Penalty for Surprise Attack

[jsweeney]

and plus as history went on and people learnt more they disliked throwing over nations as much, though they still did it

 

[jake667]

I think this is a great idea. It makes the game a lot more realistic and strategic.

 

[TheDS]

I've been trying to react seriously to your serious suggestion, which I disagree with; your "why should you think what the world cares of you ?" para felt like mocking rather than engaging with my position, an that is what I was objecting to. If that wasn't your intent, I apologise for twitching, but objecting to being mocked was the point, and I don't consider that hypocritical.

Dude, it's called "turnabout is fair play". You mocked me first, I assumed you did it because you had a sense of humor, and that's how I responded: with a sense of humor. Note the smiley! I'm usually too lazy to use them when I'm goofing around, but I remembered to use one that time!

Depends.

Put it this way. If I, playing as a liberal democrat builder sort of person, and Churchill, also playing as a liberal democrat sort of person, make a military alliance against Isabella, playing as a vicious warmongering maniac who is a clear and present danger to both of us, and Churchill and I agree (assuming for a moment the diplomacy mechanism is in place to do so in detail) to a complicated joint surprise attach on Isabella, and we carry out that attack, and it succeeds, and Churchill lives up to his end of it and I live up to mine, should that make Churchill trust me more, or less ? Should it make me trust him more or less ? I'm inclined to think the answer is "more".

A backstab is a backstab. If I tell you to commit a crime, and you do it, you still committed a crime and I shouldn't trust you because of that, even though I told you to do it. There is no honor among thieves. A responsible adult knows better than to use the excuse "He made me do it!" We learn that when we're like 5 or so.

In this case, I'm suggesting making backstabbing a "crime". In the early game, it's a tree falling in the forest and no one around to hear it. In the late game, it's the world superpower doing whatever he wants because no one can stop him. In the mid-term, all it does is tells those guys waffling over whether or not to trust you that they shouldn't. Your good buddies don't care, your hated enemies already hate you. It's a small effect, but can become bigger if you do it too much.

I'm not insulting your preferred playing style when I say this, but most players find the combat to be the most interesting part of the game, and my suggestion would take away something I consider to be virtually an exploit.

This doesn't stop you from getting your buddy to declare war with you, or attack with you, but it would incline him to hold back his attack for a turn. A lot of the time, the AI isn't in a position to carry out an attack on the declaration turn anyway, and this might give the attacking AI a chance to gather its forces too.

The more I think about it, the more I think diplomacy would better be modelled by a combination of two different factors. A reputation factor, based on your general behaviour throughout the game (as far as the other civilisation knows; if they've not met you or heard of you, they should start off neutral, if they have contact with people who have contact with you that should modify that) and which might be something you could modify positively by building Wonders, and by culture (with "culture" serving as an in-game shorthand for "look how awesome I am"). And a trust factor, based primarily on how you had dealt with that specific civilisation. It would be possible to be very trusted and have a lousy reputation, then, if you were a fairly small and unimpressive civ with a small neighbouring ally with whom you had worked together since the start of the game, even if that involved joint missions of piracy and plunder and general misbehaviour; whereas you could have a great reputation but lousy trust with someone if you were a worldwide power who had made lots of deals with most others and generally kept them but there was one particular nation you did not get on with and were in a state of wanting to destroy by any means necessary. I don't think these two numbers should be combined into one figure, because I can easily see wanting them to have different effects on different kinds of interaction.

The trust factor of which you speak is basically already in the game, though in a more primative form than what you suggest. You get diplo-bonuses from having peace, from OB, from a couple other places. I'd like to see some of these bonuses slightly increased, myself, but overall, I think it's good enough.

 

[JujuLautre]

You could do that. Definitely. Add a diplo comment from certain leaders saying "you surprise-attacked our friend", or something like that.

Now, would that change anything to the fact that people would do surprise attacks? I doubt so very much.

 

[Camikaze]

Without reading the whole thread, I don't think there should be any diplomatic penalty for what is defined in the OP as a surprise attack. War, after all, is war. It's not like it's good if there is no surprise attack. It is just fully utilising any possible benefit that could be gained by whoever carries out attack. Also, what of situations in which you see a large stack approaching your borders? If it is in the adjacent tile, and you think you have a better chance of killing it off if you attack in then and there, you would. However, obviously the aggressor in the war was the civ that had the stack on your border. What's more, in real life, for almost any war, attack will be construed as defence. Just to take some modern examples, it was construed that Pearl Harbour was due to American aggression and provocation in the Pacific (this point has serious merit), Poland invaded Germany in 1939 (this one not so much), and Iraq was developing WMDs, threatening the US. The last one, particularly so, shows that the line can be blurred, and no diplomatic penalty would apply. Despite the fact that it was an attack, it was construed as defence, and so no diplomatic penalty applied. My point is this- the line is blurred as to what would be detrimental to the relations between two nations, and who would believe what, and how the penalty should apply (in terms of defensive surprise attacks).

