Is it worth being passive?

[Victoria]

I denounce my foe and then declare war on them

If I take a city of theirs I suffer formal or casus war warmongering while if they take my city they suffer surprise war warmongering.

When my troops fight theirs I suffer formal or casus war weariness while they suffer surprise war weariness.

These rules seem a bit harsh on the defender but can be argued to be fair. Regardless the benefits are with the aggressor

 

[Leyrann]

That is the case? I thought defenders always had formal war penalties. After all, that's the standard war; surprise penalties are only because you don't have the decency to warn your enemy that you don't like them before attacking them.

 

[Victoria]

That is the case?

Well I remember a post where someone was querying the defender taking cities values and I tested it but I can test it again when I have time. 100% sure at the time they got surprise penalties.
What I can say is that the War Weariness testing seems to indicate this and I just did some of that.
I'll try and validate again tonight but I do remember being shocked and appalled about taking cities.

I guess they are still surprised when you declare because you have only denounced them before declaration.

 

[RohirrimElf]

On my last game i captured 2 cities from the Pericles. He announced me just before i wanted to announced him. Pericles declared a surprice war with me even do i was fully prepared and he was not. 5 to 1 army power in my favor.
When i captured 2 of his 3 cities after he declared war on me i got -26 and -33 warmongering traits from most civs of the game. I found it a bit harsh as i was attacked. It should be a bit lighter on warmongering.
Next time i only capture one of his cities and pillage his economy. Instead of taking 2 cities and be the new "Hitler" for most of the game. I wonder what would have happened if i was the aggressor and not the other way around on warmongering score.

 

[Victoria]

I wonder what would have happened if i was the aggressor and not the other way around on warmongering score.

It depends on what Era you are in

It sounds like you are probably the Renaissance but may be later.
So Pericles declares a surprise war which is 18 x 1.5 = 27 warmonger points
The price of either of you capturing cities will be 27 * 0.5 = 14 warmonger points
If you were industrial or later the price would be 18 per city so yeah, with discounts for others hating Peri you were probably industrial or later.
Your warmonger points with a civ degrade at 1 point per 2 turns

If you were the aggressor and declared a formal war then it would 12 per city not 18
Pericles being the defender would then get 18 per city

 

[RohirrimElf]

Thanks for your reply.

I was attacking with rifleman, reiters and bombards so i guess it was Industrial era. Next time i`ll try to attack one era earlyer and be the aggressor. I was building up my army for many turns and could have attacked with musketeers.
The last time i played i could not capture an American city with 2 musketeers and 3 bombards + some loose unit here and there. I was building enough just in case. When i attacked Pericles i did not face any defending forces this time which i could have know

I still think the math is really weird that you get punished hard by being the defender for taking a city. 33x2=66 turns is a very long time on epic speed for a negative warmongering penalty. Even if it is decreasing.

 

[Victoria]

66 turns is a very long time

The idea is you do most of your wars early before the era's get too high. Either increased tech or Civic will increase your era.
From Industrial onwards you get 24 Warmongering points for a formal declaration... 1.5x for surprise. 50% of what ever you declare for each city you take... and I think its 3x city take for the last city....

So taking a city during a formal war 12 warmonger.... but if you for example declared a colonial war it would be 70% of that.

The length of time is used to discourage people from warring. If you liberate a Civ city you get -30 warmonger points I believe... it was changed in the latest patch from 36 if I remember.

Anyone that has denounced or is at war with the same enemy will get % reductions also.... so attacking the hated has value.

Bottom line... Warmonger points mean very little apart from immersion value and a bit of trade/tourism. The value of war far outweighs the warmonger points currently. Put on that what I said at the beginning of the thread and you realize war is worth it and peace is for those that want a longer game not based on the standard victory conditions.

 

[RohirrimElf]

The idea is you do most of your wars early before the era's get too high. Either increased tech or Civic will increase your era.
From Industrial onwards you get 24 Warmongering points for a formal declaration... 1.5x for surprise. 50% of what ever you declare for each city you take... and I think its 3x city take for the last city....

