So we are back to gods and king?

[Heretiv]

Surely the AI should be trying to kill each other too?

 

[Polisurgist]

1.Puppeted cap with no buildings under resistance is huge leap indeed.
2.Yeah lets all gang bang on poor Nebby, since he has no external checks on his growth. We're all friends right?
3.Its funny when you play huge map, conquer your neighbor in Classic meeting only 3 civs in process. And when World Congress Emerges, suddenly everyone you meet for the first time Denounce you and hostile towards you.

1. Puppeting/annexing is your decision, and if you're that early in the game, not annexing a captured capital as soon as it comes out of resistance (and your second point here makes it sound like you never figured out that resistance ends).
2. If you're playing as Nebby, you get to see that everyone's gangbanging on you, you don't get to see the AIs' attitude toward each other. If they do all cooperate, at least part of that has to be because of the bonus for common denunciations which, again, is a situation you brought on yourself.
3. This pretty much illuminates the fact that you've never bothered to familiarize yourself with how diplomacy/attitude actually works in this game, and that you're stringing together an interpretation of the system based on some limited experience in which you're suffering the consequences of some pretty bad diplomatic decisions yourself. That, or you're at least applying experience all the way back from Vanilla to the game now, ignoring the improvements that have been made.

 

[katfish]

1. Puppeting/annexing is your decision, and if you're that early in the game, not annexing a captured capital as soon as it comes out of resistance (and your second point here makes it sound like you never figured out that resistance ends).
2. If you're playing as Nebby, you get to see that everyone's gangbanging on you, you don't get to see the AIs' attitude toward each other. If they do all cooperate, at least part of that has to be because of the bonus for common denunciations which, again, is a situation you brought on yourself.
3. This pretty much illuminates the fact that you've never bothered to familiarize yourself with how diplomacy/attitude actually works in this game, and that you're stringing together an interpretation of the system based on some limited experience in which you're suffering the consequences of some pretty bad diplomatic decisions yourself. That, or you're at least applying experience all the way back from Vanilla to the game now, ignoring the improvements that have been made.

1.Yeah, its my decision to get mediocre city that requires 4gold maintenance building to grow past 5 pop and isn't affected by free buildings and bonuses from tradition. Totally worth bunch of archers, gonna leap forward on that.
2.Rome and Ottomans making peace and moving fleets into Nebby direction after Attila elimination is a total coincidence.
3.No, just no.

 

[Polisurgist]

1.Yeah, its my decision to get mediocre city that requires 4gold maintenance building to grow past 5 pop and isn't affected by free buildings and bonuses from tradition. Totally worth bunch of archers, gonna leap forward on that.
2.Rome and Ottomans making peace and moving fleets into Nebby direction after Attila elimination is a total coincidence.
3.No, just no.

Y'know...have fun playing a game that seems to exist for the sole purpose of giving you something to about on the internet. I don't have any special interest in trying to educate you further here.

 

[Walter R]

Y'know...have fun playing a game that seems to exist for the sole purpose of giving you something to about on the internet. I don't have any special interest in trying to educate you further here.

Hey Pol, I've learned a lot from people like yourself - please don't stop posting.

 

[Polisurgist]

Hey Pol, I've learned a lot from people like yourself - please don't stop posting.

No, I'm just following the rule where if you're talking to someone and both you and they have repeated yourselves twice, it's time to stop doing that

 

[kaspergm]

Ok now I'm confused, I thought that's exactly how it is supposed to work? That a warmonger penalty decays over time (50 turns or so on standard speed)?

Or is the "warmonger penalty" per city, so you get 50 turns of it for taking one city, another 50 turns for the next city and so on? So basically after conquering 3 or four cities you have the penalty for the rest of the game?

That is how it works, sort of, except Firaxis haven't gotten the numbers right yet (imo.). Problems is that they've set decay rate so low that it can take several hundreds of turns to eat up the warmonger score you get from one city if it's the last city or a city state. If you take numerous cities from a civ, these numbers will quickly stack up and stay with you for the entire game.

 

[Polisurgist]

That is how it works, sort of, except Firaxis haven't gotten the numbers right yet (imo.). Problems is that they've set decay rate so low that it can take several hundreds of turns to eat up the warmonger score you get from one city if it's the last city or a city state. If you take numerous cities from a civ, these numbers will quickly stack up and stay with you for the entire game.

