Realpolitik

[Abaxial]

One thing I don't see is any political sense in AI attitudes. Suppose you have three AI civs, A, B and C. A has denounced B, but B and C are friends. Player attacks B and takes some cities. What should happen is that C should be outraged and A should be delighted. What actually happens is that both A and C denounce the player for warmongering.

It would be interesting if the game's diplomacy could result in rival blocs (perhaps of shared governments) that supported their own members.

 

[Leyrann]

Uh, can you have another look at the letters in your post? It doesn't seem to make any sense. Eg is Player B attacked or doing the attacking, etc.

 

[Abaxial]

Player attacks B

A, B and C are all AI civs.

 

[Ellerby]

Made perfect sense to me. I would love it if things worked this way.

 

[historix69]

This is not the way Real Politics work.

Assume human player and AIs A, B, C each have 10 comparable cities. Each player has the same strength. (10 : 10 : 10 : 10)
Now human player takes 2 cities from B. The new status is (12 : 10 : 8 : 10)
The relative strength for the human player and each AI has changed to the disadvantage of all AIs :
Human Player : A : (10:10 ) -> (12:10) (A dropped from 100% to 83% relative strength compared with human player.)
Human Player : B : (10:10 ) -> (12:8) (B dropped from 100% to 67% relative strength compared with human player.)
Human Player : C : (10:10 ) -> (12:10) (C dropped from 100% to 83% relative strength compared with human player.)
So all AIs are unhappy.

What should work is the following :
Human player and A and C each take a city from B (or human player takes 3 cities and donates 1 to A and 1 to C).
The new status is (11 : 11 : 7 : 11)
Now human player and A and C are happy at B's expense. Relative strength only changed with B which is unhappy.
(See partition of Poland as historic example.)

Changes in Relative Strength in Real Politics are usually more important than changes in absolute numbers.

 

[Vandlys]

Uh, can you have another look at the letters in your post? It doesn't seem to make any sense. Eg is Player B attacked or doing the attacking, etc.

It does make sense, read it again : ) He could have used Civ names to make it a bit clearer than A, B and C. But what he says is:

America (AI) has denounced Brazil (AI).
Brazil and Cree (AI) are friends.
Germany (player) attacks Brazil.

Desired result: America is happy. Cree is unhappy..
Game results: America is unhappy. Cree is unhappy.

 

[isau]

I think you do gain a diplomacy bonus for denouncing or attacking the same civs other civs have denounced or attacked.

The main thing that disappoints me about civ politics is sort of different. It's that the AI doesn't look at politics this way:

"It will do me no good to either be friendly with everyone or be in conflict with everyone; instead I should select two or three close friends who I can trust and who trust each other, and, working with them, I should exploit the rest of the world in whatever way possible regardless of how they try to flatter me."

That would be a much more realistic way to think IMO. With some civs deciding only 1 or 2 friends are necessary and some being more flexible. But, on the whole, evaluating their total "friendship portfolio" instead of treating each relationship as if it existed in its own vacuum.

 

[MaryKB]

If you do joint war with A against B they will not be as upset. Otherwise, A just doesn't like B but doesn't necessarily want to see them conquered by another rival.

 

[Infixo]

What should happen is that C should be outraged and A should be delighted. What actually happens is that both A and C denounce the player for warmongering.
.

The game works as you described in the first sentence. You get appropriate diplo modifiers for actions against friends or enemies.
The reason why you see the second sentence is that warmongering diplo modifiers are usually much, much bigger than all others. Especially in later eras. So, they basically drive the behavior eventually.

Edit. Some examples of diplo modifiers.
• 7 (~) Allied with an enemy
• 8
• 9 (~) Declared friendship with an enemy.
• 10
• 11 (~) Declared a surprised war on an enemy.
• 12
• 13 (~) Denounced an enemy
• 14 (~) Denounced a friend

 

[ZubieMaster]

The reason why you see the second sentence is that warmongering diplo modifiers are usually much, much bigger than all others.

I think that "second sentence" is the focus of the complaints. And I think you are underrating it by saying warmonger modifier is "much, much bigger" -- reality is that the instant you take or raze a city it makes all the other numbers completely irrelevant, might as well not even list them.

