I notice that when I build dungeons, the war unhappiness for that city doesn't decrease at all. Do dungeons simply not work as advertised?
War weariness is complicated and the mechanisms governing it are not made very transparent in the ui. If I understand correctly, buildings that decrease war weariness take effect only upon new war weariness that is being earned, not already existing war weariness. To get rid of war weariness you've already earned you have to either eliminate the opponent that is the source of the war weariness or end your war with them and allow time to pass until the war weariness has faded away. Note that war weariness is not the same as
caused by war weariness; while at peace you may not have any
showing in your cities but you may still have war weariness, and in that case if you go back to war the
will immediately return.
Another question on AC. Spreading Ashen Veil to a city increases the AC by 1, and razing a city with AV decreases the AC. However, razing a city without AV most often increases the AC by more than 1.
This sets up the odd situation where spreading AV actually serves to slow down the rise of the AC. Often spreading AV to all cities isn't enough to get the AC that high. If your goal is to get it as high as possible, you're actually better off NOT spreading the AV religion, since at that point the only two outcomes are going to be world peace and a moderate AC, or genocidal war and a low AC. I know that when I play Sheiam or Infernals, I do everything possible to keep AV from spreading.
Which just seems...wrong.
It is true that razing a city following Ashen Veil removes the Armageddon Counter increase that occurred when AV spread to that city, but this is only zero-sum if every city that AV spreads to is then razed. Generally speaking, it is easier to spread AV to a city than it is to defeat the city. Each city following AV that has not yet been razed drives the AC higher in a way that is difficult to counter. The AI does not use Inquisition very much, so cities to which AV spreads generally continue to worship AV for the rest of the game.
It is true that razing a city without AV raises the AC whereas razing a city with AV lowers it, but this does not mean that spreading AV results in a slower increase of the AC. The AI does not raze cities very much anyway (with the exception of the four horsemen, but see below), so the impact of this difference is on average minor. When a player captures a city they choose whether to raze it, so if one is inclined to increase the AC it is a trivial matter to raze only cities that do not follow AV. This ensures that each time the player razes a city the AC increases by 1 or more. Also note that razing a city that follows AV is no more detrimental to raising the AC than is removing AV from a city with Inquisition, and only undoes the effect of spreading AV to that city in the first place (rather than driving the AC lower than it had originally been).
So, from the perspective of one trying to raise the AC, spreading AV is not a risky tactic. Even if another human were methodically opposing your efforts the best they could do would be to counter them; they would not be able to abuse the spread of AV to drive the AC lower than its original level. At some point the AC will usually begin to take on a life of its own (ie, generally increasing without efforts on your part - thank you, Buboes), so everything you can do to drive it upwards is helpful.
