Military Emergency After One Turn: A Recipe for Ragequits

hat'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.

Ah no, I do this literally every game with that in mind, and when I don't. It means I screwed up.

Also playing the hand you're dealt doesn't really involve ragequitting when it doesn't go your way. ;)

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.

In single player it is not. I thought it was universally agreed the AI was dumb. They cannot "sneak up" on you because The first war I can understand, but the second?

Also you can recruit victor (establishes in 3 turns) and chop units/walls.

You yourself said that there was at least a 20 turn duration between the first war and second. And then you fought a war to take the capital, so that's at least 30+ in total that you have been in war mode. This is around 10% of an entire game! But in none of the 30 turns have you decided to solicit friendships, secure city states, or even LOOK at the diplomatic situation. How can that result in anything besides failure on the diplomatic front. Switch the table around, and would you vote to attack someone in your position? I wouldn't even think twice, because the target has no friends and just weakened their military.

And capitals are generally the hardest cities to take. It's a pretty large expenditure, and yes it leaves you vulnerable, emergency or not.

It makes no sense to take someone's capital to "prevent further" attacks. If I attack someone's capital, it's to keep it and probably further the war to someone else. You couldn't build a pair of encampments in 20 turns, or get victor to level 2/3? If I get attacked, I make sure all my cities are fortified once I get the chance.

But that's the fundamental strategical error. Your wars were not planned. That's fine. The problem is you have to realize when you lack the initiative, you are fighting from a point of weakness and you need to regroup until you find a strong position. How many turns did you waste trying to assault the capital anyways?

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.

Uhh no. Walls are insanely cheap with limes and the AI can barely handle taking walled cities, much less when paired with encampments. Are you using military production cards?

Friends and Allies cannot vote for emergencies against you (except Betrayal Emergencies). It is indeed sometimes not possible to make friends with everyone, but every friend made is one less front.

Also you could have voted it down with favor (what happened to CS management? You can also buy favor beforehand).

There are many, many ways to stop this. And if you don't believe me, fine, talk is cheap. Post the save at the start of the 2nd war or the one after the 1st war.
 
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Personally I find these situations interesting. Its risky to go around like Napoleon conquering countries.

I guess you had your own personal Waterloo. :)
 
There are many, many ways to stop this. And if you don't believe me, fine, talk is cheap. Post the save at the start of the 2nd war or the one after the 1st war.
Most of what you bring up is based on oresumptions with varying levels of accuracy, such as not pursuing friendships, not pursuing relationships with CS's, not using Victor, etc.

The bottom line that none of the majority of that stuff you are hopping to conclusions about is tangential. You are correct that the retaliation against Brrazil was reactive (reluctant, even), but all the same Brazil was being dealt with, so most of your critique is rather beside the point. The issue the emergency happening immediately was what was at issue. Not what happened in the rounds between war one and war two,

Also you could have voted it down with favor
I would have thought so too, but it was 9 thumbs up divided between three civ's. I don't know why these guys wanted it so badly, but they had the bankroll.

Personally I find these situations interesting. Its risky to go around like Napoleon conquering countries.

I guess you had your own personal Waterloo. :)
Yeah, being a bully should invite consequences. But that's not what was described here though. TLDR'ed, methinks.
 
Most of what you bring up is based on oresumptions with varying levels of accuracy, such as not pursuing friendships, not pursuing relationships with CS's, not using Victor, etc.

The bottom line that none of the majority of that stuff you are hopping to conclusions about is tangential. You are correct that the retaliation against Brrazil was reactive (reluctant, even), but all the same Brazil was being dealt with, so most of your critique is rather beside the point. The issue the emergency happening immediately was what was at issue. Not what happened in the rounds between war one and war two,

Well, I know that you didn't make friends with them because they entered a emergency against you. I also know there were many turns to mitigate this.

These games are about snowballing, and usually a bad situation is the result of past decisions. I mean I really don't think not having a clear plan is anywhere near tangential.

But hey, you are correct that I can't possibly know everything because we're just going by your description. Like I said, post a save. I'm willing to back up everything I say.
 
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Well, I know that you didn't make friends with them because they entered a emergency with you.
I don't know what you would do o make friends out of any given civ you encounter, but I send delegations when I can spare 25 gold, I offer open borders when they take it, and I'll offer what I have to trade for whatever they'll offer me. I don't offer gifts, as the AI never offers them. If Kongo has a beef with me for not spreading religion I don't have to them, or Carthage doesn't like me for having coastal cities, what's to be done? I don't know how you translate that into some failure of planning.

But hey, you are correct that I can't possibly know everything because we're just going by your description. Like I said, post a save.
That would fuel caviling, not quash it. People who don't grant the benefit of the doubt in the first place don't suddenly turn neutral and objective when you provide the save. Rather, providing ta save for dissection just serves to fuel validation of all the woulda coulda shoulda's with the benefit of the hindsight I provided.

