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

[CrazyG]

The main problem with lowering the anti-warmonger curve is that it weakens its effect, and again even with its current strength there is still concerns that aggression is the best path in many cases. That's the issue to me, as much as I don't like the penalty, it seems sorely needed to keep warmongering in check

So on Deity I tend to get 81% penalty for taking one city, and I suspect I'll have an 81% penalty for taking 100 cities. So it doesn't really discourage heavy warmongering. It discourages light conflict.

It also makes Lebrensaum the best tenent, because by extending your own land you can avoid the penalty. I use all my GG for citadels, because blocking an 81% penalty matters so much more than the 15% they provide.

For a long time we had X% penalty per extra capital you controlled, scaling with difficult (I think Deity was 8%). That penalty was enough to have a big impact. Really the only flaw here was the skip capital gimmick (which has downsides, for example if the capital is a holy city you often want to take it either way).

 

[Stalker0]

For a long time we had X% penalty per extra capital you controlled, scaling with difficult (I think Deity was 8%).

I'm not the greatest warmongering player, and yet I'm able to win wars with a 49% penalty (from Immortal). That would be ~6 capitals on Diety with the original system. If you have taken 6 capitals you have basically won the game.

And the penalty does discourage heavy warmongering....because the more you have to deal with that penalty, the more careful you have to be, the slower you have to war, and....as you said...the more GG resources you consume to maintain your assault. All of that adds up to slow down a heavy warmonger.

I've said it before...I don't like the anti-warmonger penalty, but lets not kid ourselves. If we greatly slow down that penalty, it will make warring significantly easier....there's no getting around that unless additional changes were made to compensate.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I'd wish it were objective (the same with all civs in the game), more straightforward to understand (listed somewhere in a tool-tip etc.) and proportionate to the amount of warmongering/liberating you're doing. Something along the lines of:
- __% for each DoW you make,
- __% for each Capital you take,
- __% for each Holy City you take,
- __% for each non Capital/Holy City you take,
- __% for each City State you take/destroy,
- __% for each major civilization you eliminate,
- __% for each turn razing a city,
- __% for each tile you pillage,
- __% for each military unit in owned tiles you destroy,
- __% for each military unit in non-owned tiles you destroy,
- __% for each non-military unit/trade route you capture,
- __% for each time you take a vassal via a peace treaty,
- __% for each time you steal foreign land via GG (because it represents acquisition of land via military means).

Maybe other stuff too, but somewhere along these lines, with taking into account quick exchanges of cities (so you don't get penalized for taking the same city on two consecutive turns etc.). I don't know how it's calculated (if it's coded via percentage points), but I'd be glad if it were possible to code so that killing a military unit & pillaging a tile would represent a fraction of other sources of warmonger fervor, with taking a Capital/Holy City/eliminating a major civ having the biggest impact. Not sure how I'd propose a slow decay of this over longer periods of time.

Inversely, you would have the same for decreasing it, with main sources being liberating a city (bigger for Capital/Holy city), resurrecting a minor/major civ, liberating a civilian unit etc.

Just an idea roughly thrown out, perhaps I'd remove, change or add some things after more thought.

 

[CrazyG]

I'm not the greatest warmongering player, and yet I'm able to win wars with a 49% penalty (from Immortal). That would be ~6 capitals on Diety with the original system. If you have taken 6 capitals you have basically won the game.

Then make it higher than before. Do 5% per capital, plus like 1% per other city.

- __% for each DoW you make,
- __% for each Capital you take,
- __% for each Holy City you take,
- __% for each non Capital/Holy City you take,
- __% for each City State you take/destroy,
- __% for each major civilization you eliminate,
- __% for each turn razing a city,
- __% for each tile you pillage,
- __% for each military unit in owned tiles you destroy,
- __% for each military unit in non-owned tiles you destroy,
- __% for each non-military unit/trade route you capture,
- __% for each time you take a vassal via a peace treaty,
- __% for each time you steal foreign land via GG (because it represents acquisition of land via military means).

I don't think you should get warmonger from things like killing a military unit in owned tiles. You'll rack warmonger just for defending yourself, that's going to be super frustrating. Capturing cities, with an extra penalty for a capital or holy city, is probably enough.

 

[Stalker0]

Then make it higher than before. Do 5% per capital, plus like 1% per other city.

If you want to keep it in the same ballpark, it probably needs to be something like +10% per capital, +5% per other city or something. I mean I could capture 2 capitals and 6 other cities before I hit the current immortal numbers...which is probably 2 vassals at that point. And that means the first person you conquer is going to be in the 0-20% range most of the time...which is a breeze in comparison.

 

[CrazyG]

If you want to keep it in the same ballpark,

I don't want it in the same ballpark. Playing with an 81% combat penalty is masochism.

Also, I think this penalty should not be dependent on whose land you are in, so it needs to be lower. You aren't winning those immortal wars with a 49% penalty to every single attack or defense you make, are you? I'm assuming you avoid the penalty by grinding from your own borders. You've talked about how important Lebrensaum is before, denying your opponent their anti-warmonger fervor is the key to combat right now.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't want it in the same ballpark. Playing with an 81% combat penalty is masochism.