And you might end up with chain denouncements, which are a thing and should probably be fixed. If two civs are really close, one's denunciation might push the other to denounce you 1-2 turns later. Then when the first one's expires, the fact that the second one still has a denunciation on you could push it into denouncing you again, and two turns later, the second one expires and then denounces you again, repeat, repeat.

 

[kaspergm]

And you might end up with chain denouncements, which are a thing and should probably be fixed. If two civs are really close, one's denunciation might push the other to denounce you 1-2 turns later. Then when the first one's expires, the fact that the second one still has a denunciation on you could push it into denouncing you again, and two turns later, the second one expires and then denounces you again, repeat, repeat.

Yes, that is why denouncement should only be an option with a specified trigger, and only once per trigger - for instance "we denounce you for declaring war on the Huns" or "we denounce you for stealing our technology" or whatever. "We denounce you because XXX denounced you" or "we denounce you because you built this wonder we would really like for ourselves" or "we denounce you because you have a higher score than us" should NOT be an option, and when you have been denounced for something once, they can't denounce you for that again. But that's a subject for another discussion.

 

[gps]

1. This pretty much illuminates the fact that you've never bothered to familiarize yourself with how diplomacy/attitude actually works in this game, ...

Funny how this argument keeps getting brought up over and over and over and over again. If the AI-diplo does not make sense for you then you're the one who did not make his homeworks and familiarize youreself properly with the logic of the AI (which - needless to say - makes perfect sense once you understood its twisted logic and know how to avoid and exploit it's flaws).
Really? If have have to study three years and get a degree in AI psychology first before I am able to deal with and understand the Civ V AI - then maybe there's just something outright wrong with the AI itself. I mean it's just a crazy idea of yours truely, but did this thought never ever occur to you? Even if just for the fraction of a second??? Just asking...
Because it could be sooooooo easy: do something bad to the AI => they hate you. Do something good to the AI => they love you. Be stronger than the AI => the fear you - and be weaker than the AI => they pity and challenge you...

 

[Dogmouth]

I should clarify my comment about "realism." While it's impossible to emulate real life and maintain gameplay balance in a strategy game like CiV, real life does give some insight into strategic considerations. The point I was trying to make is that a Civilization who neutralizes an early aggressor (by, for instance, seizing a city after being DOW'd) isn't quite as threatening as a Civilization who randomly declares war on neighbors and seizes cities. Also, generally players of any game will want to discourage outright aggression by making a failed aggression attempt at least somewhat painful.

Mind you, I'm not envisioning an elimination of warmonger penalties for Civilizations that have been DOW'd. Rather, I'm proposing a discount for the first city or first few cities. This is how EU3 did it (3 infamy per province for defensive wars without a CB, and 4 infamy per province for defensive wars without a CB), and that approach worked in my boat.

Finally, I should mention one last issue I have with the warmonger penalty: the UI sometimes suggests that CiV has some sort of Casus Belli system where righteous wars are treated differently than random DOWs, but this isn't true. I'm thinking specifically about cases where the diplomatic interfaces gives you options for responding to diplomatic slights/espionage with a declaration of war. The problem here is that the player doesn't need a special option to simply declare war; he or she may do that anyway. However, providing that option in the diplomatic interface after certain diplomatic events sure makes it seem like this sort of DOW is different than a random DOW (it isn't! you get the same warmonger for a DOW after a spying incident as you would for a DOW just for sh*ts and giggles).

 

[Polisurgist]

Yes, that is why denouncement should only be an option with a specified trigger, and only once per trigger - for instance "we denounce you for declaring war on the Huns" or "we denounce you for stealing our technology" or whatever. "We denounce you because XXX denounced you" or "we denounce you because you built this wonder we would really like for ourselves" or "we denounce you because you have a higher score than us" should NOT be an option, and when you have been denounced for something once, they can't denounce you for that again. But that's a subject for another discussion.

That's one way to go about it, though it sort of feeds into the misconception that diplomacy is about these individual actions and not about building up the AI's attitude toward you by way of a variety of factors. The fix I'd see, which would be pretty simple, would be to have the impact of a friend's denunciation decay over time; so the initial denunciation from Rome might tip Rome's ally into denouncing you too, when Rome's expires, the impact from his ally's denunciation will be decayed to the point where it alone* won't tip him back into denouncing you, and the chain can end there.

