[Rising Tide] What is new about the war score ?

[Hail]

does war score decay?

 

[omniclast]

In the video, he had the option to make peace the turn after declaring war. The button was not greyed out, so it did not appear that the AI could or would disagree.

If the system does leave it open for the AI to disagree after you choose to declare peace, as several people here have assumed, then Acken's right and the system is no different than the old one. The AI's decisions about when to declare peace will still be veiled in secrecy and highly irrational, and we will again be stuck in 50-100 turn wars where nothing happens. But in response to SK - just because you wouldn't want to declare peace in the MP scenario I mentioned, doesn't mean the analysis was wrong. The point was the war score would still favor the weaker player, which is true even if the stronger player is at the point of wiping out the weaker player. That puts you in the odd position of being ahead but being unable to declare peace.

Now, given that in the video it was the human player that declared the war, he might have had the option to peace out right away whereas if someone declared war on you you might be forced to wait several turns. And in MP, I imagine both players would have to agree, one player wouldnt be able to unilaterally declare peace, which would make a little more sense.

But with what they showed yesterday, there's really only two ways to read the implications for SP games. Either you can always force peace with an AI unilaterally, or your ability to make peace will still be dictated by the same nontransparent factors as before and the war score only defines what you get/pay for it. I actually find myself hoping it's the former, because at least that would change up the game in an interesting way.

 

[omniclast]

Actually I can think of a third option - that an AI's willingness to make peace is dependent on their fear of you directly compared with the difference between your war scores. That would be an interesting wrench in the gears that would combine the present state of the war with its historical progression. But call me a cynic, I'm thinking that's a longshot.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

But with what they showed yesterday, there's really only two ways to read the implications for SP games. Either you can always force peace with an AI unilaterally, or your ability to make peace will still be dictated by the same nontransparent factors as before and the war score only defines what you get/pay for it. I actually find myself hoping it's the former, because at least that would change up the game in an interesting way.

But the former would be a ridiculous exploit. You could go to war and force a peace whenever it benefits you. That would be terrible gameplay. The only way this could work is if the threshold between a white peace and peace where the loser has to give up something is high enough so that short wars would not be profitable.

My understanding of the live streams, is that the AI still gets to choose whether to accept peace or not and the war score is simply a way to standardize what each side gets. This actually removes the exploit where the player could make peace and get more from the AI than they deserved because the AI was not good at measuring if a peace deal was good or not.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Actually I can think of a third option - that an AI's willingness to make peace is dependent on their fear of you directly compared with the difference between your war scores. That would be an interesting wrench in the gears that would combine the present state of the war with its historical progression. But call me a cynic, I'm thinking that's a longshot.

I actually think this makes sense.

 

[omniclast]

Well, all I can say is I read what they said a lot differently. On the first turn after warfare, he opened the dialog and looked at what it would take to declare peace, and then said "I don't want to declare peace just yet." As though that was a real option. Nothing was said about the AI potentially refusing.

But there is the comfort that a 16-0 war score was still white peace, so you may be right that you have to do significant damage before you can start extorting AIs.

On the other hand, that doesn't do anything about worker stealing and killing colonists. I agree, it seems like a ridiculously unfair exploit, not to mention one that players have been abusing for years with city states in Civ5 - but I've got to be honest the devs don't seem all that good at thinking through how their mechanics could be exploited, even with mechanics currently in the game. Hopefully, if my analysis is correct, they will realize how exploitable that is and add some kind of mechanic to correct it -- though ideally not a non-transparent assessment by the AI of whether to accept peace, since that would put us right back where we started.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

But there is the comfort that a 16-0 war score was still white peace, so you may be right that you have to do significant damage before you can start extorting AIs.

In BAstartgaming's LP at the 10:08 mark, he got a favorable war score against the AI of 52-0 and it was a white pace where neither side gets anything.

In quill18's let's play at the 6:07 mark, he got a favorable war score against the AI of 163-0, and he would gain a city from the AI if peace were made.

So, the threshold where you have to give something up, is somewhere between 52-0 and 163-0. So, the threshold seem high enough to me that players cannot exploit the war score to exhort the AI with short wars.

