So we are back to gods and king?

[Arachnofiend]

The aesthetic of the leaderhead meetings is entirely separate from the core of the gameplay. It's a nice thing I appreciate, really gives a face to the numbers.

The fact that the designers are aware that it's difficult to design a complex and enthralling game with ASCII art doesn't really change the fact that the game has been getting progressively more gamey and the developers have made no effort in the other direction. It should be obvious from how a new thread pops up from a simulation player every day complaining about this aspect or that aspect while those of us who are here to play a game are quite happy with the mechanics themselves and at the most would rather see such efforts be put towards balancing them better.

 

[njmfff]

All this comes down to the way Firaxis tweaked warmonger penalty a couple of patches back: They decreased the penalty for actually declaring war and increased the penalty for capturing cities. Hence, the fact that you captured Hiawathas city makes you a much worse person than the fact that he DoW'ed you. Imo. that is the completely wrong way to go, the change should be in the exact opposite direction, but clearly Firaxis don't agree with this, which is why game plays out often in absurd ways like you descripe.

Yeah, that should be reverse. If player declares war, it's not just gonna be war for no reason, like getting some XP for units. On the other hand, AI sometimes tend to get into wars that leads them nowhere. ... especially if it's Askia or Isabella.

Oh my god, you guys seriously think I don't know that???

of course you know, but my point is the same. Sometimes real-life logic is not that important in games, that's why Constantinople-Istanbul is good example. If they went for "true history", one of those civs shouldn't exist in the game, or they could, but then it would be Ottomans with different leader and different Capital, like Edirne... but of course, Suleiman was the most famous of all Ottoman rulers, so naturally he's the one representing Ottomans (much like Elizabeth is to England and Washington is to America) so it causes some anachronism with Byzantium empire and Constantinople.

they did similar to Greece and Alexander. Fallowing real life history, Greece wasn't unified at ancient\classical time period, they were all separate city states (and often hostile toward each other). but who cares? Greece is awesome in civ5, and it's always nice to see some less used civs in games.

In every strategy game, there's always the same standard stable of civilization\nations used (England, Spain, France, America, Germany, Russia, China, Ottomans... ) so it's nice to see some other less used civilizations and nations. I mean, how many times did you see Songhai, Polynesia or Babylon in other strategy games, outside of Civilization series?

 

[gps]

It should be obvious from how a new thread pops up from a simulation player every day complaining about this aspect or that aspect while those of us who are here to play a game are quite happy with the mechanics themselves and at the most would rather see such efforts be put towards balancing them better.

This whole thread should be proof enough that this is not just an issue of some crazy backward people complaining about irrational stuff. Many of the critique points that you guys still defend to your last breath have already been acknowleged as such by the game designers as wrong or worth improving. I am pretty sure a lot of those complaints will be taken into consideration when designing Civ VI...

of course you know, but my point is the same. Sometimes real-life logic is not that important in games, that's why Constantinople-Istanbul is good example.

And once again you try to justify phoney, gamey and irrational mechanics like warmonger penalties and chain-denouncements with random mixing of names, people, religins and places - which is perfectly normal and intentional in a game designed around reliving alternate history what-if scenrios. I don't care about city names that can be changed and adjusted within seconds especially while the AI behaviour still has gaping holes huge as barn doors.

 

[njmfff]

You mean phoney and irrational mechanics like this?



BamBam over there thought I was a warmonger, which is ironic since he attacked both Greece and Portugal around turn 50-60, and they've been in war the entire game.

btw, Pacal declared war on me and Mongols, but it didn't went well for him. Sometimes they make irrational decisions, especially when there's 15+ level-5-Ship-of-the-Line-turned-Battle-Ships (with logistics and range) right next to his boarders.

 

[Maxym]

Anyway, regarding CSs I agree that there should be a lowerd warmonger penalty (and an increased one with civs who pledged to protect those CSs). After all, those 'Minor Powers' were always cue ball to the mighty.

However, the very high malus for conquering a CS is (unfortunately) a necessary(?) game mechanic to protect these important game elements from vanishing too soon/easily in the game. If they were a too easy prey, DV would be impossible all to often and a whole SoPo-tree would be pointless in every second game.

There were always penalties for conquering CS and there should be, it's just that now they are ridiculous. Not being able to deal with a pesky CS by military means detracts from strategic gameplay.

The existing penalties before the patch: a major warmonger hit after one infraction and decrease in resting point after second infraction folllowed by all out war with CSs for continued aggression were enough to discourage a strategy of praying on the weakest.

