no good deed goes unpunished

So, I'm (America) on a continent with Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, China and England. England is on a little corner of the land mass and became bottled in by my expansion. Lizzie turned hostile, but since she took the time to insult me every so often for no reason I didn't care. I tried to make her like me...really since i wanted to trade my excess gems for whales. But she wasn't hearing it. I began massing horsemen and archers and swordsmen on my border in case she decided to go for a sneak attack.

Lizzie 'embarked' some troops across the small bay on the continent to attack the city state of monaco.I was already friends with Monaco so I attacked her. Soon her three cities...London, York and whatever the other one was, were puppets. Her entire army consisted of a handful of archers and warriors. It was almost too easy. But Lizzieran, using a quickly built settler to escape across the bay and settle right next to Monaco. She tried to sue for peace, but screw that...I was too angry to let her go.I sent two horsemen and an archer after her and put her to the sword. Monaco loved me for it. My reward?

Unhappiness 16! Stagnant growth and barely any production.

So instead of letting her attack a smaller opponent, or razibng her cities I'm penalized for winning? It makes no sense. I could go back to a save before the war and just raze her cities but I'm thinking everyone else will be pissed at me for it.

 

This game encourages you to be genocidal I guess.

 

You don't have to load an old save to raze her cities. Click on the city's name and then click "raze city" at the bottom of the screen.

And as far as I know there's no diplo penalty for razing cities.

 

Razing cities *should* incur diplomatic penalties.
Each population point raised should make AI leaders more hostile towards you (using whatever mechanic exists there), and also every city state should lose relation dependent on the era.

Killing off 30 population of people should cripple relations in the late game.

What ought to be done is an additional option which is just "sack". This would give a small additional sum of gold and return the city - and make it immune to attacks for 10 turns.

 

Pssh, they hate you anyway. burn the cities regardless, and resettle with your own population. Courthouses waste way too much time to build. The AI's in this game are 2dimensional stick figures whose only purpose is to stand in your way of victory conditions.

 

Or at least plan ahead for an inevitable war.


To the OP, I'm guessing you annexed her cities (or you wouldn't have the option to raze after they were first captured). This incurs a large happiness penalty. Puppet States are a better option while you build/trade/explore to raise your happy cap.

Once you're sorted then you can annex them. To get rid of the unhappiness in an annexed city build a courthouse. Be prepared to wait though because they are stupidly hammer heavy and cannot be rushed.

HTH

 

It does. The exact mechanic is still a mystery to me, but in my experience the more I raze, the more "a bloodthirsty warmonger" I'm becoming, and eradicating whole civ (like wiping them from the face of the planet) irks other AI badly (like cooperation pacts are taken back etc). Somehow it seems that if it's not you who started the war it helps to maintain the friendly facade, but not always.

 

I didn't annex them, I made them puppets. The whole unhappiness thing is BS.

 

You can wipe out the UK first, and then put that city on their own to support their national recovery. As USA done in Iraq
Google translation from the above, you make do see

 

I was sure I'd read several times that puppet states are supposed to give no unhappiness at all. But am I remembering wrong?

 

Did you go to "war" with England, or did you use the attack on Monaco as an excuse to go on a conquest of her towns? There's a dif.

Someone called the AI's 2 dimensional stick figures. He's wrong, a lot of the players are 2 dimensional.

You don't have to take her cities at that moment. Being prepared for war means more then just having the troops, it also means having the resources. In this case, those resources is happiness. If you're empire wasn't sufficiently happy enough to immediately absorb 2 or 3 other cities, whether that be through puppet states or annex, then you shouldn't take them.

Beat back her army, annex a single city, or just bombard a city to the brink of being concurred; then demand peace for both you and Monaco.

You don't have to take cities every time you go to war, but you do have to be prepared if you choose to take some. You increased the number of cities in your empire, as well as the total population of it in a very short time, on top of them being puppet states. This is why your happiness dropped.

