Taking enemy capitals

[Josephias]

*Looks at Carbon Recapture providing 30 Favor per instance*
Gunther, shovel more Kohle into ze Hansas, we must produce our OWN favor for the war effort

But that actually makes sense IRL, it’s called greenwashing and many dictators around the world turn to philantropists to regain some of the lost favor. That you actually need to follow this same path if playing like them, altough numbers may need to be tweaked for balance, so you need to be more ‘good’ than the good peaceful player to regain the lost favor.

Additional systems might be more perfect, yet more complex too... I wrote once ago a post on how grievances balance could be used more in diplomacy (tieing in also more depht in leader’s agendas, with the more militaristic leaders, such as Monty or Gengis, looking down at you if you were too much peaceful - this is, not taking opportunities to balance grievances). But you could gain favor for being the underdog too!

 

[oSiyeza]

No. It is a valuable source of gold for an army and quite rightly stops you having a say in congress.

It seems a bit forzed. In my game yesterday, I conquered 2 of the 7 civs in the game. In ancient era. And got negative doplomacy for the rest f the game. Even when everybody leved me, I could not influence a single WC resolution on the entire game. And they are mandatory and a chore normally already.

One thing is to prevent winning a diplomatic domination. A very different one is to punish even more the domination victory. The one victory condition the game is designed to not be viable at all.

Also, taking 2 capitals has the same effect as taking 10. Basically in a standard game a -10 diplo modifier is so high, you will be always in negative numbers. So you will not be punishing at all for warmonguering beyond that.

As usual firaxis went completely wrong pushing too hard in the oposite direction. Cause they have a very particular idea on what balance means.

It seems that here most people like the change. I'm my opinion however is totally absurd, and the game is worse than before as a result.

Diplomatic penalty should scale with age. 0 in the first age; and -1 wich each new age on the game. Also there are not enough sources of diplomatic favour to ever counter a -10 penalty. And they never go away.

This is probably the less realistic diplomatic modifier on the game. And that is saying something... Conquer your neighbor the first 25 turns of the game, even if it attacks you first.... Punished for eternity in all your future World Congress meetings, diplomatic Victory will now be of the window for you, and you will be labelled as a warmonguer for life... Is ridiculous. diplomacy is not pacifism, that is not what diplomacy means.

Also I'm not aware if diplo domination was a thing. But Im sure there was a way to fix it without making the WC even more pointless.

Anyway, a final thing to think about. I never was able to win a domination Victory. FXS themselves admited that the AI to their knowledge has never achieved a domination victory, and it will never do. I dont really think making domination even less atractive is a wise decission at all.

 

[Victoria]

Basically in a standard game a -10 diplo modifier is so high, you will be always in negative numbers. So you will not be punishing at all for warmonguering beyond that.

Nope, You can still get a positive if you worked at it.

Also I'm not aware if diplo domination was a thing.

Destroy all civs but one, you become suzerain of all CS and outvote the last civ which was reduced to one city.
... and you think this change too absurd? Perhaps but much better than the absurdity when it was in place

pushing too hard

Perhaps a little and full marks for suggestions to balance a bit.
I agree taking a civ early is just natural and perhaps decay but 2 is not really playing a diplomatic game. You get a huge advantage from an additional 6-8 cities you just do not need to win a diplo. You really should be diplomatic from the start.

 

[oSiyeza]

Nope, You can still get a positive if you worked at it.

I think you can overcome a -5. But a -10 is not reasonable at all. I had a -10, with two allies, and 4 suzereined city states (I think the AI conquered a lot of them), and good relationships with all civs. While they were at war with each other, and still could not do anything with the WC.

I think this is a problem of balance, it is just overpunishing.

BTW: Another suggestion, you should get also a diplo penalty (maybe smaller) for conquering a city state. Otherwise you are just incentivating to conquer them. And to balance the AI behaviour too.

