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[Owlbebach]

Actually I think people are missing the forest for the trees.

The best strategy for a player has ALWAYS been early and opportunistic war. Even tradition civs are recommended to pillage and harass (If not always puppet or annex) neighbors.

I'm not sure about ALWAYS, i do not think its true. It is very hard to war when you play Tradition and you should take risk into accounts. Average Risk-adjusted NPV of war for tradition civ is definitely negative.

However what absolutely true is that WINNING WAR SHOULD BE BENEFICIAL. By that i mean that if you decide to go war - you take risk. You have to build units INSTEAD of buildings. And if you loose the war - you are behind. Thus if you win - you should be ahead. Otherwise there is no need to go war at all.

 

[HungryForFood]

About warmongering, I agree that puppets need a look. Right now I find it far too easy to just conquer the whole world and still maintain very high happiness by puppetting 90% of cities, once I have a solid core of 10 to 15 cities for supply and units.

I do think the current iteration of puppets is better than the previous one though, which was far too high of a happiness drain. I think puppets should have happiness and unhappiness again, but the needs should be really low, much lower than before.

 

[ElliotS]

However what absolutely true is that WINNING WAR SHOULD BE BENEFICIAL. By that i mean that if you decide to go war - you take risk. You have to build units INSTEAD of buildings. And if you loose the war - you are behind. Thus if you win - you should be ahead. Otherwise there is no need to go war at all.

That's what leads to this "problem" though. Since obviously winning war is good, if some players war and some don't, the ones that war tend to get ahead.

This means that if you war and gain value, everyone is encouraged to war. If warring doesn't gain value, then the game kinda falls apart.

That's how multiplayer has gone for me before at least. Does anyone else that plays multiplayer have a lot of success with no offensive wars?

If we want to slow warmonger's roll, then I'll reiterate my previous suggestion. Puppets produce 1 scaling with era unless they have a garrison. This intuitively lowers supply cap, (by requiring it for puppets) adds another reason to annex and teaches players about one of the main weaknesses of puppets intuitively. (Low supply cap.) This also makes it a bit easier to ignore early where you've got a happiness crunch (What's another -2 unhappiness?) and harder to deal with later.

Police station could optionally remove the unhappiness. (and will be prioritized in puppets) Also maybe decrease penalties from 80% to 75%, but maybe it would be fine as-is.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

I believe the problem is in the science and culture gained from kills.
A conquering civ will get so much yields, that they will always be ahead in techs and policies, despite having the most cities. These yields just scale so well. I hate to say this, because the killing yields are just so much fun, but it is still stronger than anything comparable - especially coming from ancient age policy.
As for the Zulu, their power is in the promotions, period.

 

[Owlbebach]

That's how multiplayer has gone for me before at least. Does anyone else that plays multiplayer have a lot of success with no offensive wars?

That's what leads to this "problem" though. Since obviously winning war is good, if some players war and some don't, the ones that war tend to get ahead.

I did have success in MP without wars (2 deity human players, but competing with each other + 8 AI)
Thing is that if you go to war you put resources into it. Another human can build Universities while you build Horsemen. He can snowball ahead of you, you will not catch up. That's why i said that war for Tradition is net negative from risk-adjusted point of view. You can win, but even after you won you still can be behind and never catch up.

 

[ElliotS]

I did have success in MP without wars (2 deity human players, but competing with each other + 8 AI)
Thing is that if you go to war you put resources into it. Another human can build Universities while you build Horsemen. He can snowball ahead of you, you will not catch up. That's why i said that war for Tradition is net negative from risk-adjusted point of view. You can win, but even after you won you still can be behind and never catch up.

I mean you need a pretty good army to defend, so my experience is that the difference between a defending army and attacking army isn't huge. (Against humans, who're not going to walk into a deathbox repeatedly like an AI, making 5 unit tradition games impossible in multiplayer. Especially if it's 4+ humans.

 

[tu_79]

I don't agree with the belief that an improved AI tactical logic is involved. To my knowledge, all AI have been improved equally (not more for Zulues than for Russia). Not even the extra CS in the spearman has sense. All AI have access to the same stronger spearman. It's possible that there is already a slight advantage for warmongering civs and that the improved combat gives a little bit more advantage, but I doubt it.

