Cede raised my warmongering penalty

[danhynes]

I thought AI ceding a city would help reduce the warmongering penalty. The turn before I made peace I had 4 AI cities (they were all taken at around moderate warmongering penalty). My warmongering penalty with everyone was around 30 including 0 with the AI I jointly went to war with. In the peace deal I got them to cede all 4 cities then the following turn my warmongering penalty went to around 50 with everyone including 20 for the AI I was at 0 with from the joint war.
I decided to see what happen if I made peace without ceding the 4 cities and it was only around 35 and 0 for the AI I joint war with.
This is on the newest patch.
So since AI ceding me the cities cost me a ton of warmongering penalty, is there anything good it gives me?

 

[Rosty K]

So since AI ceding me the cities cost me a ton of warmongering penalty, is there anything good it gives me?

Cities

It has always worked like that. If you want a city without the penalty, you need to take a city which you don't need, and trade it in a peace deal for a city you do need.

Added: and if you return those cities, the penalty is removed. That's how it works: occupying a city invokes a temporary warmonger penalty, if you then take that city in a peace deal, the penalty is doubled, and if you return the city, the penalty is removed.

 

[Rosty K]

It's not as bad now, as it was before the two latest patches. I took a city from France, and she even stopped denouncing me after a couple of times.

Btw, just realized I don't quite know what happens if you just make peace, without returning the city, or making them cede it... Does it remain 'occupied' with all the growth/production penalties?

 

[danhynes]

Thanks for the clarification.
I didn't see the icon for the cities still remaining occupied if I didn't cede them, but I am using the CQUI mod so they might have moved it to where I can't see it.
Assuming they are not occupied I don't see why I would cede them in the peace deal and just not give them back either. Can someone confirm if they are occupied or not if you don't cede them, or how can I check?

 

[Victoria]

Ceding seems a bit broken
After peace no city is occupied, there is no realy value in the cede.
The civ "has one of my cities" penalty is -18 either way.
On this point you can get a better deal from the civ by having them not cede you the city but taking something else instead

There used to be a bug around this where if you did not choose to keep the city before the deal it never lost its occupied status.

 

[aggri1]

It has always worked like that. If you want a city without the penalty, you need to take a city which you don't need, and trade it in a peace deal for a city you do need.

Hi. Tried to do this and still have massive warmonger penalty. Took three cities during the war, gave one back in peace deal which also ceded the other two to me. Now everyone hates me.
Now there's no point in diplomacy anymore.

EDIT: Oh, perhaps I misunderstood. I should have given back all three cities I captured, in exchange for one I had not captured at all? How dumb, if so.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

EDIT: Oh, perhaps I misunderstood. I should have given back all three cities I captured, in exchange for one I had not captured at all? How dumb, if so.

This system does tends towards the side of non-intuitiveness.

 

[Operator_Gaming]

As far as I can tell in my play time ceding a city effects ones ability to declare casus belli. It appears when a city is ceded it removes the ownership claim a civ had on it. Thus one can not declare reconquest war or a war of liberation if you were allied or declared friends with a gov that ceded cities lost in a war. I think the -18 penatily applies in all cases as you still hold a city that was once theirs but they cannot justify war to the global community. Let me know if this is the case with other players.

 

[Victoria]

I have not played for a couple of months nor do I intend to when such stupidity as the below example remains, let alone other issues

If you take a city in a traditional war in say the modern era you will get 24 warmonger points...
These points degrade at 1 per 2 turns but there does seem to be a bug where for the first couple of turns they reduce by 1 per turn.
If I take 2 more cities I will have 72 warmonger points minus lets say 10 for time degradation so 62 when peace is offered.

If I give 2 cities back my warmonger points for the original 2 cities are removed so my warmonger will be 62-48 = 14 warmonger points
giving back 1 city would leave me with 38 warmonger points and 3 cities would leave me with 0 warmonger points
If I give back 0 cities I will stay on 62 after peace

No I am not 100% sure on the quantity and variation on the next point but it does seem like ceding is either 5 warmonger per city or something more scaled.

in essence having the enemy cede a city to you is deemed to be more warmongering and will add additional to your score, if its 5 per time having them cede all 3 cities will put you on 77 warmonger points rather than 72 ... but perhaps its 144 warmonger points, I never tested at a high enough era.

All of the above has some sanity about it... but

If you take a city without having it ceded the only disadvantage I have been able to find is the city does not count as yours toward victory conditions. It may therefore also get higher war weariness in the future but never tested it.
If you take a city and have it ceded to you you get additional war weariness
On top of that, getting a ceded city costs a lot in a deal so you in essence are paying a lot of money to get more warmonger points.

They would have done far better embedding some loyalty penalty in non ceded cities
i believe the stupidity has been inherited from Firaxis applying a bug workaround and now like many other things they just wan to to give new toys rather than fix what is wrong because that seems to be what the majority wants. Doomed by your own forum so to speak.