The builder crowd likes it since it matches their philosophy and doesn't really affect their games, but imagine if you built one campus then every other civ instantly hated you for the rest of the game? That is the path of the warmonger in Civ VI, when what warmongers would rather see is a more sophisticated system that acknowledges that sometimes a bad-acting Civ deserves what it gets if it declares war on another Civ, or sometimes some Civs will be happy when you burn their sworn enemy's cities to the ground.

In past Civ games you could roleplay shifting alliances in strategic wars, now if you choose to war you have basically chosen always war against every other civ, there's no in between and as the OP says, no realpolitik to war in Civ VI. Indeed, to now see Gengis, Shaka or Monty denounce the player for warmonging is a blaspheme kick in the pants to an old-school Civ warmonger, and takes away a lot of the fun!

Anyway, to the OP, this philosophy of "if you take a city you are now the aggressor no matter what" is simply what the game has chosen and celebrated by the builder crowd, which I think is unfortunate since we all should want every player type to have more fun, not less. Personally I think the real reason why it doesn't work in a more sophisticated way is the AI cannot competently conduct warfare, so domination is too easy, or they don't trust themselves to implement such a system that wouldn't be open to exploitation. So instead of fixing the actual problems, they add artificial barriers to warmongering. Whatever the case, the thing that warmongers want most -- an actual strategic challenge -- is no longer in Civ. Sure cynics will say it never was, but at least maybe they faked it better in past Civ iterations.

 

[Infixo]

It is possible to adjust diplo modifiers to better balance warmongering vs other aspects. Basically all numbers can be adjusted: initial value, decay turns, stacking flags, tresholds, etc. The problem is that it requires many test games to see if the result is as expected and there really are MANY parameters.

 

[HoorayForSiam]

It would be interesting if the game's diplomacy could result in rival blocs (perhaps of shared governments) that supported their own members.

I’d also like to see more comprehensive “blocs” of civs, bound together by religion or ideology. Maybe warmonger penalty would be reduced among your allies for declaring war against civs from different blocs? Or getting certain loyalty bonuses from being in a bloc longer?

 

[historix69]

Do warmonger diplo modifiers scale with gamespeed and mapsize or number of civs in the game?

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I’d also like to see more comprehensive “blocs” of civs, bound together by religion or ideology. Maybe warmonger penalty would be reduced among your allies for declaring war against civs from different blocs? Or getting certain loyalty bonuses from being in a bloc longer?

This makes tremendous sense from an immersion perspective.

If the objective of warmonger penalties, though, is to provide a game cost to offset the huge benefit that comes from capturing cities, the above would be counter productive. It would make it easier to take out the rest of the world while your allies don't care. Then you can finish them off last.

If the development team could expand on the Loyalty system to make it much more difficult to integrate captured cities into your empire in a productive manner, so that you had to spend time and effort to "win the peace" after winning the war, then there would be room to implement a subtler approach to warmonger penalties.

At no time in history was it as easy to capture an alien population and integrate them into your own culture as it is in civ. Not even in the ancient era, and it should get harder and harder as the game goes on. The Loyalty system is a huge step in the right direction, but as long as Loyalty is determined almost exclusively as a comparison of relative population sizes with no memory of cultural affiliation, it won't compensate for the ahistorically huge benefit that capturing foreign cities quickly provides.

 

[Abaxial]

At no time in history was it as easy to capture an alien population and integrate them into your own culture as it is in civ. Not even in the ancient era, and it should get harder and harder as the game goes on. The Loyalty system is a huge step in the right direction, but as long as Loyalty is determined almost exclusively as a comparison of relative population sizes with no memory of cultural affiliation, it won't compensate for the ahistorically huge benefit that capturing foreign cities quickly provides.

Very true, and ignored by countless strategic games over the years, back to the old paper-and-counter wargames. There are historical examples of cultures being wiped out by an invader, though, and cultural differences didn't prevent Russian control of Poland at different periods.

