Question: Is a modern-era Conquest victory on Huge/Marathon/No Vassals basically impossible? Or is the unhappiness produced by war weariness bounded in some way where it won't continue to go up linearly with every foreign combat?
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Background: I've never before actually had the patience to try to win with a late-game conquest victory on a big map without vassal states, so I figured I'd finally give it a try and disabled all the win conditions except time and conquest. Now I'm wondering if my goal even possible with the war weariness mechanic.
There's about 500 cities on the map (Tectonics/Mediterranean). I control a quarter of them and it's turn 900. So if I take an average of two cities every three turns, I should still be able to win before I hit the turn limit.
Charlemagne (with whom I've never been at war before) controls half the cities (including the Statue of Zeus). He attacked a Defensive Pact partner of mine, and then sent a stack of about 1200 units towards my capital. I obliterated it with mobile arty and mech infantry in my own territory (which if I understand correctly means no war weariness for me and massive weariness for him), and then advanced into his. I've taken (and razed--they had too many corporations) half a dozen of his cities since then, killing several hundred more units. War weariness just hit 54 unhappy people (before Jail). I'm at Future Tech 40 or so, so I've only just had to start touching the culture slider, but he's got over 200 more cities.... Worse, I can see into some of his cities, and he's got zero unhappiness from war weariness. I know at the higher difficulties (this is emperor) the AI gets lots of bonuses, but I didn't think the AI was entirely immune to unhappiness due to war weariness? (In the diplomacy screen he has a positive war weariness rating vs my ally, but that too isn't showing up as unhappiness in his city screens.)
Either way, he's got a bit more than a thousand more units left in his territory, plus whatever he builds in the hundreds of turns it will take to conquer his half of the map. That suggests war weariness will hit at least several hundred unhappy citizens per city before the game ends, which is certainly unsustainable. Blitzing the city with the Statue of Zeus would help, but not enough.
(The game in question is modded, but not in any way that affects war weariness. I'm using a homebrewed civilization and I tweaked a few rules, like turning off nukes and the national wonder limit.)
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Background: I've never before actually had the patience to try to win with a late-game conquest victory on a big map without vassal states, so I figured I'd finally give it a try and disabled all the win conditions except time and conquest. Now I'm wondering if my goal even possible with the war weariness mechanic.
There's about 500 cities on the map (Tectonics/Mediterranean). I control a quarter of them and it's turn 900. So if I take an average of two cities every three turns, I should still be able to win before I hit the turn limit.
Charlemagne (with whom I've never been at war before) controls half the cities (including the Statue of Zeus). He attacked a Defensive Pact partner of mine, and then sent a stack of about 1200 units towards my capital. I obliterated it with mobile arty and mech infantry in my own territory (which if I understand correctly means no war weariness for me and massive weariness for him), and then advanced into his. I've taken (and razed--they had too many corporations) half a dozen of his cities since then, killing several hundred more units. War weariness just hit 54 unhappy people (before Jail). I'm at Future Tech 40 or so, so I've only just had to start touching the culture slider, but he's got over 200 more cities.... Worse, I can see into some of his cities, and he's got zero unhappiness from war weariness. I know at the higher difficulties (this is emperor) the AI gets lots of bonuses, but I didn't think the AI was entirely immune to unhappiness due to war weariness? (In the diplomacy screen he has a positive war weariness rating vs my ally, but that too isn't showing up as unhappiness in his city screens.)
Either way, he's got a bit more than a thousand more units left in his territory, plus whatever he builds in the hundreds of turns it will take to conquer his half of the map. That suggests war weariness will hit at least several hundred unhappy citizens per city before the game ends, which is certainly unsustainable. Blitzing the city with the Statue of Zeus would help, but not enough.
(The game in question is modded, but not in any way that affects war weariness. I'm using a homebrewed civilization and I tweaked a few rules, like turning off nukes and the national wonder limit.)