Destroy all civs but one, you become suzerain of all CS and outvote the last civ which was reduced to one city.
... and you think this change too absurd? Perhaps but much better than the absurdity when it was in place

Well, if you did that. You have efectively won the game, and had in practise won a domination victory, so it is a specific situation that does not requiere to be balanced out.

But I get what you mean. If you have conquered many cities you may have an unfair diplomatic advantage with the remaining ones. This was never a problem to me. As this is a thing the AI will never do, and is a very specific exploit that you need to do intentionally. Multiplayer maybe a different issue.

I dont think then, that the idea is absurd. I think that the execution is absurd, in that is so much outbalanced, that is indeed worse than before. In order to correct for a specific gameplay exploit. These system is now overpunishing regular playstyles, and completely breaking the WC (more).

You really should be diplomatic from the start.

With this I totally disagree. You should be able to have a flexible playstyle. This is the equivalent of funding a religion "makes all space projects 500% slower".

You get a huge advantage from an additional 6-8 cities you just do not need to win a diplo.

It is not that you need it. Is that you may want to go diplo, and there is no reason you should not be able to.

I’m totally up for balance, if conquering cities give you an unfair advantage on diplo. I’m not ok with giving you an unfair disadvantage instead.

but 2 is not really playing a diplomatic game

Yes, this is correct. I would not have a problem, If I was punished for taking two civilizations. As long as that punishment was fair. I agree in balancing that behaviour to avoid diplomatic advantages. Even if in reality that is how it works.

 

[Victoria]

and there is no reason you should not be able to.

You just wiped out 1/4 of the civs in the world,. That goes down in the history books I am afraid.
You made a decision to wipe them out because it suited you, live with it.
You may not have decided to go diplo at the start but making that decision to wipe out the second civ was not done on T30 and should be made with the understanding of the implications.

take a few cities off each neighbour Fine. But wiping them out;
1. Wins you the game whatever victory you go for
2. Removes 2 of the civs that would vote against you so that is called manipulating the VC in my books and is countered by removing 10 per turn. You can still win a diplo, but you have to work for it, it certainly should not be easy

look, I can play a diplo game and get 25-50 favour points per turn without the extra 30 each time for a promise.
5 sounds right, if you do not like it, go into your paramS and change it to 4 or 3.

we are quibbling on a fine line and the bottom line is you need to up your game if you want to kill 1/4 of the worlds countries and still be considered the nice guy.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

It seems a bit forzed. In my game yesterday, I conquered 2 of the 7 civs in the game. In ancient era. And got negative doplomacy for the rest f the game. Even when everybody leved me, I could not influence a single WC resolution on the entire game. And they are mandatory and a chore normally already.

Anyway, a final thing to think about. I never was able to win a domination Victory. FXS themselves admited that the AI to their knowledge has never achieved a domination victory, and it will never do. I dont really think making domination even less atractive is a wise decission at all.

I agree with you that the nerf went much too far. They should have just fixed the warmonger penalties instead of introducing yet another System, but I expected too much.

However it is not true that -10 means you will be at 0 for the rest of the game. In my recent game as Korea I took two capitals and it took me until about T120 to go back into the positive, which is pretty ridiculous.

What this nerf does in practice is it punishes both domination victory and violent science/culture/diplo even more.

So many players were complaining that killing your neighbor was always optimal. Well, it wasn't , and now it isn't. After lots of testing I now think that on maps with enough space you are almost always better off to just have a peaceful circlejerk and force the AI to be your best friend for the entire game.

Which is stupid -- warmongering should be rewarded, because it is a ton of work. Similiar to managing 30 cities. If those things are not rewarded, no one will pursue those strategies anymore.

The thing about AI never winning Dom is just incredibly sad and tells you a lot about the stage of this game/simulation. I look back with teary eyes on Civ 5 Shaka who often killed two of his neighbors before you even met him and snowballed into Oblivion.

