Military Emergency After One Turn: A Recipe for Ragequits

[steveg700]

Was playing a game where Brazil was implacably committed to being at war with me. They declared a suprise war, lost badly, sued for peace, and when left alone and treated amicably they nonetheless declared another surprise war maybe twenty turns later.

Second time around I decided to get punitive, their capital having no real buffer zone made it a sensible target. It's a tense situation. My units are beat up and on the defense, but finally I have some breathing against Brazil's belligerence. And then a military emergency pops up. Not cool.

Now with units in no shape to fight a war on multiple fronts, I'm at war with two other civ's with superior tech, not to mention nearby city-states happily suiciding their units against some unprotected coastal cities in order to raze them (more of those damn men-at-arms attacking cities way too easily). Time to retire for the evening. Maybe come back tomorrow and do some deep scum-saving to figure out if zero-delay military emergencies are the norm when capitals are cancelled. If so, to heck with this game.

The idea of the military emergency serving as a consequence to warmongering is a worthy idea, but not every capital grab is a break-the-bully situation. There seems to be no consideration of the accumulation of grievances between the two civ's, or the military strength of the taker. In fact, my experience is that if I'm militarily superior, the emergency members leave me alone rather than gang up. largely undermining the point a military emergency presenting of a united front against a bully.

Balance pass, please.

 

[happysheep]

Was playing a game where Brazil was implacably committed to being at war with me. They declared a suprise war, lost badly, sued for peace, and when left alone and treated amicably they nonetheless declared another surprise war maybe twenty turns later.

Second time around I decided to get punitive, their capital having no real buffer zone made it a sensible target. It's a tense situation. My units are beat up and on the defense, but finally I have some breathing against Brazil's belligerence. And then a military emergency pops up. Not cool.

Now with units in no shape to fight a war on multiple fronts, I'm at war with two other civ's with superior tech, not to mention nearby city-states happily suiciding their units against some unprotected coastal cities in order to raze them (more of those damn men-at-arms attacking cities way too easily). Time to retire for the evening. Maybe come back tomorrow and do some deep scum-saving to figure out if zero-delay military emergencies are the norm when capitals are cancelled. If so, to heck with this game.

The idea of the military emergency serving as a consequence to warmongering is a worthy idea, but not every capital grab is a break-the-bully situation. There seems to be no consideration of the accumulation of grievances between the two civ's, or the military strength of the taker. In fact, my experience is that if I'm militarily superior, the emergency members leave me alone rather than gang up. largely undermining the point a military emergency presenting of a united front against a bully.

Balance pass, please.

Just go and play civ4

 

[Futumch]

Maybe it should be set that Military Emergencies can't be called by nations that have declared a surprise war in the last x turns.

In your example - Brazil: "That nation completely beat the crap out of me when I tried to sucker-punch them! It's not faaaaair!"

 

[Archon_Wing]

Now with units in no shape to fight a war on multiple fronts, I'm at war with two other civ's with superior tech

That just sounds like a massive strategical error beyond taking Brazil's capital for no reason other than to punish them.

If you aren't friends with those civs, then you always have to consider the possibility of attack. Even excluding the emergency, what if they just decide to attack you just because?

Even if you never took their capital, you should have defenses ready on any nonfriendly border.

 

[TigerBulkRate]

Was playing a game where Brazil was implacably committed to being at war with me. They declared a suprise war, lost badly, sued for peace, and when left alone and treated amicably they nonetheless declared another surprise war maybe twenty turns later.

Second time around I decided to get punitive, their capital having no real buffer zone made it a sensible target. It's a tense situation. My units are beat up and on the defense, but finally I have some breathing against Brazil's belligerence. And then a military emergency pops up. Not cool.

Now with units in no shape to fight a war on multiple fronts, I'm at war with two other civ's with superior tech, not to mention nearby city-states happily suiciding their units against some unprotected coastal cities in order to raze them (more of those damn men-at-arms attacking cities way too easily). Time to retire for the evening. Maybe come back tomorrow and do some deep scum-saving to figure out if zero-delay military emergencies are the norm when capitals are cancelled. If so, to heck with this game.

The idea of the military emergency serving as a consequence to warmongering is a worthy idea, but not every capital grab is a break-the-bully situation. There seems to be no consideration of the accumulation of grievances between the two civ's, or the military strength of the taker. In fact, my experience is that if I'm militarily superior, the emergency members leave me alone rather than gang up. largely undermining the point a military emergency presenting of a united front against a bully.

Balance pass, please.

