Some thoughts on warmongering post-patch (not a complaint!)

[Bad Wolf]

Hey guys, so I'm playing my first game post-patch (still in the middle of it - I play for a few hours every night), and wanted to comment about my experiences with the new warmonger mechanic, because some people seem to be having a rough time with it.

Personally, I think it works really well at the moment. First of all, one huge improvement is that the game now spells out for you, in no uncertain terms, what the diplomatic penalties will be for capturing a particular city - you can make your calculations accordingly. The AI also seems to be a lot more willing to settle wars now without you needing to take a city or two from them; before I found the AI would sometimes refuse to surrender unless I took a city from them.

I also love how different AIs have different levels of tolerance for warmongering, and again they straight-up tell you if they're angry at you, or if they merely have some concerns but they still want to be friends, or if they just flat-out don't care. I captured Rome because they invaded me twice and Augustus had about six or seven wonders built there (including Machu Picchu and Himeji Castle). I was planning to offset the minor warmonger penalty I got from this by liberating Lisbon (the Zulus had crushed Portugal early on), but I found that the only AI (besides Caesar) who actually cared that I had captured Rome was Elizabeth, but she's diplomatically and geographically isolated so whatever, I'll just take the hit and move on.

Also, I can't confirm this, but it seems as if you don't get a warmonger penalty for winning cities in a war, which if true is awesome - that's precisely how it should be. States traded territory with each other all the time. Basically the Zulus invaded me for, let's see, a fourth time, while I was dealing with Rome. (The Zulus are b-tards by the way - they've razed TWO of my cities so far and my god those Impi are ridiculously hard to take down!) After I defeated their invading force and knocked Rome out of the war they offered me very generous peace terms which included the city of Nobamba, which I gladly accepted because it has strategic value and a source of copper. But I didn't seem to get any noticeable warmonger penalty for this.

I will say I have some concerns about realism and game balance in terms of early warmongering - generally, I don't think the AI should care about you being a warmonger (unless you're attacking them or their friends) in the early stages of the game, in order to reflect the brutality of the ancient world and make it possible to have a bit of war early on without knee-capping yourself diplomatically for the rest of the game.

But on the whole I'd say it's a huge improvement. As a slight aside, I'm enjoying my interactions with the AI a lot more in this one. I've been best friends with Germany since I first crossed the ocean and met them; they haven't back-stabbed me once, we keep renewing defensive pacts and declarations of friendship, and they happily accepted my religion (helps that they didn't found their own). I don't think I've ever been friends with an AI for this long without being backstabbed.

 

[EK834]

In my last game I got two cities from the Netherlands in the Classical era, with no warmonger reputation as no other civs knew us. In the Renaissance I got a third Dutch city in a peace deal after I successfully managed to turn William into as a black sheep (by having many civs declare war on him in turns, then I denounced him and many AI who had been at war with him followed). In Industrial I got him embargoed, which helps isolating him as no one loses TR with him anymore when you attack him. I then got my friends to declare war on him and I took his capital and in the peace deal I got another city. There were so many cities on the map at that point that all I got was a minor warmonger penalty that got me a single denouncement from Austria that didn't like me and hated warmongers. A few others like Germany, Persia and France gave me a dark red modifier for "modest warmongering" that faded pretty fast, Suleiman and the Shoshone didn't even have that modifier. Persia then finished his last city, and I managed to exchange it for slightly larger (1 pop) puppet with a luxury that was closer to Persia than me. I had control of my whole continent, without much warmonger penalties.

I'll just comment on this:

I will say I have some concerns about realism and game balance in terms of early warmongering - generally, I don't think the AI should care about you being a warmonger (unless you're attacking them or their friends) in the early stages of the game, in order to reflect the brutality of the ancient world and make it possible to have a bit of war early on without knee-capping yourself diplomatically for the rest of the game

I'm not sure this should be changed for the sake of realism.