The topical problematic event in this situation is already known to all now, after all. I can scum-save my way out of it, which is basically what providing a save amounts to.
 
I don't know what you would do o make friends out of any given civ you encounter, but I send delegations when I can spare 25 gold, I offer open borders when they take it, and I'll offer what I have to trade for whatever they'll offer me. I don't offer gifts, as the AI never offers them. If Kongo has a beef with me for not spreading religion I don't have to them, or Carthage doesn't like me for having coastal cities, what's to be done? I don't know how you translate that into some failure of planning.

In general I take a look at whether or not the agendas are reasonable or not. There are some games where diplomacy is not possible. But there are also other games where it's easy to jump at the chance to a friendship and free reign to ignore having to defend one side. It's situational; as you said, play the hand you're dealt.


That would fuel caviling, not quash it. People who don't grant the benefit of the doubt in the first place don't suddenly turn neutral and objective when you provide the save. Rather, providing ta save for dissection just serves to fuel validation of all the woulda coulda shoulda's with the benefit of the hindsight I provided.



I mean your anecdote isn't exactly objective either. From my experience, this is simply not an issue and I often am the aggressor. So naturally this whole situation confuses me, because I don't think it's hard to deal with and have a reason to be very skeptical.

We have zero concrete information besides your own word. What is the civs being more advanced than you? That could mean anything. Maybe you did have neighbors with unworkable agendas. The world will never know.


Here, I'll offer you two options.

1.) Post your save, and I will only critique military and diplomatic decisions. That is, no comments on tech choice, what turn it is, what districts you chose, what difficulty it is, etc.

2.) Save Scum from the point of the 2nd war and using hindsight, plan out what you would have done. You don't have to play it. Just offer your insights.

Also, keep in mind there are other people in this forum that are much more knowledgeable than me. I'm sure they will correct me if I am being unfair.
 
Yeah I just got done with one where I could have ended up in a similar situation, though it didn't involve the capital. Game an Emperor Primordial map(with age set to new for more volcanoes and such), with apocalypse mode, dramatic ages, secret societies, and heroes. I was Ethiopia.

Phillip was below me. Basil above me. And Tamar to the east. All three HATED MY FRIGGIN' GUTS right out the gate. I had a fair bit of room towards Tamar so that is the direction I mostly settled in throughout the game. Though I did forward settle Basil as well because the Matterhorn was just above me and if I put a well placed city on it both of our 2nd cities would be rather closer than comfort would normally allow. Obviously as Ethiopia I wanted to double up on the hill combat bonus.

Phillip though is the one that declares despite a quite reasonable distance between his second city and my capital(about 7 hexes). He of course has several warriors, at least one slinger, a scout, and the hero that heals 20 hp every turn. You know just what you want knocking on your door before you even have archers running around. And when a nearby barb camp managed to take out your starting warrior. Victor and a quick monument+Hero(the twins) from city 2 saved my bacon with less than 10 hp left on my city. Heroes hit hard that early. Anyways I push him back, barely.

As soon as I get peace from him Basil jumps down my throat from the north. Of course I am heavily out of position with only a bare bones defense left back. Luckily Basil didn't have a hero. I take his city because I see that it would let me set up a solid defense line(friggin scouts and cavalry running around harassing behind the front line. AI is pretty inept so damage was less than it could have been, but I still don't like dealing with it). The moment I get defense line against a possible future war I settle for peace. Tamar luckily mostly just stood around looking at us all disapprovingly and never goes to war. But as soon as he can Phillip jumps right back in and has units running around threatening to pillage, plus Beowulf this time. So this time I take his city that is 7 hexes from my cap. Because like with Basil it'll let me set up a choke point to prevent him from just running around unchecked. Plus that was his encampment city that he was staging everything from. So what happens as soon as an emergency can be declared? He tries to get Tamar and Basil to jump on me. Tamar is not interested and I thankfully had just enough favor to sink it. But seriously the guy had surprise declared war on me twice. Even with one city down he had so many grievances that it took a long time before they decayed. Still that was very close given that he was the war monger who just wouldn't stop. He continued to declare war on me every 20-40 turns for nearly half the game, and kept bringing up a military emergency against me. I had to vote it down twice more? Though maybe that was due to free cities flipping to me. He only stopped when my military was so ludicrously large that everyone else's score combined was less than mine. Since all that war forced me into repeated dark ages I kept having to take free cities back. And that loyalty pressure is nuts when you got your defected cities + two other civs defected cities all right on top of you. I had to take them in just a few turns. So I ended up building up an army where I basically had 1-2 siege, 2 melee and 1 ranged unit per city. Oh and the heroes. I spammed heroes. Twins, Mulan, and Arthur(I had no iron or horses so I just sent my warriors questing if needed, even sent a slinger once).

