Realistic benefits of (early) war

[Sal]

This is a suggestion for how early war could be changed to help solve the problem of 3 full eras of peace that a lot of people are having, without going back to runaway civs.

A lot of early wars such as the Roman expansions were fought not just despite the cost but explicitly to make money, through plundering and selling into slavery. In Civ 5 BNW war is seldom profitable, as it leaves you with a larger empire to manage, greater penalties and greater unhappiness. I would suggest the following.

1) Increase the amount of gold from plundering, so that it is worthwhile (it should not give less than the cost of one unit, when many nations went to war to pay for the cost of their armies' upkeep)

2) Allow city razing to bring in 1 worker per 2 population destroyed, or the equivalent amount in gold.

3) Scale down the warmonger penalty so that the extent to which another civ is disgusted with you is calculated as a ratio to how many social policies they have adopted. (If that is too complex it could simply increase each era)

I believe this would offer warmonger civs a real laternative to trade routes as a means of earning gold and building up their infrastructure and would more accurately reflect the real world. The great buildings in Rome were all built with the profits of war, but we are not all still furious at them and refusing to trade with them!

 

[Loreise]

I've often found that early war isn't too much of an issue, as long as you choose your targets strategically and puppet your conquered cities until you can afford the happiness and time or money necessary to build a courthouse. As such, I don't feel it really needs changing- even the most barbaric of world empires needed some form of economy, otherwise they just developed a massive cult of personality around one figure whose death would lead to the disintegration of said empire (See Attila and his Huns). Civ can never really capture what it's like to really run an empire, but as much realism as possible whilst keeping the game fun is a worthwhile endeavour.

 

[Arte_Et_Marte]

I think honor could use some buffs to make early war more interesting. As it stands you'll probably destroy all buildings, bring the city down to a couple of pop', suffer more unhappiness, and you're going to be hated by a lot of people.

I like the idea of everyone being pissed at you, I just don't think the political cost matches the reward from taking cities in BNW. If Honor had policies that reduced population and building loss, because you're an honorable and professional army, I'd reconsider it. Right now early war is my last resort, I'd have to have absolutely no where to expand and a very poor location for my capital.

 

[mistermoo33]

I think honor could use some buffs to make early war more interesting. As it stands you'll probably destroy all buildings, bring the city down to a couple of pop', suffer more unhappiness, and you're going to be hated by a lot of people.

I like the idea of everyone being pissed at you, I just don't think the political cost matches the reward from taking cities in BNW. If Honor had policies that reduced population and building loss, because you're an honorable and professional army, I'd reconsider it.

It's really not entirely honor that's the problem, but the strategies it supports. It gives your melee units combat bonuses, and a production bonus to those units. Massing melee units is heavily encouraged by honor but is ultimately not viable. Mass melee is a horrible strategy. In fact even a moderate amount of melee units is not very good. For early war you want 3 melee tops with an army primarily of ranged/siege units.

 

[kaspergm]

It's really not entirely honor that's the problem, but the strategies it supports. It gives your melee units combat bonuses, and a production bonus to those units. Massing melee units is heavily encouraged by honor but is ultimately not viable. Mass melee is a horrible strategy. In fact even a moderate amount of melee units is not very good. For early war you want 3 melee tops with an army primarily of ranged/siege units.

Well that perhaps, but also the fact that Honor encourages many units, but doesn't help you support the Gold cost of these before the finisher, and then even that one only counts when you are at active war. I know we should not turn into another Honor discussion thread when we have an active one, but Honor definitely should have some sort of benefits, such as:

• Lower unit maintenance cost
• More gold from cities
• Culture from capturing cities (they took that one out of Autocracy?)
• No upkeep for Garrisoned units (taken from Tradition)

 

[Sal]

I know the human player can make war profitable, but the AI seems to struggle, and I think taking workers, or more money, from a conquered city makes historical sense. Some empires collapsed on that strategy, but some did not and I think the long stretches of peace until ideological differences cause war are making the early game a bit boring. Saying this, I'm not a war/expansion player, but I still like a bit of a chllenge from someone at some point. I love the BNW additions I just think they give the AI modern moral sensibilities right back in the classical era.

 

[Arte_Et_Marte]

I've heard that in BNW the percentage of cities taken can be a lot more important than actually declaring war, and it definitely seems that way. If I take 1 out of 2 cities early game everyone hates me, but if I take 1 out 10 late game hardly anyone seems to care.

So if you want to war early game would it be a better choice to not take cities, but just to pillage and to sue for a favorable peace treaty, ruining their economy and strengthening yours?

