Preventing the Chaos of War?

[Zaimejs]

So now that I've played a few more games in Civ V and read up on this forum, it seems that this is a game for Warmongers. Here is my problem...

I build this nice little empire. I've got my nice clean cities. I've got happiness. I know what's going on in each city. I feel like I'm in control.

Then... suddenly... some factors come into play that force me to go to war. Pretty soon, I'm taking some cities, happiness goes down... my clean empire that I was in control of is now this sprawling mess of other people's cities. My borders are all goofy. Everything is just ick.

In fact, in the last game I played, I accidentally negotiated peace and "won" a bunch of my opponents cities. You'd think this would be a good thing, but I ended up trying to raze most of them because my happiness plummeted from +13 to -49. I had armed brigades attacking my capital appearing out of nowhere.

GAH!!!

So... here is my thought...

First... is there a better way to fight wars so that you can still maintain the integrity of your empire?

Second... is there a simple mod that would add happiness on the home front when conquering on the frontier? It seems that the people back home would be celebrating our victories... but no... everyone just gets angry.

 

[joncnunn]

Normal measures are as soon as you've sent enough to get the upper hand have cities that don't have maxed out happiness structures start doing so.

If you have cash to do so, annex & rush courthouse as cities come out of existence.

Raize to the ground extra cities not bringing in anything not brought in by the other nearby cities.

Sell to an AI outlaying cities that aren't near the rest of your empire if your not planning on keeping anything in that area.

After that it's the standard list of happiness in general items.

 

[slobberinbear]

Well you don't have to capture cities ... you can just destroy the AI's army. You can also give/sell captured cities ...

As an expander I feel you

 

[Buccaneer]

A simple mod? Oh dear god. There are many ways around this challenge and you are in the right forum to find multiple solutions.

 

[fromar]

It's all about planning ahead. Check out Bibor and MadDjinn's video reviewing a game where the player is having happiness problems preparing for war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjn_TdasMs

Don't let your population get out of control and build a large happiness buffer before you attack.

You can sell capitulated cities as well. The transfer is instant and you happiness will go up immediately.

 

[snarzberry]

Meritocracy --> Theocracy --> Cultural Diplomacy --> Planned Economy

You can thank me later

 

[Bolas]

Generally raze every city you conquer, other than those that can not be razed, which will require you to get additional luxury resources from other players.

 

[Deau]

1 - Plan ahead, raze "bad" cities in your early wars (no buildings already made, poor land etc.)

2 - Sell cities to other neighbors to alleviate the happiness hit when you get pushed below -9 happiness and wish to keep pushing for another city (like if you don't have their capital yet). If a city has a border with another civ or is somewhat close to the other civs' lands, you can get ennormous amount of gold/luxes etc. from a friendly AI. Hell in some cases, you can even do it as a gift (or as a very undervalued trade) to get a relationship boost with that AI. This helps sustain good attitude from other leaders when warmongering too much.

I've seen city size 4 that were god awful sell for ~1200g when having a shared border with a particular friendly civ.

3 - Look for appropriate SPs. Snarz did a great pointer although in all honesty, Planned economy isn't worth it. You can get at best 15 happiness out of it and it costs a couple SPs that aren't all so good either. Simply opening the Freedom tree (only one SP) will give you much, much more happiness and will actually scale up as the game plays as opposed to planned economy. Cultural diplomacy is outstanding. With so much warmongering and the gold that comes with it, you can get all the way up to 38 happiness from that SP alone and since scholasticism is really hard to get away from (least on emperor+ I haven't had one game where I didn't use it), this is up to 38 happiness for a cost of 1 SP.

The freedom tree gives a lot of happiness after having at least banking since then your mass puppets will each have 3 or so gold specialists giving "at least" 1.5 happiness per city.

*Edit* I have actually been able to pull away from theocracy (which is one of the biggest happiness policy for warmongers) and get 2 free techs from rationalism instead to push mech infs way early on warmongering games lately by making sure I had both of the above mentionned and picking TFP (the forbidden palace) as soon as it was built (aka make this civs' capital my immediate next target).

 

[gozpel]

Razing is bad as what the others think of you.

Choose the cities you want to conquer, (with horses or elephants if you intend to annex them), otherwise these cities will build a circus eventually as puppets. It will take a while, but they do it.

Unhappiness from a 2-3 city empire, with a few puppets is quite uncommon, you have to focus on WHAT you're getting, to WHAT you're going to lose.

So secure strat and lux, trade it and buy colisseums at home, and circuses if you have the chance.

Think ahead.

 

[snarzberry]

Simply opening the Freedom tree (only one SP) will give you much, much more happiness

Ah yes, forgot that one.

I don't regularly take all of the policies that I mentioned in my earlier post but if the OP is only interested in alleviating problems when warmongering then taking those policies, and opening freedom as you reminded me, will be huge.

If you stay at one or two founded cities you can get a lot of policies in the game so I have found myself dipping into order to take planned economy and communism(? - +5 hammers?) but it has little effect on the game by that time and I just want to grow a massive population and already have the other policies that are mentioned.

 

[Deau]

O wait my bad I didn't have game infos right in front of me when I typed that out last night, planned economy is great late game since by then your empire size is already wide enough that 1 happiness per city can definitely compete.

I had in mind, by the name of it, that it was the one deep in the commerce tree that gives +1 happiness per lux. This particular one is definitely not worth it's weight.