The major difference between the ancient warmongers and later ones was largely in the scope of their conquests. They just didn't have the means to bring wars too far (and the few that did have not built Empires but rather destroyed everything in their path), which forcibly reduced the threat they represented. That's why nearby cultures "didn't care". Most often there wasn't much they could do but prepare in case the warmongers attacked them next. Warmongers were no less hated or feared for that. They were not sought as friends or trade partners. In Civ, however, the early game can expand knowledge of the world much faster than in real history, expanding the diplomatic relations far beyond "realism" and the penalties. And there's no cost for over extended lines and warmongering much farther than realistic except in modern times.

It's just not very realistic that Civs can conquer huge Empires in the ancient era or early classical (nominal control over land and cities is misleading, when most of that land was empty or close and cities very small), They could never have held those together for very long (the unhappiness doesn't badly reflect that weakness of the central power in early times), and even in Classical it was a gigantic feat the Romans achieved what they did, and that it didn't fall apart sooner than it did.

It's quite fine, IMO, that early on "wise" warmongers should be more concerned with piracy, killing units to slow down rivals or make them weaklings that won't be able to recover before your later era conquest of their Empire, razing cities on borders to settle your own, capturing civilians and conquering maybe a few neighboring cities.

I think it's pretty much what the developers want the players to learn to do by introducing the penalties: either use the early units to wage war to kill units, gain many promotions, get GG, and in doing so take a military lead for later conquests, or run the risk of attempting and succeeding at building a large Empire out of your own continent before you discover all the other civs, which ought to be difficult as very few ancient civilizations managed it on any very wide scope. They do want the aggressive players to start their "too modern" Domination campaigns (possible only because the human outsmart the AI at war, and because there are no realistic costs to send your units to fight so far from your cities) later than in the ancient/classical eras or else restrain themselves to taking capitals. Start by building your civ before planning to conquer your neighbor. But the target of the changes aren't really the Domination players. It's rather the players who abused too much the military weaknesses of the AI by alternating wave of conquests with periods of fake/pretended peace and friendships to consolidate their acquisitions and build their aggressive Empires for the next wave, either ultimately going for Domination or using their wide conquered Empire for cultural or science victory. The AI can only seem to pull this off starting around the Renaissance unless it has just one or two neighbors on its continent at the start, and now the human has more or less to do the same. It's still quite possible to do it and conquer a continent, but now it has to be done decisively and fast, or pace it out and be patient to avoid too massive diplomatic penalties.

Personally I would introduce four changes for "realism". First early on I would remove the major penalty with every civ you can't conquer. If Carthage on its island can't reach Rome with land units (ie: before embarkation) but only naval units, Rome shouldn't give it a major warmonger penalty because Carthage conquered cities from its neighbor India. It should still give it a small warmonger penalty if TR from India to Rome have been pillaged. This limitation would disappear once a warmonger can send land units to conquer you, thus with Optics for nearby civs, and Astronomy for those with oceans betwen them. Your continental neighbors would still give you a heavy penalty, though.

The second change is that I would reward more the early successful conquerors this way: if a civ manages to wipe out completely another before reaching the Medieval era, the warmonger penalty should start to fade away with everyone who know you or that civ each turn until it's completely gone. The defeated civ has been culturally absorbed in another Empire and is gradually forgotten, and before the Printing Press only scholars end up remembering them. After a while that culture is forgotten even by its friends. If you fail and even one city remain, the warmongering penalty doesn't go away. If a city is liberated and the ancient civ resurrects, the warmongering penalty would gradually return.

The third change would be for the mid game: crusades. Once a civ has researched Theology (or maybe Philosophy) and until a civ research Scientific Theory, you would no longer get any warmongering penalty for conquering cities of other religions from all civs that share a religion with you, and 30% of the penalty with civs that don't share either religion. You'd rather get a diplo bonus from those who share your religion for conquering the infidels, and for converting one of their city to your religion. During that period, conquering a city would also remove its religion for yours. You would however get a extra penalty from civs that share the religion under attack. The extra penalty would start fading down to the point of the normal warmonger penalty, and the diplo bonuses would go away, by the discovery of Scientific theory for every (and on a civ by civ basis, whenever someone opens Rationalism).

