Reasons for war

[boots468]

I think it would be a good thing, if when you declared war on another civ, you had to justify it by selecting an option from a list of reasons e.g to reclaim our territory, differing moral viewponts (religion/slavery?) or even just out and out land-grabbing. Obviously, these would vary depending on the history between the civs and the state of affairs at the moment.
This would effect both your people's and other civ's reponses to your war: civs would look less favourably on an 'unjustified' war e.g. mongol invasions/ the german attacks in WWII and may join the defender, but if you managed to make a good case, they may try and help you e.g. the coalition against Iraq. What do people think?

 

[Teabeard]

I think if you are a representative government you need a justification for war, but if you are a Dictator you should be able to do anything you want without any justification.

 

[boots468]

Fair enough that in a dictatorship the people don't need explaining to, but surely the other civs in the world will care? A system like this (though obviously it needs a fair bit of improvement) would help the diplomatic side of things a lot: there would be no reasons for declaring war on a civ you've co-existed with for millenia and so you would get a small(?) rep hit, but declaring war on someone you've been fighting more or less non-stop wouldn't affect other's opinions of you at all. This may lead to a game where a long term peace means something - an issue others have compained of elsewhere.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

This would rule out many reasons for going to war without taking a rep hit. For example, you may be a democracy, but a large Fascist Civ on one border may be a threat to you. On your other border is a small civ, fairly weak, but with extra oil and coal, etc. You have NO oil, you've just discovered Motorized Transportation, and you have noticed a lot of tanks in the Fascist Civs territory. The other civ refuses to sell you oil, and you have no other way of getting a supply. What do you do? You may have to invade, to insure your security, but other civs will dislike you for it, regardless of how it looks to you. Obviously, this has a real life parallel right now, LOL. Plenty of other countries dislike the US because of its foreign policies right now, regardless of how they may seem justified to many in the US.

There have been many "unjustified" wars fought through history, over oil, tea, spices, etc. Making the player justify a war will have not much more effect than it does now, with some civs becoming "Cautious" or "Annoyed". The only way justification would work, is if the UN was a more in depth thing, with other civs being able to vote trade or other diplomatic sanctions against you during a session. The refusal of the other civ to trade might be taken into account, but if you raze cities, you could expect sanctions regardless.

 

[dh_epic]

I agree with this making more sense for representative governments. Like if you fail to choose an appropriate justification, you'll experience mass amounts of war weariness. But international reputation counts for something -- but only in the modern age, I would think, when the world is a global village.

It's an interesting thought, but not sure how viable it is without overhauling large amounts of gameplay.