Why does capturing a City State give an extrem Warmonger penalty?

[Hakuoh]

So i killed of an City State in my Current game as germany and right after everyone even my friends denouced me..
No one Protected the City state what so ever.

I dont even see an Point for the Mongolian Ua anymore if everyone will hate you and denouce/war you for 1 city state.

 

[Bergerperson]

I guess it kind of depends on the other civilizations in the game. If you have a lot of civilizations who have a low warmongering score, then even the slightest event could trigger a warmongering point against you. The fact you also killed off a city state doesn't help either... Kind of a dick move really.

 

[Hakuoh]

Yeah but you can siege other Civs and tak Citys and nobody cares.
Its even says that you get a low warmonger score for capturing a City.
But City state have an extrem score which i dont understand...

 

[OneRedBlock]

A civ can have tons of cities, but that citystate can never have more than one (unless it captures one.) Civ measures how much of a warmonger penalty you'll get for taking a city based on how many cities the civ that owns said city has. As such, because a citystate counts as a separate civ, it's like conquering an entire empire.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

It is because since a few patches ago the game calculates warmonger penalty by the difference between your number of cities and the number of cities of the civilization that you are attacking. Since CSs are civilizations with just 1 city, the penalty is usually massive.

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

What the last two posters said.

Although I don't get how declaring war, killing every unit, sacking all improvements, and then razing all the cities you got out of the peace treaty is less warmonger-like than taking one city...

 

[EK834]

So i killed of an City State in my Current game as germany and right after everyone even my friends denouced me..
No one Protected the City state what so ever.

The point is that for warmonger penalty, they're considered minor civs. The penalties are calculated by the estimated # of cities there can be on the size of map you're playing vs. how many cities are currently settled, and by how many cities a Civ (or CS) possesses.

So taking a CS exterminates a Civ from the game and the penalty is very high, but it's even worse if you do this early game or on small maps (on huge maps by the mid-game it's not that bad).

To take out a CS early, you need to do it when you haven't met other civs, or when you no longer care for the hatred and its side-effects or are strong enough to manage the aftermath.

The whole idea of the Mongols' UA anyway is to use it to deprive the other Civs of the CS and their benefits. You're supposed to be hated if you play the Mongols as they're designed. Now the Mongols's deeds get the proper response from the AI and they're fun to have in the game as they'll provide CS to liberate.

Why would you kill a CS as Bismarck when he has an UB providing benefits for TR to CS? If any civ should keep CS alive and liberate them when necessary, it's Germany. In synergy with policies like Merchant Confederacy and Treasure Fleets, it's very powerful.

 

[Socratatus]

What the last two posters said.

Although I don't get how declaring war, killing every unit, sacking all improvements, and then razing all the cities you got out of the peace treaty is less warmonger-like than taking one city...

This is right in my view. I think we`re supposed to look at it from the moral side, not the `numbers` or `penalties` side.

Why should wiping out a small civilization be any less bad than wiping out a huge civilization? It`s not a huge Civ, but of course, it`s still bad because it`s still genocide. Maybe even worse because it looks like the Big bully Civ, killing the weakling little CS Civ.

Makes sense to me.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

I don't mind the massive penalty if you specifically DoW a CS to take it but I don't think you should get so much hate when they join a war as allies of a major civ. I think the warmonger penalty should be calculated as if the CS were one of its ally's cities. It's not so bad on lower difficulties but on higher ones CSs can be a problem if your main army is on another front. You should be allowed to neutralize the threat without becoming an "evil warmonger". It'd be even better if you had the option to liberate the CS in the peace negotiations. That'd make Mongolia's UA a little better. Alexander would have to think twice before DoWing Genghis.

 

[Greizer85]

Imo in Ancient times civs should be more forgiving of such things. And it's not really genocide, either, as half of the residents of conquered cities remain upon conquest, and you cannot raze City States anyway (you should be able to, but that's a debate for another day ). I'm sure you'll agree that we should all hate the modern Greeks for taking all those city states hundreds or thousands of years ago...

