No war weariness; is war too easy?

[Optimizer]

Civ 5 does not seem to have any kind of war weariness, like Civ 3 or 4 had.

War doesn't really seem to be any drawbacks, as long as you don't annex or puppet cities. War gives generals (which can give GA), and pillage seems to pay more than the repairs cost. The Aztecs even get culture for fighting.

Is war all good in Civ 5? Or have I missed something?

 

[Slowpoke]

The problem is they made war too easy. Previously with city stacks and city defenses of 100+%, you needed stacks of catapults just to take on the A.I. cities. Now you just let them attack you, and then attack their comparatively undefended cities with massive flank bonuses. Glaring military science slingshots screwed it up even more.

 

[pi-r8]

The only reason war is so good is because you can crush the AI in it so badly. the pure economics of it don't really benefit you at all- much better to settle a new city peacefully than to annex one from someone else.

 

[uberfish]

The main problem is paying a large army, which costs 83247239423 gold per turn

 

[ignite]

The AI just does really stupid things. They'll attack a target with the most hitpoints instead of attacking a unit they could kill. They'll avoid attacking and instead shuffle around units back and forth instead of finishing off hurt units (allowing you to pull your units back). They also love to follow your units back to a wall of units and get blasted away. For instance, you'll see a bunch of riflemen coming at you, oh no! But the AI isn't too bright -- it will use a turn to get every unit into melee range (instead of, for instance, moving them all one closer, then waiting for the next turn to attack). I've had the AI swarm me with riflemen which I promptly blew away with cannons and my own riflemen. They didn't even get a chance to attack me.

 

[Sable]

Funnily enough, the AI seems to do poorly with large-scale battles (city attack, city defense) and quite well with smaller-scale skirmishes. I've witnessed far superior AI tactics by the barbarians and city-states than by the civs. When it comes to tactics, it's the barbys who run their archers back when they're injured, surround my melee units to limit my mobility, and flank me constantly. Or maybe it's just because I encounter so many barbys early game when I don't have a lot of advanced units to respond.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Yes, war is far too easy. And not only that, the pay-off for war is far too high IMO. In Civ4, you had to carefully weigh how much of an opposing empire you bit off in early war. If you took too much, too quickly your economy stagnated and you generally perished.

In Civ5, that dynamic does not exist. With an IQ over room temperature and MINIMAL planning, you can stay ahead of the happiness curve (or ignore it temporarily). And happiness is the only 'drag' on conquest. Everything else is gravy.

There needs to be a larger penalty for simply starting up the war machine and rolling. Many games now I've been doing well on one continent (without warmongering) only to find that someone on another continent has overrun the entire thing and has an insurmountable advantage. The ability for smaller Civs to complete with the massive conquest giants is GONE.

Perhaps fixing the AI so it defends better might help, but the fact will remain that if you DO succeed in conquest, the pay-off is incredibly high.

 

[crag]

Yah this is not a builders game. War is too easy. And really, the only way to win at this point. You have to mass a huge empire (which means war) to compete. Else forget it.

I really don't care about winning.. i consider the game a win if I make it to the end. If i wanted a wargame I wouldn't be play Civ..

 

[elthrasher]

The main problem is paying a large army, which costs 83247239423 gold per turn

In the early game you can run down a lot of cities with like 3-4 horsemen. Sounds cheap to me.

 

[Slowpoke]

Yes, war is far too easy. And not only that, the pay-off for war is far too high IMO. In Civ4, you had to carefully weigh how much of an opposing empire you bit off in early war. If you took too much, too quickly your economy stagnated and you generally perished.

In Civ5, that dynamic does not exist. With an IQ over room temperature and MINIMAL planning, you can stay ahead of the happiness curve (or ignore it temporarily). And happiness is the only 'drag' on conquest. Everything else is gravy.

There needs to be a larger penalty for simply starting up the war machine and rolling. Many games now I've been doing well on one continent (without warmongering) only to find that someone on another continent has overrun the entire thing and has an insurmountable advantage. The ability for smaller Civs to complete with the massive conquest giants is GONE.

Perhaps fixing the AI so it defends better might help, but the fact will remain that if you DO succeed in conquest, the pay-off is incredibly high.

Luckily modding should fix this A.I. problem pretty easy. It can't be too difficult to max civ's aggression at 7 of 10 and min at 3. Increasing city wall effectiveness as well should sort it out.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

War is *not* too easy, the AI is too easy. There is a big difference.

Passive defenses in this game are actually quite strong - the defender has more time to set up artillery, can block chokes, and has at least 1 extra thing shooting (a city). The defender also has troops heal more quickly.

If you attack someone with equal forces in this game and they're not incompetent (aka AI), you're going to lose.

 

[Slowpoke]

War is *not* too easy, the AI is too easy. There is a big difference.

Passive defenses in this game are actually quite strong - the defender has more time to set up artillery, can block chokes, and has at least 1 extra thing shooting (a city). The defender also has troops heal more quickly.

If you attack someone with equal forces in this game and they're not incompetent (aka AI), you're going to lose.