AIs still did that and will do that after the patch, but human players rarely did, and never twice the existing system worked for protecting CS while allowing players numerous strategies including conquest of key CS ally of your opponent, a source of vital strategic resource or geographical or political obstacle.

The way it is now, the gameplay options became more limited and the game poorer for it and less strategic.

People will find ways around the current implementation of warmonger penalties, most already did I am sure. I know I did, and I only played a third of a game with the new rules. After even my friend, and ally, William denounced me after taking my third city from Polynesia in Medieval/Rennaisance era despite the fact we were at war with Egypt at the time and at his insistence. Trading both through trade routes and lux exchange, no borders tension or any negative modifiers in fact, just the warmonger hate.

The war against Poly was to break out from the complete encirclement he achieved by forward settling me on t7 and spreading like a weed. This is the current deity England challenge, btw. I have no problem with the general mechanic, this is what we have so let's make it work. And it actually worked well until now. The increasing weariness of other leaders culminating in a mass DoW if a large number of caps were in player hands was great and a very welcome change to the previous AI responses which did not scale well with growing threat of player winning domination.

But what we have now is not a good design, limiting players to peaceful trade and teching as the only viable options until later era's arty or bomber rushes which can be done quickly to minimize the fallout. What a sorry way to rob us of the possible ways of winning the game. And to remove the most challenging and fun period of warfare, the one without long range weapons that can't be countered by AI.

I think what we had until this patch was a well scaled AI response to warmonger threats, what was needed was increase in AI propensity for early war and increase in it's war readiness (more units) and greater use of cooperative DoWs which are about the only thing that can threaten a competent human player.

The current implementation of warmonger penalties will lead to permawar with one CS to farm workers and XP, keeping defeated civs in zombie like state with endless pillaging of improvements and XP farming, while waiting to time city captures with ebb and flow of warmonger hate. Or early hermit kingdoms to exploit the window of opportunity of not knowing other civs. And that's just for those who won't abandon early warring for the all encompassing strategy of four city tradition to their preferred VC ie:
Heavy science to labs and Hubble for SV
Heavy science to labs and Info age for Diplo
Heavy science to labs to Internet for CV
Heavy science to Arty or labs to Bombers or Stealth for Domination.

This game has already suffered from a paucity of alternative routes to quick victory times, we don't need to limit those routes more. Sure you can win in different ways if you take your time, but it's not the same as having competing viable strategies. The only comparable strategy using a very different approach is the Sacred Sites liberty ICS for quick CV on lower levels, and this has been so pilloried that I am afraid we won't have it around much longer.

I hope the current warmonger penalties will be rescaled to facilitate more varied approaches to early game. The pre-patch was actually working well, with the dreaded CB rush deemphasized by the benefits of trade routes, and heavier emphasis on positive diplomacy as a route to profitable lux trades with friends. The trades themselves were too profitable, what's the point of having a revenue stream if you can trade it for cash in hand without any cost. The return of "interest" solves that problem. The increased AI flavor for early war should solve the early game SimCiv and keep players on their toes.

The numerous CiVs with early UU or war related UA should be allowed to take full advantage of them. Early wars should remain a viable strategy while unchecked early expansion through war should be penalized by exponentially increasing hostile response from AI. It's just that taking three cities from an opponent should not be the point where a possibility of cooperation with even friendly and allied AIs breaks down. Sure friends of your victim should take dim view of your actions and respond. But your friends should be mostly unconcerned at this point. If you continue in that vein, yes they too should start to shun you and try to stop you. But taking few cities or God forbid ONE CS should not be game breaking.

Just to provide a bit of context to my example a later screen, i am missing the breakout one on t 105 when i started the LB rush. Note the Zombie city of Nuku Hiva kept artifficially alive while I ingratiate myself with the other continent:

Spoiler :

 

[KrikkitTwo]

To solve this they need to change "warmonger" to "conqueror". That would make the name reflect what the numbers are looking at.

Scaling it a little bit more so that an ancient wipe out isn't quite as big would be useful.