And oh, a fourth: there should be a reduction (not major, the modern world valuing stability) of the penalty with civs who share your ideology, and an increase from civs that share the one under attack. Those should fade only when a civ that gave you a penalty is forced to change ideology or when you're forced to join another.

I think changes like this would add era flavor, open a window of opportunity to conquer an Empire during "crusades" but otherwise wouldn't affect too much the warmonger penalties meant to discourage players to build their Empire too much by early conquest, while perhaps preventing the whole world from turning against a warmonger. You'd still get heavily penalized, more so early on than in the late game, but only by certain civs, and more or less with one or another depending on era/tech level/religion etc.

The big problem, as I see it anyway, is more the nonsensical chain denouncements that also become a loop. In a future version of the game I would sure want them to change that so that a denouncement affects you primarily for the aspect for which you were denounced and only that. Eg; If it's for expanding too much, a denouncement should affect only other civs with which you have borders. If it's for breaking a promise, it should make others more wary to make deals with you, but it shouldn't trigger a denouncement in turn, or trigger a war with a third party, or stop a civ from sending you TR. If it's for pillaging a friendly TR, it should make everyone more wary to send TR to you, if they aren't friendly enough to not be affected by the denouncement. It should make a chain denouncement only likely if you've committed a similar offense with other civs that had not reached the level at which they would denounce you for the same offense. Eg: if you've expanded too much and got denounced, other civs nearby might also denounce you if they aren't friendly enough.

 

[GoStu]

That's an interesting comment regarding the chain denouncements which I hate so much. If there was some fix to that it would help you get away with things more often. It's why I so hate seeing Siam on the map.

Also, I often still think the "Extreme" warmonger penalty for executing a rival can be worth it, just so you don't have a constant source of denouncements and time-wasting dialog between turns.

 

[phillipwyllie]

From the patch note:
[BALANCE]

• Warmonger Penalty
  • Warmonger penalty for conquering a city is now halved with other civs that are also at war with the civ being conquered.
  • Make the building up of warmonger threats more exponential than linear (Minor - Major - Severe - Critical).

Even if you have allies during war you still get warmonger hate(notes call it threat). Taking out civs entirely is bad at any time. Getting cities in a peace deal don't count towards the warmonger score. Liberating cities lowers your warmonger score. Yeas that tool-tip is a godsend(although when you have blood-lust.......).

In my current game I've taken out 3 civs with America as my ally in all 3 wars. Guess what America is now hostile to me, and all other civs guarded(to be expected).

 

[EK834]

That's an interesting comment regarding the chain denouncements which I hate so much. If there was some fix to that it would help you get away with things more often. It's why I so hate seeing Siam on the map.

Also, I often still think the "Extreme" warmonger penalty for executing a rival can be worth it, just so you don't have a constant source of denouncements and time-wasting dialog between turns.

What I hate most about the mechanics is how illogical it all is. Siam denounces you because your borders are too close to theirs, which influences India to denounce you when their only modifier previously was that you built a Wonder they wanted, and both influence Germany because it had a DoF with both.

It's really kindergarten diplomacy, of the annoying kind. You do something minor that should annoy one civ, and it worsens your relations with several others when they are totally unconcerned by the issue with the first civ, especially in the early eras (when stealing tiles with a GG in the late game, it's somewhat normal this behavior should annoy all the allies of the civ you stole from and they join to denounce this action.. but that denouncement shouldn't influence much a civ not allied to the others who rather have issues with your cultural influence.)

I get the point it's there to encourage conflicts and create easily uncontrollable obstacles for a player who plays peacefully, while making early conquest on a large scale very difficult before you're strong and self-reliant - and that's to the good - but it's really too simplistic to be much fun.