But they are incompetent. A quick fix is city wall bonus. It doesn't make it less difficult for you as city walls take a lot of production to build, and it does stop every war gimmick rush. Having to actually build siege units for war is a good thing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But they are incompetent. A quick fix is city wall bonus. It doesn't make it less difficult for you as city walls take a lot of production to build, and it does stop every war gimmick rush. Having to actually build siege units for war is a good thing.

A quick fix is to have it prioritize military more, not completely ruin offensive/defensive balance or pile on bonuses (yet again) to compensate for a bad AI.

 

[Craftsman]

Is war all good in Civ 5? Or have I missed something?

Oh, no! Do you want more unhappiness? In Civ 5, unhappiness is like a cross-over between pollution and corruption from previous Civ versions.

But I've got your point - and you're correct. In Civ5, we can declare war and fight at will without compromising the (already problematic) happiness of our people. War weariness should be brought back, but we should also receive the means to counter it in a reasonable manner.

 

[Slowpoke]

A quick fix is to have it prioritize military more, not completely ruin offensive/defensive balance or pile on bonuses (yet again) to compensate for a bad AI.

I don't think that'd really help honestly against player rushes. When players have horsemen it really doesn't matter how large the enemy army has.

It's not asking for a buff. It's asking to unnerf XD City walls stopped things in early civ games. Now they don't.

 

[r_rolo1]

War is *not* too easy, the AI is too easy. There is a big difference.

Passive defenses in this game are actually quite strong - the defender has more time to set up artillery, can block chokes, and has at least 1 extra thing shooting (a city). The defender also has troops heal more quickly.

If you attack someone with equal forces in this game and they're not incompetent (aka AI), you're going to lose.

True, but the lack of roads everywhere and the imposibility of stacking units in weak points means that the defender also have troubles that it didn't had in previous interactions ( that is , it is harder to push a active defense ). So, I'm not sure if the war is easier to the defender than it was in previous civ games ...

Well , war weariness was a stupid mechanic, if not necessarily in principle, in aplication. I think we are better without it... but we definitely something to create some atrittion in the home front ( like you yankees use to say ) while in prolonged wars. Otherwise it simply gets too easy to war ad aeternum.

 

[Zhahz]

I hated war weariness and I'm glad it's gone. If it was implimented decently it might not be bad but in Civ IV it was just stupid, your people would get weary with no grasp of the big picture and get weary even if you were winning overall.

You do get weariness of sorts in Civ 5 depending on how you go about things. If you annex a lot, or even puppet a lot, you can cause yourself happinessp problems. You can plan and account for it, or even deal with it, but it still happens and it's about the same thing (more drastic since unhappiness in Civ 5 actually does something, even if you can still blow it off).

The problem is they made war too easy. Previously with city stacks and city defenses of 100+%, you needed stacks of catapults just to take on the A.I. cities. Now you just let them attack you, and then attack their comparatively undefended cities with massive flank bonuses. Glaring military science slingshots screwed it up even more.

War is only easy this way because the AI is dumb as a rock. If the AI had any grasp of basic tactical concepts and didn't lemming rush you whether attacking or defending, the game would be way different. Players will likely always be better than the AI but the AI could be a lot more competitive. In Civ IV, the only way the AI competed was by building insane quantities of units and maybe having a tech advantage. Piling 20 units into a city isn't really smart AI - it's an easy way out. Combat in Civ IV was pure misery. Bombard to reduce defenses and do collateral to make the boring and repetitive killing of the city stack another sleeper. Quality!

Sieging cities only seems easy because by the time you're doing it the AI's army is usually long gone due to suiciding on your troops wherever you invaded. On rare occasions the AIs army is busy elsewhere and arrives while you're rolling and all you have to do is back up a few tiles to make a favorable line and then the AI will lemming itself to death.

Civ IV wasn't much different. The AI would usually have a few big stacks. Once you wiped them out it was pretty much over other than insanely tedious clean up having to bombard and take cities.

 

[r_rolo1]

You do get weariness of sorts in Civ 5 depending on how you go about things. If you annex a lot, or even puppet a lot, you can cause yourself happinessp problems. You can plan and account for it, or even deal with it, but it still happens and it's about the same thing (more drastic since unhappiness in Civ 5 actually does something, even if you can still blow it off).

That is annex a lot of disgruntled people weariness It does not make the job that war weariness was suposed to do: make the waging of prolonged and dead end wars have prohibitive costs. It is simply a mock up of the increase of maintenance/corruption you had by conquering cities in previous civ incarnations ... it is not meant to replace WW and it does not replace WW

 

[Slowpoke]

At least it was better than this really. In Civ4 it may have been boring, but you fell behind enough in a war that you at least had to launch several wars over the game. Wars themselves were tedious, but the game was a strategy game. Now people are wiping the entire board in deity with 5 units, not even bothering to annex things, just burning them to the ground. That's very boring.

 

[jauggy]

I would like a map where there are more impassable stuff or a pangea that is really snaky. I was playing a game where there were only a couple of tiles to get through to the AI and it was very hard because my army had to march in almost single file. This made it quite challenging for me and was therefore fun.