I was attacked, I won, now everyone hates me

[siuruman]

Hi,
After playing Civilization 5 for 200 hours, I decided to learn how to play the game the right way. Usually I played on difficulty 2, cause it's fun. Now I switched to 4. And it's different - I have to understand the mechanics a bit better. That's a nice challenge. But now I have a problem with understanding relation between AI players.

So I played the game as usual. Huns were my friend, they started to gather troops close to my border and then they stabbed me in my back. I killed all of invading units. They asked for peace, but I thought that I can win the war, so I declined. In the end I took all of their cities and destroyed Huns completely. Then things started to get complicated.

All of AI opponents denounced me, three of them declared war. Fast forward to year 1980. I couldn't even get to "neutral" with anyone. During the congress they banned trading with me AND with city states. I got too big (9 cities, then after a war I as gifted 10th useless city). My economy collapsed and I'm basically done.

So here are some things I don't understand:
1. Once I get warmonger penalty, that means my diplomacy is done? I mean, it's just difficulty 4... I would expect some forgiveness after 100 years.
2. Why, whenever someone attacks me, I see that taking over their city will give me penalty, even though I didn't star the war?
3. How can one nation get 15 votes during congress meeting, while other nations get maximum of 7? Should I befriend city-states?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Taking a city is warmongering. I don't know what else to tell you. That's what the AIs call warmongering, and it's a permanent evaluation.

Your total votes in congress depends on which era of the congress this is, and then how many city state allies you have. You get a number C(era) of delegates per City-State ally, plus a quantity base to yourself for being a major power. In the first congress, C is 0.

 

[raider980]

Yes, diplomacy can be brutal sometimes. For your questions:

1. For each city you capture you get some amount of warmonger penalty. If you totally wipe out an AI civ you will get the most extreme warmonger penalty and everyone will hate you. Your reputation may never recover. So I usually only capture the really good cities and always leave the AI with at least one city. If they are an agressive civ like the Huns, try to weaken them enough so that they can't recover easily but you still don't want to capture their last city. Note: You will also get an extreme warmonger penalty for capturing a city state (it doesn't seem as bad as wiping out an AI Civ but its worse than taking one AI city.

2. This has always annoyed me too but its just the way it works. No matter who starts the war, you will get warmonger penalty for capturing their cities.

3. You get extra votes in the World Congress for each city state ally. (Ally not just friend). It varys based on game era - at the beginning you don't get any votes for CS allies, then at some point you'll get one extra vote, then later you'll get two extra votes per CS ally. So yes, its good to ally city states!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

First off, yes, you will always be hated, forever, if you wipe out a civ. And it will never change.

Try to avoid capturing a warmonger's capital and you usually won't be hated.
It may be just me, but you are also favored if you "liberate" a lot of captured cities too. I've found myself doing that in late games recently to even the scores of the lower players but put me over the top.

 

[AlanH11]

Civ 5 isn't an easy game on the higher difficulty levels, and IMO, that's good. What could be more boring than always winning?
I find happiness a big problem when I'm taking cities. Also choosing the 'wrong' ideology.
Yes, try to make allies of as many city states as you can if you want delegates, and ultimately a diplomatic win.

 

[aafritz17]

I agree, diplomacy sanctions last way too long.

Three other ways to increase your congressional votes are:

1. Building Forbidden Palace
2. Following the "World Religion" (I don't remember for sure, but maybe you have to have FOUNDED the religion)
3. Following the "World Ideology"

It usually is hard to get Religion passed, but on lower levels you can quite often be first to Ideologies, so you can propose/pass it before any AI cares about it.

And, of course, there is Globalization, but it's at the very end of the tech tree, so not really useful for, like, preventing embargos or other mean things the AI might do...