Also, I think this penalty should not be dependent on whose land you are in, so it needs to be lower. You aren't winning those immortal wars with a 49% penalty to every single attack or defense you make, are you? I'm assuming you avoid the penalty by grinding from your own borders. You've talked about how important Lebrensaum is before, denying your opponent their anti-warmonger fervor is the key to combat right now.

I just looked back over your 3 pop game where you basically conquered the world, and I assume you had that penalty most of the time. Did you use GGs for all of that warring? It wasn't mentioned in any of your notes.

I mean if diety players think the 81% penalty is too high than by all means lower it....I just keep hearing about all those diety runs where people are still smashing civs left and right...so it doesn't seem like diety players are having much trouble with warring.

And to your question, honestly a lot of my wars are in enemy lands...but it does depend. Sometimes I have to pull back when the AI army has too much ranged as my melee units can't hold with the penalty, so I have to pull back, let them crash against the wall, and then go to work again. Now it sounds like your suggesting to have the penalty apply period...which does have a different factor its true. Generally though a strong warring player would have an easier offense with this system, so I doubt they would care about the penalty on defense that much.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

CrazyG, if I recall correctly, currently you already get warmonger consequences for killing units in owned lands, so my proposal reflected that (see https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-beta-version-september-15th-9-15.649758/page-11 ).

 

[Voremonger]

I think if the current system of Anti-Warmonger Fervor could be improved upon by applying the penalties you currently get in neutral territory to all territory.
It would remove the possibility to circumvent the system via Citadels but also remove the extreme penalties you get in enemy territory.

You aren't winning those immortal wars with a 49% penalty to every single attack or defense you make, are you?

I think you can even fight against 81% in enemy territory depending on the terrain and how close you are to your own territory.
Tricks to use:

• Take Drill 1 -> Drill 2 -> Drill 3 -> Stalwart on your melee Units.
• Place your melee units on Tiles with defensive bonuses.
  
• Place your ranged Units in such a way that they cannot be melee attacked.
  
• Place your Units in such a way where you can immediately move them out of harms way if necessary. If you're near the coast you can often move your Units into embarkation, you might be able to create safe Tiles by shielding them with naval Units.
  
• Immediately pull back injured Units, replace them with fresh Units. Increases necessary army size by ~50%.
• Do not attack with your melee Units unless you are very confident that they won't die on the enemy turn. Keep in mind that enemy Cities can finish a Unit on the enemy turn that gets to attack immediately.
  
• Pillage enemy roads to avoid getting rushed.

(It is still much easier to just avoid the penalties from Anti-Warmonger Fervor when possible.)

 

[CrazyG]

I just looked back over your 3 pop game where you basically conquered the world, and I assume you had that penalty most of the time. Did you use GGs for all of that warring? It wasn't mentioned in any of your notes.

Arabia was defeated before the penalty was too large.
Russia was a very difficult war. I planted several citadels to advance, and most of my damage came from ranged units in my own territory.
***I think the warmonger logic has changed this this game, because I don't think my penalty was maxed out for the entire fight against Russia.

I defeated England at sea by swarming her with frigates, while she also was attacked by Babylon from land.
I could only defeat Babylon at sea, and when fighting him I mostly stuck to my own territory, and never tried to push forward on land. This was before the frigate overhaul, I'm not sure if I would have overcome him with the new frigates and better AI naval logic.

After that my wars were all defense on land, but offense on sea because the old frigate design was OP against the AI of the time.
I didn't mention it, but I couldn't push into Indonesia's land even with a huge tech advantage (I think it was gatling guns against crossbows?). I OHKO anything that enters my land, but it takes 3 or 4 shots to get anything on his land.

Also I didn't fight any unique units (england was too weak for SOL to matter) or particularly powerful warmongers (I only fought Mongolia at sea).

I think if the current system of Anti-Warmonger Fervor could be improved upon by applying the penalties you currently get in neutral territory to all territory.
It would remove the possibility to circumvent the system via Citadels but also remove the extreme penalties you get in enemy territory.

This is also what I want.

 

[gozar]

If you want to keep it in the same ballpark, it probably needs to be something like +10% per capital, +5% per other city or something. I mean I could capture 2 capitals and 6 other cities before I hit the current immortal numbers...which is probably 2 vassals at that point. And that means the first person you conquer is going to be in the 0-20% range most of the time...which is a breeze in comparison.

That would represent, at minimum, a 20X decrease from the status quo. Its hard to overstate how much of a chance that would represent. I think it might still be a little light, but still much more reasonable than the status quo.

In the current state, I´ve found the most success in warmongering with Denmark because it incentivizes aggressive wars without necessarily taking cities and it powerspikes so hard with beserkers. After two rounds of pillaging every accessible tile an enemy has, then they are likely dealing with crippling unhappiness, inhibiting their ability to produce or purchase reinforcements. At that point, the 81% bonus is manageable.

Germany can kinda perservere when has the Panzer. I imagine Japan might be ok during its powerspike.

