More Incentives for Peace Oriented Playthroughs

[sTAPler27]

Pretty much all 4 of the Legacy paths can be achieved through conquest as you can simply take Codices, Wonders and Resources. While I think this is fine there should be some greater rewards for player that do this on their own.

Culture:

• Building wonders could provide Culture or Science boosts based on what path they came from or simply give points towards a Celebration.
  • This representing that its a monumentous feat for your empire and a source of inspiration for others in your empire.

Science:

• Codices should provide additional Science if you've already unlocked the mastery they relate to and even more if you were the one who unlocked it
  • This would represent that you fully comprehend the material and didn't just plunder it for reverse engineering of the concept.
• (Alternatively) If you wanted to go for the more punishing route and stick with the Great Library theme you could make it so there's a chance that when conquering a city or pillaging a tile with great works that their contents are destroyed.

Economy:

• Resources are a bit trickier because resources are linked to territory far more than the other two mechanics. Much like how Conquered cities provide more Militaristic points Traded resources could provide more Economic Points. Make it so Trade Routes cost Gold to maintain to provide more strategy but not too much to make conquering with all its Diplomatic and Happiness penalties seem like the obvious choice for gaining Resources.
• (Alternatively) My first idea was having taken resources could have an influence penalty representing that they were taken through bloodshed, this mechanic however would make more sense in the modern age.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

The biggest incentive to play peaceful will be the opportunity cost of playing an aggressive game. From the videos we've seen so far, a defensive war is quite easy to win, but if you want to go on the offensive, you need a lot of units, multiple commanders (which apparently become costly quickly), not to mention spending influence on War Support that you could spend on Independent Powers and Endeavors to benefit your economy. The most aggressive game i've seen in videos so far was Inquisitive Otter's and while he utterly dominated 2 civilizations militarily, he still only got his military "victory" (golden age) in the ancient era and no other golden age.

If you encourage peaceful too much, it's easy to make an aggressive game a no-option out of the obvious military victory. I'm mostly a peaceful player myself but i think the option should be here for more aggressive players. The only victory i think needs a change is Economic in the Exploration age, and the fact it heavily favors an aggressive colonizing game is only part of the issue, the fact that the AIs on the "distant lands" can't even score points is another issue.

Now, i'm not against some small bonuses when you complete a wonder or create a codex, with celebration points being a rather fitting idea, but those would need to be small enough they are don't rule-out other options.