I get your frustration, but this is why you have to keep an eyes on the diplomatic game. That many civs jumping in on the emergency means you're not well liked, are you keeping up with your trade routes/open borders/delegations? Also, many emergencies can be defeated with only about 3 downvotes from you, did you have no diplo favor? You ignore all these things at your peril, which you unfortunately discovered, but I don't think a balance patch is necessary.

 

[PiR]

Once you've taken their capital, aren't they willing to accept peace?

 

[Uberfrog]

I find military emergencies to be some of the most challenging situations to deal with in the game... the closest the AI comes to catching you by surprise.

They may seem unfair but I wouldn’t get rid of them. A bit of unpredictability makes for a more interesting game.

 

[steveg700]

Maybe it should be set that Military Emergencies can't be called by nations that have declared a surprise war in the last x turns.

In your example - Brazil: "That nation completely beat the crap out of me when I tried to sucker-punch them! It's not faaaaair!"

That's one consideration. With the loyalty system working the way it does, you are enticed to capture the capital, not take adjacent low-pop cities.

An event more basic point I was trying to make, they certainly shouldn't be declaring the emergency one turn after the capture. I think that point got lost.

That just sounds like a massive strategical error beyond taking Brazil's capital for no reason other than to punish them.

If you aren't friends with those civs, then you always have to consider the possibility of attack. Even excluding the emergency, what if they just decide to attack you just because?

Even if you never took their capital, you should have defenses ready on any nonfriendly border.

That's all reductive. It seems to assume some idealized notion that you can play the hand you want rather than the hand you're dealt.

A civ is endlessly attacking, it merits a response. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face. Taking the capital was the right response. It was made problematic by a military emergency happening immediately afterwards. Which I contend should not occur.

With regards to the notion that "you should always have defenses ready to take on multiple civ's at once on all fronts". Sounds like a good idea, but just having a platitude doesn't actually grant the capability to execute. "But what what would your plan be if you were suddenly ganged up on by multiple fronts?" Well, in many cases, one would simply get wiped out.

 

[Mesix]

I've always disliked the emergency and denouncing rubberband mechanics. To me, these seem like lazy ways to program a response when the game AI cannot effectively fight a war. It is really curious do design a war game that punishes the player for winning wars.

From a historical flavor perspective, this should change throughout time and perhaps from one leader to another. Early in the game, trouncing your neighbor and taking their capital should be a way to garner respect from your other neighbors. In later eras, alliances and UN type mechanics should drive the dogpiling against an aggressive civ. Having leader personalities react differently would also add an element to the game.

For me, fighting early wars causes me to purposely limit exploration because conquering a civ before meeting other civs does not trigger these mechanics. I will purposely not explore into the oceans before conquering my home continent and then enjoy a more peaceful late game with the remaining civs on other continents. I think this is not the intention of the mechanic at all, but demonstrates an unintended consequence.

 

[steveg700]

I get your frustration, but this is why you have to keep an eyes on the diplomatic game. That many civs jumping in on the emergency means you're not well liked, are you keeping up with your trade routes/open borders/delegations? Also, many emergencies can be defeated with only about 3 downvotes from you, did you have no diplo favor? You ignore all these things at your peril, which you unfortunately discovered, but I don't think a balance patch is necessary.

Well, I did not ignore diplomacy, mind you. I think you are making the same assumption Archon WIng expressed that without the benefit of any information, you can assume handily that something got ignored or bad choices got made. Otherwise nothing bad would have happened.

Don't fall prey to the notion that there's some strategic checklist of sensible "always do's", as if awareness of ideal circumstances translated into the ability to realize them. Sometimes there are only less-than-ideal options.

For instance, you cannot just always have an abundance of diplo favor to swing a three-against-one vote your way. You may not have the opportunity to suzerain city-states, or even having met them. Can't always just have walls because you needed them, can't always scout just because it's advantageous, can't always get a tech boost that you usually take for granted, can't always neutralize a barbarian scout before they trigger a geyser, can't always chop a forest to rush a build. These are some of the many things often flippantly expressed in this forum as a given.

In this case, my interaction with the two civ's who joined into the emergency are pretty limited. We aren't geographically close. I had offered trades of what I had available (which isn't much) and it didn't really have an effect to offest their agenda-based reasons for disliking me. Three votes would not have been enough to offfset the crisis. The big problem was there was a suzerained city-state that crossed the water to attack me. If only my suzerained city-states were so proactive.