 

[Gyra Solune]

I know the human player can make war profitable, but the AI seems to struggle, and I think taking workers, or more money, from a conquered city makes historical sense. Some empires collapsed on that strategy, but some did not and I think the long stretches of peace until ideological differences cause war are making the early game a bit boring. Saying this, I'm not a war/expansion player, but I still like a bit of a chllenge from someone at some point. I love the BNW additions I just think they give the AI modern moral sensibilities right back in the classical era.

That last statement pretty aptly sums up the issue here, I think.

 

[aljung]

I'd say it depends on the situation. One does not simply start a game with the intention of doing early war. Especially as the A.I. receives starting advantages, you won't want to declare war on opponents that have a lot of units, but rather punish those that decide to turtle/boom. Distance also plays a role - it's easier to conquer a nearby city (Polynesia once placed a city right next to my capital in about turn 25 - I had 2 warriors and 1 archer, and added 2 archers. I could easily take the city, as he was 'only' defending with 2 warriors of his own.)

That said, I would never put more than 1 point into Honor until either tradition or liberty are at least half completed. It's too crippling on your own economy.

 

[Matjillam]

I also just think that honor needs a buff, not war it self. Making war more beneficial would just mean that civs going tradition/liberty would kick ass vs civs going honor.

Make it so that honor gets more advantages from warring like:

- improved plundering: razing cities now gives x GPT for 5 turns pr. pop razed. Pillaging trade routes gold increased by 50 %

- war stories: Gives temporary happiness each time your units are succesfull in destroying an enemy unit

Or something along those lines

Honor REALLY lacks the utilities to deal with the massive unhappines and lack of science + gold. Right now, if you want to go to war, you DONT take honor, you take tradition or liberty to get a well functioning empire first.

We need honor to be a strong pick for civs going war heavy.

 

[Lyoncet]

It's good to keep in mind why warmongering was nerfed, especially early warmongering. Back in the day, it was just too powerful, plain and simple. It was like the worker stealing of its day: if you didn't do it, you were playing sub-optimally. From a winning-the-game perspective, it created such a snowball scenario it was more often than not the easiest way to victory.

Now granted, this really only applied to single-player, and it was in large a product of the AI being inept at warmongering. The risk/reward calculus reflected that, and since the risk was pretty minimal, the investment in early warmongering almost never went unrewarded. So the two ways of fixing that were to increase the risk or decrease the reward. Since it's really unlikely they'll ever do an overhaul of the tactical AI, they had to settle with reducing the reward. So we have warmonger penalties, puppet penalties, happiness and good issues, etc. These things didn't come from a vacuum; they're the result of the devs fixing things.

Now, all that said, I really like the OP's ideas. They make warmongering more profitable early on, but they do it in a way that doesn't create the snowball effect of the early unbridled warfare. And they do it in a way that makes sense from a history/flavor perspective, and in a way that could help Honor out as a tree. Seems like a reasonable way to go about it.

 

[Seek]

2) Allow city razing to bring in 1 worker per 2 population destroyed, or the equivalent amount in gold.

This is a great idea, though I'd simplify it to: when a city is razed you have the option to choose a free worker or settler. (Powerful in the early game, but not so much in the late game.)

It's really not entirely honor that's the problem, but the strategies it supports. It gives your melee units combat bonuses, and a production bonus to those units. Massing melee units is heavily encouraged by honor but is ultimately not viable. Mass melee is a horrible strategy. In fact even a moderate amount of melee units is not very good. For early war you want 3 melee tops with an army primarily of ranged/siege units.

I disagree - the problem is the overwhelming power of a ranged unit-focused strategy. Ranged units are too powerful, as has been noted ad nauseam, and Honor is extremely difficult to use effectively as a starting policy tree. It really deserves a buff.

Culture from capturing cities (they took that one out of Autocracy?)

You plunder culture in the form of Great Works now.

 

[Sal]

I am not familiar with modding. Out of interest are these things that could be done with a mod? I imagine the buffs are but getting the AI to utilise them maybe not? I like the way the discussion is going to incorporating these changes into the honor tree rather than general benefits. That would really make it a choice about what your civ's culture is as to whether or not war is beneficial for them.

 

[True_Candyman]

This is a suggestion for how early war could be changed to help solve the problem of 3 full eras of peace that a lot of people are having, without going back to runaway civs.

A lot of early wars such as the Roman expansions were fought not just despite the cost but explicitly to make money, through plundering and selling into slavery. In Civ 5 BNW war is seldom profitable, as it leaves you with a larger empire to manage, greater penalties and greater unhappiness. I would suggest the following.

1) Increase the amount of gold from plundering, so that it is worthwhile (it should not give less than the cost of one unit, when many nations went to war to pay for the cost of their armies' upkeep)

2) Allow city razing to bring in 1 worker per 2 population destroyed, or the equivalent amount in gold.