You just wiped out 1/4 of the civs in the world,. That goes down in the history books I am afraid.
You made a decision to wipe them out because it suited you, live with it.
You may not have decided to go diplo at the start but making that decision to wipe out the second civ was not done on T30 and should be made with the understanding of the implications.

take a few cities off each neighbour Fine. But wiping them out;
1. Wins you the game whatever victory you go for
2. Removes 2 of the civs that would vote against you so that is called manipulating the VC in my books and is countered by removing 10 per turn. You can still win a diplo, but you have to work for it, it certainly should not be easy

look, I can play a diplo game and get 25-50 favour points per turn without the extra 30 each time for a promise.
5 sounds right, if you do not like it, go into your paramS and change it to 4 or 3.

we are quibbling on a fine line and the bottom line is you need to up your game if you want to kill 1/4 of the worlds countries and still be considered the nice guy.

All of this is correct, but honestly diplo victories are just ***** currently and I see no reason whatsoever why any aspect of this game should be balanced towards them. This change is not even all that meaningful for Diplo VC anyway since if you plan on going for Diplo, you are likely not conquering anyway, nor focussing on expanding your empire, because those are not necessary.

This is simply a nerf to Domination and Violent Culture/Science/Religion. That nerf was not needed. It might help with Diplo specifically, which is neat, but idgaf about Diplo, and neither do a lot of people. It's not a proper "Victory Condition" imo and as long as it remains this random I likely won't ever go for it. Might as well play Slot Machines instead of Civ 6.

 

[oSiyeza]

You just wiped out 1/4 of the civs in the world,. That goes down in the history books I am afraid.
You made a decision to wipe them out because it suited you, live with it.
You may not have decided to go diplo at the start but making that decision to wipe out the second civ was not done on T30 and should be made with the understanding of the implications.

take a few cities off each neighbour Fine. But wiping them out;
1. Wins you the game whatever victory you go for
2. Removes 2 of the civs that would vote against you so that is called manipulating the VC in my books and is countered by removing 10 per turn. You can still win a diplo, but you have to work for it, it certainly should not be easy

look, I can play a diplo game and get 25-50 favour points per turn without the extra 30 each time for a promise.
5 sounds right, if you do not like it, go into your paramS and change it to 4 or 3.

we are quibbling on a fine line and the bottom line is you need to up your game if you want to kill 1/4 of the worlds countries and still be considered the nice guy.

Well, the thing is, no nation is punished diplomatically for their crimes in antiquity. Nobody even asociates our nations of today with the nations of antiquity. Cause that would be insane.

However, there is indeed a line, but how far we go... Is conquering a city a "crime against humanity?" do you have a diplo penalty for "razing a capital instead of keeping it?". The romans conquered half the world, and they went down in history not as warmonguers but the opposite. Are the Spanish veted in the UN for what they did in South America?. Quite the opposite, there is a league of spanish speaking countries with special relationships. You can argue that the colonies were freed, but the original civs do not exist anymore. A military conquest does not equal in civilization as killing a country.

But regardeless, gamewise, a balance is needed, I get it.

A better balance would be:

• Ancient era, no diplomatic penalty.

• -1 diplomatic penalty per capital or city state taken or razed, -1 additional penalty for wiping out a civ (Classic era). -1 extra penalty for each subsequent era up to renaisance (-3 diplomatic penalty per capital or city state taken, -3 additional penalty for wiping out a civ in renaisance eras and later).

This would be a balanced punishment for me.

 

[oSiyeza]

However it is not true that -10 means you will be at 0 for the rest of the game. In my recent game as Korea I took two capitals and it took me until about T120 to go back into the positive, which is pretty ridiculous.

You have +1 modifier for each city state you are suzerain of, and I think +2 for each alliance. Im not aware of other modiffiers. So actually you would need to be suzerain of 8 city states and having one ally to go back to 0 (this, if the AI conquers a couple of them. means to be suzerain of almost all remaining city states).

At that point, you pretty much are too far into the game to care about doing anything diplomacy wise, but is even worse, because 0 diplomtic points per turn is still totally pointless. Though at least you get to keep the ones you win with competitions.

Probably one or two wonders have modiffiers, and I think there is very late policy that modifies this as well. Still at that time, you are out of the diplomatic game.