To be clear here, I am not objecting to military emergencies as a whole. My main objection is that the emergency occurred immediately. That was not expected, and does not lead to an interesting game so much a frustrating one.

I would tend to think some factors would influence the occurrence of the emergency. Maybe compare the military strengths of the civ or grievance accrual, and then perhaps only the more egregious threat would warrant an immediate military emergency.

 

[Socrates99]

Did you keep the capital in a peace deal or was the war ongoing? If I'm not warmongering I usually return cities in the peace deal. The population loss and pillaging sets them back enough that I consider them punished for their naughty behavior. That usually keeps the rest of the world happy. More often than not the former aggressor eventually turns amenable.

Honestly, I wish we'd see this response to warmongering more often. War is so easy in Civ VI the only way a player is going to be challenged is a multi front war. It's what happened to Hitler and Napoleon. They got too aggressive and annexed too much so the world around them banded together to stop them.

I did have a similar experience in my current game. I took Adwa from Ethiopia and Canada and Babylon joined an emergency. I just sent my light and heavy cavalry and field cannons over to that side while the siege and melee pummeled Ethiopia more. Worked pretty well.

Did you play it out to see how it'd go? It really might not have been that bad. Might've lost a city or two before Brazil sued for peace so you could deal with the rest of them. I've even lost my capital as Scotland to the Japanese and still won the game. Dont know why Hojo cared so much about me wrecking that backstabber Darius...

 

[steveg700]

I've always disliked the emergency and denouncing rubberband mechanics. To me, these seem like lazy ways to program a response when the game AI cannot effectively fight a war. It is really curious do design a war game that punishes the player for winning wars.

Well, some actions should have consequences that prevent the tendency of 4X games towards inexorable snowballing. If the emergency system worked as intended, it would lead to excellent narratives where weaker civ's can align against a bully-boy civ.

The thing is, the civ's don't coordinate and wolf-pack. A bully-boy civ may not see a single attack result from a military emergency. It's much more likely a militarily weak civ that winds up facing a consequence for pulling off a successful upset against a bully-boy.

 

[Planktonic]

In this case, my interaction with the two civ's who joined into the emergency are pretty limited. We aren't geographically close.

If you're new antagonists are geographically far from you, then you probably have time to build walls, recruit new units, heal wounded units etc.

I like the mechanism of the Emergency in principle, but in practice I find that it almost never works to the AI's advantage. Typically you are already at war with the main civ that is precipitating the Emergency, so the fact of an Emergency changes nothing in that regard. As I said, other civs that are far from you take a while to even engage, then typically dribble in troops one or two units at a time, where they can be killed piecemeal. There's almost never a concerted attack en masse or in formation. In my last Emergency I simply peaced out with one of the two participating civs after 10 turns without having seen a single unit from them.

And the Emergency can sometimes be helpful. If you are struggling to maintain loyalty in the conquered city, having an Emergency stabilizes it completely and allows you a potent advanced base of operations.

As far as I can tell, Emergencies overall are just free +4 Era score most of the time.

 

[steveg700]

Did you keep the capital in a peace deal or was the war ongoing? If I'm not warmongering I usually return cities in the peace deal. The population loss and pillaging sets them back enough that I consider them punished for their naughty behavior. That usually keeps the rest of the world happy. More often than not the former aggressor eventually turns amenable.

Honestly, I wish we'd see this response to warmongering more often. War is so easy in Civ VI the only way a player is going to be challenged is a multi front war. It's what happened to Hitler and Napoleon. They got too aggressive and annexed too much so the world around them banded together to stop them..

Since the emergency happened right after capturing the capital, there was no time for averting it with negotiation (one more balance reason for the emergency to not happen right away). Brazil would not entertain a peace deal with their capital captured, and that's generally my experience with the AI.

So the alternative would have been to raze non-capital cities instead of taking the capital. If I could have found their source of iron, that would have been the city to go, but it appears to be buried. I haven't resumed the game yet to see how it plays out.

But yes, I'd enjoy seeing emergencies play out as you describe.

If you're new antagonists are geographically far from you, then you probably have time to build walls, recruit new units, heal wounded units etc.

Like I said, they had suzerained CS's that swam over to attack on their behalf. And most of my cities would need at 15 turns to build walls, so that is plenty of time for them to get crashed.

 

[PiR]

If I could have found their source of iron, that would have been the city to go, but it appears to be buried.

You mean under a city/district?
If you use the search feature looking for Iron, it will show you.

 

[Beaver79]

Yes the AI will do this.