 

No, it contributes "less" unhappiness then if you had annexed them.

 

Quite so, the population count of 1 per citizen still comes in, as well as penalty for the amount of cities. You just don't have additional from being occupied and lack of Couthouse. And because all puppet states are shunning mines for the farms and such, they eat away your happines quite fast. Luckily, if you'll go down the Freedom route that specialist bonus (half of unhappiness and half food eaten by a specialist) you can get by quite nicely, since puppets have built-in that annoying default specialist slot usage that I have to disable every time I build a new city - in the long run that can give quite a few Great People

Alternatively you can just Trade post everything and at least get some cash for your effort - that could explain why the AI trade posts everyfrickingthing except for the luxury/strategic/food resource tiles.

 

And besides, don't worry about the unhappiness - worst that can happen is that you're cities will stagnate (so not starve, like it could happen in previous civs, only not mae the problem bigger by growing), produce 50% less hammers (but still build and you can actually build things in a state like that, what with chopping or offsetting it by workshop/windmills/factories etc) and give your army -33% combat penalty. That is mildly annoying but put your GG there and you can cope with that if you play against reatarded AI.

In my last Immortal game due to a vanishing luxuries bug I was left out without nearly any resources so I had to kill all the other civs to get their luxuries. At some point I was at -79 and yet Military Caste + Forbidden Palace and few rushbuyed colloseums and such bumped me back to +13 Note that I played as China, and their GG's are pure bliss in a situation like that

 

Kinda both. I knew Lizzie would attack me sooner or later....at least if she follows the same pattern the AIs did in previous civ games. So I had mustered my troops along her border in preparation. The attack on Monaco only gave me incentive for attacking her. Game-wise, she was a hindrance. I had to keep an eye on her constantly, she wouldn't trade with me no matter what I did, and her cities were keeping me from land I could use. So yeah, I "started" it, but really....she would have been dead five times over if she was next to an AI civ considering how pitiful her army was. (not to mention the every-few-turns-insults she popped up with....it really bugged me seeing how her empire was so much weaker than mine.)

For my own knowledge, what is the difference?

I reloaded my game this morning to just before the attack. I can't raze her cities once they've been made puppets. So in I used the "Omega 13" (stupid Galaxy Quest reference) and tried it again, this time razing Nottingham, York and Hastings. I kept London (annex) and am building a courthouse there now. London has the Great Lighthouse and access to whales. The result? Unhappiness 6 instead of 16. I think it will be ok once the courthouse is built, I reestablish the whaling boats (being built in one of my nearby coastal cities) and hopefully no one will beat me to Notre Dame. With that my happiness should go green.

I'm not normally a warmonger, but past civ games have taught me that if I let an enemy live they usually come back in the late game and give me headaches. So once again I obliterated England from the map. This time I was lucky enough to catch the settler before he embarked so I didn't have to chase Lizzie across the bay. Now if things cool down on the happiness side I need to prepare my other border for defense. I'm almost sure the ottomans, or China will be calling me bloodthirsty and want to attack soon. Maybe Egypt, but Ramses has been buddy buddy with me the whole game so far. He is, however, the closest. He and China keep asking me for FREE gems. Whats up with that? Especially China....Wu won't trade her stinkin' luxuries with me, but she sure wants a handout.

 

In this case you're not taking the hit on the additional population or cities by razing the 3, as apposed to making them puppets.

Now you can see 3 ways of dealing with the situation. Raze the cities and take her capital, annex or puppet her cities, simply beat down her army till she begs for peace and take none of her cities.

You could have also pledged to protect Monaco, and demanded or asked her to make peace with them. If she feels your army is strong enough she'll agree to a treaty; now you've got a 4th way of dealing the the situation.

How was Ramses's army? You could have asked him to attack England, bribed him, possibly even demanded he do so. It's possible to get another civ to do the fighting for you. It's even possible to watch them fight it out, weaken their armies, and then invade the both of them when they're the most vulnerable.