Assyria, my favorite civ, is borderline unplayable on higher difficulties. I used to like that the tech and XP advantage would give you an incrimental advantage, but that sort of incremental advantage is nothing compared to warmonger bonus once you take even the most miminal city. My current strategy is to hope that I can forward settle a tradition civ so that I can get a direct border to the capital. The idea is to take the capital first, so as to decapitate the enemy. After that I withdraw my troops into my own borders, which now include the enemy capitals larger domain. That civ should eventually be weak enough to pick off the rest. If there are no attractive targets, I am better off playing Assyria like a gimpy Korea with better defensive abilities.

I agree that Lebensraum is OP currently. A massive reduction in warmonger bonus AND applying it at 50% strength in the aggressors territory would make the bonus more manageable and less gimmicky.

 

[yoshipyah]

I play on Deity and for me the insane warmonger penalty is kind of ruining the game. In my last playthrough as Venice I went for a domination victory and I had the 81% warmonger penalty pretty much the entire game. It's not fun to have modern armor that struggles beating riflemen. In the end only Japan was left, but it was such a headache to get through his insane number of troops with the 81% penalty that I just went for a science victory instead because it was so much quicker to just buy the spaceship parts.

I really hope some balance can be found between this; I do agree that domination victories were too easy before, domination victories were pretty easy to get pretty early in the game, but this is just no fun. Even when I take a couple of cities the warmonger penalty is already absurdly high. At that point I'm usually not too far ahead in techs either so it makes conquering almost impossible. Maybe it just shouldn't be a maximum of 81% but around 60-65% on deity. I also think that it shouldn't scale up so quickly. I can understand that the last civ remaining has a very high anti warmonger fervor, but the way the game is balanced now it just scales up so quickly as a human player.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

So i have just stepped from emperor to immortal, taking the very first city gave AI +49% , my great generals are worthless and those ancient era naval ranged pretty much OHK my composites and skirmishers.
That's not fun at all, playing to your civs like Sweden or France is not worth it and i think i'm better off playing peaceful Brazil or Korea at this point.

 

[AndreyK]

it seems like people forget that +81 is not flat +81, it's +81 among other additives, many of those give +50 and +33, so it's not like END OF ALL thing. Still I think that there is something that we shoud consider, I don't like, like many other observers, +81 warmonger penalty from very beginning, from very first city that I take. I play only domination games, on deity, but I like to advance on science and culture at first, build many wonders. So ALWAYS SOMEBODY DECLARE A WAR ON ME, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes 3-4-5-6 AI at the same time. It's not very fun, when they DoW and I'm a peaceful civ buiding some wonder - they plunder my TI, my TR, and it's goes and goes, until I go take 1-2 cities and then my WARMONGER penallty is at MAX. I think it may go even above +81, but NOT FROM FIRST CITY TAKEN. So I think it may be it's like stalker proposed but a little bit higher 15-18-20% per capital, 5-7%. per city taken.

 

[Gazebo]

A lot here, but I’ll note that the warmonger system is getting a facelift this version. And I’m creating a dedicated handicap value for anti-warmonger values so we can tweak the value more clearly.

In short, I’m bringing the ‘big number math’ of the original system back down to a 0-100 scale (Roughly), and modifying the decay etc to make it so that warmonger rises and falls a bit more predictably. I’m also fixing a few vanilla instances of AI ‘personality’ leaking into the formulas, which should be agnostic to be fair to humans.

G

 

[Randomized]

Well darn now I can't play anymore till next version

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I know there have been many tweaks over time in trying to balance a warmonger's ability to snowball, but hopefully domination becomes viable late game to the same degree as the other VC's. In most instances it's "easier" to just grab a SV / DiploV or even CV once you're wide enough, as pointed out by the majority, and this discourages completing the domination, ultimately reducing the fun of that style. Don't get me wrong, there should still be situations where adjusting off DomV to a different VC is necessary, but comparatively it gets the most resistance late game with the current setup, and it's not in the forms it should be - the other VC's often have you spamming "next turn", meanwhile warmongers have to grind against abstractly inflated fervor throughout the entire game (on top of the negative unhappiness and diplo you'll understandably warrant).

In my opinion, the two main blocks toward a DomV late game (in which anti-warmongering fervor is inherent, tangible and realistically manifests itself) should be from:

a) Unhappiness / War Weariness (e.g., fall of the Romans, attrition faced by Alexander and his army, etc.) - slow me down with concrete numbers on an empire level, not "imaginary" fervor percentages stacked onto my other accrued maluses; my squabbles over wide unhappiness relating to pop has been well documented in the past, but Zebo has put happy/food/pop in a much better spot since then and I wouldn't be opposed to a slight bump in puppets/unhappiness/weariness in order to compensate for reduced fervor.

b) The remaining civs' ability to asses and recognize the threat of global domination, and act accordingly by funneling what resources left to either stop the threat with combined force, or hold on long enough to complete it's own VC before the world is consumed with annihilation (e.g., Nazi Germany).

Of course, this is not taking into account the upcoming changes which Zebo just relayed, but I wanted to address the situation and hopefully keep the spirit of domination alive and well. The next version should be juicy - I'm excited to see how it all plays out combined with Recursive's diplo changes.