Funny how this argument keeps getting brought up over and over and over and over again. If the AI-diplo does not make sense for you then you're the one who did not make his homeworks and familiarize youreself properly with the logic of the AI (which - needless to say - makes perfect sense once you understood its twisted logic and know how to avoid and exploit it's flaws).
Really? If have have to study three years and get a degree in AI psychology first before I am able to deal with and understand the Civ V AI - then maybe there's just something outright wrong with the AI itself. I mean it's just a crazy idea of yours truely, but did this thought never ever occur to you? Even if just for the fraction of a second??? Just asking...
Because it could be sooooooo easy: do something bad to the AI => they hate you. Do something good to the AI => they love you. Be stronger than the AI => the fear you - and be weaker than the AI => they pity and challenge you...

Dude, it's not that hard for you to at least read a thread posted by someone who's familiar enough with the coding of the game to read the AI's diplomacy algorithms. I'm not saying you need to do it yourself, just read something by anyone who's actually done this and a couple factors will be readily apparent, namely the thing that katfish got wrong, that the AI is somehow conspiring against him because he gets denounced immediately upon meeting other civs. The logic behind diplomacy is plainly obvious that that cannot be simply because of the warmonger penalty from taking a single city-state or capital; the civs you haven't met yet have absolutely no way of knowing your warmonger status, no matter how bad it is.

However, all else being equal, if you've only met, say, Portugal, plus you've given them lots of reasons to hate you, and then Portugal goes around and meets the rest of the world while you stay isolated, then yes, the WC gets founded, you meet everyone else, and at that point, the only thing any of them know about you is that their buddy Maria thinks you're a dick, you're going to have a bad time of it diplomatically, and that means denunciations and declarations of war.

I'm not saying this means you should be peaceful; your mistake in a case like this is not wiping Portugal off the map before meeting the rest of the world. If you're gonna warmonger, then warmonger like a warmonger.

 

[gps]

Dude, it's not that hard for you to at least read a thread posted by someone who's familiar enough with the coding of the game to read the AI's diplomacy algorithms.

See, that's exactly my point. I don't want to read a thread posted by someone who's familiar enough with the coding of the game to read the AI's diplomacy algorithms to understand what's going on in the game. I want to understand what's going on in the game by playing the game myself or by reading a thread posted by someone who's familiar with playing the game. In a game of Civ I don't want to beat algorithms or mechanics, I want to beat Monty, Lizzy and Cathy. And strangely enough even the Civ V lead designer Jon Shafer acknowledged this in his recent blog about Enemy at the Gates stating that even the best and most brilliant AI algorithm is pointless if the AI behavior does not make sense for the player... Dude...

 

[Cromagnus]

@Strategist83:

Pretty much agree. And if you lie about moving troops from someone's borders, that still shows up as bright red 200 turns later to every AI, *even AIs you hadn't met at the time*. It's a bunch of BS. It's making it just plain not fun to go for Domination Victory until very very late. Like, forget about taking cities prior to turn 200, or you'll be DoW'd by everyone in the game. That is completely stupid.

 

[Polisurgist]

See, that's exactly my point. I don't want to read a thread posted by someone who's familiar enough with the coding of the game to read the AI's diplomacy algorithms to understand what's going on in the game. I want to understand what's going on in the game by playing the game myself or by reading a thread posted by someone who's familiar with playing the game.

I think it definitely depends who you're reading, then, since there seem to be a ton of people who do one thing that may not be the wisest move, get bit for it, do the same thing ten more times, get bit ten more times, show up here to complain, have someone explain it in more or less plain English, go back, do the same thing a hundred times and then post the same complaint a hundred times.

However - big caveat - you're right that the game could explain the logic a lot better (and post-fall patch, it does), by saying specifically "TAKING THIS CITY IS A MAJOR WARMONGER PENALTY" or even by ditching the word "warmonger" entirely. If they said "military threat," it works just as well and just about nobody would complain about the fact that a civ who took over half the world is still capable of seeing you as a military threat. Save some hurt feelings from the Emocratic division at the very least.

In a game of Civ I don't want to beat algorithms or mechanics, I want to beat Monty, Lizzy and Cathy. And strangely enough even the Civ V lead designer Jon Shafer acknowledged this in his recent blog about Enemy at the Gates stating that even the best and most brilliant AI algorithm is pointless if the AI behavior does not make sense for the player... Dude...

First off, if you think reading up on AI algorithms is tough, I wouldn't recommend trying your hand at the time machine you'd need to actually play Civ against Catherine the Great instead of a set of algorithms. She probably wouldn't be all that Great at the game anyway.

