Flawed War Weariness mechanics?

[Diamondeye]

I have been playing a couple of games LAN with a friend, where we got a techlead bordering the extreme (Infantry + Cannon/Artillery vs Praetorians and LBs), and I have noticed something annoying about War Weariness.

It seems to add up fast even if we are not losing more that a couple of units during the entire war!

I wonder whether this is the way WW is supposed to work (I would imagine a people fighitng a war and winning easily, even in foreign territory, would be more proud and less war weary then one losing galore at home)?

Can anyone explain some exact WW calculation methods or something? I am getting really frustrated by this

PS: Furthermore, I have tried having WW doubled by redeclaring - I was not aware that this happened - is it a bug or a feature? (My WW was 1000 before redeclaring, so you can guess how my empire looked after! )

 

[Supr49er]

Diamondeye

You have a high rating, and are a veteran, so I'm pretty dure you're aware of this, but

To get virtually NO War Weariness:

Build Jails (-25% WW)
Build Mt. Rushmore (-25% WW)
Run the Police State Civic (-50% WW)

 

[Diamondeye]

I knew that, thanks anyway. Problem is mainly when I run a SE and want Representation, because then I cannot have Policestate, and that handicaps the idea a bit. Although I guess half is better than full WW, its still annoying.

And what is the wallbang smilie code ?

 

[Supr49er]

Is this the one you mean? (wallbash)

 

[foobarred]

I think my "favorite" aspect of war weariness is that your citizens become happy after committing genocide.

 

[Kesshi]

Diamondeye,

I don't claim to have the perfect answer for you, but here is some speculation.

Each "unit" doesn't represent one person. It represents many people. When that unit is injured, perhaps that counts as "losing part of a unit" to the WW code, which may be increasing your WW. Also, I bet that your WW "doubled" because maybe when you declared war because declaring war causes WW. (Again, just speculation, I'm not sure about this at all.)

I wish I knew more, but as a fellow SE player, WW isn't much of a problem to me because I usually have the culture slider to bail me out of any problem for a minimal loss of science.

 

[Roland Johansen]

From the War Academy:

War Weariness Mechanics

By the way, the people in your empire aren't thinking the same way as you do. Whether the war is going well or not, is not the main reason for becoming war weary. A nation that is defending it's own soil has rarely crumbled because it's people were weary of the war. And when you're defending your own soil, you're typically not winning the war. It's typically when the soldiers are fighting in a war far away from home when the citizens start to become restless because it becomes harder to explain the deaths. When the bombs are falling on your cities, then it's easy to explain why the soldiers are fighting in that war.

In civ4, you get war weariness when your soldiers are fighting in areas where there is (a fraction of) foreign culture. This is not a perfect representation of real-life war weariness, it's a simplification, but there are a lot of other elements in civ4 which are a far worse representation of reality. This one works as a game element because it makes conquest (which has inherent benefits) costly for the conqueror.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I think my "favorite" aspect of war weariness is that your citizens become happy after committing genocide.

My thoughts exactly, and after I wipe conquer their last city, my newly aquired citizens are suddenly and completly assimilated. Excellent.

 

[Diamondeye]

From the War Academy:

War Weariness Mechanics

By the way, the people in your empire aren't thinking the same way as you do. Whether the war is going well or not, is not the main reason for becoming war weary. A nation that is defending it's own soil has rarely crumbled because it's people were weary of the war. And when you're defending your own soil, you're typically not winning the war. It's typically when the soldiers are fighting in a war far away from home when the citizens start to become restless because it becomes harder to explain the deaths. When the bombs are falling on your cities, then it's easy to explain why the soldiers are fighting in that war.

In civ4, you get war weariness when your soldiers are fighting in areas where there is (a fraction of) foreign culture. This is not a perfect representation of real-life war weariness, it's a simplification, but there are a lot of other elements in civ4 which are a far worse representation of reality. This one works as a game element because it makes conquest (which has inherent benefits) costly for the conqueror.

Thanks for the link and explanation. I think I understand it a little better now (after all, we danes are rather annoyed by our troops presence in Iraq despite token losses, so I guess you're right there).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Also, you get War weariness for

HAVING Battles (both winning AND losing a battle gives War Weariness)
and
Taking Cities

 

[Amask]

the numbers in the article are outdated
I had an unpleasant experience with ww in my first bts game, I lost 2 catapults or smth like that while destroying a stack of 20 or smth units (yes, janissaries are like that), yet my ww shot up to 100 or 150 or smth like that, but definitely not (1*20)+3*2=26
my enemy had the statue of zeus too, but even with that, 26*2 is only 52

I went into wb and noticed that unlike in warlords and vanilla, you get massive ww when attacking (no matter if you win or lose) compared to just defending

when I was doing the "tests", the numbers I got were 13 for attacking and losing, 7 or 8 or smth for attacking and winning, and only 3 for defending, both cases
this is what I remember, I didn't record any of the results so the real numbers might be slightly different, but it gave me an idea that attacking is BAD, even if you can win every single battle

I got these numbers by placing some units next to the AI capital, and attacking there - so it's 100% enemy soil

in normal situations, the numbers are scaled based on the culture ratio in the tile where the defendant is standing
the factor is y/x+y
where y is their cultural %, and x is yours
this is for areas that are under the influence of 3 or more civs
if it's just you and your enemy, you get y% of the ww, 'cause x+y=100

 

[PieceOfMind]

Amask, what is smth? I can't figure out from the context.