 

[Duuk]

In summary... "cede is broken, don't do it."

Also "warmonger from taking cities is broken. Once you take a city from someone outside of the ancient or classical era, you should probably just go full warmonger and conquer the world, because everyone is going to hate you anyway."

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

In summary... "cede is broken, don't do it."

Also "warmonger from taking cities is broken. Once you take a city from someone outside of the ancient or classical era, you should probably just go full warmonger and conquer the world, because everyone is going to hate you anyway."

If Civ had better documentation, they'd include your summary in the Civilopedia.

 

[Duuk]

Obviously I should write a Duukopedia with helpful tips on how Civ6 actually works written from the perspective of a player that doesn't play on Deity.

"Industrial Zones. I build them, but all of the players who really know how to play tell me I'm an idiot for building them. There are spreadsheets that prove I should just build barracks instead, but my heart tells me that Firaxis has the same spreadsheets and there is no way they would make a district named the INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT really bad at boosting your INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION, right? Right?"

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Obviously I should write a Duukopedia with helpful tips on how Civ6 actually works written from the perspective of a player that doesn't play on Deity.

"Industrial Zones. I build them, but all of the players who really know how to play tell me I'm an idiot for building them. There are spreadsheets that prove I should just build barracks instead, but my heart tells me that Firaxis has the same spreadsheets and there is no way they would make a district named the INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT really bad at boosting your INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION, right? Right?"

I definitely want to read the Duukopedia!

Let me edit that Industrial Zone entry for you:

Industrial Zone: A district you place in or near the city you're going to build your Spaceport in if going for a science victory. Otherwise, a district you build if you're really bad at war and haven't killed the AI before losing all your upgraded ancient era units. Or a district you build if you really like smoke stacks.

 

[UWHabs]

I have not played for a couple of months nor do I intend to when such stupidity as the below example remains, let alone other issues

If you take a city in a traditional war in say the modern era you will get 24 warmonger points...
These points degrade at 1 per 2 turns but there does seem to be a bug where for the first couple of turns they reduce by 1 per turn.
If I take 2 more cities I will have 72 warmonger points minus lets say 10 for time degradation so 62 when peace is offered.

If I give 2 cities back my warmonger points for the original 2 cities are removed so my warmonger will be 62-48 = 14 warmonger points
giving back 1 city would leave me with 38 warmonger points and 3 cities would leave me with 0 warmonger points
If I give back 0 cities I will stay on 62 after peace

No I am not 100% sure on the quantity and variation on the next point but it does seem like ceding is either 5 warmonger per city or something more scaled.

in essence having the enemy cede a city to you is deemed to be more warmongering and will add additional to your score, if its 5 per time having them cede all 3 cities will put you on 77 warmonger points rather than 72 ... but perhaps its 144 warmonger points, I never tested at a high enough era.

All of the above has some sanity about it... but

If you take a city without having it ceded the only disadvantage I have been able to find is the city does not count as yours toward victory conditions. It may therefore also get higher war weariness in the future but never tested it.
If you take a city and have it ceded to you you get additional war weariness
On top of that, getting a ceded city costs a lot in a deal so you in essence are paying a lot of money to get more warmonger points.

They would have done far better embedding some loyalty penalty in non ceded cities
i believe the stupidity has been inherited from Firaxis applying a bug workaround and now like many other things they just wan to to give new toys rather than fix what is wrong because that seems to be what the majority wants. Doomed by your own forum so to speak.

Yeah, if they gave, say, a -20 loyalty penalty for occupying a non-ceded city, and then let then cede it to you after the fact to get rid of it, then there's a real decision to be made. As it stands now, other than score, I can't think of a single reason to want to have cities ceded to me.

 

[Victoria]

Once you take a city from someone outside of the ancient or classical era, you should probably just go full warmonger and conquer the world, because everyone is going to hate you anyway."

Seems a warmongers mantra.... what is true is people still want to do standard surprise wars and not bother with diplomacy nor good tactics which of course does lead to that.

By good tactics I mean you do not have to take all their cities anymore and taking the right ones means the others loyalty will often fall and remember that you can take extra cities and give them back in peace removing the -18 and any WM from them. Good tactics is taking the small strategic cities and growing them, looting their luxuries, running a bread and circus project is the the opportunity arises. plenty of things

A medieval formal war where you want to take 3 cities is only 30 warmonger points which takes 52 turns to remove (it seems to work that every time you get new WM points your WM degrades the next 2 at 1/turn). making that a war against someone your allies dislike means less WM so managing diplomacy and strategy early leads to less WM points with desired friends. If you have a good ally already in the Medi period 30 WM will not ruin your day and to be honest by the time you take the third city it will likely be 25 WM points not 30.

by the time of the renaissance you should have Cassus to use and just how greedy with cities do you want to be? you should have rightfully used some of your own settlers and can win any bar a dom victory with 10 -15 cities, more is just a pain.

