How do you get through big anti-warmonger fervor bonus of AI?

[Racky]

Hello, I'm new to forum, I recently had returned from other 4X games to CIV5 to play VP because I heard it is great. I can say it is most flavorful experience I had in 4X game. it is that great mod. thanks to modders/community for their effort.

I had won easily the settler(heard it is vanilla prince difficulty), warlord, prince difficulty with snowballing. all on standard speed, Communitas map script, standard setting. on 2020 April beta version of VP.

now I'm playing on king difficulty. I always play with random civ selection, and game gives me warmonger faction mostly(mostly the game picks France, don't know why..) so I do that. (I don't like restarting)

so I tried to win domination victory, and plan to make early war to snowball with authority policy.
I always have great success in early game greatly hampering one faction with chariot archer to skirmisher combo.
sometimes I conquer their few cities, or completely destory civ to gain more land for myself, but If there is some other civs nearby and If they gets some warmonger angry(on city hex tooltip) I try to avoid warmonger penalty I just left them fall behind to vassalize them later / or continue the war into medieval era and vassalize.

after that one civ conquer, I could get enough land so I make all cities can work itself, both happiness / food / production, playing wide.

at this time, it was easy on lower difficulty than prince to become #1 civ score because I snowballed, and playing wide gets shine on develop some lands.

but on king difficulty, there is some #1 faction that has doubled score of other faction including AI, and me. it seems there is some AI get bonus than any other civs (kinda rivalry AI?), or I assume they got some lucky start with some good tiles.
so my score is #2~4 after conquer/stable the land. so I feel I have to follow up / or use civ's UU and strong timed rush to get that faction cannot recover so I can get #1.

so on my current game, I prepared the musketeer (French UU) timed rush with cannon/crossbowman. It did worked, and killed their longsword/pikeman easily. there was almost no anti-warmonger fervor bonus on them(5%? maybe because I DoW them) and I succeed to get their 45+ defense city.

after that, warmonger penalty get sky high with that civ (almost only that civ with their ally) and It makes enemy unit get +45% bonus on their territory. even with just one city..
it wasn't a great city. it was a frontline city, lowest value target so that I can do more war before warmonger penalty stops me. though it has some 16 pop. (other enemy city's pop has 17~20 pops)

before DoW, there wasn't an any warmonger notification on diplomacy tooltip. so it becomes 0 -> maximum.

is it normal? then how can player win war through conquer city? or player have to avoid city conquer and only defend the AI?
It makes french's ability useless because after conquer one city, the war ends because It cannot be continued due to their +45% bonus on them. they just keep their guard and wait for their tech up to tercio/lancer/musketman. after UU time, I automatically lose because I couldn't get more cities/even harassed their economy on my favoring time.

so I stopped play and came here to ask.

1. is it normal to get maximum warmonger penalty from zero even I just get one of their frontline city of theirs?
2. then how can warmonger faction makes them valuable? like France, which give bonus on conquering city.

with this warmonger fervor bonus, I rather do some defensive civ to fight on my territory and find some other method for snowball/win. it is that frustrating.

attached file shows the bonus. and current game. I have one vassal(scored 358, spain) and the bottom city 'Corihuawhatever' is the one I conquered, and lost due to their naval ships.

 

[andersw]

2. you work around it. France still gets a bonus for every subsequent attack on the same unit, its a strong ability.
A lot of upgrades and warmonger religious options (like crusader spirit) to keep up against the warmonger modifier.
Now imagine these modifiers and your behind in tech ....
Atilla is somewhat of a pain because he cause extra warmonger difference from his UA.
You're doing as much as 44 damage ie you're doing just fine, nothing to worry about.
On higher difficulties you can have situation where you're doing 10-15 damage to a unit/attack and then you're in for a grind.

 

[Racky]

@andersw, thanks for reply.

so on higher difficulty, getting into enemy territory/conquer city is kind of 'not to do' until I promote enough and have some greatly promoted by grinding enemy then..

 

[andersw]

@andersw, thanks for reply.

so on higher difficulty, getting into enemy territory/conquer city is kind of 'not to do' until I promote enough and have some greatly promoted by grinding enemy then..