The game already has plenty of interesting mechanics that could be tweaked just a bit to become more interesting sources of conflicts. For example if to get a TR up you needed first to negotiate a mutual (or non mutual, if you bargain it for a resources or gpt) agreement to open trade concessions with another civ, and there was a maximum TR any city could host (increasing with city size and buildings). This would create tensions (and motives for war), if a civ refused you trade, and competition between civs over the spots in the best trade cities (pirate a trade route to free a spot in top grade trade city you want to trade to, because even though you have trade open with the owner, all the spots are taken in East India Co. city and you are left trading with one of its small coastal cities, for a fraction of the benefits). By industrial, trade cities would have become big enough to welcome pretty much anyone wishing to, and those rivalries would fade quite a bit. But in the late game, strategic resources could be spread unevenly (one area has 50% of the oil, the rest is spread in smaller quantities over the world, enough for its owner to be self-sufficient and maybe a bit of trade), and TR could provide access to that resource for gpt, if the owner agrees to let you send cargo ships.... A civ deprived of oil, or unable to secure enough from its TR, and that gets refused trade by one of the oil producers would have a very strong motive for war before its lack of oil obsolete its army, and so would later a "superpower" that might be tempted to seize control (puppets or vassals) of the oil producing area because it trades with its enemies and refused to desist. And that's just trade... Religion has as just as much potential early game for interesting conflicts (and alliances), and ideologies. And I also think they would solve a great deal of the "warmongering" abuses if they changed the game so that tiles could now be sold, exchanged, occupied or conquered. Instead of seizing a city (which would remain possible, of course), you could decide to seize its three river tiles touching your border, which would provide a better defensive line. You could force a weaker neighbor to give you a few tiles with resources you want to avoid war, which of course would create big tensions. You could seize a mountain pass controlled by your neighbor because it's the perfect spot for a fortress. You could obtain those five tiles that would provide you build a coastal city for trade and connect it to your capital. Etc. This would provide a ton of opportunities for diplomatic interactions and deals, and most of all for small scale/local wars without warmonger penalties at all, but with significant losses and gains (those tree tiles you lost in war might have been your city's best food tiles...). Larger scale warmongering, especially away from your borders, would still be significantly punished, but in the early game it would be far less interesting, as the warmongers and diplomats alike would be busy expanding then optimizing their borders and territories, competing for trade routes, warring against immediate neighbors for logical motives. They could also make it more likely that civs will sell or exchange cities along common borders.

 

[EK834]

In my current game I've taken out 3 civs with America as my ally in all 3 wars. Guess what America is now hostile to me, and all other civs guarded(to be expected).

Taking out three civs is already some major warmongering, though That's like begging for a world war against you, but you seemed to have played it to avoid the worst of it.

It's logical game play wise that wiping out a civ get punished my making some aspects of the game more difficult. Removing civs makes the game gradually easier (either for the human, but also for a runaway warmongering AI).

In a recent game I've conquered and puppeted 11 cities (and got 5 Wonders out of that) - again all from the same foe with whom I shared a continent. One was conquered early before the world knew me and my foe. Two others were acquired via peace deals in two consecutive mid game wars (one medieval, one renaissance), after laying siege and bringing the a city's defenses all down, pillaging many tiles and destroying many, most, of my foe's units. I've conquered two more for minor penalties in Modern incl. the capital, and got the rest in peace deals, leaving two pitiful cities to my foe, who then got wiped out by an opportunistic and less principled warmonger.. from whom I took those cities later.. he had so many that got me very minor penalties... So I held all a civ's original cities, without suffering too massively in diplomacy. All that for the cost of one denouncement and one civ going from friendly to neutral with me for the rest of the game. All the others still liked me in the late game, though a few had a phase in which they gave me minor warmongering modifiers and sulked a bit... but those from my ideology still renew the DoF in time (another thing I discovered will mitigate warmongering effects is to have RA with the other civs. Beside the penalty for backstabbing they seem much less keen to declare war on you when this means they'll lose their RA with you. If you have many TR to them beside...)