3) Scale down the warmonger penalty so that the extent to which another civ is disgusted with you is calculated as a ratio to how many social policies they have adopted. (If that is too complex it could simply increase each era)

I believe this would offer warmonger civs a real laternative to trade routes as a means of earning gold and building up their infrastructure and would more accurately reflect the real world. The great buildings in Rome were all built with the profits of war, but we are not all still furious at them and refusing to trade with them!

A lot of early wars may have been fought to may have been fought to make money, but this doesn't mean they actually did. The Roman expansions were more to secure trade with locations where unrest had emerged. So you could use that aspect. I don't think anyone would argue they were profitable except through gaining/not losing potential trade though.

Most of the Roman empire was built of trading infrastructure though, secured by legions, not through war. The idea of the Roman's as glorious conquerors is becoming outdated and a legacy of their romanticism by industrial western Europe.

Most, if not all, wars throughout history were not profitable, unless you count the long term benefits of gaining land, population and resources. These aspects are already considered by the systems of CiV, so your argument is flawed by being based of history.

I don't believe any of those benefits are necessary either (and most of them are wildly unbalanced). There is already more than enough incentive to go to war if you can win (and if you can't it's your own silly fault, you shouldn't gain anything from making a mistake). Pillaging is plenty good enough, there are opportunities to steal settlers and cities and peace treaties can often be very lucrative. I think war is just fine as it is.

I do like the idea of small improvements to the honour tree though. Extra culture and production related to military activites would be a welcome addition

 

[Arte_Et_Marte]

With the additional warmonger hate and increased barbarian activity in BNW it looks like Firaxis wants early warfare to be all about barbarians, which isn't a bad idea. One way of making this early warfare more interesting would be to make barbarians more interesting. If they worked like mini-civs where instead of/as well as encampments they have their own villages, it'd be a lot tougher than an encampment but you'd be able to capture it, like a city, and eventually grow it into a city.

This would keep the grow tall, grow wide, and grow by taking their stuff dynamic without conquering full fledged cvs.

 

[True_Candyman]

With the additional warmonger hate and increased barbarian activity in BNW it looks like Firaxis wants early warfare to be all about barbarians, which isn't a bad idea. One way of making this early warfare more interesting would be to make barbarians more interesting. If they worked like mini-civs where instead of/as well as encampments they have their own villages, it'd be a lot tougher than an encampment but you'd be able to capture it, like a city, and eventually grow it into a city.

This would keep the grow tall, grow wide, and grow by taking their stuff dynamic without conquering full fledged cvs.

Even if it doesn't grow into a full city, it would be nice if it just gave you a little splurge of land, like 3/4 tiles or so around the camp.

 

[Sal]

@True_Candyman - I am not familiar enough with recent views on history to dispute this, but I do feel that there is, at root, a problem with realism at the moment. If it is the case the wars have seldom made sense (and who could dispute that?) It does not mean that there should be little or no war in the early game. It is one of the many challenges that fledgling empires and kingdoms had to face and often defined their sense of themselves as a people. I suppose what the question comes down to is whether you want the AI to "try to win" in which case they will all play as wise and intelligent rulers, or whether you want a single player to reflect a passage through time and the story of a civilization, in which case some AI will rule well and there will be others who (like Alexander the Great or Attilla the Hun) go out and conquer everything in sight only for the whole thing to collapse after their death.

I personally like the latter style, but obviously that's just my preference. What my suggestions are aimed at is providing some AI players who add that "flavour" to the game. I have long thought for example that while the Vikings (or Danish) are buffed for pillaging, it's not really in their interest to do so, so they don't. After all who wants to puppet or annex a city with all the improvements in ruins?

How do you feel about the big peace stretches at the beginning? I find myself in a strange position arguing against them because I am a culture/diplo player, but I feel that something has been lost, even though a lot has undeniably been added.

 

[Arte_Et_Marte]

Even if it doesn't grow into a full city, it would be nice if it just gave you a little splurge of land, like 3/4 tiles or so around the camp.

That could work, it'd be better than what we've got. I just like the idea of civilizing barbarians and bringing them into the empire.

 

[True_Candyman]

@True_Candyman - I am not familiar enough with recent views on history to dispute this, but I do feel that there is, at root, a problem with realism at the moment. If it is the case the wars have seldom made sense (and who could dispute that?) It does not mean that there should be little or no war in the early game. It is one of the many challenges that fledgling empires and kingdoms had to face and often defined their sense of themselves as a people. I suppose what the question comes down to is whether you want the AI to "try to win" in which case they will all play as wise and intelligent rulers, or whether you want a single player to reflect a passage through time and the story of a civilization, in which case some AI will rule well and there will be others who (like Alexander the Great or Attilla the Hun) go out and conquer everything in sight only for the whole thing to collapse after their death.