 

[miaasma]

the AI doesn't really differentiate between aggressor vs defender when it comes to taking cities; in fact, the act of declaring war itself gives only a very minor penalty, whereas capturing cities will give a variable penalty from minor to extreme

if you're on the receiving end of war and start pulling ahead, my best advice would be to kill as many units as possible and avoid hitting cities. this way you can potentially win the cities you want in a peace deal once your army is significantly larger than your opponent, and cities obtained in this way don't incur the aforementioned penalty. the only downside is that you can't annex a capital in this way

 

[Trackmaster]

I feel like I step in and give some help:

• The other Civs getting angry at you is just part of the game. No matter what you do most of them will eventually turn on you at some point, and by late game, even if you do a great job of keeping them happy, most of them will hate you, except a couple if you're lucky. If you ever did enough to make them all your friend the whole game, you wouldn't survive, and wouldn't be in line for a victory condition. But this isn't as bad as it seems, because you should be on your way to a victory condition when your relationships with other Civs are really getting bad.
• To piggy back on the last, the ideologies are really what cause the your relationships to strain, and if nothing else, a lot of time alliances basically go down that line. And if you think its getting too easy for you, Civs will out of the blue demand that you denounce a random Civ, or they'll denounce you. So you really have to be picking some teams.
• Don't forget that Domination games will naturally lead to them turning you on earlier than peaceful games and that's just part of the challenge. It shouldn't be super hard to wipe out a Civ from a battlefield perspective, but the bigger challenge is the aftermath and managing everything. That's why you should really be doing Domination with a Civ that is built for war, and you understand that once you start taking out other Civs, you're not going back and you probably should be at war for 95% of the remaining game until you get all the capitals or find that the game is unwinnable and give up.
• Despite what I said earlier about "they're going to hate you no matter what you do" you still need to manage your relationships, and you want to delay them all hating you as long as possible. There are ways to warmonger and protect your relationships as much as possible:
  • Don't be afraid to leave cities and really try to avoid taking the last one -- which is basically seen as genocide. Taking and/or their major cities, wiping out their units, stealing their workers, and pillaging their tiles should leave them in enough of a bind that their game is over at that point and they won't bother you again. You don't need to take their final cities. In reality, another Civ will do that dirty work for you.
  • Never ever miss an opportunity to liberate. Its basically a loophole. You get to fulfill your dream of warmongering, profit, harvest promotions, and you get a diplo boost out of it. Always liberate CS's whenever possibly (and this is even a decent reason to go to war with a non-friend if you're trying to be peaceful if you think you'd win), and try to liberate other Civs cities too. It'll weak the enemy that you're fighting, and give you a diplo boost. If they were wiped out before, even better. You get an automatic friend and you get open borders to help you in your war effort. I also may try to get a feel for how valuable a capital is (either through a spy or just deducing it based on the diplomatic screen that shows you who has wonders) and consider sending a previously captured capital back to its owner -- but I'd only do this if it resurrected them. I figure they'll be so weak that they're a valuable friend, and they're easy pickings later when I need to wrap up victory.
  • The fact that resurrected Civs will be more or less blindly loyal to you (as long as you don't mess with them) actually creates some balance where you won't be that much worse off with your relationships than if you went peaceful.
• Also don't forget that while taking cities is generally what gives you global diplo hits, there's still some value to getting them to attack you. That will generally be better for your relationship with them. Although this may be more of a factor if you don't absolutely decimate them. And I do believe that attacking a friend without warning will you get a backstabbing stab that will get you some global penalties. So you want to start off by denouncing them, and wait until they denounce you, give it a few turns, and then invade. Also don't get too cute and put everybody in the right position so that you can DOW on the next turn. They can see this and demand that you back away or DOW, and if you pick DOW prematurely that can put you out of position. Nothing wrong with DOW and then having to set up. If anything its nice to give their units pulled away from the cities as well.

I know that this is an old thread and you've probably figured this out by now, but I figure this might be helpful. I do think that for many reasons, you really have to build a strategy around being a warmonger and using brute force with some tact to overcome the penalties and stealing what you need, or being peaceful and defensive and really committing to building a strong Civilization from the ground up where you try to keep your turns at war to an absolute minimum (and ironically you'll need a powerful standing army to keep them from invading you).