So taking a city during a formal war 12 warmonger.... but if you for example declared a colonial war it would be 70% of that.

The length of time is used to discourage people from warring. If you liberate a Civ city you get -30 warmonger points I believe... it was changed in the latest patch from 36 if I remember.

Anyone that has denounced or is at war with the same enemy will get % reductions also.... so attacking the hated has value.

Bottom line... Warmonger points mean very little apart from immersion value and a bit of trade/tourism. The value of war far outweighs the warmonger points currently. Put on that what I said at the beginning of the thread and you realize war is worth it and peace is for those that want a longer game not based on the standard victory conditions.

Havent played all that much in the last 6 months. I just expanded very rapidly in civ 6. Often took an early capital (small warmonger hit) and had 14 cities or so in total by the middle game.
At that time it was just spamming theatres and campussus and click end turn till i`ve won the game. I was playing on immortal mostly.
Since then the game got better and i`ve installed a the AI+ mod. Things like warmongering has got my attentioni in the last couple of games. I used not to care much about it.
Like i said i did not realise at all that you have to be so carefull while being agressive. I`m more used to be a fast settler and build up an economy. Most of my agression used to come in the first 2 era`s.
But i got outmacro`d by America in Syria in the last 2 games. America on science and Syria on culture. It was hard to keep up so i started being aggressive to catch up. Noticing all the world was against me very fast.

 

[Victoria]

Noticing all the world was against me very fast

Have a look at the GOTM forum. You can learn lots by playing a scenario others play and see what they did.

 

[Leyrann]

Havent played all that much in the last 6 months. I just expanded very rapidly in civ 6. Often took an early capital (small warmonger hit) and had 14 cities or so in total by the middle game.
At that time it was just spamming theatres and campussus and click end turn till i`ve won the game. I was playing on immortal mostly.
Since then the game got better and i`ve installed a the AI+ mod. Things like warmongering has got my attentioni in the last couple of games. I used not to care much about it.
Like i said i did not realise at all that you have to be so carefull while being agressive. I`m more used to be a fast settler and build up an economy. Most of my agression used to come in the first 2 era`s.
But i got outmacro`d by America in Syria in the last 2 games. America on science and Syria on culture. It was hard to keep up so i started being aggressive to catch up. Noticing all the world was against me very fast.

Syria? You mean Sumeria? Arabia? Persia?

 

[RohirrimElf]

Syria? You mean Sumeria? Arabia? Persia?

Sorry i think i meant to say persia. Its the leader with beard that likes to surprise war others.

 

[Kyro]

It is like you said. Warmonger/Weariness Points do little to deter warmongering.

They sound like they should, but practically they are only a strong a deterent as the consequences they impose which is near non-existent.

Warmonger penalties are only as effective as the profitability/penalties of international relations, but alas there's no power vested in those at all.

War Weariness is easily recovered and punishes defenders. It takes too long to affect players who take cities in a few turns. Do people really beg their government to surrender to their enemies? If anything people gain renewed fervor against common enemies, especially a warmonger at that.

People ask: Is there a need to deter warmongering in the first place? The answer is a resounding yes and here's why:

1: When you conquer/cripple an opposing Civilization, you just eliminated a Competitor in the game. Is that not a strong enough benefit? This should be the only benefit on top of one-time spoils from peace.

That is however not the only benefit from warmongering. When you conquer somebody; their cities, districts, wonders and population come to you for a minute fraction of the cost you had to invest in troops to get them; with no penalties/resistance/unrest whatsoever.

This makes warmongering an Incremental payoff on top of its already powerful advantage of removing competition entirely.

What sort of design in any game gives overwhelming power such as this to both progress and elimination of rivals simultaneously? It would be like a player in Starcraft/Command and Conquer gaining control of an entire enemy base just because it defeated its troops.

The power of this strategy renders any other strategy obsolete; especially on higer difficulties.

2: War is never profitable beyond the context of eliminating rivals. That's the reality of life. Look at both world wars. Look at the Iraq-Iran war. Look at the gulf war.