You need to be more careful choosing who to fight and where.
I've seen flatland AIs get stomped on Diety but the wrong AI on hilly/forest terrain in their territory can be a nightmare on emperor.
Sometimes it works to wait and get the opponent to throw away units on you, sometimes you have to "general" forward with citadels.
In extreme cases I need indirect fire and +1 range (a very op combo).
A more experienced player would in your picture for example have tanking units fortified in front of your cannon, it is atm free for units to walk in and snipe it, something you cant afford on high lvls.
Vision and zoning becomes very important.

 

[Racky]

You need to be more careful choosing who to fight and where.
I've seen flatland AIs get stomped on Diety but the wrong AI on hilly/forest terrain in their territory can be a nightmare on emperor.
Sometimes it works to wait and get the opponent to throw away units on you, sometimes you have to "general" forward with citadels.
In extreme cases I need indirect fire and +1 range (a very op combo).
A more experienced player would in your picture for example have tanking units fortified in front of your cannon, it is atm free for units to walk in and snipe it, something you cant afford on high lvls.
Vision and zoning becomes very important.

I loaded on beginning of war to change strategy from conquer city fast to kill units. and almost took ~30 turn to kill their units and promoting my units. I could conquer the city in 5 turn but didn't because avoiding warmonger penalty means I can get more kills/more production the AI use on unit so I can get later timed rush on good position.
some got +1 range/Ind.fire so it was easy to kill both land/navy afterwards.

avoiding conquering city due to anti-warmonger fervor, it seems the only combat strategy on high difficulty.
seems strange that 'conquer city If I can, do it fast that enemy can't react' is normally common sense in any game, but in higher difficulty in VP is 'kill enough unit that you can snowball through promotion/authority bonus(which is small in mid-late game, but it seems it help quite amount) and conquer city later'

I skipped that bottom trash city and conquered inland city to defend and did peace treaty, and with many generals spawned with many combats made citadels in good positions that I can make road chain to setup, and rushed the fusilier/arty tech for later timed rush.
and it worked, got enemy civ down to almost unrecoverable status.

not sure it works on higher difficulty though, because I heard the more anti-warmonger fervor bonus on AI, and AI tech faster so there won't be a good timed rush apply to that games. timed rush needs production/gold/research so much but there won't be some kind of space for them. except for epic speed or marathon speed that unit control is more valuable and player is more favorable than AI.

 

[andersw]

No, you want to conquer to get yields from taking cities, that will also in long term increase your yields, its also a dent in opponents happiness.
I guess the warmonger penalty is there to prevent civs not instantly collapsing.

 

[vyyt]

I have no advice on anti-warmonger malus (I find it unfun and turn it off), but where are your melee units? I'd think that even on lower difficulties, the AI would charge in with their cavalry/infantry and crush those cannons and crossbows. Or did you take that screenshot after you destroyed their army?

 

[Racky]

I have no advice on anti-warmonger malus (I find it unfun and turn it off), but where are your melee units? I'd think that even on lower difficulties, the AI would charge in with their cavalry/infantry and crush those cannons and crossbows. Or did you take that screenshot after you destroyed their army?

the first screenshot is after I retreated from their city border due to the +45% bonus for them. my melee guys (french UU musketeer) dead while I make retreat.

I won this game today, by prioritizing killing enemies than conquer city. after getting down the biggest civ, the latter part of game was steamrolling due to picking enemies/making allies.
but without military tech concentration I won't be the winner because in same tech with AI, I can't win a combat because of that bonus. I learned If I have to do war to victory, (not defense against AI) I must focus on military tech so far that even other tech gets behind 2 era so that I can win that +45% bonus and clear enemies consistently.

also I found out If I have to play on higher difficulty with warmonger civ, I'll modify the bonus to around ~+30% because the clearing board of enemies is kind of chore..

so much learned in this playthrough.

 

[Recursive]

Atilla is somewhat of a pain because he cause extra warmonger difference from his UA.

He causes extra war weariness, not extra warmongering penalties.

 

[andersw]

He causes extra war weariness, not extra warmongering penalties.

It feels like having other penalties fighting him, he's such a pain to war.