How fast do grievances subside?

[subtledoctor]

My situation: it’s the late classical period. India is my close neighbor (grumble), and Germany is on the other side of them. There is a one-hex mountain pass that leads to the other side of their territory, closer to Germany’s capital; that one hax is he city-state of Antananarivo. I suzerain’d preparation for India’s DOW; but they have not moved against me. 20 turns later (playing epic speed) Germany, hating all city-state alliances, DOWs poor little Antananarivo. I cannot help my little vassal state because this game stupidly doesn’t let you pass through allies’ cities. So Germany captures Antananarivo and now the question is what I can do about it.

I get 82 grievances against Germany. I immediately denounce which drops that number to 57. My thought is, there’s not really anything I can do about this, but maybe I can DOW Germany just to drain their resources a bit and slow their growth. I am 5 turns away from enabling a casus belli, and 14 turns away from Defensive Tactics and thus protectorate wars.

After 5 turns, I only have 17 grievances. So a DOW against Germany will incur 83 grievances of my own. If I wait for Defensive Tactics, they will be down to zero grievances and so a DOW against them will cost 50 (I think). Either way I end up being the bad guy.

My grievances against Germany seem to be dissipating very quickly. Is that normal? Something specific to Germany? (If that’s a German UA, it seems… at odds with history.) And ultimately, what path do people advise here?

 

[MrRadar]

You can read more about grievances and the decay formula in the Civ VI wiki.

As for your given case, if you were the Suz of Antananarivo, next turn an option to call an emergency against Germany to liberate the CS should offered to you, then you can put the motion to the Congress for 30 DF and then vote and hope that someone joins too, probably India, to have more votes against Germany's countervote. If an emergency passes, you get a grievance free war against Germany, in temporary alliance with other potential backers.
If somebody else had some envoys in Antananarivo, (could be India, as they're close) there's a good chance that they will call the emergency if you don't, so you could also save 30 DF for the vote. Check how much DF Frederick has, to estimate how much votes he will use to downvote the emergency.

Or else... you have smiley faces with a lot of people. Sign Declarations of Friendship with them if you don't plan to take them on a bit later and have your way with Germany as you like, at once if you want. Declared Friends will not mind. A DoF means an immunity from war for 30 turns - neither side can declare war on each other. The turn the DoF ends, you may renew it - if you offer it the same turn, they will accept however many negative diplo modifiers you have accumulated.
And in any case, liberation of a city state will write off 100 grievances or so from the negative balance with whichever nation you may have slighted a little.

 

[subtledoctor]

Yeah, the real problem is that I don’t have an avenue to actually liberate it.

OTOH I just offered the emergency at the first WC meeting. I didn’t quite understand how these things work; it didn’t get many votes, only me and Chandragupta voted in favor. It looked like the proposal failed; but then in the next screen it said “you are now in a military contest to liberate Antananarivo.” So, I guess it failed in the broader WC community but passed for me and India? At any rate, we are now at war with Germany. I just crossed into a new era, and immediately used three saved envoys to become suzerain of three city-states (nice +6 era score bonus on the first turn of the era) so three city-states are supporting me. Not bad! And India just happens to have had a bunch of units wandering along its very large border with Germany, so they should harry the Germans well. India is sure to win the contest - I can’t effective liberate the city with only a 1-hex window for a catapult to attack. But that’s okay, 30 turns of fighting should make for a decent drain on the resources of both India and Germany.

 

[MrRadar]

India is sure to win the contest

I very much doubt it. That India will go and try to liberate it, that is.

If after 30 turns Germany still holds Antananarivo, the emergency will fail and Germany will get rewards. It is a small miracle that they can hold it and are not losing it to loyalty.

On the other hand, Pergamon has quite a few jungle tiles, Magnus is there, you could get a builder there to chop those jungle tiles to raise the population for Pergamon, maybe that would cause Antananarivo to start losing loyalty. For the emergency to succeed, Germany must lose the ownership of the city, that includes losing it to a loyalty flip to a Free City.

I can’t effective liberate the city with only a 1-hex window for a catapult to attack.

I think you can get 2 cats attacking, that rice isn't a hill, is it? So two cats: on the forest and stone should be able to attack. Also bring a melee unit, and a battering ram, if Ancient walls goes up, should quite be doable, although, yes, more difficult, with only one hex approach and across a river. But their City combat strength is not so high yet. Also if, some vassalized city state is nearby or maybe even on the better side of that mountain range, you could levy their troops and use them.

 

[subtledoctor]

Climax: India had ~4 archers and a varu outside the CS so I was sure they would take it. But somehow there was some kind of barb uprising over in the shared Germany/India territory, and both nations had to pull units back to handle it. I ended up knocking down the city defenses pretty quick with a catapult and a crossbow (this happened at a very convenient time for me, tech-wise) and took it with a swordsman.

Epilogue: I liberated the CS, got my envoys back and was re-established as suzerain, I won the contest, AND my swordsman ended up on the wrong side of the mountains afterward. While there, it found TWO barbarian settlers that must have been nicked off of Germany/India in the chaos. I grabbed them and, after a centuries-long trek back to my side of the continent, they founded my 8th and 9th cities.

Crazy.

Post-credits scene: immediately after that, I sent a unit to a small antarctic tundra island where I found one of those mid-game goody huts... and it popped a settler. Which I can't even use

 

[aieeegrunt]

After twenty years you think that Civ devs would realize how broken capturing a settler is

I think one version of Civ had captured settlers turn into workers instead