The worst thing is actually for me, to have to go through dozens of WC resolutions along the game you can’t do anything about. And dozens of competitions you can’t take advantage from.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Making it dependant on era (or maybe population as well?) seems a lot more meaningful that just a regular -5. Also, maybe the question of who actually declared war should be a part of the equation as well?

You have +1 modifier for each city state you are suzerain of, and I think +2 for each alliance. Im not aware of other modiffiers. So actually you would need to be suzerain of 8 city states and having one ally to go back to 0 (this, if the AI conquers a couple of them. means to be suzerain of almost all remaining city states). Which at that point, you pretty much are too far into the game to care about doing anything diplomacy wise.

I get 3+ alliances in most of my games, having 5 suzerains really is not all that difficult on standard maps. Even less so on bigger maps. I've had 6 alliances on standard maps, too.

Or does only the first alliances give you the +2? I don't know and am too lazy to check

Also, you care about diplo favor for votes. For me, diplo favor is simply currency. And currency is a lot more important, imho, than votes, which are often completely negligible. You are essentially taking away one of the most important income sources for warmongers, and warmongers already struggle with income compared to peacemongers.

 

[oSiyeza]

Also, you care about diplo favor for votes. For me, diplo favor is simply currency. And currency is a lot more important, imho, than votes, which are often completely negligible. You are essentially taking away one of the most important income sources for warmongers, and warmongers already struggle with income compared to peacemongers.

If you use it for currency, fair enough. Is like a money penalty.

Is not that I care a lot for votes. But going trough WC when you cant even vote, is what really makes me mad.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Yes, it feels very farcical for me. The entire WC mechanic might as well not exist if you take one or two capitals. Or just in general..

 

[oSiyeza]

I get 3+ alliances in most of my games, having 5 suzerains really is not all that difficult on standard maps. Even less so on bigger maps. I've had 6 alliances on standard maps, too.

Agree, but if you have a -10 penalty. Because honestly wiping out a civ early, should not be punished at all. You would need 11 to be on the positive or 9 plus one ally (8 if what you say is correct). And 1 favor per turn is still as pointless as pointless can be.

If you have 2 allies and 5 suzerained city states, you would have 1 diplomatic favor per turn best case. So still kind of pointless. And I dont think is reasonable to expect that a player can get much more than that just to mean something diplomacy wise.

 

[Casworon]

So many players were complaining that killing your neighbor was always optimal. Well, it wasn't , and now it isn't. After lots of testing I now think that on maps with enough space you are almost always better off to just have a peaceful circlejerk and force the AI to be your best friend for the entire game.

Interesting. I'm still in the camp where it's best to wipe out your neighbor early game for those sweet sweet extra cities but maybe i miscalculated this. This suggests that we are back to the era of late development Civ V where just going peaceful tall is the optimal strategy in a lot of cases. I didn't think we where entirely back there with Civ VI yet.

War and conquest has often been the best 'oh crap i'm behind' strategy since not only does it give you resources but it also takes resources away from someone else, so can be used to reel in a runaway that's running away with the game. However we now meet two problems with Civ VI. Often there isn't an AI runaway that needs to be reeled in even on Deity, and also that the AI doesn't prioritize going to war with you when you are running away with the game. So it's main function might as well not even exist. So now it's just a mini-game for people who want to do a 'domination run'.

It is very important to note that the multiplayer scene and the deity scene are two different universes. Playing against stupid opponents with lot's of bonuses and playing against smart opponents on a level playing field require very different approaches but the game has a single rule-set that applies to both. I believe domination is still the preferred multiplayer strategy but i know the multiplayer community has their own balance mod which makes the other victories easier to achieve to keep them relevant.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Interesting. I'm still in the camp where it's best to wipe out your neighbor early game for those sweet sweet extra cities but maybe i miscalculated this.This suggests that we are back to the era of late development Civ V where just going peaceful tall is the optimal strategy in a lot of cases. I didn't think we where entirely back there with Civ VI yet.