Also destroying their army and ripping their land to pieces will likely get you your desired results without taking cities unless a warmonger in which case it does not matter.

Some other considerations

• A Darwinist secondary agenda ignores all warmonger penalties
• Gorgo Ignores all warmonger penalties
• If a civ is at war with the declared enemy, their warmongering view of you is 40% less
• If a civ has denounced the declared enemy their warmongering view of you is 20% less
• If a captured city has a smaller population than the average (Average info not available in game) then the warmonger penalty is reduced by the size difference.
• Liberating cities reduces warmonger by 36 points

I always enjoyed playing the diplomatic game and would spend a lot of time in the first 50 turns working out just whom how and when. I posted a similar post quite often just to say the diplomacy game may not be the best but it is playable.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I always enjoyed playing the diplomatic game and would spend a lot of time in the first 50 turns working out just whom how and when. I posted a similar post quite often just to say the diplomacy game may not be the best but it is playable.

The diplomacy aspect of Civ 6 has the potential to be quite interesting. Just not relevant, as the like or dislike of your neighbours seems a non-factor to me.

I may be in the minority on this, as many comment about all the AI leaders hating them. I'm not sure why that's an issue? Who cares if the AI hates you? Or likes you? Doesn't seem to make any difference to how the game plays out.

I wish it did, as that would provide some motivation to worry about leader agendas, etc. As it is, I just ignore them. I never even bother to send delegations or embassies anymore. Very rarely will the AI bother to attack, and when it does, it does nothing except gift me a ton of gold 10 turns later. I suppose if I took their cities they would hate me more and attack me more, but that would just mean they're gifting me gold more frequently. So again, I'm not sure what the motivation is to have good relations, or why anyone would worry about warmongering points? Other than for role playing purposes, which is fine, and I can see that some people would enjoy that, but that doesn't seem on the surface to be the situation with many who comment about warmongering points.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

The diplomacy aspect of Civ 6 has the potential to be quite interesting. Just not relevant, as the like or dislike of your neighbours seems a non-factor to me.

I may be in the minority on this, as many comment about all the AI leaders hating them. I'm not sure why that's an issue? Who cares if the AI hates you? Or likes you? Doesn't seem to make any difference to how the game plays out.

I don't see much of a point in courting the AI's affections either. Makes essentially no difference. Once the mid game hits, I find they won't make equitable trading deals whether they like me or not. And even if they did, what do I need with trading with them by that point, as the opportunity cost for not warring far outweighs any diplomatic relationship with the fickle AI's.

 

[Victoria]

The diplomacy aspect of Civ 6 has the potential to be quite interesting. Just not relevant,

Other posts along the same thread, I have always disagreed.
Diplomacy can save you on deity early and certainly it can help an early game a lot
Diplomacy certainly helps in culture victories, just ask the most expert culture player @Copper_47 , she can get a peaceful CV faster than a violent one and diplomacy helps.
I'm am not completely disagreeing, it is fairly useless, especially as trades give you little benefit but maybe with something akin to world congress life will be better, certainly you need something to stop warmongering being just so OP it dominates most things.

 

[acluewithout]

The diplomacy aspect of Civ 6 has the potential to be quite interesting. Just not relevant, as the like or dislike of your neighbours seems a non-factor to me.

I may be in the minority on this, as many comment about all the AI leaders hating them. I'm not sure why that's an issue? Who cares if the AI hates you? Or likes you? Doesn't seem to make any difference to how the game plays out.

I wish it did, as that would provide some motivation to worry about leader agendas, etc. As it is, I just ignore them. I never even bother to send delegations or embassies anymore. Very rarely will the AI bother to attack, and when it does, it does nothing except gift me a ton of gold 10 turns later. I suppose if I took their cities they would hate me more and attack me more, but that would just mean they're gifting me gold more frequently. So again, I'm not sure what the motivation is to have good relations, or why anyone would worry about warmongering points? Other than for role playing purposes, which is fine, and I can see that some people would enjoy that, but that doesn't seem on the surface to be the situation with many who comment about warmongering points.

I mostly play with diplomacy because it’s a fun game in its own right. But yeah, I’m not sure it actually matters that much. I ageee with @Victoria . Not useless. But fairly useless.

 

[c4c6]

Diplomacy can save you on deity early [...] certainly helps in culture victories [...] is fairly useless, especially as trades give you little benefit

I mostly play with diplomacy because it’s a fun game in its own right. But yeah, I’m not sure it actually matters that much. [...] Not useless. But fairly useless.

So a pretty big piece of Diplomacy is implemented & functional - just not very relevant. The human player has all freedom to use it or ignore it as he likes ...

And (for specific players) the game would be better, if Diplomacy matters more, much more; ie. the player is forced to actually play the Diplomacy game / benefits (directly) from playing the Diplomacy game well.

Could it help, if a mod would generate AI player units out of thin air depending on the relationship towards the human player (the worse the relationship the more 'rebels' - barbarians, regular troops)?