What I don't like about it is they declare a surprise war against you and they now have 150 grievances against you. Meaning the world is mad at them for causing grievances to others. You beat them back and take 1 city. They still are in the wrong according to grievances. They have 75 still. They are then allowed to call a coalition war against you for being the bad guy. If you go too far and have grievances against them I'm all for coalitions but not if they are still the bad guy.

 

[Planktonic]

Like I said, they had suzerained CS's that swam over to attack on their behalf.

Well, this is just bad luck. Often times suzerained city states will be largely indifferent, that is, they'll fight you if they happen to see you but won't actively seek you out.

I'm curious if you remember which city states they were. There seems to be quite a variability in city state military preparedness and aggression, and I'm wondering if it is consistent. For example, in two games now I've seen Mexico City aggressively attack on behalf of its suzerain, to the point of independently conquering and then razing a target city, which I've not seen with any other city state.

 

[PSG]

There shouldn't even be military emergencies until the Renaissance.

 

[jasper]

This thread is reoccurring. Its the same old thing. Im all for them repaying you for damages but when you take over their cities, especially the capital lol, then you are no different at that point. You can rename it however you want to"punishment" for them attacking you.

Whos to say they didnt do the same thing? They too might have justifed trying to capture your capital city in their own way. Those guys are settling too close. Those guys are in our way or hamper our way of life.

 

[steveg700]

Well, this is just bad luck. Often times suzerained city states will be largely indifferent, that is, they'll fight you if they happen to see you but won't actively seek you out.

I'm curious if you remember which city states they were. There seems to be quite a variability in city state military preparedness and aggression, and I'm wondering if it is consistent. For example, in two games now I've seen Mexico City aggressively attack on behalf of its suzerain, to the point of independently conquering and then razing a target city, which I've not seen with any other city state.

The CS was Muscat.

I am definitely an underdog in the game in question, so it's hard to pinpoint where bad luck begins. Sometimes you get terrain that is not favorable to growth, which is unfortunately abundant in Civ. In this case, a mixture of plains hills and desert. Many problems cascade from the inability to get pops. I am trying to play a hand that is mediocre at best.

This leads to me settling too close to Brazil just by way of the terrain being the best of a bad situation. Which leads to Brazil going insane at the insufferable idea of us having cities six tiles from each other. Which leads to a war that drains productions, that shifts the focus away from building districts or wonders or conducting exploration. Which leads to AI civ's not getting their agendas (which often amount to "be successful") satisfied. And all the while, some of these civ's who were dealt better hands get to grow and become systemic threats.

The military emergency system needs to account for the different types of aggressor situations. There are legitt times for a wolf pack to go after a lion, but there are also bad-hand situations where war (and even taking cities out) is an underdog's necessity, not a power play.

This thread is reoccurring. Its the same old thing. Im all for them repaying you for damages but when you take over their cities, especially the capital lol, then you are no different at that point. You can rename it however you want to"punishment" for them attacking you.

Whos to say they didnt do the same thing? They too might have justifed trying to capture your capital city in their own way. Those guys are settling too close. Those guys are in our way or hamper our way of life.

As it is the same old thing, you should be well aware that I suffered one surprise war and settled for those reparations you speak of, but then Brazil just turned around and did it again shortly after the forced peace expired. And now they've got iron and I don't. So that didn't work out.

It's all good and well to tell me that I'm the aggressor for taking decisive action against their cities, grievances shmievances, but consider how else one civ deals with the prospect of being stuck in an unending spiral of perpetual defense without striking back against the aggressor's cities. If the alternative is to just let an aggressor keep expanding and researching and building out their war machine, then this idea that I become the aggressor by neutralizing the aggressor is rather reductive.

I'm fine with Brazil having its justification for attacking because it thinks it can take my city from me. Brazil gets to be a warmonger. That's valid play even without a pretext of justification. That's not the point. The point is--which has been repeated--is that the emergency system needs to reined in not to pounce other civ's on me the turn after I take the capital from someone who is sitting on a pile of grievances.

There shouldn't even be military emergencies until the Renaissance.

Well, there's been some discussion that the world council forming in the medieval era is too early. I suppose I would be more amenable to this business of one-turn-later military emergencies occurring in the late game, because in the late game a civ should have its war machine built out and cities are presumably all capable of some token level of self-defense. In the medieval era, it's going to be a lot of what I have, which is a concentration of units rather than distributed fronts.

You mean under a city/district?
If you use the search feature looking for Iron, it will show you.

I mean, I can't even see all of Brazil's cities. The sources of Brazilian iron are still in the fog somewhere.