Smallish warmonger change suggestion

[smorgasborgas]

Issue:
AI can be very openly aggressive to the Human with virtually no repercussion. The only retaliation is war, which causes huge warmonger penalties which seem to disproportionately affect the Human. This results in no trade, sanctions, no friendships, etc. which results in a very 1-dimensional experience from then on. There should be more options than A. Become warmonger, and B. Ignore it.

Small neighboring civs forward settle, use citadels to steal land, use spies to steal/assassinate/sabotage and get caught. If I take the land back by force, I become a warmonger for the next 4 thousand years. I can't demand reparations for theft, even from much weaker civs.

Why I think it's a problem:
#1. It makes it difficult to not be a warmonger. If I'm playing tall and peaceful, and some dinky civ sidles up and steals my land, it shouldn't be impossible to get restitution without becoming a warmonger. As it is, I have to either waste a great general (of which I have few, since I'm trying to play peaceful), or ruin my relationships with all the other civs.

#2. It's pretty unnatural. If Canada stole land and tech from the US and... -- I shouldn't even need to finish this example, you know why it's ridiculous. On the other hand, a major warmonger military power should easily be able to steal from smaller civs, but should incur large diplomatic penalties with everyone else for doing so.

#3. As it is, there is (or seems to be) a huge asymmetry with how the game treats the human vs. the AI with warmonger penalties. Ideally I think it should be as symmetric as possible while still providing a challenge.

Possible solution:

#1. Keeping track of a 'Naked aggression' value for each pair of civs. This value needs to be 'burned through' before global warmonger penalties take effect.

For example:

• A civ steals land, then 100 NA (Naked Aggression) points. They are caught steal a tech and gold through espionage, 50 NA points each. Total 200 NA points.
  
• I want revenge by declaring war and taking the city that stole the land. Normally this would result in warmonger penalties only for me.
• Instead warmonger penalties should be diminished by the NA points.
• This represents other civs 'understanding' why I retaliated.

#2. A new item on the trade screen 'Restitution' that would flatten out the Naked Aggression points between two civs. The trade value would depend on the amount of NA points and the relative power of each civ. Civ steals from me, gets caught, and then to avoid military retaliation they have to pay me off. Seems pretty natural.

#2.5. If a neighboring civ is already a warmonger, then why not steal from them without paying restitution? They are probably already going to attack you at some point anyway. This way, a safer target for spies would be the warmonger rather than a peaceful ally. This would also encourage peaceful civs to band together.

#3. Separately, stealing land and getting caught committing espionage should result in diplomatic penalties with all known civs. Especially if done against your friends and allies. There should be some risk and disincentive for these things.

#4. Overhaul warmonger penalties. I feel like actual warmongers don't get hurt enough from these penalties and peaceful civs that are just defending their monopolies and 3-radius borders are hurt too much. It also cements your play style throughout the whole game. Once ally blocs are formed, they don't shift even over hundreds or thousands of years.

​

Concerns:

It could exacerbate snowball effect. Big civs keep bullying smaller ones and small civs have no recourse. Fixing this would require tuning the sizes of penalties.

It could decrease the number of wars and make the game too passive. If there are too many peaceful ways to get back at a civ, there might be fewer armed conflicts. But decreased warmonger penalties could mean the wars that DO happen are longer and more meaningful.

 

[tu_79]

If you are playing tall, most of your borders should be wide. When I play tall, it is very rare that a neighbour steal my strategics. Even then, you can recapture with another citadel (except for USA, which you better conquer). Tall is 4 to 6 cities, BTW. If you need to produce great generals, just fight without conquering cities, make your neighbours waste resources on military units and repairs. Chances are that they get so unhappy that a few of their cities might secede.

My usual problem with this approach is not fighting enough to have the big experienced army that I need.

 

[DingoBongo]

I think these are great ideas. I just finished my first ever VP game, and while I loved it and definitely prefer it over the vanilla experience, the warmonger penalties were the worst part of it for me. Even after getting Casus Belli passed in the World Congress I was forever hated by everybody for being a warmonger, even though every war I fought was defensive (I inevitably ended up conquering land in the process). It's silly that your only options are either to never capture cities or to be a warmonger, unable to form alliances, for the rest of the game.

 

[andersw]

The warmonger penalties are very onesided.
I've seen AI's conquering half the map and still have a very different diplo game with friends and defensive pacts left and right, something that is totally impossible for a human player (I havent played the latest version yet).
And it seems that the aim is not to have the same rules for humans and AIs.
Still despite this there are enough ppl consistently winning on diety but Im not entirely sure what the aim is.