If anything, those that declare war should get a 10% surprise bonus in their first turn of war.

 

[TheDS]

Au contrare, mon ami! In all those cases you cited, the attacker was promptly reviled and spanked in one way or another. What you are talking about is what the nation's leaders told its populace, not what the world believed. And the American attack was most assuredly NOT a surprise, it had been warned of for about 10 years. Saddam didn't want to observe international agreements nor the terms of the treaty he signed ending GW1, and we'd been telling him we were going to kick his ass if he didn't follow the agreement. Finally, we had enough and did what should have been done after he refused to let UN inspectors have access. All we did was tell the whole world that we bark and don't bite, until we finally had enough and bit. And even though we were in the right to do what we did (regardless of whether WMDs actually existed, that was irrelevent; the guy wouldn't obey the terms of the treaty), three of our four main allies decided their own profit was more important that telling a mass-murderer that he had to obey human rights.

Considering how much noise France makes about human rights, it's shocking they'd support someone who flaunts killing his own citizens en masse. But they and Germany and Russia all felt it was more important to make money, and condemned us for doing the right thing. Even the English, our staunchest ally since about 1917, looked poorly on us, and like I said, it wasn't even a surprise.

And I guarantee you, if Germany and Japan had won WW2, neither of them would have trusted each other because they both engaged in surprise attacks.

 

[Camikaze]

Au contrare, mon ami! In all those cases you cited, the attacker was promptly reviled and spanked in one way or another. What you are talking about is what the nation's leaders told its populace, not what the world believed.

History is made by the winners. Maybe Pearl Harbour was actually due to American provocation (a reasonable possibility and definitely part of the answer). Maybe Poland did invade Germany (okay, that's a bit of a stretch). Maybe America were acting in self-defence by attacking Iraq (doubtful, but possible). My point is, that whoever was reviled and spanked, was reviled and spanked because their enemies managed to concoct a better story. Who is to say that the world is a better judge of what actually happened than, say, those holding the minority view of events? So, how would any AI (an arbitrarily programmed computer system, no less) judge whose fault a war, or surprise attack actually was?

And the American attack was most assuredly NOT a surprise, it had been warned of for about 10 years.

I was using it in the context of an attack that had two sides to the story, rather than a surprise attack. This shows further that a surprise attack is not something worse than any other form of warfare.

Saddam didn't want to observe international agreements nor the terms of the treaty he signed ending GW1, and we'd been telling him we were going to kick his ass if he didn't follow the agreement. Finally, we had enough and did what should have been done after he refused to let UN inspectors have access. All we did was tell the whole world that we bark and don't bite, until we finally had enough and bit. And even though we were in the right to do what we did (regardless of whether WMDs actually existed, that was irrelevent; the guy wouldn't obey the terms of the treaty), three of our four main allies decided their own profit was more important that telling a mass-murderer that he had to obey human rights.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You obviously hold the minority opinion as to whose fault the war was, and whether it was right or wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are wrong. And yet, in this situation, despite early support, there is now widespread condemnation of the US' actions. Showing that no situation is all one way. No situation would have only diplomatic points going one way.

And I guarantee you, if Germany and Japan had won WW2, neither of them would have trusted each other because they both engaged in surprise attacks.

I don't see why they wouldn't trust each other. Germany declared war on the US after Pearl Harbour even when they weren't obliged to. There is no determinant as to whether or not there would have been trust after the war, and so instituting one into the game seems rather unrealistic.

 

[rysmiel]

A backstab is a backstab. If I tell you to commit a crime, and you do it, you still committed a crime and I shouldn't trust you because of that, even though I told you to do it. There is no honor among thieves.

This is I think the nub of where I disagree; because hostory and indeed the modern world are full of organised bunches of human beings for whom loyalty to each other and their personal set of ideals comes with an understanding of dividing the world into "us" and "them" in which it's perfectly acceptable to screw "them" over by any means available without this reducing your standing in the eyes of "us". It's not nice but I think Civ should reflect it.