 

[Ninakoru]

Just some numbers:

Capturing a CS on standard map with around 40 cities in the game (lets say turn 100 Immortal or so), will net you 1300 warmonger score, with is traduced to 65 warmonger points on average to each know civilization, witch will net you the second level of warmonger out of nothing. This will quickly lead to some denunciations and even some joint war declarations later, and unfavorable trade deals with everyone.

No worries, if you don't conquer anything for the rest of the game, you will recover the clean warmonger status in only 260 turns. Sum 50 extra turns if you declared the war.

So the game is clearly telling you to not kill CS, but CS always leaded to big warmonger penalties even back on G&K where it was penalized because you wiped out a Civilization. Now Gengis Khan is dogpiled even faster, with two CS kills he will be considered the ultimate global threat.

That's what we get on game current's state.

 

[Glassmage]

yea this cs warmonger penalty need a tweak.

 

[Ninakoru]

This is right in my view. I think we`re supposed to look at it from the moral side.

I don't think so. This is a simulation/war game, is not Bambi.

Also that "Moral" reasonement to me is hypocrite: Today on XXI century (supposedly entering the information era), we still have resource wars and etnial genocides on Africa, and China soon will be member of the human rights council. Not so long ago we had a World War, all we have been done ALL civilizations until now is to bring on wars whitch pursue their interests.

Also on Civ 5 total genocide is done when you raze, not when you conquer. With CS is always conquer, and the pop loss are considered war casualties from the conquest and loot.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I also think the warmonger penalty should be less for city states.

In my last game, I was playing indonesia, and wound up on an internal sea with Jakarta. Obviously, not ideal for indonesia. I wanted to put my settlers on other continents for the obvious reason, and so my solution was to capture the one CS nearest Jakarta, so I could build a harbour there.

I went from being on friendly terms with most civ's, to being denounced in one turn by ALL of them. They were all going on about "clearly see the threat posed by your warmongering" even though it was literally the only war I'd ever fought in the entire game, the CS wasn't allied to anyone, and wasn't under anyone's protection. At the time I captured the CS, Jakarta was my only city.

That just doesn't seem balanced to me.

 

[EK834]

I don't mind the massive penalty if you specifically DoW a CS to take it but I don't think you should get so much hate when they join a war as allies of a major civ.

The problem with reducing the penalty when you're the one being DoW is that it's easy to provoke the AI to attack you. You want Genoa and Ife located on the fringe of your territory? Piss off Alexander, which is easy, and seize the CS. Very easy to exploit (especially since the protectors of CS are often located on the other side of the map from them and getting DoWed by them isn't a big deal), and it defeats the purpose of including them in the warmongering penalty system , which is largely because they are a key part of the Diplo Victory (not that bringing diplo contenders to wage liberation wars to win couldn't be cool), beside being a feature important to the performance of many civs (Venice, Germany, Greece, Siam, Austria, Portugal etc.). There are already Venice and Austria in the game to reduce the # of CS and encourage the player to stop them. Competition over alliances with them and protecting them are also motives for conflicts, and removing the CS undemine this in time. The Mongol UA is IMO more there to counter the strategies of players relying a lot on CS allies, making dealing with the Mongols a priority if they go on a CS-killing spree, or encouraging them to wage liberation wars since the Mongols can't permanently remove a CS, unlike Venice and Austria for which it's limited (esp. Venice, who has to produce MoVs). The human player can also use the Mongol UA, but he has to play it like the AI Mongols now: being hated by everyone and the CS.


CS also provide major bonuses to the player and, up to the mid game and sometimes beyond, to the AI. It there was no cost to removing them from the game, it would be easy to do it and the AI civs would be even less a challenge. It would also seriously undermine Patronage as you could lose too much of its benefits during the game.

You should be allowed to neutralize the threat without becoming an "evil warmonger".