If you really wanna have some fun with it, download the emigration mod. Citizens will leave towns and emigrate to other nations or city states during periods of unhappiness.

Game is so dumbed down and 2 dimensional. Yeah.

 

Its just as well, since I don't think puppets provide any kind of advantage that I can see, but come with a lot of baggage.

I tried option 3 in another game once. The problem was the AI civ (Askia....geez, its usually him that gives me a problem) would just start attacking another CS near me after the treaty ran out. I think option 1 is the best for now, but its situational, I guess.

I don't know...I know my army was stronger than hers (hell, I beat her whole civilization with two swordsmen and three horsemen and I didn't lose one unit.) but she wouldn't trade whale with me, even when I demanded it. "Take it over my dead body" she said. Big talk from someone with a few archers and warriors to back it up. (Heh...reminds me of my first Civ II game when I told France to go screw themselves and they warned I'd suffer the consequences. I chose the response "Consequences, Shmonsequences" and was greeted with a battalion of higher tech units dismantling my civ ). It seems the AI is somewhat suicidal. Lizzie must have known her army was no match for mine....and she had no allies...still she kept poking the sleeping bear.

My military advisor says Ramses Army is almost non-existent, but I suspect that has changed or will soon. I didn't want to involve him in this anyway. If he managed to take an English city he' be in territory I'd rather not have him in. But if Civ History has taught me anything, my closest AI friend will soon grow hostile towards me and build up an army. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong.

I don't want to fight another war any time soon, anyway. I'd rather stabilize my civ before another campaign. (Though I doubt the other AIs will wait until I'm back on my feet to start being a pain.

That sounds like a feature they should have put in the game from the get go.

I wish they'd polished it up a bit before release. I'd rather just have war weariness than crippling unhappiness, too.

 

I managed to get over the unhappiness hump after crushing the English, and then decided to expand my empire a bit. The AIs don't seem to grasp the value of lux resources in their vicinity. Across the bay near Sulieman's border there were two unclaimed silver deposits and an incense resource. Since he didn't seem interested in it, I sent a settler with 3 units for defense and two workers over and claimed it myself. It made me chuckle that Sulieman got upset. Dude, that stuff was in a stone's throw of you for 2000 years! After securing more happiness I then built cities on the ruins of nottingham and York as the land was already developed and had resources that further increased trade and happiness.

BUT as soon as I got the whale resource both Wu and Bismarck (I just met him, he's on anther continent) came a'beggin'.

I've given Wu gems for free before but that was early in the game when I wanted to keep her happy and on my side if i needed an ally...but why the hell does the AI beg for stuff when they could pay for it (she was making a profit...only 4g per turn, but heck, she could have offered 1g to me...instead she wants handouts all through the game).

I think Sulieman or Darius (on a different continent, but he has a higher score than i do and seems to be the big boss over there)will be the ones to give me crap later in the game. I can proably crush the ottomans easily at this point, and may have to since they DoW'd on Egypt just before I saved and quit for awhile. I'm almost certain that Ramses will be calling me up for help soon...but Wu DoW'd on him too, and i don't know if i want to make 2 enemies right now.

 

Maybe - but pissing off the AI isnt sufficient, they should unite against you. There should be some "strengthening against" like the city-states do occasionally.

Also, it should piss off city-states egregiously. SO people relying on them who raze cities would suddenly find all their allies less friendly, or neutral city-states actively hostile.

If the "sack" option was given - then city-states that conquer cities could use that instead of 'raze'.

 

There is no proof that the AI are not 2 dimensional stick figures of diplomacy (figuratively speaking). You can assign them whatever driving emotions/factors/plans you want in your head, but given the black box nature of diplomacy and the extremely limited information from the xml files, I see the AI as 2 dimensional, and I've seen nothing to conflict with that assessment.