Can warmonger fervor be made a function of capitals taken instead of warmonger score?

[SpankmyMetroid]

It doesn’t make sense to me to have a 50% boost to enemy troops in the classical era after taking one capital of someone else, especially if that’s the max bonus (and if it isn’t, good god how high does it get???). If the point of the combat bonus is to gradually increase the difficulty of finishing off the dom victory (which should be fine as it’s easiest to snowball by taking an opponent’s cities) then it makes sense for the combat bonus to also increase stepwise. It also adds some consistency to planning a conquest, because of the randomness leader personalities present right now to warmonger protection bonuses. Ghandi might be the next logical target on your continent but because he hates warmongers so much he maxes out on the penalty right away, while Ramses on the other side of him would only have a 10% bonus to work against. So you’re forced to either fight an opponent with an army effectively 1.5x stronger than it’s size or awkwardly move your troops around his cities without the benefit of being able to heal or resupply from your lines. All because Ghandi has a hardon for keeping the peace! And anti warmonger fervor is completely arbitrary when applied to when the player gets a bonus against an attacker.

Instead, why not just increase the penalty up to a portion of 50 or 75% for all players for each capital taken? So in an 8 player game, giving 1/6th of a the full 50% bonus after the first capital is taken, 2/6th after the second, etc. There could even be ideology policies that influence this modifier (freedom doubling it for the player and order halving it, for example). This would smooth out the domination process and keep players and AI from getting “stuck” after the first conquest (or even before their first capital if they’re unlucky enough to take few satellite cities first and get a huge warmonger score).

 

[Stalker0]

I personally hate the anti-warmonger bonus with a fiery passion. I hate that it fundamentally shifts the balance of units in the game. One minute you can have a line that will hold against your enemy, then you take one city, and suddenly that same line will fold like paper.

But the reason I haven't brought it up before....I honestly can't think of anything better. The bonus does its job, it makes conquest significantly harder, and forces a player to get very smart to win wars at high difficulty. Diety Warmongers still think the game is too easy at times....so removing the bonus would just make the game a walk in the park for those kind of players.

I would love if there was an alternate way to keep the AI warring challenge without this bonus....but I honestly can't think of a good one.

 

[Recursive]

I believe it used to be based on # of capitals controlled.

 

[Randomized]

I guess that wasn't sufficient to reduce warmonger snowball? I really don't like the mechanic, and the idea of having it based on capitals sounds good, but if it was tried in the past and didn't work I guess there's no point reimplementing it.

 

[civplayer33]

I guess that wasn't sufficient to reduce warmonger snowball? I really don't like the mechanic, and the idea of having it based on capitals sounds good, but if it was tried in the past and didn't work I guess there's no point reimplementing it.

It's rather trivial to circumvent...just use the following tactic:
1. start your first rampage in Classical and let it drag into Medieval
2. don't capture the capitals of your victims, but vassalize them (hence point 1)
3. hamper their development with maximum tax rate
4. continue rampage until only about 3 or 4 free civs are left
5. now you have a bunch of vassals giving you massive yields so you are snowballing anyway, so it should be easy to fight the others even if they get some bonus...the first one won't have a bonus anyway because his capital will be the first you take.
6. After there are no more free civs left simply declare on your vassals one by one to take their capitals with ease (try to be nice to your vassals, aside from the tax rate, so they don't rebel, at least until you get Iron Fist or the time has come to take their capitals)
7. Profit

So yeah...the anti-warmonger bonus is annoying but it only counts in foreign lands anyway AFAIK, so it's not so bad if you want to mostly play peacefully...if not then, well, there needs to be a mechanism to stop you.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I would love if there was an alternate way to keep the AI warring challenge without this bonus....but I honestly can't think of a good one.

We could rid of it and probably cause no issue to players Emperor and below, while reintroducing all those crazy production and supply bonuses/handicaps on Immortal+. I know all the hardcore players love grinding through carpets upon carpets of units to capture a single city...

But in all honesty, I feel your pain.

 

[civplayer33]

I wonder: does this bonus also count for AI vs. AI battles and does it scale with difficulty there, as well? Kinda seems like maybe it shouldn't as it would really hamper aggressive AI expansion on Deity vs. Settler...or do Deity players see situations where an AI conquers multiple Civs sometimes?

