(Not) swapping tiles following conquer (+ additional grievances discussion)

[Josephias]

I missed the opportunity to rant about this change in the patch notes thread (however, others did for me). Nevertheless, I find this "correction" so incorrect (sorry about the pun ) that I felt it deserves it's own thread (didn't found any, so I'm creating it - sorry if I missed it).

As @leandrombraz pointed out in the patch notes thread, I never saw it as an exploit. I share @nzcamel toughts it was even thematic: in RL you do not always go to war to conquer a full city - maybe you just want a specific piece of land that now is controlled by a different neighbour. You go on full campaing and may conquer the capitol of a zone just to deny its influence, but then retreat only keeping what you need. Shortly said: if you look to any historic map evolution, you would notice frontiers switch a lot more than capitol ownership.

Add to this @BroterInJah comments about AI not being the best one selecting which tiles it gets for each city, and indeed it becomes a pain having this "feature" removed, without trying to sort out the rationale of the exploit and considering other solutions (maybe it has been done, but it does not look so).

Which brings me to the grievances (warmongering) system. The only reason I see this tile swapping mechanic could be an exploit is you could deprive your neighbours of land/important resources just by conquering, getting the tiles you want and returning the city with no/minor consequences. But, would it haven't been a more elegant solution to add you grievances for each tile swap from an occupied city? - say, in example
+3 grievances if you swap a normal tile (+1 if a "barren" (tundra, desert, snow) tile)
+2 extra (up to +5) if the tile has a working (not pillaged) improvement
+2 extra if the tile has a bonus resource (cummulative with the improvement up to +7, +5 wihtout improvement)
+3 extra if the tile has a strategic/luxury resource (cummulative with the improvement, up to +10, +8 without improvement).

This way, you should take into account the "war point ecconomy" of switching frontiers - ¿is it worth to do so vs keeping the full city?, making it less of an exploit and more an additional use of a game mechanic.

Saying that, an open question that also bugs me and maybe also shows how the war/grievances system could have been developed much more:

- Why don't you generate grievances from pillaging?... you are robbing and burning someone else fields, villages and monasteries, and nobody cares about that?.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I 100% agree with your sentiments, although feel your penalties for swapping tiles are excessive (maybe 1/4 your values).

So I can pillage 2 or more civs back to the stone age over the course of hundreds of years and the world will love me while I do it. I can't swap out an oil or uranium tile in a CS I recently conquered before I liberate it? I also can't salvage any number of tiles from a city before I raze it. You would think the powers that be in the World Congress would favor these tiles repurposed rather than face the alternative (obliteration). Not being able to swap tiles also makes me more inclined to keep a CS I might liberate if it has strategic resources (contrary to the good neighbor positive grievances theme). We have been able to swap tiles in conquered cities for as long as I remember. It is not an exploit, it is a mechanism involved with warring.

The new no-swap cure to the "exploit" only leads one to choose the path of an even more egregious warmonger.

 

[agonistes]

I'm pretty sure you can still swap.

I think you just need the city ceded to you, no? Because I am sure once you fully own the city, you can swap.

Try swapping after the city is ceded, then gift it back.

edit: a cs might take more work, but I suspect there is a workaround.

edit: its possible you might need intervening ownership, but I don't think so. I was able to swap with Spainish cities after taking them from Mali.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I'm pretty sure you can still swap.

I think you just need the city ceded to you, no? Because I am sure once you fully own the city, you can swap.

Try swapping after the city is ceded, then gift it back.

edit: a cs might take more work, but I suspect there is a workaround.

edit: its possible you might need intervening ownership, but I don't think so. I was able to swap with Spainish cities after taking them from Mali.

I suppose one could conquer the entire area (city states and all), swap the tiles, trade the CS's to a civ, DOW , then (re)liberate. It's just more clicking and shambling about, revisiting an already resolved issue (ie. the areas disposition) without much of a point. Conquered areas should behave like conquered areas. Not to inject too much reality based logic into a strategic wargame, but I mean who exactly is going to argue with the border realignment? The conquered city? The fellow I'm @ war with? The cadence of warring was much more fluid and adaptable.

Summary: Whether I'm playing peaceful or warmongering, it was better before.

 

[FenrisWolf456]

Making more use of the grievance system would definitely be a bonus. I haven't really looked into the grievance system as it is, but currently I mostly shrug my shoulders at something causing a grievance.

I do find it surprising that you can pillage without grievance. Considering that raiding someone's borders often led to violent response if not outright wars, and too much pillaging during a war often led to calls of war crimes. And really there should be some consequence or cost to reaping such large one-time rewards. If the actions had a long term negative impact on relations with not only the civ you were at war with, but the overall world community, there would be more weight to the decision on whether to pillage or not. Would the ransacking of the a campus district be worth not being able to sell an excess luxury because no one was friendly enough to offer a deal?

The issue with the tile swapping strikes me as a more of a minor exploit (not that I haven't done so in the past), mainly due to how the mechanics work. Sure, you should be able to take land during war and redefine the city borders; but when it comes to the peace deal and giving back the city, there is no counter border proposal from the AI. All they see is they're getting the city back, not that you've taken all the valuable tiles on that are on the border. And I doubt it is a set of actions that the AI takes.

