More expansion (or conquering?) penalties

[Stringer1313]

Having played a few games now, it seems like there should be greater expansion - or at least conquering - penalties. I've played games where I have militarily snowballed AIs, capturing 6-7 cities in quick succession (quickly scoring points victories), and then games where AIs military snowballed other AIs quickly (quickly scoring points victories). There should be some kind of things that stop the snowballing. There's a happiness hit to conquered cities but that's not enough of a deterrent. Some suggestions include:

- Reducing culture of conquered cities back to Weak (since you are a totally new culture), thus reducing point value of new cities (or at least decreasing culture one level), + penalty to culture accumulation for a short time
- The occasional creation of rebel units in conquered cities (over X turns), or creation of rebel units when happiness is being lost at -5 or more
- Other civs declaring war on the person who is snowballing (this is one of the greatest deterrent yet since multiple wars = death if the civs are close to you), or at least warning you to stop conquering cities, or at least holding increasingly negative opinions (for X years) for every city you conquer
- This may be too complicated , but your military units starting getting "exhaustion" / "war weariness" penalties for every city you conquer (which reduces over time), while each military unit gets "resistance" boosts everytime a city is taken (which reduces over time)
- More random events associated with taking cities, such as families making demands (however, in the olden days families probably liked it when you conquered other cities), or any number of negative random events associated with overextending in history
- upkeep in conquered cities could be substantially higher than normal, with upkeep increasing dramatically for each new conquered city

These reins may slow down conquering snowballs.

 

[The Civs 6]

Having played a few games now, it seems like there should be greater expansion - or at least conquering - penalties. I've played games where I have militarily snowballed AIs, capturing 6-7 cities in quick succession (quickly scoring points victories), and then games where AIs military snowballed other AIs quickly (quickly scoring points victories). There should be some kind of things that stop the snowballing. There's a happiness hit to conquered cities but that's not enough of a deterrent. Some suggestions include:

- Reducing culture of conquered cities back to Weak (since you are a totally new culture), thus reducing point value of new cities (or at least decreasing culture one level), + penalty to culture accumulation for a short time
- The occasional creation of rebel units in conquered cities (over X turns), or creation of rebel units when happiness is being lost at -5 or more
- Other civs declaring war on the person who is snowballing (this is one of the greatest deterrent yet since multiple wars = death if the civs are close to you), or at least warning you to stop conquering cities, or at least holding increasingly negative opinions (for X years) for every city you conquer
- This may be too complicated , but your military units starting getting "exhaustion" / "war weariness" penalties for every city you conquer (which reduces over time), while each military unit gets "resistance" boosts everytime a city is taken (which reduces over time)
- More random events associated with taking cities, such as families making demands (however, in the olden days families probably liked it when you conquered other cities), or any number of negative random events associated with overextending in history
- upkeep in conquered cities could be substantially higher than normal, with upkeep increasing dramatically for each new conquered city

These reins may slow down conquering snowballs.

I think having to deal with the city being inhabited by foreigners of a different civilization, and dealing with the local family, would make sense given the theming of the game. I was kind of surprised to see, for example, conquered cities generally incorporated like normal cities into the event system. I feel like special occupied city events that are harmful would be very flavorful.

Also, generally, having good buildings/good stuff leads to good events, which leads to more good stuff. I feel like high culture/strong infrastructure could have more negative events (IE if you have a courthouse, you can have legal decisions that go against you). I'm not sure if that is already in the game based on my one play through.

Another way to skin the cat would be to have large empires have a negative impact on order #. I think it makes sense that a large empire with lots of stuff going on would become bloated and hard to manage. The way it is now, the larger your empire the more orders you get.

Just some ideas. Not criticisms - generally really liked the game.

 

[Stringer1313]

Looking back on this post, I do think I like the more random events associated with conquering kingdoms seems to make the most sense and feels the most fun. And I get that snowballing is an issue in all 4X's and it's impossible to completely prevent. I'm in the Humankind OpenDev and they have a weird / interesting casus belli mechanic that makes it impossible for you to completely conquer a civ in one uninterrupted snowball b/c of complicated grievance and demand give and takes. I'm not sure if that's the right solution or not but I like that they are experimenting with these kinds of hard stops.

The problem with snowballing isn't necessarily that it makes things too "easy," only too tedious and thus not fun b/c you spend so much time just playing mop up without using your brain. More negative random events forcing hard choices as you conquer more and more civs seems the way to go here.

 

[The Civs 6]

Looking back on this post, I do think I like the more random events associated with conquering kingdoms seems to make the most sense and feels the most fun. And I get that snowballing is an issue in all 4X's and it's impossible to completely prevent. I'm in the Humankind OpenDev and they have a weird / interesting casus belli mechanic that makes it impossible for you to completely conquer a civ in one uninterrupted snowball b/c of complicated grievance and demand give and takes. I'm not sure if that's the right solution or not but I like that they are experimenting with these kinds of hard stops.

The problem with snowballing isn't necessarily that it makes things too "easy," only too tedious and thus not fun b/c you spend so much time just playing mop up without using your brain. More negative random events forcing hard choices as you conquer more and more civs seems the way to go here.

Just to add to this post, which I agree with, is that it starts to turn the game into empire administrator sim. Doing that for some of your cities is good because the game's mechanics are so interesting. But writ large for dozens of cities, where you start to become uninterested in getting any one city right, feels like a negative contrast with the rest of what makes the game so (potentially) special.

With that said, even snowballing has its moments. The warrior queen who asserted my Greeks as a world power had a one on one duel with the rival Babylonian king. I just rolled the dice on that one and she slew him, leading to a truce. Later, her granddaughter had the ambition of conquering a foreign capitol and capturing 7 wonders, so to achieve that ambition I staged an enormous invasion of Persia. Certainly this game does a good job of making what might be an unavoidable problem with 4x's feel rewarding.

 

[nolegskitten]

Hi !

I know this thread is somewhat old, but there are drawback to conquest. They are not very strong, but the military play is an important part of the game. There are discontent penalties on large empires that have strong effect on family relationships and can easily result in widespread revolts. There are extra discontent penalties in cities that were founded by another nation as well.

Also, as a general advice, if you find it too easy to just kill the AI you might want to go one or two level up in difficulty setting.