One More Complaint About Warmongering and Diplomacy...

[fjordan]

I know this has been discussed before but I am so frustrated I think we should keep posting until the devs understand.

I played the most peacefull game ever. Got attacked several times. Just defended (kill some units and gain a bit from peace). In the last attack I conquered a useless coastal city which was blocking my tiles. A previous game I razed such a city, seeing only red faces for the rest of the game. So I kept it and made peace. Two turns later I am denounced by everyone for being a warmonger. AAARGH! I never declared, just kept one lousy city and everyone hates me ??? WTH? I know people rush at higher levels (this Emperor) and take the penalty but if I get the penalty anyway why would I restrain (as I tend to do). It seems the only way to get no warmonger penaly is killing everything you see.

OK. Relax. I will take my drugs now. But please please fix this...

 

[liv]

You could steal tiles and then give it back in the peace treaty.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Or get that city in a peace deal. Just destroy every unit of theirs and surround their capital.

 

[Futumch]

Beaten by a few minutes - ask for the city in a peace deal.

Taking a city is a sure fire way of getting a warmonger penalty. Razing a city is triple the penalty.

 

[bladex]

only one?!
btw you can edit out these values and turn them off completely.

 

[Battlehelm043]

I still want the ability to tell the AI to move their units from my boarders.... as was pitched in the original sales fluff....

 

[Victoria]

Politics works for me... I keep posting this too and I am not the only believer. You are just not playing right if you get everyone to hate you.

For domination you just have to take a capital. So make them declare on you, take their capital, raise all their lands and they will give an extra city of two in a peace deal. You will get maybe -20-40 warmonger points but they fade at 1 per turn. It can be done, if you just want to waste everyone then sure they will hate you. Could you imagine if china suddenly started taking out countries and too over half the world.

I have 3 friendly nations near me at +20 and suddenly 2 declare war on me. Defend for 10 turns then ask for peace, they will accept and are at +20 again, they were having a tantrum because you were getting too strong , starting to win or did not give them room to expand. Rather than defending, walk in raise their lands ask for a city and after peace be at +8. This passive agressive way of play is better in my view than being a brutal genocidal maniac and the game is designed for it IMO

You also get sooo much benefit from looting their land I often have a few knights for the job now, works a treat.

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah, this isn't a problem.

The problem is you kept the city. You have the ability to cede them back to their owners when you agree a peace treaty.

 

[Ozisl]

I miss Civ V's Austria abilities to absorb city-states peacefully. Handy, handy trait.

 

[Victoria]

I really was not that keen on taking over CS as venice or austria. I would spend time and money and suddenly the CS is gone without any chance of me recovering it to its former glory.

 

[MrRadar]

I got -8 relations with Gandhi for my warmongering, because two of my allies - Rome and Arabia ganged up on Russia. I'm not involved in any way, Gandhi is not involved in any way, he hates all the three of them btw, yet on the same turn Rome and Arabia DOW Peter and before I can even make a move, Gandhi comes to me to complain about MY warmongering:

I've been a declared friend and ally with Gandhi for a few thousand years, only haven't signed a defensive pact. Towards the end of the game a few other leaders warmed towards me, so I signed friendship, alliance and defensive pacts with them, including with Arabia and Rome. Peter is universally hated, he's even got Trajan's capital - Rome. No wonder Trajan is doing something about it and seeks allies to regain it. But when he finds a third party for his adventure, it somehow sours my relations with a fourth party.

I understand that Gandhi could be miffed about me being allied to dudes he hates, but we have "-6 Allied to an enemy" for that. Yet have another penalty for your warmongering because somebody else I don't like went to war with somebody else I don't like. You did nothing, but that does not matter.

 

[Crawd]

It seems back, but feels way more immersive than before. Just look at today, there's still lots of hates generated from countries that conquered some lands to another, even if this happened more than 500 years ago. Based on this, it does feel way more immersive. However, as some said, there's some ways to do it without hurting too much the diplomacy.

That being said, I will admit that keeping a high diplomacy doesn't bring much now, so I no longer care at my warmongering level. I even did a 100% warmongering game where I was below the -600 diplomacy penalty with everyone. Of course, I destroyed 6 civs, had 13 capitals and simply never stopped, one war after another.

Now, why am I saying that I no longer care about warmongering level? Simply because trades aren't as strong as in Civ V. In Civ V, I always used my trade to upgrade my economy, but now, with commercial district and harbor that gives trade routes, it's good enough. Also, on top of that, there's soo many nice policies to upgrade the trade route values. With those two, I feel like doing a few luxury ressources trades aren't that worthy. I will get targetted by DoW, but it will not break my economy, since it's based on trade routes and commercial districts.

In the end, there will have red faces toward you. This is inevitable. The question is, does it really matter? My answer, right now, is no.

 

[bladex]

You are just not playing right if you get everyone to hate you.

all you have to do is change your gov or build more wonders or have more greats and the AI will hate you ! the current agenda system as it is right now needs to be SCRAPPED.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Thread title edited to be more descriptive of thread topic -- Browd

 

[burleigh]

Warmonger penalties are over the top, and should be scaled (razing/capturing a 1 pop city should have a much smaller impact than razing/capturing a 20 pop one). Similarly, it is ludicrous to get warmongering penalties imposed by states that requested the war in the first place. I use the adjustable warmonger penalties mod and have halved the points- it still leads to warmongering accusations (as it should), but not everlasting ones, apart from civs you've taken cities from.

The issue is not just how the other civs see you (I rarely declare war, but will occasionally steal a city that's uncomfortably close )- they also affect how the other civs view each other (or at least I think they do). Given that they tend to declare war between each other fairly frequently (even though they are inept at fighting them) they finish up hating each other.

