Should pillaging have a downside?

WineGuy

Chieftain
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Throughout history the armies that pillaged a countryside often lost the support of the locals whose land they were pillaging, often to the point where they had to withdraw or change their strategy after incurring too much local backlash. In Civilization, an invading army really doesn't face any maluses associated with pillaging territories (and indeed, it is basically a meta at this point). Would it be more realistic if pillaging a city's hex increased the defensive strength of the city itself (representing citizens who either fled the pillaged land and reinforced the city center, of who had their resolve increased to fight the invader harder) or increased the loyalty pressure from the besieged city and nearby cities against the invader?

Right now, a general strategy is to pillage a land completely, capture the city center and take a builder to repair all the damage. What this doesn't address is the resentment of the people who had their land's pillaged by the invader. It would make capturing cities more strategic (and realistic) if you had to choose between a 'no pillage' strategy that increased the chances of keeping the city once captured and a "pillage and burn" strategy where you were better off razing an angry city after you'd ruined its lands.
 
Wouldn't mind seeing something similar to the raiding mechanic in Crusader Kings if you've ever played that game. Basically, there is a loot (and a maximum loot) for each tile. Pillaging would give you whatever yields were part of the loot but set the loot to zero where it slowly ticks back up overtime.
 
Empire wide effects like war weariness and grievances are easily ignored, but the real historical impacts of turning a local population against you should have a direct and immediate tactical impact.

I was thinking more of a localized tactical disadvantage, since that would be more historically accurate in my eyes. Maybe a loss of one combat strength per tile pillaged when fighting in that city’s land area.
 
Nevertheles, war weariness and specially grievances should be there. Now you can be a prick bully that pillages every tile of a weak neighbour for no more grievances than the declared war (and not even that, if you are the one declared).

Your starting loyalty in captured cities should be much lower if you pillaged tiles. Losing combat strenght by pillaging makes no sense (if any, it should increase it, altough the health recovery is somewhat that). If you want a "localized" tactical disadvantage, you should recover a partisan-type unit, that has an increasing chance to appear near your units for each pillaged tile.
 
I was going to recommend the same mechanic with the chance of a partisan unit appearing, but I have basically given up hope that we will see the classic partisan unit return to the series. I definitely think that earlier versions of civilization had it right with the role of the partisan unit and it definitely made you more carefully consider your strategy and tactics when you knew you may have to deal with a large number of lower combat strength units.
 
Ain't the most profound downside of pillaging is that when you have captured a city, then you have to repair what you have pillaged inside the vicinity of that city previously? I don't often pillage, because I want maximum yields from the cities I have captured as soon as possible. As if the loss of population and buildings inside the city center upon capturing a city ain't damaging enough.

Then again, I'm often surprised by the difference between how I and other people on this forums play the game.
 
A good while back I was waiting on my spaceship to reach it's destination when someone declared war on me. Didn't feel like conquering so decided to just carpetbomb everything in range of my jet bombers. As I was bombing farms and neighborhoods I thought to myself that this game could use some sort war-crime mechanic. Giving additional grievances worldwide or something.
 
Alternately, one mechanic would be that your units would suffer five damage per turn when they end their turn on a tile that has been pillaged in an opponents territory. Or something similar that reflects the fact that when you pillage land you are effectively turning the inhabitants of that hex against you and there should be some form of consequence associated with the pillaging and the subsequent occupation, Beyond just having to fix the tile later or dealing with grievances or war weariness at an empire level.
 
I suggest

1: Additional Grivalance against the Civ you pillaged.
2: Additional Grivalance against all Civs, as they witness your cruel behavior. (after any player researched Mass Media)
3: Additional loyalty towards the pillaged city when owned by your enemy, Loyalty penalty if you capture that city. As the citizens remember the harm of the pillage.
4: Reduced yield when conducting further pillages in that city (or Civ?), as people there start to learn to protect their wealth from pillage.
 
Repairing is easy because it costs no build charges for improvements, and if pillaging district then the pillager likely wont take that city anyways.

Grievance is ok, but it does nothing when one do not care about diplomacy and about diplo favors. War weariness is ok but it can be countered rather easily, and there are lots of reduction modifiers for it. Combat modifier i dont think can be implemented. Partisans were not significant until relatively modern times so idk if that is a good thing to have.

I think loyalty should play a major role here. Extra permanent loyalty penalty towards your civ for each pillage done. Reduced yields is also a really nice idea, and will help breaking the pillage meta for sure.
 