 

[omniclast]

Ok, that's good. (Though going from nothing to giving up a city seems like a pretty big leap.)

I'm still worried about tactically killing civilian units though. If I could take out nearby settlers and declare peace without having to worry about the AI's big nasty army, I would exploit the hell out of that. Not to mention never building a worker again...

 

[Lucius_]

Regarding exploiting the war score to extort the AI, getting nothing from the peace deal is fine. The manipulation is occurring DURING the war. Worker sniping, then peace the next turn is one example. Another would be camp your neighbor, kill his settlement, make peace. Rinse/repeat forcing the AI into a situation where he cannot expand and can't do anything about it. No, the AI must be able to decline peace terms otherwise the game would be horribly broken.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I'm still worried about tactically killing civilian units though. If I could take out nearby settlers and declare peace without having to worry about the AI's big nasty army, I would exploit the hell out of that. Not to mention never building a worker again...

Well, something else to consider is that wars nullify any agreements and knock your relationship back down to sanctioned when you do make peace. So if you try the war/peace exploit to steal AI workers when you already had agreements with the AI, you are losing all that investment in diplo capital. Furthermore, we know that cancelling agreements will cause the player to lose respect with the AI, making further agreements or improving the relationship in the future more difficult.

And if you try the war/peace exploit to steal workers when you don't have agreements (so as not to lose that investment), you are still sticking yourself with a bad relationship where it will difficult to make agreements in the future. So, I conclude that declaring war, stealing workers, and making peace is viable I guess if the AI agrees to the peace and if you are willing to lose out on the benefits of agreements.

 

[omniclast]

I'd probably do it similar to how it was done in civ 5 - pick one AI near me who I'm likely going to fight with later (ideally someone aggressive, with crappy agreements like Kozlov) and then sit outside his borders and steal his new workers as he builds them.

It's possible that just won't be as big a deal as it is in civ 5, especially given there's an agreement that lets you build workers in one turn anyway. It still just seems kind of exploit-y.

Maybe the problem is I thought War Score was intended to solve a different problem than the one the devs intended it to solve. I expected that it would be a way to tell how willing an AI would be to make peace with you, to make the diplomacy process more transparent. But perhaps they were more focused on the problem of the AI giving away cities for seemingly no reason. If the AI can still make a decision to declare peace and War Score is just about what you get out of it, they don't do anything to stop the weird 50-turn refusals to make peace, but I guess at least the AI won't be willing to throw cities at you randomly, so that is a step forward.

 

[Gort]

Regarding exploiting the war score to extort the AI, getting nothing from the peace deal is fine. The manipulation is occurring DURING the war. Worker sniping, then peace the next turn is one example. Another would be camp your neighbor, kill his settlement, make peace. Rinse/repeat forcing the AI into a situation where he cannot expand and can't do anything about it. No, the AI must be able to decline peace terms otherwise the game would be horribly broken.

In the Paradox games that have been using War Score mechanics for years, there are two numbers at work:

1. The "raw" war score, which is determined by how well the war has gone. So if you declared war and on the same turn captured all but one AI city, you might have a war score of 90%, for example.

2. Modifiers to the "raw" war score. Things like "total military strength", "strength of allies", "being in debt", that sort of thing. These modifiers are displayed separately from the raw war score, so you could have a war score of 20% but with a -200% modifier, meaning the AI would not want to talk terms.

It's the second number that prevents what you're saying from being a problem - there's a large negative modifier to war score called "length of war". This modifier is very large early in a war, meaning that even though you might have a war score of 50% early on, you wouldn't actually be able to demand 50% war score worth of stuff on turn 1.

The "length of war" modifier turns positive later on - the longer an AI is at war, the more likely they are to talk peace. Note, however, that this just means that they'll be willing to agree to a white peace where nobody loses or gains anything, unless you ALSO have a high warscore.

100% warscore is a special case. If you manage to achieve that, the AI has no choice but to talk peace with you immediately, length of war modifier be damned. This is useful when attacking small nations, so you don't have to occupy them for five years before you can annex them.

 

[poom3619]

Consider current AI, most likely scenario I can see would involve AI send units to die to player's multiple range attacks and player may gain a city without set foot into their territory.