The solution I'd like to see, but haven't got the brains to mod(!) is some sort of scaling as outlined above and some zero-summing adjustments e.g. if I declare war, my relations with others goes down, but there is some upwards adjustment of their relations with each other. This would reflect the real world where, say, the allied powers hated Germany/Italy/Japan during WW2, but adjusted upwards when the USSR & China were perceived to be the enemy later. (similarly, English attitudes to France/Spain flip-flopped in the 16th Century).

 

[bladex]

you can edit out the Warmonger penalties but you can't stop the AI from being an idiot and deno you if your different than them

 

[EgonSpengler]

I don't really understand why people are so upset about this. Who cares if the AI likes you? I mean, sure, playing peacefully should be an option, and it is, but this is a game about defeating the other civs in a competition where there is only 1 winner and finishing 2nd just means you were the last one to lose. Why should they like me while I open a can of whup*** on them? This isn't really meant to be a "sim nation" game. Naturally, you can play that way if you want, but at least know that you're trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. You paid your $60, so it's your peg, have at it.

And if a little historical accuracy spices up your game, near-constant conflict between the nations with pretensions of glory - e.g. the ones that want to win the game - is almost a prerequisite. For instance, the peace that's existed in Europe since 1945 is an historical anomaly. They were knocking the crap out of each other for most of the 2000 years before that. I don't know if there's ever been a nation of international significance that didn't at least throw some elbows, and most of them have sat on huge piles of bodies. It's fashionable here in the United States to poke fun at the French for being effete and getting rolled by Germany in 1940, but France isn't just a country of artists and scientists and vintners, it's a country of artists and scientists and vintners sitting in a pool of blood.

p.s. That said, I wouldn't mind it if the warmonger penalties faded faster than they do. I'd like diplomacy to be more dynamic and lively. It gets boring after a while, being so static.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't really understand why people are so upset about this. Who cares if the AI likes you? I mean, sure, playing peacefully should be an option, and it is, but this is a game about defeating the other civs in a competition where there is only 1 winner and finishing 2nd just means you were the last one to lose. Why should they like me while I open a can of whup*** on them? This isn't really meant to be a "sim nation" game. Naturally, you can play that way if you want, but at least know that you're trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. You paid your $60, so it's your peg, have at it.

And if a little historical accuracy spices up your game, near-constant conflict between the nations with pretensions of glory - e.g. the ones that want to win the game - is almost a prerequisite. For instance, the peace that's existed in Europe since 1945 is an historical anomaly. They were knocking the crap out of each other for most of the 2000 years before that. I don't know if there's ever been a nation of international significance that didn't at least throw some elbows, and most of them have sat on huge piles of bodies. It's fashionable here in the United States to poke fun at the French for being effete and getting rolled by Germany in 1940, but France isn't just a country of artists and scientists and vintners, it's a country of artists and scientists and vintners sitting in a pool of blood.

p.s. That said, I wouldn't mind it if the warmonger penalties faded faster than they do. I'd like diplomacy to be more dynamic and lively. It gets boring after a while, being so static.

Part of the flaw that someone mentioned was that the way warmonger penalties apply, they're much worse.
So if you count the total effect, a -4 warmonger penalty essentially gives you -10 total (-4 the first turn, -3 the second, etc...). "Double" the warmonger penalty to -8, and your net is actually -36 with them (-8, -7, etc...). Double it again to -16, and it's -136.

And then because there's only a single counter for it, that applies to all warmongering. So say you get -8 for declaring war. That would be -36 when it runs out. If you then capture a city that would give you another -8 after the initial runs out, then your total negative with others would be -72. But if you capture that city on turn 1 of the war, then your total is -136. So if you want to avoid warmonger penalties, you have to basically declare war, not capture any cities until the first penalty wears off, then you can capture a city, wait for that to wear off, then capture another one, etc...

Of course, the fact that also the "default" warmonger penalty is around -16, which happens to be much higher than you tend to get for any other bonuses other than being allied, just makes it almost impossible to recover from. If I'm only getting +4 or +5 from trades, and I get -8 from warmongering, then there's nothing I can do to recover that friendship, basically.

 

[Ryika]

It's a bit like these youtube videos where a woman hits a man for like 10 Minutes and nobody does anything against it, then when he punches back once, everybody around suddenly teams up against him.

I really dislike the way it's designed from a psychological point of view.

 

[rschissler]

It seems back, but feels way more immersive than before. Just look at today, there's still lots of hates generated from countries that conquered some lands to another, even if this happened more than 500 years ago. Based on this, it does feel way more immersive. However, as some said, there's some ways to do it without hurting too much the diplomacy.

That being said, I will admit that keeping a high diplomacy doesn't bring much now, so I no longer care at my warmongering level. I even did a 100% warmongering game where I was below the -600 diplomacy penalty with everyone. Of course, I destroyed 6 civs, had 13 capitals and simply never stopped, one war after another.

Now, why am I saying that I no longer care about warmongering level? Simply because trades aren't as strong as in Civ V. In Civ V, I always used my trade to upgrade my economy, but now, with commercial district and harbor that gives trade routes, it's good enough. Also, on top of that, there's soo many nice policies to upgrade the trade route values. With those two, I feel like doing a few luxury ressources trades aren't that worthy. I will get targetted by DoW, but it will not break my economy, since it's based on trade routes and commercial districts.

In the end, there will have red faces toward you. This is inevitable. The question is, does it really matter? My answer, right now, is no.

I've found that green faces don't matter either. They will still attack you.