Just remove war from the game

[bison21]

I think the concept of bellum ustum should be restricted to early game warfare. As soon as ideology hits, it practically acts as a form of legitimizing war and the AI is much more likely to war against differing ideologies.

I would love to get rid of the theming-bonus rubbish which adds complexity without substance, and rather use a system to increase diplomatic options in the leader-screens: things like asking the AI how justified it calculates a war against X based on the diplomacy modifiers would add alot of depth without going overboard with new menus and confusion.

For example, the backstabbing modifier would greatly increase the value of justification of war against the backstabber by the backstabbed. Coveting lands is also a justify-er, whereas things like competing for same city states shouldn't affect that value.

 

[Gamgee]

War mongering sucks in BNW, quit while your ahead. That's my advice, they've completely broken it as a viable method to win. All thanks to this new ******** diplomacy system which I think is even MORE dumb than gods and kings.

I'm not a happy camper with this expansion. Which has completely ruined the fun of the entire game for me. *sigh*

 

[Polisurgist]

War mongering sucks in BNW, quit while your ahead. That's my advice, they've completely broken it as a viable method to win. All thanks to this new ******** diplomacy system which I think is even MORE dumb than gods and kings.

I'm not a happy camper with this expansion. Which has completely ruined the fun of the entire game for me. *sigh*

Funny, I have a hard time avoiding collateral domination games whenever I'm pursuing culture or diplomatic victories. Maybe just ignoring everything so you can pump out troops isn't the secret to success now that the game's smarter.

 

[Bakspatel]

Did you at least try to get the other civs against him in diplomacy? Apart from Denouncements, there are a number of tools to keep warmongering civs pariahs. If you neglect to diplomatically isolate your enemies, then don't be surprised if people stand up for them.

Well unfortunately it was too early for that, because we were fighting each other so much neither had the chance to go for global exploring. It wasn't a few turns after I send my caravels out (which until then I used against Denmark) that England discovered us and the WC was founded. So I had it against me that I couldn't build up international relations with other civs while they still received the negative modifiers for warmongering (after all, those always count no matter if civs know about you)

Besides that I usually know my way around in diplomacy. BeforeBNW I excelled pretty well in building up relations, making someone the bad guy of the community and keeping everyone occupied with him. But the pacifist attitude of BNW makes it quite challenging to actually use your army for something useful. In this game, my main issue will be England. Knowing Elizabeths anti-war attitude I can pretty much forget for the rest of the game any chance on improved relations. Because she has several allies I basically cannot start or join a single war during the rest of the game.

I had good relations with just two civs: Venice and Greece. The situation has improved for me in that Greece now seems to have maneuvered itself in a worse position than I have, they denounced the popular Iroquois. Enrico, being the bastard that he is actually forced me to denounce Greece. Losing my only ally (I already began to notice that he became less fancy of a friendship with me) wasn't an option, also as this seemed to prevent him from buying up my CS.
The WC situation improved for me in that we moved to the next era and Greece became the host, so now me and Greece can make the proposals. But I still have to see in how well that is going to end.

What annoys me about this situation is that I had to take out Denmark, I didn't want to. Trading with him made me large sums of gold and his lands (being pretty much all in the tundra) wasn't interesting for me. But his highly aggressive attitude made it necessarily for me to take him out; he was already starting to outrun me in tech and army size. If I didn't do it he would have eventually taken me out. The WC wouldn't have helped as banning trade would have affected me as well....

 

[Gamgee]

Funny, I have a hard time avoiding collateral domination games whenever I'm pursuing culture or diplomatic victories. Maybe just ignoring everything so you can pump out troops isn't the secret to success now that the game's smarter.

Oh you CAN do it, it's just so inefficient compared to pretty much any other way of victory. Pure domination is more or less dead as a strategy.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Well unfortunately it was too early for that, because we were fighting each other so much neither had the chance to go for global exploring. It wasn't a few turns after I send my caravels out (which until then I used against Denmark) that England discovered us and the WC was founded. So I had it against me that I couldn't build up international relations with other civs while they still received the negative modifiers for warmongering (after all, those always count no matter if civs know about you)

This is the importance of exploration. Aside from diplomacy, one Caravel would have been netting gold, trade, happiness, etc. from City States and Civs. Worth more than just another ship in a battle.