Second, Shafer's line about the AI algorithm being pointless if it doesn't make sense is all well and good, but there are just some people you're never going to be able to make sense to. If you can be told time and again that you'll find it easier to maintain diplomacy by making declarations of friendship with a few civs and time and again you're going to come back here and say that there's no point in doing that, and that you aren't even going to try it, citing as proof the number of times you've been gang-banged by the world after not declaring friendships...I don't think there's a designer in the world who's going to make an AI that makes any sense to you, because I'm not sure how you're able to figure out the AI on a damn traffic light.

 

[njmfff]

The problems with that are/were:

a) taking one CS out of the game removes huge benefits for one player and big benefits for a few others. [...]

Agree there, I've said in some other threads, CS are much more valuable in BNW then they were in vanilla and GnK, especially cultured CS in early eras when you struggle for culture-per-turn. It allows you to complete social policies faster, when they are most needed. Militaristic CS are terrific if you plan to play more peacefully, because they will supply you with units so you can spend time and production toward building good economy\infrastructure.

What warmongers are asking for is to be allowed to conquer in waves through the game, while enjoying all the benefits of pretending to play peacefully in between those waves... but with every wave of conquest they get stronger and closer to the final victory, and more unstoppable.

Agree there too, but there's a slight problem. Most of us are complaining about AI, human players are different story. Every player wants to win, so it's natural response to prevent other players from winning. Ok, be a warmonger and you're getting powerful, but don't be surprised if two or three players team up if you're a threat to them. It doesn't matter how better that warmongering player is doing, if he gets ganged, the sheer numbers of other three players will win over him.

Now, with AI you get diplo hits for some terrible reasons. Declare war just once, you're bad. Drop fifth city in the late game, AI will complain you're expending too much, even if he just dropped his 30th city - happen in my game today, when I dropped my fifth city because I didn't have coil\oil in my first four, France denounced me for building cities too aggressively!? and he had around 30+ cities, plus he circled around my boarders with FOUR other settlers. I think what really happen is he became cranky because I blocked his settlers (surrounded them with units).

Warmongers who don't limit themselves to the capital of opponent + a zone of safety eventually get tons of luxuries, tons of cities in which to build more science buildings, culture buildings, tourism, tons of looted Wonders and Great Works. The AI Poland did that in one of my post-patch games. It became ridiculously overpowered in tourism, science and culture - eating up my long held 6-7 tech advances and finally running away and gaining a 6-7 tech lead and the Great Firewall before I finally build my Internet. When I finally won diplomatically, Poland was 2 spaceship parts away from SV, something like 15% away with two last cultures from a CV, and four capitals away from a DV... He had well over 30 cities, and the other AI were constantly at war with him.

It's a very good thing they at least balanced this out by heavy and lasting warmongering penalties so at least they can't benefit (as in exploit/abuse) that much from the game's other systems like trade routes (if the rest of the world embargo the warmonger and CS) and diplomacy, or it would make waves of conquest terribly overpowered (and tedious to play against). This huge Autocratic warmongering Poland was a nice challenge, but if beside that it could have traded massively and make friends to get RA etc. it would have been another thing altogether to play against that.

hmm, culture, gold most likely, but dunno about science. If he had dozens of cities, I am not sure how he could have advanced that fast. I mean, isn't that like every extra city adds +5% to tech cost?

I know that in my Mongol game recently I had a tech lead by several techs, but once I started dropping cities left and right, Korea and Arabia out tech me since they had 4 tall cities. I had over 40 cities, and by the time I researched Dynamite, Korea built Eiffel Tower. Arabia was using Battleships while I was still using Keshiks. In the end, I managed to take out Korea and hurt Arabia, only because of sheer number of units I could spam each turn. Yeah, in fair battle, they could easily wipe me out, but they were simply overrun. Later on I catch up with them by faith buying GS and bulbing them (dozens of cities, each with pagodas\mosque, shrine and temple, that's around ... 8-9 faith per city each turn? 4500 faith for GS? No problem )

PS. that wasn't game meant to be won, it was just good old Mongol domination fun. Honestly, I kinda get tired sometimes of playing several games and not be involved in just one war.

 

[Cromagnus]

I don't expect to have *as good* Diplomacy with the AI as if I hadn't taken any cities, what I expect is

1) A balanced set of Victory Conditions, where one is not significantly harder than the others

This is absolutely a must, because 15+ Civs in this game are designed for conquest. Nerfing Domination nerfs them. I don't want it to be *easier* to win if you start capturing cities, but it shouldn't be *much harder*.