Remember that domination penalty has been replaced by 'warmonger fervor'. This could have an impact in mid game, since the penalty is likely less than before in the final combats. But I stand that the biggest culprit is the so convenient puppet we have now, as we don't need to consolidate anything before a new conquest attempt. The second culprit that makes sense for that early difference is definitely the change to city strenght.

My take on this is,

1. Puppets: 100% food/production. 20% other yields. 80% needs happiness reduction. No added supply.
2. Increase city HP on population. (Maybe not needed after fixing puppets)

Puppets may become very unhappy with war weariness, as that part of happiness is not affected by needs, so it shall force players with puppets to become happy again before new wars.

 

[hr_oskar]

I mean you need a pretty good army to defend, so my experience is that the difference between a defending army and attacking army isn't huge. (Against humans, who're not going to walk into a deathbox repeatedly like an AI, making 5 unit tradition games impossible in multiplayer. Especially if it's 4+ humans.

I don't understand how 5 unit tradition games are even possible in single player. I find that the AI is so bloodthirsty currently that I always need to prepare for war, even if I settle my cities in a tight formation (i.e. no forward settling unless I really want a fight) and try to play nice.

 

[ElliotS]

I don't agree with the belief that an improved AI tactical logic is involved. To my knowledge, all AI have been improved equally (not more for Zulues than for Russia).

Theory: Previously tactical AI was bad enough that AIs couldn't leverage their advantage for a clean win of a war. This means that due to losing piles of units even AIs that won wars needed to spend a lot of production on units. This reduced gains from wars.

Now AI tactics have been improved enough that a large advantage can be leveraged into a cleaner win of wars. This would increase the upside of wars, and make war look comparatively better regardless of other changes.

There are probably other factors, but this might be part of it.

 

[Moi Magnus]

So while it's possible that the mechanics are unbalanced, I think we need to consider if changing any of them can actually help without making war detrimental to the victor (which would be dumb obviously).

Well, in a lot of games war IS detrimental to the victor most of the time. It leads to games where diplomaty and alliance are central, since the goal is to only make one-sided wars. But that's not really the kind of game civ is supposed to be (the impossibility of having deals between more than 2 civs is a quite big restriction for diplomacy games)

 

[Owlbebach]

I mean you need a pretty good army to defend, so my experience is that the difference between a defending army and attacking army isn't huge. (Against humans, who're not going to walk into a deathbox repeatedly like an AI, making 5 unit tradition games impossible in multiplayer. Especially if it's 4+ humans.

Well i'm really unsure about it... After all defensive position plays its role and even if defender needs 8 units to defend 10 units - this is a 2 buildings advantage that will snowball.

With that said i really think that in human vs human game VP is very unbalanced and i doubt anything except Authority is playable (unless it is a 1v1 on duel map where you can play OCC Tradition).

Tourism is certainly not an option in MP. I bet 90% of games will be over before Renaissance

 

[Deadstarre]

In my current immortal game Mongolia is set to dominate the map. He is on a rampage to say the least. Anyway, out of his 22 cities nine are puppets. I believe the problem lies there.

I blame you for choosing to start a game with him =) 'Heavy annex' is intolerable

 

[ElliotS]

i doubt anything except Authority is playable

I disagree completely. Progress is especially good as it can mostly match the power of authority while allowing you to eek out advantage over time. If you're going to try and bend but not break you can force the authority players to beat you or lose. Putting the attacker on the clock is powerful and does give you a decent defensive advantage.

Tradition has a much bigger problem, but it does tend to start very strong. Landscape dependent I think it's good. (Very defensible, high production terrain.) The capital being a monster can really help you do a lot.