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

It's rather trivial to circumvent...just use the following tactic:
1. start your first rampage in Classical and let it drag into Medieval
2. don't capture the capitals of your victims, but vassalize them (hence point 1)
3. hamper their development with maximum tax rate
4. continue rampage until only about 3 or 4 free civs are left
5. now you have a bunch of vassals giving you massive yields so you are snowballing anyway, so it should be easy to fight the others even if they get some bonus...the first one won't have a bonus anyway because his capital will be the first you take.
6. After there are no more free civs left simply declare on your vassals one by one to take their capitals with ease (try to be nice to your vassals, aside from the tax rate, so they don't rebel, at least until you get Iron Fist or the time has come to take their capitals)
7. Profit

So yeah...the anti-warmonger bonus is annoying but it only counts in foreign lands anyway AFAIK, so it's not so bad if you want to mostly play peacefully...if not then, well, there needs to be a mechanism to stop you.

I’ve never actually tried to make someone my vassal before taking their capital. Is that easy to do?

I’m personally having a hard time getting over the 50% hump in foreign lands after my first capital, which only means the AI must be doing exponentially worse... the poor authority civs are probably getting stopped cold. Then again...

I wonder: does this bonus also count for AI vs. AI battles and does it scale with difficulty there, as well? Kinda seems like maybe it shouldn't as it would really hamper aggressive AI expansion on Deity vs. Settler...or do Deity players see situations where an AI conquers multiple Civs sometimes?

My last emperor game on this patch Shaka was able to take both of the other capitals on his continent but had no presence to continue by water as far as I could tell. I don’t play much VP anymore but 3/8 capitals is the most I’ve seen in a long time.

 

[Recursive]

I wonder: does this bonus also count for AI vs. AI battles and does it scale with difficulty there, as well? Kinda seems like maybe it shouldn't as it would really hamper aggressive AI expansion on Deity vs. Settler...or do Deity players see situations where an AI conquers multiple Civs sometimes?

Maximum for AI players is 25%, regardless of difficulty. Yes, the bonus applies between AIs as well.

For humans it's 0/1/4/9/16/25/49/81%.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

Maximum for AI players is 25%, regardless of difficulty. Yes, the bonus applies between AIs as well.

For humans it's 0/1/4/9/16/25/49/81%.

81? With all the other deity shenanigans? God, that sounds masochistic.

So it looks like I maxed out my neighbor’s score 49 score extremely early, before I was able to take any of his cities except for a tiny forward settled one. Probably because I completely wiped out my first conquest which was between us, which I didn’t think taking the final city mattered anymore. Was there some smarter play I could have done otherwise to avoid that penalty, or is it just an inevitability warmongers need to overcome in VP? Maybe focus on taking out as many units as possible before sieging so they don’t get pumped up when you start taking cities? Seems counterintuitive if you ask me, the longer they stay up, the more hammers and gold you’re fighting.

My other not as appealing target has a much more reasonable penalty (20 in his lands) so I must have accidentally played more proactively with him, but I’m not sure what I did.

 

[civplayer33]

I’ve never actually tried to make someone my vassal before taking their capital. Is that easy to do?

For the first Civ in Classical it's not that easy...you have to rely on some razing, but that helps you less because of less and smaller Cities and you also need to keep up the pressure because you need to drag the war into Medieval, but for the others it's easy enough...just don't forget about razing one or two of their Cities, which gives nice Warscore and pillaging their Trade Routes, which gives some nice points, too.
In my current game I was actually able to vassalize one Civ by only killing almost all his units, razing one of his Cities, pillaging all his Trade Routes and shooting down his capital (without taking it) and he was willing to capitulate; I still took the capital because I wanted it anyway, but that was quite the surprise to me that I could've vassalized without taking more than one City. I already had two vassals at that point, however, and my economy was strong, as well, so it was actually the "right call" on his part to offer capitulation in order to get me to leave his capital to him...but after 150 Turns of him stubbornly sending hordes of Missionaries to my Cities despite me being nothing but nice to him and even liberating one of his Cities I had to exact my revenge...had two Great Prophets, Missionaries and an Inquisitor ready (his capital was also his Holy City) to wipe his religion off the map once and for all

 

[Recursive]

I think perhaps the AI could be programmed to make vassalization less easy, if this strategy is so successful.

 

[civplayer33]

I think perhaps the AI could be programmed to make vassalization less easy, if this strategy is so successful.