It looks to me like if it's planned with minimal care (reining in the "bloodlust") and spaced out, it's perfectly possible to use war and conquest to secure a decent Empire more than sufficient to provide a necessary edge to win a Space or Culture victory without turning yourself into the world's big black sheep. Instead of killing all the population, it's now much, much better to lay siege to the city, kill the units, pillage and force your foe to give you that defenseless city (or another one that's your real desire....) in a peace deal. It's conquest but much cleaner, without sending that unit in for the final push that will needlessly kill half the civilian population and barbarically pillage the city. It's the more civilized warmongering way.

It's quite advantageous in every way as no pop is lost (all the more useful in the late game when that 18 pop city you get will add a great deal more significantly to your science output than a 9 pop one...) and no building destroyed, and you don't get the reputation for being a civilian killing monster. It's much better than previous situations in which you had to conquer, lose, reconquer a city and before long this had wiped out nearly all its population and it was more a matter of pride to keep that conquest than benefits from holding it.

Going Domination from there would also be possible, but in time would turn the world against me, which would be perfectly normal.



As for going "Hitler" on the world.. well, the thing is the Civ is no longer balanced for that sort of game play. It's not new, they tried to discourage that since they made Domination about conquering the capitals only. Keeping the game fun/balanced for those who keep using it for "infinite conquest" when it's no longer designed for it don't seem to be a goal for the developers. I suspect the warmongering mechanics was about re balancing other aspects of the game by mitigating the AI's weakness in defensive wars. It just incidentally further hurt a play style that wasn't encouraged in Civ 5 in the first place. The new warmonger mechanics is actually fun to play against, if you follow a mixed conquest/peaceful strategy, planning to conquer but with minimal diplomatic repercussions.

 

[Socratatus]

Haven`t played since the Patch yet, but stuff about AI sounds good, even the negative bits for realism sake.

 

[GhostSalsa]

In a recent game I've conquered and puppeted 11 cities (and got 5 Wonders out of that) - again all from the same foe with whom I shared a continent.

Playing as?

I agree the current mechanics are perfectly exploitable if things are going well. More generally if you are playing as a very strong civ.

This hardly makes the unrecoverable Vanilla-style game-ending chain-denouncement-chain-DOW more palatable, as it usually will strike when you are playing as a weaker civ or with a weak start.

You can't pick and choose your enemies when you're weak. If you're conquering for survival it's really annoying that as soon as you finish investing 40 turns in a mid-game war against a twice-as-strong AI who invaded you and put them down, OOP, game over, everyone's denouncing, good try but head back to the main menu please.

 

[Cromagnus]

Actually, the change to make it so you only need to own capitals to win domination was not to discourage domination, it was to make it less tedious. It was to encourage it. It was to fix the problems they created when they made per-city science penalties and took away a lot of the happiness in the game.

They aren't systematically trying to nerf Domination. They're doing it by accident. IMHO.

Early domination is primarily affected on Deity. If you do world conquest late, you're waay less likely to get DoW'd, because by then you're considered a threat if you're playing at all well.

If you conquest early, the AIs all see you as a juicy target, and they gang up on you IMHO not because they hate warmongers, but because when the "weak" guy pisses you off, you beat him up. It's very kindergarten.

On lower difficulties where the AI doesn't have a huge starting advantage, you can conquest all you like, because the AI is afraid to do anything about it.

Sometimes when I'm testing viability of strategies I go back to Prince to level the playing field, and man, if the game really is balanced for Prince, it's kind of sad, because you can pretty much get away with *any* strategy on that difficulty level. :lol

EDIT: And this is why I want them to balance Deity. I want Deity to be the difficulty level where your strategy has to be near-perfect or you lose, not the difficulty level where the strategy is totally different. If early warmongering is only invalid on Deity, then Deity is broken. It should be the difficulty level which is comparable to multiplayer in terms of challenge, but without the simultaneous turns, crashes, connection loss, waiting for other players, and inability to run mods.

 

[EK834]

Playing as?

Venice, and you're right, it was fairly good/strong games.

