Causus Belli Futility

[Tamir Lenk]

Another warmongering rant.

The concept of causus belli is great, but the timing doesn't work at all.

Except for a formal DOW in the classical era, the reduced warmonger penalty does nothing for you. By the time you unlock the more sophisticated war triggers, you still face moderate or higher penalties. Moreover, in my games, even moderate warmonger scores generate universal hate from the rest of the world.

Also, what's the point of AI promises not to convert or forward settle. If (when) they break the promise, why doesn't that reduce the warmongering hit for the corresponding causus belli? In Civ V, breaking a diplomatic promise caused all known civs to dislike you, or the AI (recall Ghengis Khan). In this game, I see nothing like that. If the AI promises to stop converting cities and then immediately converts another one, I still am a monster when I declare Holy War on it.

 

[Disgustipated]

All CB's (except for colonial war) should be zero warmonger penalty IMHO. I never start wars past the classical age. I hate being hated all the time.

 

[Woobyluv]

I periodically check my warmongering penalty with other civs. Isn't it supposed to go down for every turn you are not at war with anyone? I just see it rise, not go down.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The world needs to treat 5 cities differently from 50 cities. It also needs to factor in how strong the conquering nation is becoming, size-wise, and scale warmonger hate to that so that responses to conquest are reasonable.

If they don't set it up that way, any warring = total warpath gameplay, because the world treats it the same way in practice.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I get universely hated for declaring war once and capturing one city. There is definitely something wrong with that!

I seem to get denounced for being the target of a DoW and punishing the AI that started by taking most of its cities or even eliminating them.

Often every Civ is denouncing me every 5-10 turns. It gets boring, like the constant give me your gold and resource trade offers every few turns. For several turns, half the Civs wanted me to finance their entire government via these grossly one sided deals.

Causus Belli doesn't seem to work at all.

 

[The Highwayman]

I only declare Casus Belli when I'm going to declare surprise war and it happens to be an option. "(They think you're a warmonger)" is going to appear during every single interaction no matter what.

 

[Futumch]

I agree causus belli seems like a waste of time, given the crushing penalty of warmonger status.
I've given up trying to pussyfoot around the AI players now, as if they have "feelings" or something. If war starts, I will do my best to wipe that civ from the map. Raze all their cities, pillage their districts (free science!), plunder trade routes (free money!), take their capital. That stops them from calling me a warmonger (even though it's quite fair and accurate). I think it's a slippery slope, once one civ declares you as a warmonger, it won't be long before you get a whole line of red angry face icons scowling at you.
I should point out that I don't go out of my way to start wars, I'd rather concentrate on trade and science. Last few games the wars I've fought have all been reactionary, with an AI declaring war on me out of the blue.

 

[Tones]

Yup. When I read about CB in the runup to the game I was excited about adding some more nuance to war diplomacy, but in practice it's been useless. Hell, I've even had Civ's call me a warmonger because another Civ has declared war on me!

Maybe a future update will fix this.

 

[Victoria]

At the moment the main thing stopping you warmongers just romping over eveything in 150 turns is war wearyness and the amenity penalty. The AI is just not there yet

Do you need warmonger penalties as well considering they do not stop you?

• Well they close their borders which helps stop you accidentally getting a culture victory.
• They are less likely to trade those luxury goods for that war wearyness, which slows you down.
• They are less likely to give you money and aluminium etc which also slows you up.

The diplomacy screens can be very annoying, maybe a toggle to an alert would be a nice option.
For the rest I think it helps you stay playing to a degree or it would be absurdly easy.

And yet there are so many complaints about war wearyness and warmonger, I see them as a positive that can be toned down after they resolve other things.

@greygamer is a good example of mature play. They limit themselves to make it more challenging because even with these limitations its fairly easy.

Another quick couple of fixes would be

1. Give all Civs ancient walls at the start a bit like Civ5
2. Have the AI more encouraged to place a ranged unit in every city and shoot it and the city every turn.

I played my third domination last night, probably my last for a while. It was a joke to say I had won on Deity when the first 2 CS did not even put up a fight, france dropped a settler out of their city while I was attacking it and Brazil gave up firing its city after 3 shots. That was just up to turn 90, do you think it went better from there?

Yes warmonger is broken but broken in a way that limits you currently. Its easy to fix with a few param changes but the issue is still with the AI's combat ability. Fixing diplomacy will just make it too easy, you need it harder.

For Causus Belli, if you want to just fight one colonial war and just to get rid of those pesky apostles instead of taking and razing cities people will eventually forget. The big issue is not in declaration but ownership and genocide.

