some nimrod civ who launches a war and gets his army wiped.

Meh, still no actual games. It's pretty boring to have all this abstract talk.

Alright to be fair, current games may have not gone well and may have been tossed out in the garbage. Yea, it just happens. Anyone want to toss a save and a scenario that needs diplomatic help?

I reloaded from an older save. Pedro popped up and gave his message of fondness for not competing for great people, and turned green smiley a turn or two later. I jumped to make friends with him, and once that happens it's smooth sailing as the dominos of getting diplo bonus for shared friendships fall into place.

Another thing that might have made a difference is that I didn't see Brazil get Arthur, and perhaps that emboldened them to attack in the previous game.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I reloaded from an older save. Pedro popped up and gave his message of fondness for not competing for great people, and turned green smiley a turn or two later. I jumped to make friends with him, and once that happens it's smooth sailing as the dominos of getting diplo bonus for shared friendships fall into place.

Another thing that might have made a difference is that I didn't see Brazil get Arthur, and perhaps that emboldened them to attack in the previous game.

Nice. Anyhow, if you do want to share the save, I can always try to make it spicy by not making friends with Brazil. I may end up dead though.