I personally like the latter style, but obviously that's just my preference. What my suggestions are aimed at is providing some AI players who add that "flavour" to the game. I have long thought for example that while the Vikings (or Danish) are buffed for pillaging, it's not really in their interest to do so, so they don't. After all who wants to puppet or annex a city with all the improvements in ruins?

How do you feel about the big peace stretches at the beginning? I find myself in a strange position arguing against them because I am a culture/diplo player, but I feel that something has been lost, even though a lot has undeniably been added.

I understand why you feel something needs changing, and i understand why you feel like something has been lost. I do too. However, this can be restored simply by increasing AI aggression expansion just a little. I don't think we need AI aggression or expansion as high as it was before, as i've found the (relative) peace early on allows for more interesting late game (which is FAR better than it was before IMO - i used to be unable to complete a game post renaissance because i had effectively already won). However, i feel the balance isn't quite there for my liking yet, but i think the aggression is the only issue, not the benefits of warfare.

Adding gold incentives will do nothing to help the AI, it will only encourage more aggression from the player. The incentives you have suggested are just plain ridiculous in the extent of advantages given against the potential cost. They will make the game a war simulator. There is plenty enough advantage to war as is for the reasons i've already listed. Additionally, gold is not the main concern when going to war. You lose out on all aspects of your economy by prepping and taking part in war, so gold incentives would still be pittance to make up for it.

Essentially, i think this is vastly unneccessary and would end up with the AI being picked on by the human player, and making the game far too easy by generating easy snowballs after one successful war. The game is already balanced for war. There is clearly a benefit to war economically, and it is a direct path to victory. It does not need changing. The game is fine in this regard. The lack of early war is an different and unrelated issue that you are conflating with the lack of short term rewards for warfare, and that's where i think our point of disagreement is.

That could work, it'd be better than what we've got. I just like the idea of civilizing barbarians and bringing them into the empire.

It would be a nice little mini "colonisation"-esque thing i think. It would really incentivise aggressive barb hunting and early military build up if there are barb camps around luxury resources. +4 happiness without the negative for cities and pop? Yes please. At the same time it would be quite a difficult thing to do, and more difficult still to defend if it's a way off. It would be interesting to investigate how many tiles would be a nice touch without being a gamebreaking leg up on everyone else.

It would also make Germany VERY relevant again

 

[Sal]

Adding gold incentives will do nothing to help the AI, it will only encourage more aggression from the player. The incentives you have suggested are just plain ridiculous in the extent of advantages given against the potential cost. They will make the game a war simulator. There is plenty enough advantage to war as is for the reasons i've already listed. Additionally, gold is not the main concern when going to war. You lose out on all aspects of your economy by prepping and taking part in war, so gold incentives would still be pittance to make up for it.

Essentially, i think this is vastly unneccessary and would end up with the AI being picked on by the human player, and making the game far too easy by generating easy snowballs after one successful war. The game is already balanced for war. There is clearly a benefit to war economically, and it is a direct path to victory. It does not need changing. The game is fine in this regard. The lack of early war is an different and unrelated issue that you are conflating with the lack of short term rewards for warfare, and that's where i think our point of disagreement is.

I don't believe the suggestions are ridiculous. There are many examples of wars that have been fought not for land but for money. The crusaders took so much plunder that banks had to be invented to take care of it all. The viking raids on the North of England were initially about carrying off slaves and loot that they could then trade elsewhere for money, or take home to build with. What I was suggesting would add this as a possible type of warfare.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the advantages would be too great, but would also be a pittance. If the amount of money I suggested is too much in can also be balanced down, or vice-versa. Time lost building can be made up buying those buildings with your spoils.

I do however agree that this is something human players may exploit! For this reason it would need to be experimented with and balanced carefully.

I think the issue of over peaceful beginnings is connected to this, because one of reasons is for them IMO is that the AI now calculates that war is not worthwhile because the science, culture and happiness penalties of expanding the empire through conquest outweigh the gains. These additions would give them another reason, but it would be a playoff between the short term gains and the loss of trade routes to that Civ and diplo penalties (a much bigger deal now with WC)

"With the additional warmonger hate and increased barbarian activity in BNW it looks like Firaxis wants early warfare to be all about barbarians, which isn't a bad idea. One way of making this early warfare more interesting would be to make barbarians more interesting. If they worked like mini-civs where instead of/as well as encampments they have their own villages, it'd be a lot tougher than an encampment but you'd be able to capture it, like a city, and eventually grow it into a city."

This is interesting, and on reflection could well be their intention, but I agree that barbarians would need a bit more about them.