I have an example of what needs to change in GnK. In my last game Germany declared war on other civs 17 times. I declared war 4 times and he thought I was a warmongering menace to the world. To me that is hopelessly ridiculous, because for much of the game everyone hated Germany. Throughout the game this guy was at war with 5 people at once. And he calls me a warmonger. This calling the kettle black philosophy has to go by the wayside.
And let's not forget that if you declare war at someone else's behest, then if they later decide they don't like you, you'll get the warmonger penalty with them for a war
they prompted you to start.
I wonder if the warmonger penalty could be modified as follows:
- you don't get a warmonger penalty at all, or points towards one, for starting a war someone else asked you to; you'll get the usual penalties with your enemies "you were at war!". Add a new penalty ("You declared war on us/on our friend!") to replace the warmonger penalty with these civs, which increases in severity with multiple war declarations against them. This latter would limit exploits by just accepting every war offer and wiping out half the map without getting penalised.
- However, you would get a warmonger penalty for refusing a peace treaty without conditions, and a bigger one if you refuse one deemed to favour you (such as peace + stuff from them vs. peace only from you). Multiple refusals increase the penalty. A civ will actually get a warmonger penalty for offering peace that favours them at the expense of the opponent, since this amounts to forcing an opponent to surrender.
- The warmonger penalty is reduced if another civ has declared more wars than you have; the more war decs from the leading warmonger, the lower your penalty. This means that you can have multiple civs with the warmonger penalty, but the greatest warmongers will have a proportionately greater penalty - which makes intuitive sense.
This is the other problem I see apparent. In my last game, Japan DoWed me early. I won the war and he gives me Tokyo, and he ends up in his remaining city, Kyoto, his original capital. I thought to myself ok, he is impudent and no threat anymore. In the industrial era this moron with one city left backstabs me. So, I completely took Japan out of the game warmonger penalty or not. So, another thing that needs to change is the idea that we should leave these conquered civs in the game. For two reasons. One, because even though they are not a threat militarily, they are a threat diplomatically. Number two, we should not have to leave these single city has been civs around to backstab us later, especially if they have to be watched the whole game through, or be in our flank or rear. They should be elimiated without penalty and done away with. Especially, if they are in one city and declare war on you.
I think this should probably be handled as a different type of penalty again - right now 'warmonger' is too much of a catch-all. I think genocide should carry a diplomatic penalty, although possibly this would only apply in later eras or to your relations with civs that have certain social policy branches. Diplomatically these fallen civs can be a double-edged sword; on the one hand they can be dangerous, but on the other hand they can be a tool to affirm your alliances if you and your allies repeatedly denounce the remaining Ottomans (as happened in one of my games). I also think it's fair to have a trade-off - yes, you can deal with them to prevent them being a nuisance, but doing so is likely to damage relations with other civs.
The other thing that needs to change is this. If you are playing a domination game, taking capitals should be the name of the game. You should not get a penalty for taking capitals, because that is how you win. How can you be penalized for following the rules. Keep in mind this is for games when the only VC checked is domination.
I agree with this since domination already gives you lots of penalties by its nature, though I don't like the idea of changing the AI's diplomatic behaviour based on victory conditions. Also in this scenario, all the AIs will hate you by default for going to war and for competing for the same victory condition, so it wouldn't actually have much effect. There is certainly an inconsistency with the capitals issue, though - you don't get penalised (except with other culture/science focused civs) for building a Utopia Project or a spaceship - you shouldn't get an extra penalty for the domination condition (particularly since you'll need to take out multiple capitals to satisfy it).
I'm fine with dropping this altogether in the main game, except naturally for the civ whose capital you've taken (and probably their friends). Did Alexander, say, really upset people outside Persia more for sacking Persepolis than for conquering anything else in his path? In the modern world people objected to war in Iraq - but they didn't object on the basis that enemy forces would be occupying Baghdad. In WWII, attacking Berlin was a unifying Allied objective and the major theatre in which Western and Soviet interests converged.
For games will all, or other VCs checked, including domination. To decide who hates someone who has declared war on another civ, should be individualistic, and not taken into consideration as a group. So, if you declare war twice it should not mean everyone should automatically hate you. Every single civ on the map should decide for themselves. Every civ should evaluate what the best course of action should be.
From what I understand, this is the way it works in principle, as it does with other modifiers - the issue is that in practice all civs have similar levels of tolerance for this behaviour (someone mentioned their warmonger ratings), so this is probably where changes should be made. As it stands, the main personality differences are that everyone will hate you if you declare two wars, but some will hate you if you declare only one. Strangely, I never saw Genghis Khan or Alexander as the types to consider warmongering a bad thing...
I hope they add a mechanic that decreases your warmonger rating whenever you liberate a civ or CS.
Definitely needed. You don't even get a diplomatic bonus for liberating a civ with the civ you liberated, I noticed when liberating Nebuchadnezzar from the Siamese yoke twice in my last game. Though in gratitude he did wait a while before denouncing me (and even that might have been fair enough since I did originally capture his capital). Still, it was odd to see myself labelled a warmonger when I'd been the defender in all but two of my wars, and had liberated the Babylonians and Helsinki.