 

[Recursive]

The warmonger penalties are very onesided.
I've seen AI's conquering half the map and still have a very different diplo game with friends and defensive pacts left and right, something that is totally impossible for a human player (I havent played the latest version yet).
And it seems that the aim is not to have the same rules for humans and AIs.
Still despite this there are enough ppl consistently winning on diety but Im not entirely sure what the aim is.

Latest versions (1/9 & 1/15) should be better in terms of AI/human inequality. It wasn't warmongering that was the problem, just messy code and memory issues all around.

 

[Melchizedek]

I agree with this suggestion. The game should have some broad notion of just war beyond 'taking cities = aggressor.' The current causus belli mechanics are too narrow.

 

[Recursive]

Issue:
AI can be very openly aggressive to the Human with virtually no repercussion. The only retaliation is war, which causes huge warmonger penalties which seem to disproportionately affect the Human. This results in no trade, sanctions, no friendships, etc. which results in a very 1-dimensional experience from then on. There should be more options than A. Become warmonger, and B. Ignore it.

Small neighboring civs forward settle, use citadels to steal land, use spies to steal/assassinate/sabotage and get caught. If I take the land back by force, I become a warmonger for the next 4 thousand years. I can't demand reparations for theft, even from much weaker civs.

Why I think it's a problem:
#1. It makes it difficult to not be a warmonger. If I'm playing tall and peaceful, and some dinky civ sidles up and steals my land, it shouldn't be impossible to get restitution without becoming a warmonger. As it is, I have to either waste a great general (of which I have few, since I'm trying to play peaceful), or ruin my relationships with all the other civs.

#2. It's pretty unnatural. If Canada stole land and tech from the US and... -- I shouldn't even need to finish this example, you know why it's ridiculous. On the other hand, a major warmonger military power should easily be able to steal from smaller civs, but should incur large diplomatic penalties with everyone else for doing so.

#3. As it is, there is (or seems to be) a huge asymmetry with how the game treats the human vs. the AI with warmonger penalties. Ideally I think it should be as symmetric as possible while still providing a challenge.

Possible solution:

#1. Keeping track of a 'Naked aggression' value for each pair of civs. This value needs to be 'burned through' before global warmonger penalties take effect.

For example:

• A civ steals land, then 100 NA (Naked Aggression) points. They are caught steal a tech and gold through espionage, 50 NA points each. Total 200 NA points.
  
• I want revenge by declaring war and taking the city that stole the land. Normally this would result in warmonger penalties only for me.
• Instead warmonger penalties should be diminished by the NA points.
• This represents other civs 'understanding' why I retaliated.

#2. A new item on the trade screen 'Restitution' that would flatten out the Naked Aggression points between two civs. The trade value would depend on the amount of NA points and the relative power of each civ. Civ steals from me, gets caught, and then to avoid military retaliation they have to pay me off. Seems pretty natural.

#2.5. If a neighboring civ is already a warmonger, then why not steal from them without paying restitution? They are probably already going to attack you at some point anyway. This way, a safer target for spies would be the warmonger rather than a peaceful ally. This would also encourage peaceful civs to band together.

#3. Separately, stealing land and getting caught committing espionage should result in diplomatic penalties with all known civs. Especially if done against your friends and allies. There should be some risk and disincentive for these things.

#4. Overhaul warmonger penalties. I feel like actual warmongers don't get hurt enough from these penalties and peaceful civs that are just defending their monopolies and 3-radius borders are hurt too much. It also cements your play style throughout the whole game. Once ally blocs are formed, they don't shift even over hundreds or thousands of years.

​

Concerns:

It could exacerbate snowball effect. Big civs keep bullying smaller ones and small civs have no recourse. Fixing this would require tuning the sizes of penalties.

It could decrease the number of wars and make the game too passive. If there are too many peaceful ways to get back at a civ, there might be fewer armed conflicts. But decreased warmonger penalties could mean the wars that DO happen are longer and more meaningful.

This is not smallish from a coding perspective. It would take a considerable amount of effort.

 

[azum4roll]

Last game the world barely cared about my warmongering when I had killed one civ and vassaled 3. It was until I wiped another civ off the map (in less than 10 turns) that the one remaining non-vassal started having very negative warmonger opinion. It's doable if you spread out your wars, only conquer what's necessary for capitulation and only target those already hated by the world.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I've seen AI's conquering half the map and still have a very different diplo game with friends and defensive pacts left and right, something that is totally impossible for a human player (I havent played the latest version yet).

Latest versions are fine. I just finished a DomV with several dynamic DoF's / DP's. Although negative repercussions can snowball, diplo generally gets easier when you're stronger; words don't carry the same weight as your swords.