That strategy was to explain why a conquered-capital-based anti-warmonger bonus is easy to circumvent, but that's not the kind of bonus VP has, so there is no problem.
Like I said, the vassalization offer by my opponent was the right move, it's just that I'm punching below my weight class in this game (it's only King) because I want to use the game to freely test out a late game mod instead of having to worry about whether I can even get to late game.

 

[Recursive]

That strategy was to explain why a conquered-capital-based anti-warmonger bonus is easy to circumvent, but that's not the kind of bonus VP has, so there is no problem.
Like I said, the vassalization offer by my opponent was the right move, it's just that I'm punching below my weight class in this game (it's only King) because I want to use the game to freely test out a late game mod instead of having to worry about whether I can even get to late game.

Ah, never mind, I misread.

 

[CrazyG]

I wonder: does this bonus also count for AI vs. AI battles and does it scale with difficulty there, as well? Kinda seems like maybe it shouldn't as it would really hamper aggressive AI expansion on Deity vs. Settler...or do Deity players see situations where an AI conquers multiple Civs sometimes?

It counts for humans too. You can sometimes get a positive modifier against the AI, I currently have 7% against Persia in a game (and all he did was declare war).

My biggest complaint would be that the number builds up really quickly, as an example above, 7% with no cities changing hands. Also I don't like that it affects different AI differently, since it based on how much they dislike you.

 

[andersw]

I was annoyed at it before but after lowering city strength/defense (and practice) I'm rarely bothered with it anymore on emperor.
Sure I throw away some units here and there because of it but thats usually at a point where that isnt superimportant.
This thing is there to stop snowballing and I definitely dont want to get rid of it, play on lower difficulty if it gets too rough instead.
But it could possibly need some fine tuning.

 

[Stalker0]

I was annoyed at it before but after lowering city strength/defense (and practice) I'm rarely bothered with it anymore on emperor.
Sure I throw away some units here and there because of it but thats usually at a point where that isnt superimportant.
This thing is there to stop snowballing and I definitely dont want to get rid of it, play on lower difficulty if it gets too rough instead.
But it could possibly need some fine tuning.

I personally found the bonus really changed my game when I went to Immortal. On Emperor at 25%, its noticeable but it didn't change my gameplay too much. My units took a bit more damage, but I still was able to play relatively the same with or without the bonus.

With Immortal's 49%, I found that certain units would get one shoted that could previously take a hit, and my front line units were noticeably less tanky once the bonus was in play. Also units that I could once 1 shot would survive a hit. So I found that I had to actually change the way I war when the bonus kicked in.

And Diety's 81...my god are diety players even able to move in melee troops into enemy territory? I feel like they would just ignite on fire as soon as they moved in.

 

[andersw]

I personally found the bonus really changed my game when I went to Immortal. On Emperor at 25%, its noticeable but it didn't change my gameplay too much. My units took a bit more damage, but I still was able to play relatively the same with or without the bonus.

With Immortal's 49%, I found that certain units would get one shoted that could previously take a hit, and my front line units were noticeably less tanky once the bonus was in play. Also units that I could once 1 shot would survive a hit. So I found that I had to actually change the way I war when the bonus kicked in.

And Diety's 81...my god are diety players even able to move in melee troops into enemy territory? I feel like they would just ignite on fire as soon as they moved in.

Oh wow, I didnt realise it scaled that high, 81% is a crazy amount, and 49% is ... well you need to be like atleast an era ahead for units to survive unless redicously experienced.

 

[Randomized]

The bonus doesn't apply if the AI is the one to declare on you correct? So I'm guessing deity warmongering is a lot about baiting the AI to attack you? In late game the AI tends to spam war you anyway so that might work to your advantage. I'm still trying and mostly failing to beat immortal though. It feels like a huge step up from emperor.

 

[civplayer33]

The bonus doesn't apply if the AI is the one to declare on you correct? So I'm guessing deity warmongering is a lot about baiting the AI to attack you? In late game the AI tends to spam war you anyway so that might work to your advantage. I'm still trying and mostly failing to beat immortal though. It feels like a huge step up from emperor.

Nope, it depends on your warmonger score. Making a DoW will increase your warmonger score, but if you already accumulated some by previous conquests and an AI declares on you, it will get some anti-warmonger bonus against you in their own lands and half that in neutral lands (just a bit less than they would have if you made the DoW this time).