Not exactly, I think going peaceful wide, rather than peaceful tall, is the new optimal. For several reasons:

Taking out one neighbor means:
-You might not get an alliance, because everyone hates you. Means you miss 2 Eurekahs, a lot of Influence (gold).
-You will have bad trade deals, because you will have bad relations.
-You will likely be denounced by one or two Civs, which means no open borders with those Civs. Will hinder your expansion and worsen you relations (open borders improve relations!)
-You might have loyalty/amenity problems resulting in reduced yields, aka slower finishing times and weaker empire
-You will be missing an abhorrent amount of gold because you get no Diplo Favor
-You invest hammers into units instead of Settlers/Districts/Building, meaning you are behind until you actually conquer and make peace/eliminate (this is a big one!)
-You invest gold into upgrades instead of economy

Also, going peaceful wide has been made so much easier with monumentality and ancestral hall compared to vanilla.

It also comes with thousands of benefits, and I still think it is optimal to conquer your neighbor if they have a strong wonder, or really good land, or if they are simply too close to you. But it used to be optimal under any condition to kill your neighbor, that is no longer the case at all. It is only worth to conquer your neighbor under specific conditions now.

I generally think FXS never designs or balances around multiplayer. Usually multiplayer is treated like an abandoned child and the players have to fix everything themselves via mods. Also, few people play Civ 6 MP. I think the Civ 5 NQ still has more people playing than 6, which tells you a whole lot about how much they support MP. I also generally think this game should be focussed on SP, since that is where Civ shines most. Civ simply isn't "built" for MP, and I say this as someone who plays MP often. It's not Counterstrike or Age of Empires or Starcraft.

War and conquest has often been the best 'oh crap i'm behind' strategy since not only does it give you resources but it also takes resources away from someone else, so can be used to reel in a runaway that's running away with the game. However we now meet two problems with Civ VI. Often there isn't an AI runaway that needs to be reeled in even on Deity, and also that the AI doesn't prioritize going to war with you when you are running away with the game. So it's main function might as well not even exist. So now it's just a mini-game for people who want to do a 'domination run'.

Yes, that is how I see it. War is essentially meaningless and only there in order for the player to finish his game faster. You don't need to actively hurt or keep the AI down in order to win, so the only regard in which war matters is the bonuses it gives to you.

 

[Casworon]

I generally think FXS never designs or balances around multiplayer

I am actually very curious about this point. I know the single-player community complained about how powerful rock bands and death robots where. But playing a big multiplayer game with a group of friends recently i was surprised by how much their power actually brought excitement to the late-game. One of the players who was behind for almost the entire game RNG'd a few super rock bands and then shot right back up to being a legitimate contender for a culture victory because of all the tourism and gold he got from them. While not being the most 'balanced' thing in the world. It was an incredibly fun and hilarious game with the entire world suddenly turning on him and him rising up from nothing to be a serious contender for victory. I wouldn't be surprised if the game design team at-least engages in some multiplayer games with each other to spit-ball idea's, and we know the QA team plays multiplayer games with each other.

 

[oSiyeza]

Interesting. I'm still in the camp where it's best to wipe out your neighbor early game for those sweet sweet extra cities but maybe i miscalculated this. This suggests that we are back to the era of late development Civ V where just going peaceful tall is the optimal strategy in a lot of cases. I didn't think we where entirely back there with Civ VI yet.

War and conquest has often been the best 'oh crap i'm behind' strategy since not only does it give you resources but it also takes resources away from someone else, so can be used to reel in a runaway that's running away with the game. However we now meet two problems with Civ VI. Often there isn't an AI runaway that needs to be reeled in even on Deity, and also that the AI doesn't prioritize going to war with you when you are running away with the game. So it's main function might as well not even exist. So now it's just a mini-game for people who want to do a 'domination run'.

