Poll: Should Defensive Pacts be nerfed?

[ElliotS]

I get locked out of war completely very often by defensive pacts if I'm small.

I think later in the game more than 1 is fine, around the time of ideologies big alliances aren't a problem in my experience.

Are they not a problem because they tend not to form amidst late-game political tensions, or because you're strong enough to overcome them?

If the former, then increasing the limit seems to just open back up unfun corner cases, and if the latter then it still prevents a civ going for a science victory from trying to disrupt a culture victory and other such strategic wars.

I just don't see what is gained, though I think the cold war resolution could be a good place to open it up because then it at least has political counter-play.

 

[CrazyG]

My only issue with defensive pacts is this stupid thing in the medieval era where like 80% of the world is in a defensive pact with each other, removing my counter play to things like missionary spam or late forward settlers. Starting in the middle of a continent is already hard enough with religious pressure coming from every direction. Also it places a false importance on who declares the war, a lot of times two nations just don't like each other and the war is more or less mutual.

Are they not a problem because they tend not to form amidst late-game political tensions, or because you're strong enough to overcome them?

I've literally never been dissuaded from a war by a defensive pact at modern era on wards, not a single time in thousands of games of this mod. The AI declares war so often in the late game that you can get around defensive pacts quite often anyways, and they tend not to form the huge networks like in the medieval era.

You should be allowed more than one defensive alliance by the modern era, at minimum you should be able to form a defensive pact with everyone in your ideology.

 

[Zanteogo]

The most easy fix for this is to make the top military power civs less willing to take defensive packs, and even less willing the more packs they have, but weaker civs more willing.

This will cause multiple weaker civs to band together while the more powerful civs will tend to stand on their own.

 

[InkAxis]

The most easy fix for this is to make the top military power civs less willing to take defensive packs, and even less willing the more packs they have, but weaker civs more willing.

This will cause multiple weaker civs to band together while the more powerful civs will tend to stand on their own.

That would have the desired effect, but it would not really make sense. When you're making a defensive pact you want to make it with a strong player, or at least one that's as powerful as you - why would you make it with a weak player that can't defend you? So the stronger civs would want DP with strong civs.

 

[CppMaster]

That would have the desired effect, but it would not really make sense. When you're making a defensive pact you want to make it with a strong player, or at least one that's as powerful as you - why would you make it with a weak player that can't defend you? So the stronger civs would want DP with strong civs.

So you can fight the stronger civ

 

[Zanteogo]

That would have the desired effect, but it would not really make sense. When you're making a defensive pact you want to make it with a strong player, or at least one that's as powerful as you - why would you make it with a weak player that can't defend you? So the stronger civs would want DP with strong civs.

It's more of a compromise solution. Logically all the AI should form defensive packs with every single AI they can. It makes attacking them way more harder. The solution to make strong AI's less willing to make defense packs is to increase "fun" factor for the humans. (it's still a game right?)

It's not to say strong civs won't take on defensive packs, they will just has less of them more often while allowing weaker civs to form mass defensive packs to help control snow balling.

Just my suggestion anyways.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

Multiple DPs should have a malus like having mutiple vassals (they fear our aquisition of multiple vassals) since it clearly elevates the civ in military strength. Having too many DPs would cause people to be disliked which would result in more tensions with the people who they don’t have them with, which results in actual world wars instead of gridlocks. Much more exciting. I also really wouldn’t mind if you had to sink a chunk of gold into creating one (similar to research agreements) just so they’re not “free”, it invites some counterplay by starving the civ you want to attack of gpt before they can renew, and it punishes the clear military runaways that have negative gpt from getting even stronger by being able to combine their forces.

 

[CppMaster]

Multiple DPs should have a malus like having mutiple vassals (they fear our aquisition of multiple vassals) since it clearly elevates the civ in military strength. Having too many DPs would cause people to be disliked which would result in more tensions with the people who they don’t have them with, which results in actual world wars instead of gridlocks. Much more exciting. I also really wouldn’t mind if you had to sink a chunk of gold into creating one (similar to research agreements) just so they’re not “free”, it invites some counterplay by starving the civ you want to attack of gpt before they can renew, and it punishes the clear military runaways that have negative gpt from getting even stronger by being able to combine their forces.