 

[Polisurgist]

Oh you CAN do it, it's just so inefficient compared to pretty much any other way of victory. Pure domination is more or less dead as a strategy.

If people are still nearly falling into domination victories while pursuing other, totally, not kill-everybody-all-the-time strategies, then no, it isn't inefficient and it isn't dead as a strategy.

What is dead as a strategy is domination by way of lazily piling up units and exploiting an AI that's too dumb to not declare war on an overpowered human foe before marching all its troops toward you single-file, all while entirely ignoring the cultural situation within your own borders and the diplomatic situation without. What's dead as a strategy is being able to Google up some 100% always winning strategy that's really just about exploiting some loophole in the AI and being able to win on any difficulty setting because you're better at mindlessly following that program than any computer because you're less burdened by self-awareness than it is.

Domination victories are still possible. Stupid domination victories are less possible.

 

[Kwami]

There's still war in this game? Really? You should tell the AI in my games that they can fight me. They don't seem to know that.

 

[Polisurgist]

There's still war in this game? Really? You should tell the AI in my games that they can fight me. They don't seem to know that.

They even added a feature where you can declare war. Neat, eh?

 

[Chiatroll]

They even added a feature where you can declare war. Neat, eh?

I didn't know this and it changed my entire playstyle.

 

[cambasonso]

I also find the system totally broken. I never declare war but almost always end up a dangerous menace to the world because I have to burn down useless little cities from AI who declare war on me. In G&K, I would have a huge puppet empire, I almost never burned a city, no matter how useless it was, I was able to keep afloat with happiness. Now, it's just impossible, early happiness was reduce so badly that even maintaining 4 of my own cities is almost impossible even with religious benefits such as 1 happiness per every 2 cities, which always nets me in excess of 10 happiness (from CS and other followers) plus pagodas and mosques. For me, brave new world is more like: broke and unhappy!

The AI needs to see a difference between capturing a capital (huge threat) versus burning/puppeting useless little cities. ICS should also be a huge threat and ground for war in as much as it can be compared with the median cities per player. Ej. if 3 cities per player is the average, one that doubles that automatically becomes a threat. The funny (i.e. stupid) part is when someone denounce me for aggressive settling when I am founding my fifth cities and they have 7! Just brilliant. Or when my "friends" comes and ask me to go to war with them because X is a threat to them and they are talking of a barely surviving civ, instead of going against the elephant in the room (you realize Shaka is collecting capitals, don't you?). No, let's gang bang on the weak!

And of course, what I did in ancient era, should eventually (modern era) be forgotten, or not. That's the bad thing about being a 6000 yo leader, your sharp memory don't forget a thing!

 

[Uncle_Joe]

There's still war in this game? Really? You should tell the AI in my games that they can fight me. They don't seem to know that.

Yup. Same here.

I've renamed BNW to 'Boring New World' now because the game feels so damned predictable now.

Leave the AIs alone, don't expand more than 4 cities in the early game, trade with people, buy CSs, tech up, win.

It's far too easy to do that even on two difficulties higher than I played on G&K.

 

[Scott Jegg]

It's far too easy to do that even on two difficulties higher than I played on G&K.

Have you tried going up another two? Prince isn't that hard.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Have you tried going up another two? Prince isn't that hard.

Ha!

I'm up to Immortal now...same boring nonsense. Unless you start next to a psychopath, it's pretty easy to keep out of trouble and win the game.

 

[Kwami]

They even added a feature where you can declare war. Neat, eh?

But why should I? It's easier to win without war.

 

[Stonecutter9]

Bakspatel:

Who were you playing as and who were you playing against? Such factors might affect their negative modifiers toward you...

 

[Uncle_Joe]

But why should I? It's easier to win without war.

Yes, this is indeed, the problem. It's fairly easy to win if you aren't under any form of threat (whether it be political, economic, military). And if you follow what I listed above it's been very rare to be under any form of threat and in fact, quite the contrary. The AIs are more than happy to help me out with trades and RA and whatnot.