It is very important to note that the multiplayer scene and the deity scene are two different universes. Playing against stupid opponents with lot's of bonuses and playing against smart opponents on a level playing field require very different approaches but the game has a single rule-set that applies to both. I believe domination is still the preferred multiplayer strategy but i know the multiplayer community has their own balance mod which makes the other victories easier to achieve to keep them relevant.

I think other strategies need to be viable, and tall needs to be viable too.

Also AI (at least some of them) need to be more aggressive, especially late game. So it is not only about taking your neighbors, but also about avoiding your neighbors taking you.

As I said, I understand the need to balance it out, if warmonguering had diplomatic advantages. I think they went too far too soon.

I would keep this mechanic, if it was balanced properly. I dont dislike the idea, now that I understand the concerns of some people. But it needs to be balanced in a reasonable way, where you are not cut from the diplomacy from the entire game, when conquered two civs. Because context matters. And the cost should scalate with the eras and other factors, be zero for the first era, includde razed cities and taken city states, and be a full fleshed mechanic instead of the careless lazy thing it is now.

I am actually very curious about this point. I know the single-player community complained about how powerful rock bands and death robots where. But playing a big multiplayer game with a group of friends recently i was surprised by how much their power actually brought excitement to the late-game. One of the players who was behind for almost the entire game RNG'd a few super rock bands and then shot right back up to being a legitimate contender for a culture victory because of all the tourism and gold he got from them. While not being the most 'balanced' thing in the world. It was an incredibly fun and hilarious game with the entire world suddenly turning on him and him rising up from nothing to be a serious contender for victory. I wouldn't be surprised if the game design team at-least engages in some multiplayer games with each other to spit-ball idea's, and we know the QA team plays multiplayer games with each other.

I agree with this, sometimes balance means less fun. And I wish many things like the WC or the spy game were less balanced and more interesting.

However, I dont agree In FXS not balancing for multiplayer. If anything they do it too much. Only on late additions they seemed to deviate from a genereal "every mechanic has to be balanced, so nothing should really have a big impact" philosophy.

EDIT: Just joined the two replies.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't know if these changes were specifically for MP; but me personally I really appreciate Rock Bands being a part of this game. I hate the "click next turn until win" kind of culture victory

However, I dont agree In FXS not balancing for multiplayer. If anything they do it too much. Only on late additions they seemed to deviate from a genereal "every mechanic has to be balanced, so nothing should really have a big impact" philosophy.

EDIT: Just joined the two replies.

What balance changes did they do exclusively for MP, besides Rock Bands and GDR? I can't really think of any, but I am not the most avid patch note reader.

 

[oSiyeza]

I don't know if these changes were specifically for MP; but me personally I really appreciate Rock Bands being a part of this game. I hate the "click next turn until win" kind of culture victory



What balance changes did they do exclusively for MP, besides Rock Bands and GDR? I can't really think of any, but I am not the most avid patch note reader.

I mean, Im unaware of why they do what they do, so this is me just thinking. But for example:

Tthe entire WC seems to be balanced so no resolution can give any player any real advantage. Also it seems like the AI is designed to be a flavour presence and not take away the agency of the human players, disasters are not really capable of setting back any player in any way... and so on.

I was thinking on a design philosophy more than specific balance changes.

If I was designing the game I would fill it with funny unbalanced things, such as being capable to go with your spy to a missile silo of a rival and fire it into another nation so they blame the civ that launched it instead of you.

 

[Weraptor]

How about better scaling for number of taken capitals? A formula like 5x-3+x
1 taken ... -3 DF
2 taken ... -9 DF
3 taken ... -15 DF
4 taken ... -21 DF
5 taken ... -27 DF

It's very similar but the scaling is there.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I mean, Im unaware of why they do what they do, so this is me just thinking. But for example:

Tthe entire WC seems to be balanced so no resolution can give any player any real advantage. Also it seems like the AI is designed to be a flavour presence and not take away the agency of the human players, disasters are not really capable of setting back any player in any way... and so on.

Some really good points there. I had been blinded, but now I see..

If the AI being a "flavour presence" is an active design decision, not just mere incompetence, that just makes me more angry