Maybe a domination victory could be achieved through every civ giving you a city... but that would be too easy right?

Please remember I am trying to objective and constructive here. I started slipping into the "its broken" mantra but stopped because I am sure Firaxis want the right approach.

 

[·Imhotep·]

@Victoria

I like your attitude of trying to stay positive, but the thing is diplomacy will stay meaningless as long as the AI is a pushover. I can only compare it to Civ IV - you had to play the diplomacy game there because the AI would not trade techs or could really punish you if you pissed it off. No matter what penalty they give to making war this will always be the easiest play if the AI stays so inept. Until the AI is better with 1 UPT and utilizing the power of ranged combat war will always be easy.

 

[Victoria]

I agree that diplomacy and warmongering do not go well together. They do need to rebalance. So suggest alternatives, discuss. We can use the forum for venting frustrations but also as our mechanism to have at least some possibility of input into a sensible resolution

 

[·Imhotep·]

@Victoria

One way to deter human players from the war path is making diplomacy reasonable. I have limited experience with the game still but from what I've gathered it is often the case that the AI makes unreasonable trade demands and denounces for war mongering even if the human player did nothing to piss them off (though not quite on vanilla Civ V level of absurdity). If the AI will hate you no matter what you do you might as well just wipe them.

Hidden agendas are contributing to this as you can't clearly calculate which behavior the AI likes or hates. So there has to be a way to discern that better as spies come rather late in the game.

Making diplomacy more predictable and reasonable would the goal I'd strive for.

 

[Victoria]

Hidden agendas are contributing to this as you can't clearly calculate which behavior the AI likes or hates

I think the word hidden has something to do with it. You cannot get a clear idea but when Cleo suddenly says to me I do not have much money it is not hard to work out.
The key is to get to that level... I have played many a diplo game and its not hard to get to that level.... unless warmongering past classical. It is the denunciations that are a pain.

If the AI will hate you no matter what you do you might as well just wipe them.

Maybe try a non domination game like cultural victory. I have had every civ friendly to me on Immortal but not on Deity but probably could if that was my only aim. Hmm they should have a quest for that.

To win a cultural at Deity, smite thine closest enemies before the end of classical as much as possible then be nice with about 10 cities and you will get there and win. Just nurture their love as much as possible rather than giving up and smiting more.

 

[Europa Victrix]

The system needs to be fine tuned. You should receive WM penalties on a per-Civ basis, not in general. So fighting a religious war against somebody of another religion should only create minor warmonger penalties with civs of your religion, reconquest should receive no or minor penalties with Civs that value freedom and so forth.

 

[Mustakrakish]

All CB's (except for colonial war) should be zero warmonger penalty IMHO. I never start wars past the classical age. I hate being hated all the time.

Very much agreed.

 

[Bowman in a Bad Mood]

No matter what the AI has done, counter-conquest should nevertheless result in harsh warmonger penalties. That's just realistic.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Here's how I would have done it:

When you get DOWed, you get zero penalties whatever you do (minus nukes), conquer one or 3 cities, doesn't matter... UNTIL the agressor sues for peace. If you continue the war after they sued for peace, you start getting penalties with each turn passing and of course for each city taken from that point forward. The sued peace must be at least white peace, they can't demand stuff from you.

When you DOW, every casus belli (except for colonial and territorial expansion) have zero penalties and you get zero penalties until after the first city taken and / or 10 turns have passed. Then you start racking up penalties. Needless to say if you declare without casus belli, you get massive penalties and start racking them up immediately.

EDIT: As for war weariness, IMO there should be an inherent bonus in certain goverments that half it. Say autocracy, monarchy and fascism (no war weariness during holy war with theocracy). Those governments that have more diplo/economic/wildcard slots are significantly better than those and it would be an appropriate bonus IMO

 

[TamirLenk]

The system also needs to account for broken promises. If the AI promises to stop converting your cities but continues to do so anyway, that should further reduce the the warmonger penalty for Holy War. Breaking a promise not to settle close, or to quit spying on you, should also reduce the corresponding warmonger penalty. As it stands, it makes zero difference whether the AI honors its promises on any front.

 

[Victoria]

You should receive WM penalties on a per-Civ basis

WM penalties are local Amenity based as well but yes, all civs should not equally hate you.

 

[GIO888]

When I first saw Causus Belli I thought "At Last" but it certainly does need tweaking to make it effective, especially with Religious Wars, which seems to make no difference to either the AI spamming missionaries at my Civ or other AI taking account of my "Just War".

Not three bad straight out the box vanilla though, if we fondly look back at Civ V Vanilla - remember that? Exactly!!!