To me it seems like a flaw in the game logic...growing Wide is noted and punished by the AIs in multiple ways. Growing Tall (which can be just as powerful) is ignored and aided.

That just doesn't seem like something is working properly IMO....

 

[Socratatus]

So since the launch of BNW I've become dreadful for warfare due to its highly negative consequences in diplomacy, sometimes to the point of staring at how my enemies are destroying my allies as I fear that if I start joining those wars my allies could turn against me. I've experienced the negative effects of going to war in previous games, negative modifiers that you can get in the Renaissance era and last until the Information era. But nothing as bad as this before. Not ever since I've started playing civ 5.

So I just started this game: continents and had Venice and Denmark as close neighbours. Especially Denmark was close, Copenhagen was about 25 tiles away from me. And Denmark being Denmark, I soon began to notice how bad it was going to be.
First he started a war against me. He actually came with a nice force, but I managed to repel his forces (still he nearly had taken a city) and take his whole assaulting army down while they tried to flee. We made peace and I immediately received a denouncement.
This went from bad to worse when I reached the Renaissance era first and he decided to aggressively spy on me. It wasn't until he had stolen four techs from me that my spy finally got his. Then he stole land from me with a GG, and decided that bullying my allied CS wasn't enough and conquered Sofia.
So I had enough because this only could get worse. I build up an terrestrial and naval army and declared war on him. With the sole purpose of removing this serious threat from the face of the earth. It actually wasn't easy in the beginning because he could invest in higher tech units while stealing other required techs from me.
Half way during my campaign, England discovered all civs and the WC was started. After that I freed Sofia and captured his last two cities. Within two rounds, I received seven (!) denouncements - with attitudes going as bad as 'hostile'. And for the first time ever playing Civ5 I managed to downgrade myself as the kicking ball for the rest of the world.
The real game has yet to start: Ideologies haven't kicked in yet but it looks like this is going to be a very hard game to finish. From my experiences of AI's being the kicking ball of the community I don't even expect international relations to improve much more. And all for removing a hostile threat, and starting one war; one I didn't even want to begin because Denmark was ideal for trading relations.

I really really really hope that the Fall patch is going to do something about this massive anti-war attitude of BNW. I don't expect all civs to start tolerating warmongering but in its current status it is just killing the game for me.

I think I understand. the other Civs don`t take into account a trouble maker Civ and give you some leeway, especially if you have a proven peaceful record.

I had Attila attack me unprovoked 3 times and 3 times, I beat his army back until he sued for peace 3 times. the 4th time I`d had enough and decided to wipe him out. Of course, I got a big hit for doing that. I had been peaceful and declared no war on anyone else at all the whole game. All this should be taken into account, I think.

I know wiping out his last city should give me a penalty, but perhaps something could be done to allow other Civs to `understand` that I was consistently peaceful and had to deal with a threat that just was not going to stop. I mean if you`re peaceful all game and a Civ attacks you 3 times taking a city or two and you manage to fight it off and get peace 3 times, then you have some reason to go all out when he attacks you again the 4th time.

It`s probably too much work for the Devs to figure into the AI though.

 

[Kwami]

Yes, this is indeed, the problem. It's fairly easy to win if you aren't under any form of threat (whether it be political, economic, military). And if you follow what I listed above it's been very rare to be under any form of threat and in fact, quite the contrary. The AIs are more than happy to help me out with trades and RA and whatnot.

To me it seems like a flaw in the game logic...growing Wide is noted and punished by the AIs in multiple ways. Growing Tall (which can be just as powerful) is ignored and aided.

That just doesn't seem like something is working properly IMO....

I'm confident that the fall patch will tune the AI to make them more competitive. That's what happened after G&K and it worked out pretty well.

 

[Jewman]

Also I wouldn't freak out tooooo much about denouncements. I've had a similar scenario to yours but once you get those renaissance inter-continental trade routes out, some of the more rational civs will come around and hell some of em even become your friends. Trade routes are the key to the AIs heart.