Unser Giftzwerg
UgLe Game Promoter
All I know about war weariness is the best game of Civ I ever played was my 2nd game of FfH ver II. Thanks to geography, I could not get at Hippus but Hippus couldn't get past my Maginot Line across the contnent. But he would not make peace, not for nothing. He'd bribe Lanuninto the war a couple times, and that was a bit tof a problem for awhile. They had HvCrossbows, and I had Rangers. And a whole lot of Amurite mages who eventually grew up. But even when they did, the war had gone on so long WW was about to cause mass starvation across all the main cities in the kingdom. I eventually scraped up enough navy to lift a few units and took a remote Hippus city. That finally forced a peace. But I was impressed. WW had been on the verge of taking out a strong civilization in the mid/end game. That game was very fun.
There's some talk of fiddling with WW here. I'll chime in then by agreeing it should be a stronger factor in game play. WW should be quite difficult to manage early on. Techs would make WW management easier over time.
The same principle should be applied to city defenses. The early game should start with city defenses stronger across the board. (And/)Or add a few early, cheap city defensive enhanceemnts. Other +defensive builds could be added to the Cavalry line, for instance.
The intent here is to make offensive, expansionistic warfare more problematic until end-game techs appear. Right now numerous opportunities exist to get 1 or 2 uber-units early on. These steamrollers can methodically reduce cites unfortunate enough to be defended by tier-2 units or even some tier-3s. That's all well and good, but, a fledgling civ should find it all but impossible to fully assimilate a rival civ living a continent away.
The rationale goes something like this:
a) Start with cities being very hard to attack directly.
b) Start with WW acting even faster and stronger than currently.
c) Start the game with city-flipping-after-conquest much more likely to occur.
This would channel early-era wars into brief raiding wars. The player could still obtain a dramatic advantage over the AI by winning an early raiding war. But such wars would have to end and when they did, the AI civ would still most likely have it's cities. This would allow that civ to bounce back. It'd live on, perhaps to become a diplomatic thorn, perhaps to become Finlandized puppet state. Perhaps to stab you in the back while you fight a war on another continent.
By making permanent conquest very difficult, it becomes more likely that players will reach the mid-game running a civ very much is size to its rivals. That is a more interesting mid-game than being already 50% larger than any rival. But it still allows for plenty of fighting. You can "keep ahead of the Jonses" by kicking the snot out of the Jonses every time they try puttin on airs. But you just can't quite get rid of them, like cockroaches or cheesy reality shows.
The idea is to let civs fight it out early on, but still make it more likely they'll survive for the real fun stuff. At this point city defense becomes a matter for the tech wars. . .defensive enhancements can be persued (e.g. Ring of Warding). Offensive coutnermeasures start appearing on battlefields (catapults, magic). (City defenses of +300% or more would make Cannons a more valuable.) And social progress makes it increasingly easier to sustain wars and assimilate subject peoples.
One thought specifically on the subject of the Cavalry line is to introduce production enhancements to the city tile itself. The idea here is that such an economic enhancement is 'raiderproof'. Even if every surrounding tile is scoured of every improvement and road, city tile improvements will let the community continue to produce militia-grade units at a reasonable clip.
Early cavalry-line economic techs would thus work towards the above goal of making cities hard to actually conquer. Later on cavaly-line techs could further improve production. Perhaps at that later stage of the game using a lot of animal techs might cause health problems, as a balance? Anyway, a nice but not massive per/city production bonus would be available to civs that persued the cavalry line hard.
Examples: Specific numbers just for discussion purposes.
Fodder Silo: Enhanced facilities to support work animals boosts city material production. Available at Animal Handling
Effect; +3
Cost to build; 90 Requires Horse? Cow/Sheep/Pigs? (These are fantasy pigs, not your grandfather's everyday ho-hum pig, after all.) Obsolete tech?
Grain Mill: The first proto-industry, driven by animal treadwheel. Having a miller in town means more the annual crop gets eaten, not lost to rats and rot.
Effect: +2
+1 
? Optional: Requires Rice/Wheat/Corn and/or Horse/Cow/Pig/Sheep? 125-150 to build.
Available at Animal Handling? A bit later? (Festivals doesn't seem to fit, but hey.)
Public Commons: Public grazing land set aside supports more farm animals during times of crisis, making it easier for the city to resist aggression. Mild culture effect as people feel safer living a bit outside city walls. Available at Agriculture.
Effect: Roughly half the effect of Walls, +1
Cost to build 60 Obsolete Tech?
Palisade: Move to Crafting, to give that tech an immedeately useful function.
Optional: Reduce bonus and/or cost-to-build? Optional: Eliminate obsolescence at Construction?
Maneuver by Elements: New tech or reworked existing tech. (Perhaps with other stuff.)