Also Paradox's way of handle war score is improve upon for many years. I guess CK2's system of pre-made peace deal would be what BERT tried to implement. Don't sure if it will be without problem.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

does war score decay?

No. war score of both sides simply increase each time that side kills a unit or takes a city.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

In the video, he had the option to make peace the turn after declaring war. The button was not greyed out, so it did not appear that the AI could or would disagree.

If the system does leave it open for the AI to disagree after you choose to declare peace, as several people here have assumed, then Acken's right and the system is no different than the old one. The AI's decisions about when to declare peace will still be veiled in secrecy and highly irrational, and we will again be stuck in 50-100 turn wars where nothing happens. But in response to SK - just because you wouldn't want to declare peace in the MP scenario I mentioned, doesn't mean the analysis was wrong. The point was the war score would still favor the weaker player, which is true even if the stronger player is at the point of wiping out the weaker player. That puts you in the odd position of being ahead but being unable to declare peace.

Now, given that in the video it was the human player that declared the war, he might have had the option to peace out right away whereas if someone declared war on you you might be forced to wait several turns. And in MP, I imagine both players would have to agree, one player wouldnt be able to unilaterally declare peace, which would make a little more sense.

But with what they showed yesterday, there's really only two ways to read the implications for SP games. Either you can always force peace with an AI unilaterally, or your ability to make peace will still be dictated by the same nontransparent factors as before and the war score only defines what you get/pay for it. I actually find myself hoping it's the former, because at least that would change up the game in an interesting way.

Getting Peace Deal was never ever greyed out in Civ 5, the AI would simply refuse to consider it. What's stopping that from still being the case? And I've said it again, if we can peace out without consequences then that leaves a huge gap for exploiting and avoiding consequences since youc ould immediately get a White Peace Deal.

 

[Gort]

I guess CK2's system of pre-made peace deal would be what BERT tried to implement. Don't sure if it will be without problem.

Well, Crusader Kings 2's system relies upon you actually having a reason for war (IE: A "casus belli") - a claim on some territory the enemy has, or religious differences or something like that.

You'd have to implement the casus belli system before you could have a pre-made peace deal, and there's no evidence of them taking that particular system from Paradox games yet. It would be a good system for them to take, but baby steps.

 

[Ryika]

The whole system is just silly if you can't, based on some evaluation of relative worth, choose what you want to take or give for peace. Just imagine fighting a war for 20 turns, then suddenly another AI declares on you - and in order to be able to concentrate on the new threat, you have to accept a peace deal that has been put together by the game - that decides, instead of one of the other cities that could actually grow into something useful, a sum of gold that could be helpful with the new war or maybe even diplomatic actions (such as "Make peace with me and declare war on my attacker!")... you now "have" to take the city surrounded by plain water and snow tiles or else you can't peace out until you've poked away more units. If that's how it's supposed to work, then that's just silly.

I mean with direct trading gone you would not even be able to get rid of that city, you'd need to burn it down, accept the negative health and the tech and culture-modifier it adds. That CAN'T be how they plan to introduce the system.Overall, the system does not seem polished yet.

Allow custom peace deals or bust.

 

[Galgus]

I'm kind of curious as to how surrenders will work with conquered cities with the war score mechanic.

Though its an unlikely scenario, let's say an AI is beating you in a war and took a city, and you want to make a peace rather than fight them off.

Would the War Score mean the AI keeps that city as the peace deal, or would you need to sweeten it with more cities or a large sum of Gold?

And if the losing player would need to lose more than they already lost to an AI that is beating them, wouldn't surrender always be a bad idea?

At least theoretically I think of it as a way for a losing player or AI to cut their losses in a war that they either cannot win or one that would cost too much from them, but for it to work that way it can't consistently give everything but the capital city away when one is losing.

Otherwise it makes more sense for players and AI's to simply fight to the death.

 

[Halbbruder]

Is it possible that this feature only applies to SP, like respect and fear diplomacy?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Is it possible that this feature only applies to SP, like respect and fear diplomacy?

I highly doubt it, I also think they confirmed War Score exists in MP.