You can already do that by killing the units of the CS. It shouldn't recover before your other war is over. You can also pillage its luxuries and resources, which deprive its ally of them for a good deal of time (the CS will have to produce a worker and units and might well prioritize its defense units first, and you can't gift it money to repair a resource).

It'd be even better if you had the option to liberate the CS in the peace negotiations.

It would be cool to have the ability to liberate any captured city at any time, but only if you lost the liberation bonus or most of it if you don't liberate right after capture.

Why? Because it would be all too easy again to exploit. It would become the "take a CS during your wars to clean your warmongering slate as soon as you sign peace" exploit.

Imagine this: you steam roll Ramses' 6 cities in the late game. The ones give only minor penalties on big maps, the last one has a severe penalty for wiping out a Civ. Then you end the war and liberate the least valuable of the six cities and you get a) all Ramses's delegates for WC, b) a HUGE diplo bonus for resurrecting a civ that would cancel the penalty for taking him out in the first place. Capture and liberate a CS ally in the same war and you'd get out of it white as snow.

 

[joshua43214]

This is right in my view. I think we`re supposed to look at it from the moral side, not the `numbers` or `penalties` side.

Why should wiping out a small civilization be any less bad than wiping out a huge civilization? It`s not a huge Civ, but of course, it`s still bad because it`s still genocide. Maybe even worse because it looks like the Big bully Civ, killing the weakling little CS Civ.

Makes sense to me.

They are small and weak, they should be conquered and their population enslaved for the better of the Empire - this is the moral thing to do. The dead ones are better of because they served under a weak an ineffective leader, the ones that lived are the strong ones and will be able to realize their full potential under a stronger, wiser leader.

Please keep your morals off my game...

 

[Koiranputki]

Although I suppose we could debate particular situations, ad infinitum, I think the consensus probably would be that the developers need to tweak the warmonger penalties a bit.....

I've become almost afraid to start wars...which can be particularly annoying when the AI drops a city right in your face a few tiles from your capital.... I've become much more vigilant regarding AI settlers approaching "my area".... I try to have a few units around to block and corner them if I can....and if that doesn't work I'll take a small penalty and grab their settler...[added benefit sometimes ...an additional worker] ....but I find this can get a bit tiresome....

Maybe some kind of warmongering penalty that scales a bit, depending on how close the CS or AI city is to your capital????

Anyway, the developers are probably working on "tweaks" to this as we speak....

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

They are small and weak, they should be conquered and their population enslaved for the better of the Empire - this is the moral thing to do. The dead ones are better of because they served under a weak an ineffective leader, the ones that lived are the strong ones and will be able to realize their full potential under a stronger, wiser leader.

Please keep your morals off my game...

This

But seriously, only a handful of CSs still exist IRL, and you'd expect a huge war and lots of hate when someone invades somewhere like Kuwait or Belgium

But at the beginning of the game, all the civs are basically CSs, and IRL CSs got wiped out and new ones established all the time without any international squables.

I agree that the warmonger penalty for taking them should be high, but only in later eras. Taking a CS in the ancient era should be a slight penalty, while doing it in the information era would be an extreme penalty.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I think spies and diplomats ought to be able to influence perceptions of a city state. A task you could assign them to, maybe put it in the CS and have it assigned to "discredit regime". The idea being that once the image of the CS is tarnished the penalty for invading would be lowered.

This would mean not using that spy for other purposes and maybe it should cost some gold. The game mechanic would lower the warmonger penalty.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

The problem with reducing the penalty when you're the one being DoW is that it's easy to provoke the AI to attack you. You want Genoa and Ife located on the fringe of your territory? Piss off Alexander, which is easy, and seize the CS. Very easy to exploit (especially since the protectors of CS are often located on the other side of the map from them and getting DoWed by them isn't a big deal), and it defeats the purpose of including them in the warmongering penalty system , which is largely because they are a key part of the Diplo Victory (not that bringing diplo contenders to wage liberation wars to win couldn't be cool), beside being a feature important to the performance of many civs (Venice, Germany, Greece, Siam, Austria, Portugal etc.). There are already Venice and Austria in the game to reduce the # of CS and encourage the player to stop them. Competition over alliances with them and protecting them are also motives for conflicts, and removing the CS undemine this in time. The Mongol UA is IMO more there to counter the strategies of players relying a lot on CS allies, making dealing with the Mongols a priority if they go on a CS-killing spree, or encouraging them to wage liberation wars since the Mongols can't permanently remove a CS, unlike Venice and Austria for which it's limited (esp. Venice, who has to produce MoVs). The human player can also use the Mongol UA, but he has to play it like the AI Mongols now: being hated by everyone and the CS.