Yeah, I like that in Stellaris defensive pacts cost something. In Stellaris it costs influence which is also used to expand territory and some changes in empires. In Civ it should be something else, obviously. It could be just gold, but I would go for something more, like increase cost of science and culture, just like when you build new city, but to much lesser degree. The more cities your defensive pact allies have the more the costs increase, so if you have a DP with a small empire, it would cost you less than DP with a big empire.

 

[a3kov]

This guy...he REALLY wants to play defensively.
This is a huge map with 16 civs but still...

Spoiler :

Defensive Shoshone

• a3kov
• Aug 6, 2020

The upside is that you are much less likely to be attacked, but the downside is that you are more likely to get into too many wars that you don't want to be in. Currently I think AI doesn't understand the downside at all. I personally experienced the downside as a player where I regretted having DP in the endgame (I wanted a peaceful game but my DP partner dragged me into a war I didn't need).

AI should value the downside of the DP same as humans. Then naturally they will pick just a few DP to have defense bonus.
AI should also prioritize DP with neighbors. DP with civs on the other side of the world doesn't have much value - even if it enacted the partner is unlikely to help you.

 

[InkAxis]

So, I came up with a possible solution, reposting it here:

When someone spies on you, and you catch them, you can click the notification and it gives you several options, IIRC, it was "let this transgression slide", "denounce", or "declare war". what if a similar thing happened when someone stole tiles, but if you hit "declare war", it would ignore DP?

This way, Defensive Pacts are still Defensive, it makes it harder for players that are warring for the sake of war or warmongers. But, it doesn't allow the player with the DP to be an annoyance and place citadels, take CS, etc. This I think would fix DPs and Citadels as it would allow you to sort out minor disputes without activating the DP, but major conflict will still require it.

This would mean that for large scale conflict/warmongering, you would still have to fight against DPs. So they still work as a Defensive option. However, it doesn't defend you against citadel or other offensive actions. Before they were really almost like offensive pacts.

So what do people think of this idea?

Also, what conditions should trigger this? This was originally for citadels but there are a lot of other things that could allow this, some examples being (I'm not in favor of all of these): forward settling, killing protected CS, spying, converting their cities, etc.

 

[Vhozite]

The only one of those I’d add is killing protected CSs. The rest are annoying but aren’t borderline warfare the way tile stealing is.

 

[DeAnno]

Forward settling has a lot of peaceful counterplay, you can buy out your borders or you can place your cities such that they can't be forward settled well. I think it's fine. Same to religion, you can fight that in peace just fine. I think spying is a borderline case because there really isn't much defense against stealing GW available now but the AI rarely does it anyway.

Citadels and CS attacks are more clear cut cases where this makes sense.

 

[usadefcon1]

Do you need to be a declared friend before you sign a defensive pact?

 

[azum4roll]

Do you need to be a declared friend before you sign a defensive pact?

No.

 

[Gidoza]

I almost always turn down defensive pacts because I just assume that it'll result in my getting in a war with someone else, and not the other player's helping me out.

 

[Novntis]

Does attacking a vassal currently trigger a defensive pact that the overlord has with another civ?

 

[azum4roll]

You can't declare war on vassals, and vassals can't make defensive pacts.

 

[InkAxis]

You can't declare war on vassals, and vassals can't make defensive pacts.

IIRC, you can, but then they are no longer your vassal. I remember doing this, as you also get some meme text (from the prequels) which is why I remember. Maybe it changed but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to declare war on your vassal.

EDIT: Ironic.

Spoiler :

 

[azum4roll]

Didn't sound like they were asking about declaring war on their own vassal though.

 

[cptHaddock]

Is there a way to just completely disable them yourself for now by editing mod files ?
As it is I end up:

1. Having really boring stalemate games for ages making me miss vanilla Monty tearing through the world as I sleep through the game
   
2. Going on a really tedious warmonger adventure against half the world forced to totally ignore defensive pacts making 0 efforts for diplomacy
   
3. Loading up IGE and making them declare on me which feels like cheating because the penalties against me are more for my winscore than for the actual aggression

I kinda miss the old style chain denouncements lol, at least there was room for smaller civ's to war at some level and actual repercussions against warmongers