 

[InkAxis]

Well I think, other than some minor things, this is a pretty good idea. In fact, it's already a feature in Civ 6, called grievances. It's one of the things I think they implemented really well. Particularly, it allows you to declare different casus belli for a war. For example, you can declare a war of reconquest, and you gain less grievances if you take cities you had previously owned. Also religious wars, colonial wars, etc. I think a civ even has a special war for their UA. Each one has a different amount of grievances for declaring war, taking cities, taking units, taking civilians, etc.

But, I do have one problem with your suggestion: the title. This is not a "smallish" change. It would require entirely changing diplomacy and war and AI, and likely many other things. But it would be a very interesting change.

 

[DingoBongo]

Latest versions are fine. I just finished a DomV with several dynamic DoF's / DP's. Although negative repercussions can snowball, diplo generally gets easier when you're stronger; words don't carry the same weight as your swords.

My experience would differ from this with the latest version of Vox Populi.

 

[smorgasborgas]

Ah I didn't mean 'smallish' in terms of difficulty to implement. I have no idea how the code is laid out so I can't be sure what would be easy or difficult. I really just meant that it is a 'smallish' issue; it really doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game that much. I just enjoy when the AI behaves in a way that makes more logical sense (by that I mean 'in-game logic' where they are leaders of civs, not emulating human players playing civ).

Second, my suggestion may already be obviated -- I don't know -- as I haven't had time to play either of the latest @Recursive patches which have overhauled AI logic as I understand. Seriously thank you @Recursive, @Gazebo, and @illiteroi and others for the time you put into making this easily the best civ game there is. I can't imagine how much work you've put into making the only game I've played for the last 3 years.

So given that this suggestion might be unnecessary at this point and given that I have no idea how the code looks for all this, I think a good approximation of this suggestion could still be implemented using the existing warmonger penalties and without 'entirely changing diplomacy and war and AI'. If the trade item from OP is scrapped, then the only issue is that:

AI aggression + my retaliation --> Me having warmonger penalties and AI having none.

and the desired effect is

AI aggression + my retaliation --> We're even, or close to it. In the eyes of the other leaders.

This could be done by introducing warmonger penalties to their 'non war' aggression while DECREASING warmonger penalties for the transgressed.

For example:
*I'm next to Germany, and they steal some land.
*So they should INCUR warmonger penalties of about 0.5 of capturing a city and I should get a DECREASE by that same amount. (this penalty could be scaled by existing reputations and relations, i.e. a peaceful civ stealing from a warmonger doesn't get such a big penalty, stealing from a friend gets a bigger penalty, etc.)
*Then, if I do decide to take the city, I will have a mitigating negative warmonger factor.
*If I DON'T decide to take a city, then my reduction in warmonger score reflects my 'restraint'. (which I think is a pretty natural reaction). It also leaves the rest of the world suspicious of Germany, which would also be pretty natural.

So even without introducing N choose 2 variables tracking Grievances (a much better name) and introducing a trade item to flatten them out, I think we can have a reasonable approximation of the OP suggestion. Since I would think that AI makes decisions based on the CURRENT state of the game (warmonger scores, military power, are they a threat, etc) rather than storing some historical chain of events, then not much would have to change with the AI. They would just now make decisions based on this new warmonger scoring and decide whether or not to steal land or sabotage based on the new consequences. I.E. don't sabotage your friends unless you want everyone else not to trust you. And presumably this would lead to less illogical aggression.

 

[andersw]

Latest versions (1/9 & 1/15) should be better in terms of AI/human inequality. It wasn't warmongering that was the problem, just messy code and memory issues all around.

Yes this was a LOT better, great job.

 

[DingoBongo]

Do the new versions of the Community Patch work with Vox Populi? I'm new to these mods, so wondering if I can just update the CP if I have the latest Vox Populi installed?

 

[Melchizedek]

Not having worked on the code I can't be sure, but this doesn't seem like it should be so hard. It would consist of arithmetic modifiers of existing values, and possibly storing a record of some events to produce future arithmetic modifiers. Maybe you wouldn't necessarily need to teach the AI to deal with this change on a first pass, because it shouldn't make much difference to their decisions. Just alter the existing diplomatic values for warmongering penalties.

 

[Alpharius]

This sounds great to me. One pet peeve I've always had are warmonger penalties despite being the 'aggrieved' party in a war. Citadel spamming of AI in mid-game is near unbearable and I hate that you only get two choices; suck it up or become a warmonger.

It'd be wonderful if this idea, or something similar were implemented but I understand the mod team has their hands full already.
I'd help if I could but sadly I do not know how to code and I'm not tech savvy.