 

[historix69]

Nationalism as we know it is mostly a 19th century invention and very new.
Before most people were ruled by emperors, kings or comparable rulers and did not care much if it was a polish king or a russian tsar or someone else unless circumstances like taxes, language or religion were changed by force to the worse.
There were differences between (often self-determined) people living in cities and people working the land.
As todays companies have (changing) CEOs, lands in former times had their (changing) rulers. People did not identify with their rulers. Rulers changed by election, appointment, conquest, marriage, death, ... Rulers could rule several countries of different languages and culture

see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism

Spoiler :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg

 

[XplosiveLun]

"A" shouldn't be happy at all. You're gaining power through war by occupying others' cities. Is it reasonable All other civilizations should get angry at you.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

There are historical examples of cultures being wiped out by an invader, though, and cultural differences didn't prevent Russian control of Poland at different periods.

Nationalism as we know it is mostly a 19th century invention and very new.
Before most people were ruled by emperors, kings or comparable rulers and did not care much if it was a polish king or a russian tsar or someone else unless circumstances like taxes, language or religion were changed by force to the worse.
There were differences between (often self-determined) people living in cities and people working the land.
As todays companies have (changing) CEOs, lands in former times had their (changing) rulers. People did not identify with their rulers. Rulers changed by election, appointment, conquest, marriage, death, ... Rulers could rule several countries of different languages and culture

Agreed. Even today, "nationalism" and "national identity' is a gross simplification. There's no particular reason for political divisions to follow cultural identity, and attempts to equate the polity with a particular ethnicity create more problems than they solve.

At all times, though, taking over a city by force was only step one. You still needed to win over the populace, which could be more or less difficult depending on how culturally similar the new rulers were and how willing they were to allow local customs to continue and, probably most important, how willing they were to allow local middle men to retain their status and privileges. Then there were the thorny of issues of whether and how to incorporate local men into your military, how much you could increase the tax rates over what they were used to paying, etc.

In game play terms, there are lots of flavourful ways this could be incorporated into Civ 6's government, policies, and loyalty systems to allow you to take over foreign cities and eventually convert them into productive cities for your empire, while also serving as a nerf to conquest. Maybe you need to build Courthouses in conquered cities, a cost you don't have for settled cities. Maybe you can speed up assimilation by running a policy card, which uses up a policy slot you can't allocate to some other bonus. Maybe you can speed up their Loyalty gain by giving them greater autonomy, but at a cost of reduced yields.

The idea would not be to eliminate military expansion, but to place game play restrictions on it beyond the current warmongering penalties, ideally restrictions that could be managed, but at an opportunity cost that peaceful players don't bear.

 

[ZubieMaster]

All good discussion, I think past Civ titles would solve the issue by being able to stack a military garrison to quell the rioting citizens, which wasn't a perfect mechanism but at least recognized that a city shouldn't completely flip if there is enough of a military presence to keep the population under its thumb. City production should go to non-existent, rebels should pop up, buildings should be razed every turn or something, but it shouldn't flip. Would have been great if it worked that way in Poland during WWII, for example, but it's just not that easy to flip when a brutal military has yet to be ousted.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

All good discussion, I think past Civ titles would solve the issue by being able to stack a military garrison to quell the rioting citizens, which wasn't a perfect mechanism but at least recognized that a city shouldn't completely flip if there is enough of a military presence to keep the population under its thumb. City production should go to non-existent, rebels should pop up, buildings should be razed every turn or something, but it shouldn't flip.

Civ6 does grant a loyalty bonus to units in a city but it is somewhat weak so it is only prevent some flipping. I do like the idea of rebels popping up because it does a good job of simulating what happened in Irak with the recent insurgency. Rebels also gives your units a concrete problem to deal with so that you can't just keep a unit in the city and move on right away to conquering the next city. Rebels would force you to keep fighting a bit around the city before moving on to the next target.

I do think that there should be some factors that determine how rebellious a city gets when you conquer it. In some cases, a city should actually be jubilant when you take it (like the allies liberating France in WW2). So for example, taking a city that used to belong to your ally and that had been conquered by your mutual enemy, should actually be happy when you take it, assuming you liberate it back to your ally. Taking cities with a similar culture than yours, should have less rebels. If you are a democracy and you take a city that belongs to a totalitarian civ, that city should have less rebels. Heck, just comparing amenities, if conquering a city causes its amenities to increase, it should have less rebels when you conquer it. Taking a city of a civ that has a long standing hatred against you, should produce more rebels. Taking a city from a culture that is very different than yours, should produce more rebels. Basically, the amount of unhappiness and rebels should be based on how much that city wants the change of leadership from you taking it.