Pillaging gives you a way to wage war without needing to capture cities. War is an opportunity to set your opponent back or move yourself forward.

Give warring a bone here. They already get diplo penatlies for holding capitals, grievances for declaring war in the first place and emergency alerted by world council. They get relations penalties with other civs for warring. Now you want to nickel and dime every pillaged hex?

Games dont need to be balanced around realism.
 
I suggest

1: Additional Grivalance against the Civ you pillaged.
2: Additional Grivalance against all Civs, as they witness your cruel behavior. (after any player researched Mass Media)
3: Additional loyalty towards the pillaged city when owned by your enemy, Loyalty penalty if you capture that city. As the citizens remember the harm of the pillage.
4: Reduced yield when conducting further pillages in that city (or Civ?), as people there start to learn to protect their wealth from pillage.
I support all these suggestions. That seems both good for gameplay and realistic.
 
Now, thats good thinking! But I think easiest would be creating war weariness as the population at home takes part of the horrors commited abroad.

Could be minimal penalty for farms and mines but substantially higher for districts.


I can't help but get a little bit political here, but I think recent history shows that the citizens of a country are very easily able to ignore horrors committed abroad. It is extremely difficult to get people to acknowledge atrocities committed by "our boys" let alone care about them.

I mean, if someone objects just saying "that's enemy propaganda" will shut most people up and if they won't shut up you can accuse them of being "enemy sympathizers" and imply that they might possibly be traitors or enemy agents.

Such a mechanic would be terribly unrealistic, but I also think that it would be detrimental to the game. I think conquest is the thing that really needs to be balanced around. Pillaging needs to be good because there needs to be diverse reasons to go to war. I like going to war just to raid enemy districts and then win extra gold and stuff in the peace terms, it is a nice change from conquest which can get very messy and boring. The fact that I can go on pillaging wars without incurring significant grievances is a nice, small benefit that is necessary for balance, but if you add grievances for pillaging then I may as well conquer everything.
 
Most of the comments here have focused on the strategic implications of a pillaging strategy. I was more interested in some of the tactical implications. If your army pillages the area around a city you shouldn’t expect to be able to sit there without the people whose farms you burned trying to exact revenge or at least strengthen the defenders in the city center.

An extremely important innovation in warfare in the last half millennia or so was to convince your troops, either through discipline or actually paying and provisioning them properly, to not despoil all the villages and farms that they marched through. The units that did pillage, loot, and cause Mayham often incurred a significant tactical penalty to their movement, safety, or well-being as a result.

In the game I would be much less likely to pillage every tile I see if I knew that it would eat away at my success in either capturing or holding the city center. Of course, if I had no interest in actually capturing the city it would be another story.
 
Pillaging gives you a way to wage war without needing to capture cities. War is an opportunity to set your opponent back or move yourself forward.

Give warring a bone here. They already get diplo penatlies for holding capitals, grievances for declaring war in the first place and emergency alerted by world council. They get relations penalties with other civs for warring. Now you want to nickel and dime every pillaged hex?

Games dont need to be balanced around realism.
When pillaging is so good that intentionally build a city, sell, then pillage it, or when flipping a city back&forth to pillage&repair, are strong strats for science victory (or worse, diplomatic victory), that's not good for either the game side or realism side.
 
When pillaging is so good that intentionally build a city, sell, then pillage it, or when flipping a city back&forth to pillage&repair, are strong strats for science victory (or worse, diplomatic victory), that's not good for either the game side or realism side.


These exploits don't affect my enjoyment of the game because they are obscure enough that I can choose not to use them, but if you nerf pillaging to "fix" these exploits then my experience will be ruined. If these exploits can be removed without nerfing ordinary pillaging, then fine do it, otherwise leave it alone.
 
Ain't the most profound downside of pillaging is that when you have captured a city, then you have to repair what you have pillaged inside the vicinity of that city previously? I don't often pillage, because I want maximum yields from the cities I have captured as soon as possible. As if the loss of population and buildings inside the city center upon capturing a city ain't damaging enough.

Then again, I'm often surprised by the difference between how I and other people on this forums play the game.
I see where you are coming from. However, if you have a spare builder, it costs nothing to repair a pillaged tile. So basically each turn you can repair a tile, but you also get the pillage yield beforehand. It's virtually free yields.

I don't do it myself, but I can see why people do do it - it's a very cheap exploit.

On the other hand, I can see why the system is set up the way it is. If it actively cost to repair things, it would swing heavily in the aggressors favour and even natural disasters would really aggravate me. It's a pain now if I have a large empire.
 
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