My apologies for that Snarz

The path for planned economy is actually great, not just the +5 hammers but also the baseline +15% production to buildings helps puppets get their happiness buildings faster as well on top of the PE policy itself. It is definitely a valueable path for total domination

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

If you're playing high level, consider police state instead. At 9 population annexed cities generate less unhappiness than settled ones, at 12 population it beats planned economy. It's just as deep as planned economy anyway.

 

[Deau]

The only issues most warmongers find with police state are
1: the rest of the tree is a little lackluster
2: the net gain from turning a Theocracy puppet into a Police state annexed city isn't that big(still noticeable) but then you have to annex all of your cities to really make it worth it, thus having absurd micromanagement time, less GPT (puppets are hard to beat in a gold focus perspective) and significantly delayed subsequent SPs.

It is still nice, especially if you did as I said in my previous post and skipped over theocracy, but the opportunity cost is kinda high and the micromanagement of cities and units in late game is a real strain.

 

[Helmling]

I think this player's interest in a "nice, clean" empire would preclude the atrocity of scorching cities.

As a peaceful player, I find a strong military usually allows you to tend your garden in relative peace. If you do get dragged into wars, then you don't have to conquer. All you need a good defensive strategy to use your units to slaughter theirs as they come to you. Use terrain choke points to outmaneuver the AI.

 

[Zaimejs]

Thanks for the tips. One idea I don't have a grasp on at all is preventing city growth. When do you want your cities to stop growing? Is there a good number or does it depend on a ton of mathematical factors?

Razing is pretty ugly. But it might be a necessary evil. My big mistake was accepting that peace accord and taking all of those stupid cities in the trade. I had his cap. Should have just stopped there.

I like the idea of selling cities to other civs. That's a good idea.

I have to look at the Policy tree a bit more closely. I know I've taken the obvious happiness ones, but I also admit, that I do not know it completely.

 

[Bungle]

I find that during most of the game, 6-8 pop is enough to get good production and/or gold output In other words, I usually tick "avoid growth" when my cities reach that size - unless I have tons of happiness to spare(which I usually don't have).

 

[northernlights]

Thanks for the tips. One idea I don't have a grasp on at all is preventing city growth. When do you want your cities to stop growing? Is there a good number or does it depend on a ton of mathematical factors?

I'm a very experienced player and I still struggle with this at times. I understand the relationships between population, science, production and happiness and generally value Science/Production over happiness, which is highly subjective to the game being played.

For that reason I usually only limit city growth when using an ICS strategy (Library + Colloseum + capped population (4 population works IIRC) lets you settle unlimited settlers independant of your luxury situation.

Overall I find happiness not that hard to manage... at any given time you usually have a number of different ways to improve it, where science has fewer options and production much fewer.

 

[snarzberry]

When do you want your cities to stop growing? Is there a good number or does it depend on a ton of mathematical factors?

This question is too broad to get a good answer. There are just too many factors that contribute to the particulars of each game that determine how much you'd like each city to grow.

One concept that might help you make better decisions is that pop points in cities don't come at equal value to you. You know how you have those important buildings like the National College for example? The city with the NC gets a 50% science boost, so 1 unit of growth in that city increases science on average more than in other cities. There are other buildings that work in the same way. In the end it's all a balancing act.

It depends on how closely you want to micro-manage your cities and what structure your empire is. A few core, very large, cities surrounded by lots of smaller cities is probably the most popular set up (?).

 

[chazzycat]

embrace the chaos! Play as Russia for extra immersion

 

[Deau]

Thanks for the tips. One idea I don't have a grasp on at all is preventing city growth. When do you want your cities to stop growing? Is there a good number or does it depend on a ton of mathematical factors?

Razing is pretty ugly. But it might be a necessary evil. My big mistake was accepting that peace accord and taking all of those stupid cities in the trade. I had his cap. Should have just stopped there.

1. It is very, very hard to tell, especially later as the game goes on as there are tons of variable involved in it.

Interesting variables to look for are - biggest one is happiness but beyond that,
-does the city have many pop scaling buildings (esp science one)? if so don't restrain growth
-are there "bad tiles" used up? If so, should've prevented growth a while ago, unless the above case or happiness is outstanding. Then again defining a bad tile depends on tech progress as well :s rule of the thumb is riverside+resources(unless they're on desert tiles) are good tiles
-Will I go warmonger? If so, leave a happiness buffer out and restrain growth to research/army manufactoring cities

Often it just gets overwhelming though, esp when your happiness tech are not keeping up with your warmongering/war techs.


2. When being offered cities in a peace treaty, you should basically "always" accept the huge size cities and maybe leave the small ones to the civ. Tall cities surrendered through a trade don't take the 50% citizens' cut and massive building destruction that happens when you take a city through attacking it. As such, these cities, even though sometimes turn to be a happiness hit, are generally very developped and provide outstanding buffs if only you can make it through the unhappiness. All in all, they are also the cities that have the biggest value on the city sales market.

As odd as this sound, unless the civ was spamming wonders, it may prove better to sell the capital to a different civ and hold on to those "big cities" earned through the peace treaty than the other way around. Ghandi has often gave me cities through trades that had a positive happiness differential from having happiness buildings built even beyond my current tech that were instead destroyed when the capital capitulated.