 

[Amask]

well, I was going for "something"
maybe used "or smth" a couple times too many in the second sentence

 

[PieceOfMind]

well, I was going for "something"
maybe used "or smth" a couple times too many in the second sentence

lol ok it looks really obvious now that I read it again. Lateral thinking was never one of my strong points!

 

[Roland Johansen]

the numbers in the article are outdated
I had an unpleasant experience with ww in my first bts game, I lost 2 catapults or smth like that while destroying a stack of 20 or smth units (yes, janissaries are like that), yet my ww shot up to 100 or 150 or smth like that, but definitely not (1*20)+3*2=26
my enemy had the statue of zeus too, but even with that, 26*2 is only 52

I went into wb and noticed that unlike in warlords and vanilla, you get massive ww when attacking (no matter if you win or lose) compared to just defending

when I was doing the "tests", the numbers I got were 13 for attacking and losing, 7 or 8 or smth for attacking and winning, and only 3 for defending, both cases
this is what I remember, I didn't record any of the results so the real numbers might be slightly different, but it gave me an idea that attacking is BAD, even if you can win every single battle

I got these numbers by placing some units next to the AI capital, and attacking there - so it's 100% enemy soil

in normal situations, the numbers are scaled based on the culture ratio in the tile where the defendant is standing
the factor is y/x+y
where y is their cultural %, and x is yours
this is for areas that are under the influence of 3 or more civs
if it's just you and your enemy, you get y% of the ww, 'cause x+y=100

The value used to describe war weariness in the article is not necessarily the value used to describe war weariness in the game. When that article was written, there was no in-game valuation of war weariness. There was an effect in your cities, but no valuation was given to war weariness. That valuation is something new in BTS.

From observation, it seems that in-game war weariness valuation = 2.5 * war weariness valuation in the article (just observation, no code reading). This absolutely doesn't mean that war weariness has increased by a factor 2.5 in BTS. That doesn't seem to be true purely based on my personal observations in some games that I played before and after the introduction of BTS. War doesn't seem to lead to more war weariness. It is far more likely to just be a difference in measurement. If you measure a distance between two towns in kilometers or miles, then the valuation will be different, but the distance is the same.

Since the effect of the culture ratio in a tile on war weariness seems to be introduced in BTS, it is logical to use a more detailed measurement for war weariness in BTS. Otherwise the effect of culture ratio in a tile could not be represented accurately. You need higher values to show the distinction between a battle in a 60% enemy culture or 70% enemy culture tile.

 

[eeevans]

nub question: where can you see your own ww?

 

[Roland Johansen]

nub question: where can you see your own ww?

You can see the value of your war weariness when you hold the mouse pointer over one of the leaders in the scoreboard (lower right of the main screen) with whom you are at war. If you are at war with multiple leaders at once, then each of them will contribute war weariness points and you'll have to add those to get your total war weariness value.


Question of my own:

You can see the war weariness value of yourself in the scoreboard and the war weariness values of other civilisations who are at war with one another can be found in the diplomacy screen. However, is there any place where you can find the war weariness of civilisations who are at war with you? You can find the effects of this war weariness by spying in their cities, but that's not what I mean. I mean the value of this war weariness. I find it weird that you can see the war weariness of 2 civilisation who are at war with one another but can't seem to see the war weariness of your own enemies.

 

[Amask]

Since the effect of the culture ratio in a tile on war weariness seems to be introduced in BTS, it is logical to use a more detailed measurement for war weariness in BTS. Otherwise the effect of culture ratio in a tile could not be represented accurately. You need higher values to show the distinction between a battle in a 60% enemy culture or 70% enemy culture tile.

this is a very strong point

however, I was just pointing out my own experience, and if I do remember the numbers correctly, they aren't just scaled up, they are scaled up AND changed around a bit relative to each other, to make any attacks, whether successful or not, cause more ww compared to defense
(also, defense causes less ww now, maybe that's why on average you get the same level of unhappiness compared to warlords/vanilla)

victory on attack: 1 in the article, 3.5 or 4 in my experience (divided by 2 to account for the statue of zeus in my game)
loss on attack: 3 in the article, 7.5 in my experience
defense: 2 in the article, 1.5 in my experience

well, not much more can be said without further tests

 

[Roland Johansen]

this is a very strong point

however, I was just pointing out my own experience, and if I do remember the numbers correctly, they aren't just scaled up, they are scaled up AND changed around a bit relative to each other, to make any attacks, whether successful or not, cause more ww compared to defense
(also, defense causes less ww now, maybe that's why on average you get the same level of unhappiness compared to warlords/vanilla)

victory on attack: 1 in the article, 3.5 or 4 in my experience (divided by 2 to account for the statue of zeus in my game)
loss on attack: 3 in the article, 7.5 in my experience
defense: 2 in the article, 1.5 in my experience

well, not much more can be said without further tests

I looked into this a bit more closely a while ago when there was some discussion in the discussion thread that accompanies the war weariness article. See post 127 in that thread. It's probably more accurate than what I wrote here. For instance the 2.5 multiplier that I mentioned here is 5 times the map multiplier from a huge map. I always play on huge maps. I agree that the war weariness from killed units is probably mixed around a bit.

Krikkitone who wrote the article and also responded in this thread could probably give you a more detailed answer. He went into the code to find the war weariness formula and that is probably a lot more accurate than some world builder tests.

Note that your world builder tests are dependent on the map size. War weariness figures are dependent on map size. See the formula from the linked article to find the multiplier that depends on map size. Bigger maps typically have more units and cities and thus the war weariness resulting from a single killed unit or captured city should be less.