Effects: Allows the Screening promotion to mounted units. Screening is a clone of the existing Fear spell. It simulates teh ability of a mounted force to simply ride outside the ranger radius of any approaching threat. A Screening unit has a chance to force the attacker to execute a Withdrawal action before the first round of combat. This give a line of mounted units a chance to form a skirmish line ahead of an attacking force. Details TBD, but as this would work like an existing (and nifty) bit of code, it seems plausible.
There's some talk of fiddling with WW here. I'll chime in then by agreeing it should be a stronger factor in game play. WW should be quite difficult to manage early on. Techs would make WW management easier over time.
The same principle should be applied to city defenses. The early game should start with city defenses stronger across the board. (And/)Or add a few early, cheap city defensive enhanceemnts. Other +defensive builds could be added to the Cavalry line, for instance.
The intent here is to make offensive, expansionistic warfare more problematic until end-game techs appear. Right now numerous opportunities exist to get 1 or 2 uber-units early on. These steamrollers can methodically reduce cites unfortunate enough to be defended by tier-2 units or even some tier-3s. That's all well and good, but, a fledgling civ should find it all but impossible to fully assimilate a rival civ living a continent away.
The rationale goes something like this:
a) Start with cities being very hard to attack directly.
b) Start with WW acting even faster and stronger than currently.
c) Start the game with city-flipping-after-conquest much more likely to occur.
This would channel early-era wars into brief raiding wars. The player could still obtain a dramatic advantage over the AI by winning an early raiding war. But such wars would have to end and when they did, the AI civ would still most likely have it's cities. This would allow that civ to bounce back. It'd live on, perhaps to become a diplomatic thorn, perhaps to become Finlandized puppet state. Perhaps to stab you in the back while you fight a war on another continent.
By making permanent conquest very difficult, it becomes more likely that players will reach the mid-game running a civ very much is size to its rivals. That is a more interesting mid-game than being already 50% larger than any rival. But it still allows for plenty of fighting. You can "keep ahead of the Jonses" by kicking the snot out of the Jonses every time they try puttin on airs. But you just can't quite get rid of them, like cockroaches or cheesy reality shows.
The idea is to let civs fight it out early on, but still make it more likely they'll survive for the real fun stuff. At this point city defense becomes a matter for the tech wars. . .defensive enhancements can be persued (e.g. Ring of Warding). Offensive coutnermeasures start appearing on battlefields (catapults, magic). (City defenses of +300% or more would make Cannons a more valuable.) And social progress makes it increasingly easier to sustain wars and assimilate subject peoples.
One thought specifically on the subject of the Cavalry line is to introduce production enhancements to the city tile itself. The idea here is that such an economic enhancement is 'raiderproof'. Even if every surrounding tile is scoured of every improvement and road, city tile improvements will let the community continue to produce militia-grade units at a reasonable clip.
Early cavalry-line economic techs would thus work towards the above goal of making cities hard to actually conquer. Later on cavaly-line techs could further improve production. Perhaps at that later stage of the game using a lot of animal techs might cause health problems, as a balance? Anyway, a nice but not massive per/city production bonus would be available to civs that persued the cavalry line hard.
Examples: Specific numbers just for discussion purposes.
Fodder Silo: Enhanced facilities to support work animals boosts city material production. Available at Animal Handling
Effect; +3
Cost to build; 90 Requires Horse? Cow/Sheep/Pigs? (These are fantasy pigs, not your grandfather's everyday ho-hum pig, after all.) Obsolete tech?Grain Mill: The first proto-industry, driven by animal treadwheel. Having a miller in town means more the annual crop gets eaten, not lost to rats and rot.
Effect: +2
+1 ? Optional: Requires Rice/Wheat/Corn and/or Horse/Cow/Pig/Sheep? 125-150 to build.Available at Animal Handling? A bit later? (Festivals doesn't seem to fit, but hey.)
Public Commons: Public grazing land set aside supports more farm animals during times of crisis, making it easier for the city to resist aggression. Mild culture effect as people feel safer living a bit outside city walls. Available at Agriculture.
Effect: Roughly half the effect of Walls, +1
Cost to build 60 Obsolete Tech?Palisade: Move to Crafting, to give that tech an immedeately useful function.
Optional: Reduce bonus and/or cost-to-build? Optional: Eliminate obsolescence at Construction?
Maneuver by Elements: New tech or reworked existing tech. (Perhaps with other stuff.)
Effects: Allows the Screening promotion to mounted units. Screening is a clone of the existing Fear spell. It simulates teh ability of a mounted force to simply ride outside the ranger radius of any approaching threat. A Screening unit has a chance to force the attacker to execute a Withdrawal action before the first round of combat. This give a line of mounted units a chance to form a skirmish line ahead of an attacking force. Details TBD, but as this would work like an existing (and nifty) bit of code, it seems plausible.