Basil doesn't bother me because he never tried the victim card and because I get why he went after me with a surprise war. Once I got a good look at his territory I saw he was on a peninsula with room for two cities. Blocked off from going west by a mountain range and water, with lost of water on his east, and I was on his south. He literally had no choice but to expand into me and try and take my 2nd city(at least). The poor guy was crippled the whole game since he failed to overrun me. He was basically stuck with two cities(one of which was truly terrible, though he did somehow manage to get the iron producing wonder and the pyramids in it) until he could hop to another landmass. And eventually I took that one after it went to free status. It was pretty useless, but hey, free pyramids! That dang city flipped pretty much every age. At least it was easy to retake and was a wonderful choke point against Basil.

But yeah when someone has two+ surprise wars worth of grievances you wouldn't think they would get to claim military emergency unless you offset a significant amount of those grievances with grievances of your own.
 
Civ6 AI are usually so terrible at waging war that the emergency really doesnt do much.

Ganging up on the leader using any pretence IS smart strategically, it’s just the AI is so inept tactically and operationally
 
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'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.
Thing is, realistically this DOES happen, when an aggressive nation (not well liked) does badly against another (also not well liked), and the aggressor goes on the defense and seeks help from everyone else. See the Iran-Iraq war. Politics is a game.

Yeah, it merits a response, but if you're not liked by people more than THEY are not liked, then you can still wrongfully (in your eyes) be seen as worse.

I do think that the penalty for taking a capital is a bit harsh and the grievances being the same for attack vs defense are RIDICULOUS for a defender and really ties your hands. On the one hand, yeah the real world does often work that way right or wrong, on the other in the context of the game it sucks. Occupation and defensive grievances really need a rethink because you should be able to do a bit more righteous occupation (not necessarily annexation) in order to force a peace and get reparations.

Not sure that will ever be fixed though. :/
 
I do think that the penalty for taking a capital is a bit harsh
Given that occupying a capital leads to DV, I'm not sure I agree.
I had a game where a capital was a free city, I chose to annex it and I got the -5 diplo. Even playing peacefully, not hurting any alive competitor, I accepted it, I knew what I was doing.
 
Given that occupying a capital leads to DV, I'm not sure I agree.
I had a game where a capital was a free city, I chose to annex it and I got the -5 diplo. Even playing peacefully, not hurting any alive competitor, I accepted it, I knew what I was doing.
Fair points
 
I found this thread fascinating because it's so far from my experiences with Civ 6. I've gone entire games without being declared on once, let alone having an emergency declared against me.

To the OP, would you mind sharing some of the details of your game setup and your style of play? I'm curious what the may be causing the differences in our experiences.
 
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.
Yes world diplomacy is unfair ,not the most unrealistic thing tbh , what's new :)
 
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.

In my experience it's not really the strength of the aggressor, but it is related to "is this civ winning?" With the emergency much more likely if the "leader" is the aggressor.
 
I do think that the penalty for taking a capital is a bit harsh and the grievances being the same for attack vs defense are RIDICULOUS for a defender and really ties your hands. On the one hand, yeah the real world does often work that way right or wrong, on the other in the context of the game it sucks. Occupation and defensive grievances really need a rethink because you should be able to do a bit more righteous occupation (not necessarily annexation) in order to force a peace and get reparations.

Yeah not to mention how DECLARING WAR with a CB gets you a discount but suffering a declaration entitled you to none.
 
Yeah not to mention how DECLARING WAR with a CB gets you a discount but suffering a declaration entitled you to none.

Yeah that can be frustrating. In my last game, I had war declared on me when I was in a Heroic age and actually had the "To Arms!" dedication enabled. If I had declared on them instead, I would have had permanently lower grievances throughout the war. There should either be a "defensive war" grievance measure at e.g. 50% of the normal amount, or you should be able to counter-declare with your own casus belli (valid at the time) and use that grievance amount instead.
 
Yeah that can be frustrating. In my last game, I had war declared on me when I was in a Heroic age and actually had the "To Arms!" dedication enabled. If I had declared on them instead, I would have had permanently lower grievances throughout the war. There should either be a "defensive war" grievance measure at e.g. 50% of the normal amount, or you should be able to counter-declare with your own casus belli (valid at the time) and use that grievance amount instead.

"You can't declare war on me because I declare on you first!"
 
Meh, still no actual games. It's pretty boring to have all this abstract talk.

Alright to be fair, current games may have not gone well and may have been tossed out in the garbage. Yea, it just happens. Anyone want to toss a save and a scenario that needs diplomatic help?
 
The Op didn't build walls, couldn't even defend against a city state that was separated by a body of water, walls are insurance and you didn't pay the premium. These kind of posts remind me of the " I'm going to turn barbarians off because they are too hard". Like if you can't handle barbarians or city states then how do you handle starting next to Chandragupta or Alexander Or Ambiorix on Deity ?
 
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