CS also provide major bonuses to the player and, up to the mid game and sometimes beyond, to the AI. It there was no cost to removing them from the game, it would be easy to do it and the AI civs would be even less a challenge. It would also seriously undermine Patronage as you could lose too much of its benefits during the game.



You can already do that by killing the units of the CS. It shouldn't recover before your other war is over. You can also pillage its luxuries and resources, which deprive its ally of them for a good deal of time (the CS will have to produce a worker and units and might well prioritize its defense units first, and you can't gift it money to repair a resource).



It would be cool to have the ability to liberate any captured city at any time, but only if you lost the liberation bonus or most of it if you don't liberate right after capture.

Why? Because it would be all too easy again to exploit. It would become the "take a CS during your wars to clean your warmongering slate as soon as you sign peace" exploit.

Imagine this: you steam roll Ramses' 6 cities in the late game. The ones give only minor penalties on big maps, the last one has a severe penalty for wiping out a Civ. Then you end the war and liberate the least valuable of the six cities and you get a) all Ramses's delegates for WC, b) a HUGE diplo bonus for resurrecting a civ that would cancel the penalty for taking him out in the first place. Capture and liberate a CS ally in the same war and you'd get out of it white as snow.

I think you kind of misunderstood a little of what I was saying. In the current system you can DoW some one and let your enemy take the CS ally. They get the mountain of warmonger hate and then you swoop in a little later and liberate your own ally to get the liberator bonus to wipe out some of your warmonger status and get the liberation influence bonus from the CS. You're the only one who comes out smelling like a rose and looking like a hero even though you're the actual warmonger in that situation. That sounds more exploity than any scenario you talked about and it's how the game really works right now. You don't even have to coerce the AI into DoWing. You can DoW and feel safe knowing you can wipe that penalty away later.

Say Alexander, who is running away with the game, has a dozen CS allies and is hated by everyone for doing what Alexander is known for, just plain being a jerk, decides to DoW me and he's bought out 3 CSs bordering me and he has an army on another front. Somehow I do manage to wipe out those CSs' troops but I still need to leave a portion of my troops to guard against those CSs and threaten him enough to get him to sign a fair treaty that doesn't involve giving him all of my cities. On standard or quick those CSs will be spitting out troops fast enough that it's going to take a fair number of troops to keep them from coming in and pillaging tiles and stealing workers. I want to be able to neutralize that problem so I can focus on getting Alex to sign a fair treaty without losing productivity in my cities and occupying my troops. Sometimes those troops stuck on guard duty could be what tips the balance. Denying CS benefits to an enemy during a war would be an added bonus.

All I want is for those CSs to be treated like one of his cities during that war. During the peace treaty negotiations I could then liberate those CSs back to where they were before the war. I'm not saying I should lose any warmonger hate for the liberation and most certainly not get the bonuses for resurrecting the civ, that would be way too exploity and wouldn't make sense. There could even be an additional penalty for refusing to liberate at the end of the war to prevent some one from trying to get a freebie out of the deal. It's not you ousting an occupier and freeing the people. It's you saying "I had no dispute with you but I had to stop you from invading. You're free now that we're no longer at war."

It could indirectly help the diplomatic victory be more diplomatic. If you've got a lot of CS allies spread out over the map you might think twice about DoWing some one who is in a position to take out one of your allies. You would have to play diplomatically and avoid war. It's a risk thing.