 

[EK834]

Actually, the change to make it so you only need to own capitals to win domination was not to discourage domination, it was to make it less tedious.

Indeed. This also marked the moment where "infinite conquest" stopped being a play style/strategy the developers worked to balance. It's not so much they discourage it as they don't really design the game for this to be interesting except to people who find it fun to take every last city in Civ. It's like an "unsupported" play style.


I don't think the tweaks in BNW were really aimed at Domination nor even to curtail the "infinite conquest" play style (they just don't care about people who use Civ that way, IMO). It just happened, incidentally, to make infinite conquest annoying and tedious. It's also made the highest level Domination more annoying or too difficult (I take the word of people like you for it, I don't play Deity). I don't think either it was the goal.

My best guest is they introduce this to give a performance boost to the AI, by discouraging the players (and the AI...) from starting their game by wiping out 1 or 2 opponents, rest to consolidate, get money, happiness, TR, etc; and once strong enough take out another 1 or 2 opponents etc. That play style when the AI does it is okay, as it has limitations, but from the human it "abuses" and games the weakness of the AI at warfare and exploited the diplomacy system as the AI couldn't recognize a treacherous, abusive player. By mid game players controlled a whole continent, were building every Wonder and ran away to an extremely tedious, overpowered late game.You also ended up with fairly weak AI civs mid game. With BNW they tried to make the late game more interesting (whether it's a success is another question), but most of the mechanics are interesting and work as intended only if enough AI are still around, if those AI have not irremediably fallen far behind the player etc. I think it's the main reason why they sought to give an early boost to the AI, by making it harder to build an Empire mostly by conquest, by wiping out a few AIs early game, stop to acquire luxuries. It's the same logic by which they also made very wide play harder and less optimal.

As I said elsewhere, I think the way they now intend the aggressive players to use the early era UU is to wage war to weaken the AI, gain promotions and GG, get a few cities in peace deals and avoid capturing cities. Playing this way gives you a fair military lead mid game with super ugraded units, when your Empire is also more self-sufficient and if you don't intend to use diplomacy and foreign trade too much you can start truly warmongering.

It's really not that they don't want the players to wage wars and conquer, but they tried to make it so the warmongers would start late enough that their new cool "Autocracy" features would matter...

They aren't systematically trying to nerf Domination. They're doing it by accident. IMHO.

I totally agree. I'm not surprised if it had unintended and unfortunate consequences on Immortal or Deity.

Sometimes when I'm testing viability of strategies I go back to Prince to level the playing field, and man, if the game really is balanced for Prince, it's kind of sad, because you can pretty much get away with *any* strategy on that difficulty level. :lol

I think it's probably too focused on giving the best experience to Prince/all Standard players, though it's King/Emperor I find the more balanced atm. I imagine Prince is the setting most played by their consumers, though I've got nothing concrete to base that on, except it's usually what "average difficulty" means!

Some people find it already though with BNW. It's true enough that even on Prince now you need a minimum of good strategy with your start.

And this is why I want them to balance Deity.

It would probably be a good idea to re balance all levels specifically at this point, with unique rules if necessary. With BNW and the patch they're really not that far from a pretty cool King/Emperor. The AI keeps up better, and more of them than usual can survive and stay in the game past the Renaissance. Even playing with the limitations of warmongering and finding ways around them is fun on those levels (for now, sooner or later it will be recipes...). The late game could still use improvement. Even if the AI keeps itself afloat longer than before, the ending is still too easy and gets easily tedious (unless you play Domination and end it earlier than that...) when you reach the point by which you're certain to win, certain the AI don't know the tricks by which it could even hope to stop you... the victory turn is still way too far away to really make reaching it much fun.

 

[Cromagnus]

It's really not that they don't want the players to wage wars and conquer, but they tried to make it so the warmongers would start late enough that their new cool "Autocracy" features would matter...