2) Fair treatment. If an AI wipes someone off the planet, you don't see the rest of the AI chain-DoWing him all at once. When Genghis wipes out a CS on turn 40, or Venice eats one on turn 50, you don't see the world chain-Dowing all at once. But if a player captures a CS? Game over. That makes the game horribly imbalanced for early-to-mid game domination runs. It means that the only "supported" way to win a Domination Victory is to peacefully tech science until around turn 175. That's some BS for all the civs whose unique units come in the Ancient, Classical, Medieval or Renaissance Era. Siege Towers? Yeah, right. Have fun with those. You'll take one or two cities and then get wiped off the face of the planet.

People who don't think this is unbalanced obviously don't do a lot of early warmongering. I'm *fine* with it being a struggle to recover diplomatically and financially from early warmongering. That challenge is part of the fun. I'm not fine with it being a death sentence.

 

[Callonia]

I don't expect to have *as good* Diplomacy with the AI as if I hadn't taken any cities, what I expect is

1) A balanced set of Victory Conditions, where one is not significantly harder than the others

This is absolutely a must, because 15+ Civs in this game are designed for conquest. Nerfing Domination nerfs them. I don't want it to be *easier* to win if you start capturing cities, but it shouldn't be *much harder*.

2) Fair treatment. If an AI wipes someone off the planet, you don't see the rest of the AI chain-DoWing him all at once. When Genghis wipes out a CS on turn 40, or Venice eats one on turn 50, you don't see the world chain-Dowing all at once. But if a player captures a CS? Game over. That makes the game horribly imbalanced for early-to-mid game domination runs. It means that the only "supported" way to win a Domination Victory is to peacefully tech science until around turn 175. That's some BS for all the civs whose unique units come in the Ancient, Classical, Medieval or Renaissance Era. Siege Towers? Yeah, right. Have fun with those. You'll take one or two cities and then get wiped off the face of the planet.

People who don't think this is unbalanced obviously don't do a lot of early warmongering. I'm *fine* with it being a struggle to recover diplomatically and financially from early warmongering. That challenge is part of the fun. I'm not fine with it being a death sentence.

Can you give us a couple of your battle reports so that we can understand your problems with warmongering being a death sentence for you?

 

[Cromagnus]

Sure, my last game, Assyria. Only neighbor was Shoshone. He forward settled two expansion cities towards me, and his capital was behind them. I couldn't go around because it was protected by a one-tile hills approach between mountain and sea on one side, and a CS he had allied on the other.

I couldn't cap a CS because that would be an immediate DoW by all Civs. So, I capped his three cities, because, well siege towers are a Classical Unit. You really need to use them before turn 100 or you're missing out on a powerful attack unit. Sure, they can support other units until t130 maybe, but they'll get owned fast because the AI targets them.

After capturing two cities, all civs denounced me, and after capturing his 3rd and capital, started DoWing me within a few turns. I couldn't defend my entire flank from multiple DoWs and retired.

Basically, warmongering prior to artillery is nerfed now. You get to capture 1-2 cities before you're a pariah. If you wait until later in the game when you've built up friendships and allowed diplomacy to create allies and enemies, you can DoW the enemies of your friends, or denounce and rely on your friends taking your side.

But in the early game? (IE prior to turn 100-120) Sides haven't been taken, friendships aren't strong enough, and the new patch warmonger penalty puts the whole world against you.

So you can capture 1, at most 2 cities. If they aren't highly valuable there's almost no point. Because you're going to lose friendship opportunities for doing it, even if you don't get denounced.

EDIT: Not to mention the +5% per city penalty, the puppet city penalty, the cost of annexing, etc.

It's far superior right now to build 4 cities than the build 2 and cap 2. So why not go Tradition/Liberty and peacefully tech to artillery? What's the *point* of early warmongering?? Other than, well, it's fun. ;-)

It's not profitable at the moment. Early warmongering is an investment of resources, just like focusing on growth or putting out cities. It needs to yield at least comparable benefits. And don't get me started on the Honor tree. If you don't think warmongering is nerfed, try Honor some time. Once upon a time, Honor held its own with Tradition and Liberty. Then they buffed city defense and nerfed the Honor policies. This latest patch is yet another blow.

Now, none of this applies on Emperor or below. The game is so ridiculously easy on those levels that virtually any strategy can succeed. But to win on Deity with early war is very tough, and this patch made it even harder. That's all I'm trying to say.

 

[Cromagnus]

I'll give you an example of what would help. If they're hell bent on having the whole world hate you for warring on your neighbors, fine, but trade routes are an integral part of the game now, and trading in general is too. Luxuries, money, research agreements, open borders. If you're going to take all that away, you have to give something back.