What would be more interesting would be the ability to trade and fight over tiles, rather than just cities. There are certainly numerous land deals in the past where one society sold land to another. And certainly way more times when border land was fought over until a peace deal was meted out. The issue would be more then if the AI could properly assess the worth of a tile.

 

[Infixo]

An exploit is also a game feature that AI is not programmed to use and probably never will be, because it is a quite rare situation. It was much easier and cheaper for FXS to ban this behavior than teach AI how to use it.

 

[Halcyan2]

I'm pretty sure you can still swap.

I think you just need the city ceded to you, no? Because I am sure once you fully own the city, you can swap.

Try swapping after the city is ceded, then gift it back.

You no longer seem able to gift/trade cities that you didn't found.

Prior to GS, you could trade/swap cities that you conquered (but didn't originally found) with the exception of capitals. With GS, I only seem able to gift/trade cities that I found.

In addition, if an AI civ loses certain cities (in war or to revolt) sometimes the list of cities that are listed in diplomacy gets curtailed.

 

[Infixo]

Prior to GS, you could trade/swap cities that you conquered (but didn't originally found) with the exception of capitals. With GS, I only seem able to gift/trade cities that I found

You can gift cities that loyalty-flipped to you. I gifted a flipped city in my last game 'cos I didn’t need it.

 

[Tyroq]

You no longer seem able to gift/trade cities that you didn't found.

Prior to GS, you could trade/swap cities that you conquered (but didn't originally found) with the exception of capitals. With GS, I only seem able to gift/trade cities that I found...

I just noticed this the other day when trying to buy a city from my ally Japan that they had previously conquered from Poland. There was a little exclamation point by it saying something about a "prior deal" prohibiting the trade. I had no idea what that meant until reading your post. So that sucks. Poland is gone now anyway, completely wiped out of the game. So their cities ought to be fully tradable! What's a logical reason not to at this point?

Regarding tile swapping, yeah that's not an exploit at all. It's border rearrangement after a successful campaign. I love the idea of being able to negotiate over specific tiles instead of just cities. It would have to be a tile that borders at least one of yours and is within the workable range of one of your cities, but yeah. Totally a feature I would love to see implemented.

 

[Halcyan2]

I just noticed this the other day when trying to buy a city from my ally Japan that they had previously conquered from Poland. There was a little exclamation point by it saying something about a "prior deal" prohibiting the trade. I had no idea what that meant until reading your post. So that sucks. Poland is gone now anyway, completely wiped out of the game. So their cities ought to be fully tradable! What's a logical reason not to at this point?

Regarding tile swapping, yeah that's not an exploit at all. It's border rearrangement after a successful campaign. I love the idea of being able to negotiate over specific tiles instead of just cities. It would have to be a tile that borders at least one of yours and is within the workable range of one of your cities, but yeah. Totally a feature I would love to see implemented.

That's actually a second issue.

Compared to prior versions of Civ VI, the AI in GS is extremely reluctant to trade ANY cities. In fact, the AI is often specifically prohibited from trading them during peace (but may occasionally give up a city during war).

Similarly, the AI will occasionally be unwilling to trade Great Works (especially in the early game). And after a certain era they will be unwilling to trade Diplomatic Favor.

 

[Josephias]

An exploit is also a game feature that AI is not programmed to use and probably never will be, because it is a quite rare situation. It was much easier and cheaper for FXS to ban this behavior than teach AI how to use it.

I can accept your definition, but rather tan a quite rare situation, I see border wars as something that is ingrained with the game: you are allowed to build tiles, they do not hesitate to pubicise "culture bomb" mechanics (Poland, Burial Grounds… there is even a WC resolutin for that)… war swapping tiles is part of the same game for me.

I do not see a specific difficulty in programming AI to consider these options, provided there is already a mechanism to value tiles (when city is growing borders), you only need to confront the cost of swapping them (maybe the most difficult part is programming AI to return cities that are useless for them - which would be helpful too in cases of loyalty los - Indeed, besides grievances, you could also factor loyalty when swapping tiles: of course if a city is being deprived from its best lands, probably it would take a loyalty hit).

If AI does not know how to swap tiles (I would believe this), then just swapping tiles would be an exploit and should be removed, not only after war.

And not to consider grievances as a potential way to manage this, (besides grievances for pillaging - or spy operations were nationality of the spy is known) is some of the things that hits me the most about Civ VI introducing neat mechanics, but not exploiting them to full potential. Maybe they are afraid to make the game to complex and they are looking for a more generalist public, but these are the kind of bittersweet things that I gave many old fans (specially the ones still in Civ IV) the reason when saying maybe this is not the best game.

 

[Infixo]

I do not see a specific difficulty in programming AI to consider these options, ...

That is a very popular opinion on CivFanatics regarding AI

 

[TheMeInTeam]

An exploit is also a game feature that AI is not programmed to use and probably never will be, because it is a quite rare situation. It was much easier and cheaper for FXS to ban this behavior than teach AI how to use it.

Quoted argument taken to its logical conclusion devs would ban players from playing Civ 6 entirely.