Did Napoloen gain anything conquering Russian Cities in his invasion of Russia?

There fact of the matter is that it involves huge administrative costs to govern conquered civilizations and civil unrest/resistance is always round the corner in those cases which is not reflected in Civ 6 at the moment. If anything, conquered people don't do their best for their mortal enemies.

I would disagree however, that peaceful play is passive play. There's so much to appreciate when you don't gain all the building from conquering. Building something with your own abilities holds much more value than taking it from somebody else's hands. Maintaining friendships would actually be fun if only there were powerful advantages of doing so. City Placement/planning becomes much more important when most of your yields don't come from conquered cities.

 

[Equilin]

2: War is never profitable beyond the context of eliminating rivals. That's the reality of life. Look at both world wars. Look at the Iraq-Iran war. Look at the gulf war.

Did Napoloen gain anything conquering Russian Cities in his invasion of Russia?

There fact of the matter is that it involves huge administrative costs to govern conquered civilizations and civil unrest/resistance is always round the corner in those cases which is not reflected in Civ 6 at the moment. If anything, conquered people don't do their best for their mortal enemies.

Wars of the past are for land, population and resource however. Why did Alexander push on after eliminating Persia? Genghis Khan and his descendants expanding west? Colonial Empires? Even more, in the past when education is not commonplace all the grudges are mostly gone in a few generations.
My opinion would be to make warmonger penalties have more impact & AI diplomacy better. E.g.if one player accumulates too many warmonger points others would try to cooperate against said player.

 

[Pythakoreas]

War Weariness is easily recovered and punishes defenders. It takes too long to affect players who take cities in a few turns. Do people really beg their government to surrender to their enemies? If anything people gain renewed fervor against common enemies, especially a warmonger at that.

It does happen that the people ask for peace/surrender from their government when they get weary of war, especially in wars of attrition and other circumstances where the people's lives get destroyed. However, when people rally in the name of the nation or if the aggressor is perceived as an evil that preys upon the poor, things become different. In Civ6 terminology you'd call this "running a government with National Identity and Defense of the Motherlands"

2: War is never profitable beyond the context of eliminating rivals. That's the reality of life. Look at both world wars. Look at the Iraq-Iran war. Look at the gulf war.

Did Napoloen gain anything conquering Russian Cities in his invasion of Russia?

There fact of the matter is that it involves huge administrative costs to govern conquered civilizations and civil unrest/resistance is always round the corner in those cases which is not reflected in Civ 6 at the moment. If anything, conquered people don't do their best for their mortal enemies.

Selling weapons and other military material to countries at war is very profitable business. WW2 was how US recovered from Great Depression. In Civ games I guess it's represented by a monopoly of sorts that you can get from another civ once they go to war and lose their trading partners.

Napoleon didn't get anything from Russia because of the Russian scorched earth policy. Their is a Industrial era Civic carrying its name but doesn't do what it's named after.

Civil unrest/Resistance would be very interesting if Civ6 got some kind of a Congress system where the will of the people is presented on your strategy board.

 

[Kyro]

Wars of the past are for land, population and resource however. Why did Alexander push on after eliminating Persia? Genghis Khan and his descendants expanding west? Colonial Empires? Even more, in the past when education is not commonplace all the grudges are mostly gone in a few generations.
My opinion would be to make warmonger penalties have more impact & AI diplomacy better. E.g.if one player accumulates too many warmonger points others would try to cooperate against said player.

Ealier wars, Land and resources yes, population no. When civs go to war for that reason they eliminate the population or drive them out; they dun keep competitors. Do people go to war because they covet infrastructure earlier on? Well in Civ 6 the biggest benefit of conquering cities is their districts.

How many wars in the ancient past end up with entire populations slaughtered and cities completely destroyed? Many, if not most of them. Which thinking player will raze cities now?

How many colonial empires revolt? Do those conquered become major techological/cultural centres?
The mongolian empire disintegrated by itself. As did the British. Rome fell apart because it got too large for its administrative capabilities.