 

[apocalypse105]

The problem I have with this penalty is that only the player gets punished in my game atilla took more cities then me

but spain didn't denounced him but instead she denounced me and dowed me


Or AI that take over a entire continent and still have friends but if you do it embargo

 

[Strategist83]

To the people agreeing with my post on page 1 (and everybody else, I suppose): What I forgot to specifically point out in my post when I made up that Rome/Carthage example is that what I want (well, wanted I should say, I think it's a given at that point that CiV diplomacy will never be fixed, hence my frustration) diplomacy to be about is power, instead of this dysfunctional 'warmongering' system - just as how the real world works. Diplomacy should be changed entirely and 'warmonger hate' should be just a minor factor rather than the main one. It is the struggle for power and dominance that always has and will continue to decide international diplomacy - not pointing fingers at rogue states. To make this fact abundantly obvious, look no further than North Korea:

In the real world, this petty regime would have invaded the South long ago if they believed they were powerful enough to win a war with South Korea + the US. North Korea is surely a warmonger state, a true "warmongering menace to the world" - but are they relevant to international diplomacy, and do we really bother much about them? Despite their obvious warmonger status: not really, we don't. The US is relevant. Russia is relevant. China is relevant. North Korea - isn't. Because they aren't powerful enough to be (hence also their pursuit of nuclear weapons technology, which would increase their power!). Power is what governs world affairs. Nobody likes North Korea - we're all 'denouncing' them - but it's really just for show, because unlike Hitler's Nazi Germany, they aren't powerful enough to be important enough that war is necessary. That's really why we're not at war with them right now. History from hundreds of years ago have minimal relevance to actual diplomacy, it's power it's all about.

If North Korea was in CiV, however, pretty much every single nation in the world would be at war with them right now. That's because in CiV, power is more or less irrelevant - what matters is pointing fingers at the bad guys. "You wiped out a city-state 2000 years ago, die scum!!!!111". Even worse, we'd also all still be at war with France today because Napoleon was a bad boy back in his time. Not to mention Greece who we'd also all still be carpet bombing because in antiquity, Greece had that Alex the Great guy doing some conquering spree and we're still really upset about that. To be perfectly fair, CiV does factor in power to some degree in that AIs [mostly] won't declare war on you even if they hate your guts but your army strength dwarfs theirs, but it's still the finger-pointing that really dictates diplomacy: He may not be declaring war, but Gandhi still won't trade his exotic fruit luxury with you because of what happened 250 years ago when you conquered some city-state that even wasn't interesting to him in the first place. So, just to avoid disturbing relations thousands of years and hundreds of turns into the future you choose not to attack this city-state! Gameplay becomes a circus parade of navigating around and circumventing this ludicrous diplomacy instead of playing the game in a sane way. CiV's current diplomacy is an utter abomination.

This got terribly long, but my point is: CiV diplomacy should revolve much more around what nations are powerful, and much less about what nations are resented for their past actions. V's diplomacy should function more like real-life diplomacy: based on current affairs, status and needs instead of the millennium-grudges against nations on the other side of the globe. That also means if one civilization starts gobbling up the entire map and getting much more powerful than everybody else, this is the nation that will see diplomatic relations declining moreso than the hundred-year-old 'warmonger'. Nations are always concerned if one of their neighbours become just a tad too powerful for comfort. Unlike what Polisurgist seems to think I'm arguing for a system that makes it much harder to run away with the game, not one that let's me just have things my way. My system would make CiV radically more challenging and leave things still undecided right until the end same as BNW has attempted to do.

Here's a more concise post I made a while back from a pretty good debate on the 2k forums, also discussing CiV's diplomacy: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...noyances-with-diplomacy&p=3137841#post3137841 . This one probably outlines this power model I envision to replace the 'warmongering' model a bit better. Note: As one of the bullet points I propose in that post that the penalty from warmongering should drop over time - I'm well aware it already does, but I think it happens much too slowly and should probably be 10x as fast as it current is.

 

[Moriarte]

Just need to realise that current diplomacy system was specifically invented in order to make the game artificially more difficult. The system, which provides 2x growth, 2x production to AI is one example of how you can provide a good challenge in absence of possibility to code good build orders, and technological paths for AI.

Another aspect of that same system is military AI. Which is hopeless. You have to improve it somewhere else, so that the player feels challenged. If you make Casus Belli within that system the whole game will become a joke, because not only you will be in control of diplomacy, the AI's poor fighting capabilities will make a game too easy on any level.

If you look deeper, there is 'one unit per tile' problem which lies at the very root. That magnifies the difficulty of coding decent military AI by x100. So, if you can't make AI any smarter, you make the game artificially harder elsewhere. (warmongering hate)

That also means if one civilization starts gobbling up the entire map and getting much more powerful than everybody else, this is the nation that will see diplomatic relations declining moreso than the hundred-year-old 'warmonger'.

That just means that AI will start reacting to your "moves" after it is too late and you already rose in power, which will make the game way too easy compared to what it is now. If you offer a real life diplomacy model, you also have to offer a source of difficulty. In civ5, if you have 7 cities, you already won, even if your neighbour has 10.