 

[HalfEmptyMug]

From my experience, the issue with warmongering recently is that capturing puppets just leads to an insane warmachine snowball - from my last game on King with Greece in 4/11:

Here I was lucky enough to snag the Statue of Zeus and Goddess of Protection, while choosing Progress instead of Authority to play off the Hoplite's discipline and Acropolis' culture on kills.
As I begin my march across the continent, there isn't really any need for me to annex the cities I capture - the gold and progress bonuses I get are enough to keep my infrastructure adequate and supply my army. As I capture more puppets though, my happiness and unit supply cap will only increase without needing to stop my advance.

So, toward the end of my campaign I am drowning in happiness and yields, getting away with annexing maybe 3 of the nearly 2 dozen cities I've captured.

I agree with @ElliotS that warmongering is and should remain a good strategy, but right now it feels like the only strategy. My recent attempts to play tradition have been incredibly difficult as you are punished harshly with unhappiness and stagnant growth from working specialists. It seems you're forced to instead focus first on infrastructure, but without the worker buffs to improve your tiles, the building buffs to deal with needs, or the combat/production buffs to maintain a proper army.

 

[bigcat88]

In current implementation when puppets don't produce unhappiness it is very easy to control happiness(from mid game). And you can conquer non-stop(only those 36% warmonger penalty can stop you!), you even don't need to defend that puppet cities, if someone will capture them you can just reconquer them back. Some punishment for puppet cities must present(not big, but when you conquer 3 cities in 10-15 turns with pop 25+ in one war and there is no much happiness penalty it looks bad). But now domination victory are really possible!
And @Gazebo can you decrease religion pressure slightly? Right now it is too big in Industrial+ era(from my last 5 games observations).

 

[pandasnail]

I wonder if it will be viable to intentionally kill one's own happiness to create a bunch of new CSes on your own border to trade, protect, and ally with.

If I play as Siam will I be instafriends even with the new CSes that liberate themselves from my conquests? Go to town with Nauries, and then get a bunch of new children to govern.

 

[ElliotS]

I'll add that I'm not sure puppets are as effective as people are claiming they are, compared to razing cities. The main use of a puppet is to deny your enemy land. Before Imperialism you don't get much out of them at all.

Meanwhile if you just raze city after city you'll quickly be able to vassalize your enemy and then let him recolonize the land, which is even better than puppeting it on high difficulties. (AI gets a big bonus, and you still get the same percent of yields. That means you get more yields. Plus these cities will improve their own improvements and defend themselves.)

Basically while I'm not discounting puppet's power, I'm thinking we might be seeing a significant mis-attribution of where the problem is.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll add that I'm not sure puppets are as effective as people are claiming they are, compared to razing cities. The main use of a puppet is to deny your enemy land. Before Imperialism you don't get much out of them at all.

Meanwhile if you just raze city after city you'll quickly be able to vassalize your enemy and then let him recolonize the land, which is even better than puppeting it on high difficulties. (AI gets a big bonus, and you still get the same percent of yields. That means you get more yields. Plus these cities will improve their own improvements and defend themselves.)

Basically while I'm not discounting puppet's power, I'm thinking we might be seeing a significant mis-attribution of where the problem is.

One Other aspect I’ve been thinking about for mid game puppets is gold maintenance.

Maintenance is one of those things that you don’t normally think about too much since the yields normally more than make up for it.

But with gold yields down so low in a puppet, do you have situations where the city costs more than it generates? For early game cities maintenance is low. But by mid game that costs starts to creep up

 

[hr_oskar]

I'll add that I'm not sure puppets are as effective as people are claiming they are, compared to razing cities. The main use of a puppet is to deny your enemy land. Before Imperialism you don't get much out of them at all.

Meanwhile if you just raze city after city you'll quickly be able to vassalize your enemy and then let him recolonize the land, which is even better than puppeting it on high difficulties. (AI gets a big bonus, and you still get the same percent of yields. That means you get more yields. Plus these cities will improve their own improvements and defend themselves.)

Basically while I'm not discounting puppet's power, I'm thinking we might be seeing a significant mis-attribution of where the problem is.

Good point, but isn't even more effective to just gift them the cities back after vassalization instead of razing?

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Gazebo, would it be possible to limit the number of puppets a civ can have? So when you'd hit the limit, the next conquered city wouldn't give an option of puppeting.