The point is, expansion by conquest has severe consequences that need to be reflected in terms of productive output and administrative costs and it cannot be more efficient to conquer than to build at all because of the importance of districts.

If you focus on warmongering, the benefit should be control over rivals, not stronger technological/cultural/economical output than one who chooses to specialize in that area and certainly not infrastructure when you invested production in the military instead. It's only fair and logical.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I've caused rivals with too big cities to spawn rebels just by declaring war on them, so definitely yes if you have the amenities to spare.

 

[Guatenadian]

Once diplomacy gets an overhaul in a future expansion then I imagine it would be more worth it to go passive. The World Congress, while not great in Civ 5, did provide some interesting ideas that could be very well implemented into Civ 6.

 

[Equilin]

Ealier wars, Land and resources yes, population no. When civs go to war for that reason they eliminate the population or drive them out; they dun keep competitors. Do people go to war because they covet infrastructure earlier on? Well in Civ 6 the biggest benefit of conquering cities is their districts.

How many wars in the ancient past end up with entire populations slaughtered and cities completely destroyed? Many, if not most of them. Which thinking player will raze cities now?

Ok. I was wrong on the population part. Pardon me.

How many colonial empires revolt? Do those conquered become major techological/cultural centres?
The mongolian empire disintegrated by itself. As did the British. Rome fell apart because it got too large for its administrative capabilities.

The point is, expansion by conquest has severe consequences that need to be reflected in terms of productive output and administrative costs and it cannot be more efficient to conquer than to build at all because of the importance of districts.

Then it should be the issue of administration (which imo should present in all wide empires, including those that expand a lot peacefully, Romans did expand both ways as retired soldiers are given land to settle). Which brings the revolt system and similar stuffs in mind. (I loved CiV5's city flip and really hope cultural influence via tourism does more, but let's leave it at that).
About build vs. conquer, it's up to the build about which one you mean between building a new city and building stuffs in an existing city.

 

[universecreep]

It is like you said. Warmonger/Weariness Points do little to deter warmongering.

I think that there should be better rewards to maintain peace rather than punitive measures to deter war mongering.

Perhaps, some buildings could give more benefits depending on your reputation. Culture for example: Nazi buildings/symbols are pretty much universally despised but more peaceful symbols are revered (Statue of Liberty, Sidney Opera House). Perhaps, if you build certain wonders considered peaceful they could be given bonus benefits if you remain peaceful and loose those if you do not. Other buildings (amphitheater, temples, etc) could also have added benefits if you stay peaceful but loose them if you stray from that.Maybe industrial buildings could also be tweaked. Maybe give bonus production when building non-military to industrial buildings if you are peaceful.

I suppose this is still punishing warmongering but I feel this approach could encourage peace. Right now the answer for winning is always war no matter what victory condition you are pursuing. If the benefits of peace matched warmongering this would make it a viable option. This would also lead to end game tension (see below) since you'd be trying to maintain a peaceful rating (because of the culture benefits you get while working for your culture victory or production benefits you get while building your spaceship parts) while defending yourself against aggressive AI's.

The game also needs to have a better way of dealing with warmongers. In Civ IV, the whole world would unit against you (or another AI) if the were warmongering. I liked that because it mimicked the real world - very immersive. Right now, they'll denounce an aggressor but stand by while you/other AI roll over them. Getting denounced does nothing to stop an aggressor.

I also would like to see a change to the end game hate you get if the computer AI's feel you are "winning" (I hate that). I understand it's to give the late game a bit of tension but it would be nice if at least one of your friends stood beside you. Maybe if you are above a certain threshold of friendship or you've had >3 eras in a row of ongoing friendship they don't do this as long as you continue to be peaceful. Otherwise, there is no incentive to remain friends with anyone since they always turn on you in the end. It also makes the game predictable which is what Ed said he wanted to get away from.

 

[Kyro]

I would like to point out that "punish warmongering" isn't the correct term to describe penalties.

I am only suggesting that warmongering be portrayed in accordance with its inherent consequences and not the extreme profitability it entails currently.