I think you might be right. Unfortunately, on Deity anyway, a lot of the Ideology stuff comes too late. Like, by the time you could be leveraging most of those policies, except for the happiness ones, the game is often either lost or in the bag.

It's great to have a new city start with 4 citizens, but man, how is that going to help me win if I get it on turn 200? ;-)

It's great that suddenly I can produce tanks really fast, but man, the AI already has bombers... etc. I think it's a Deity thing. Culture/turn is somewhat fixed, whereas tech rate speeds up on Deity. So, a player will tend to get their 6th ideology policy (their 1st 3rd-tier policy) on roughly the same turn on Prince as they do on Deity. But on Deity, the AI has Atomic Era units by then.

The irony to me though, is that if you play on Prince, sure, the ideologies come at a more appropriate time... like, you get Lightning Warfare right as you get tanks, instead of way *after* you get tanks... but the AI is so hapless that you absolutely don't need any of those ideology policies. You could easily win without them.

It's a shame. The only difficulty level the game is balanced for is too easy because the AI is poor at both combat and long-term planning.

And if they did intend for players to not take cities until ideology, then it devalues early UUs that are only good for city-taking, like Siege Towers, Battering Rams, Ballista...

Also, it devalues the Honor tree, because 2 of the policies only affect "melee", which doesn't include musketmen, mounted units, or anything beyond that. Since the only melee units are pre-Renaissance, they're much less valuable. I mean, yes you can harass your neighbor for profit, but is doing that actually the most efficient way to go about things? You might be losing trade route beakers with your closest neighbor, losing trade opportunities, etc. In order to actually make them accept a peace deal that involves them giving you a city, you need a pretty decent army, and that's not free...

But I don't think they intended to devalue early warfare. I think it's a side-effect. I think they intended to make it so you can't just start taking every city without consequences right from the beginning of the game. Their implementation has had unforeseen side effects, that's all.

EDIT: Also, as an aside, how is it better to "take" cities by nuking a city down to zero health and getting them to give you a city for peace?? Why is that zero warmonger penalty instead of "Major"? I mean, that's just silly.

 

[GoStu]

Also, it devalues the Honor tree, because 2 of the policies only affect "melee", which doesn't include musketmen, mounted units, or anything beyond that. Since the only melee units are pre-Renaissance, they're much less valuable.

Wait, what? I had no idea this was the case: I assumed that all units not using Ranged attacks counted as Melee. I guess I never really checked mid-late game to see if my production was being increased.

I've been putting together a few ideas for improving Honor to be a better tree; I'll have to make sure I clarify that it should apply all game long. I'm really not a fan of social policies with a limited-time value, save that I tolerate Liberty as the free units that early are game-defining.

 

[Cromagnus]

Wait, what? I had no idea this was the case: I assumed that all units not using Ranged attacks counted as Melee. I guess I never really checked mid-late game to see if my production was being increased.

I've been putting together a few ideas for improving Honor to be a better tree; I'll have to make sure I clarify that it should apply all game long. I'm really not a fan of social policies with a limited-time value, save that I tolerate Liberty as the free units that early are game-defining.

It doesn't even improve production of Scouts. They're a special class unto themselves.

 

[Dogmouth]

It's true that taking cities in peace deals doesn't give you any warmonger. I've done it several times without consequences.

Additionally, early warmongering to steal workers and enslave settlers has very few consequences as long as you don't take cities.

Another way to avoid the warmonger penalty is to target a civ that conquered another civ or a CS. As long as you release the conquered civ or CS, the liberation bonus will outweigh a significant amount of conquest. To give an example, in my current game I DOW'd the Huns after they conquered Ifa. I seized almost half of their cities (3/8), including their capital. I also took Ifa and liberated it, leaving the Huns with 4 garbage cities. Not a soul complained about my warmongering (settings: immortal, epic, standard size, highlands). In fact, after I clobbered Attila's military, other civs dogpiled and I got a nice diplomatic boon. I also got a diplomatic boon for my pre-war denouncement (followed by several other civs) and a post-war denouncement when the first denouncement wore off.