Taking enemy capitals

[Casworon]

Also WC being pointless is not a very good reason for this mechanic. The WC should not be pointless, and even if it is, and no player should have to suffer the chore of going trough all WC votings without being able to vote.

This i agree with. But then we are looking at multiple area's that need reworking. I agree it is a bit of a band-aid solution but i don't expect to see any major reworking of game mechanics at this point in Civ VI's lifetime, and sadly since it looks likely we aren't going to be getting the DLL i don't think we can look forward to a massive community patch which will rework it.

 

[oSiyeza]

I don't think it should decay either, but it could have a smooth increase, being more damaging if you capture multiple capitals than if you capture only one or two. The problem that this penalty intends to correct only exists if you eliminate several Civs. People that like to conquer a Civ or two isn't what is being targeted by this change, so they shouldn't be punished as heavily.

Also should be consistent with the other game systems, and not ignore casus belli, who started the war or in what era the war was.

This i agree with. But then we are looking at multiple area's that need reworking. I agree it is a bit of a band-aid solution but i don't expect to see any major reworking of game mechanics at this point in Civ VI's lifetime, and sadly since it looks likely we aren't going to be getting the DLL i don't think we can look forward to a massive community patch which will rework it.

You are sadly right. But I think is reasonable to expect this especific mechanic to be tuned so is not as stupid and shallow as it is. And punish the things it is supposed to punish in a balanced way.

 

[DWilson]

We disagree that it's imbalanced, and particularly not stupid and shallow. It's a relatively small price for the reward of additional conquering. Furthermore, you've completely disregarded suggestions around it.

You keep mentioning not being able to vote- you know the first vote is free, right? And that in ties, it usually seems to go in favor of the human?

I don't think the votes are meaningless, even if they are often less impactful than people would like, but you can still have a say. On the turns of the World Congress (really a between turns moment), you can buy as much favor as you like by trading with the AI to allow yourself however many votes you think you need.

People often argue that DF is overvalued by the AI, but I don't agree. If it were cheaper, the human could simply buy it all off the AI. As is, if you conquer and hold a couple capital cities you have to buy/bribe your votes, which means you should either play with what you have or build up an economy that allows you to do what you want.

It creates meaningful choices and fallout based on early decision, and I fully reject that this is a bad thing.

 

[leandrombraz]

And that in ties, it usually seems to go in favor of the human?

Ties go to whoever spent the highest amount of their own favors. If both Dido and Eleanor give 2 votes (10 favors), while Dido has 30 favors and Eleanor 50, Dido will win because she spent 1/3 of her favors, while Eleanor spent 1/5. There's no bias in favor of the human player.

 

[DWilson]

Ties go to whoever spent the highest amount of their own favors. If both Dido and Eleanor give 2 votes (10 favors), while Dido has 30 favors and Eleanor 50, Dido will win because she spent 1/3 of her favors, while Eleanor spent 1/5. There's no bias in favor of the human player.

If you spend the same amount of DF, there is. It's a small bonus, but it exists. I think it may just go with whatever the first voter choose, which by default is the human

 

[oSiyeza]

We disagree that it's imbalanced, and particularly not stupid and shallow. It's a relatively small price for the reward of additional conquering. Furthermore, you've completely disregarded suggestions around it.

You keep mentioning not being able to vote- you know the first vote is free, right? And that in ties, it usually seems to go in favor of the human?

I don't think the votes are meaningless, even if they are often less impactful than people would like, but you can still have a say. On the turns of the World Congress (really a between turns moment), you can buy as much favor as you like by trading with the AI to allow yourself however many votes you think you need.

People often argue that DF is overvalued by the AI, but I don't agree. If it were cheaper, the human could simply buy it all off the AI. As is, if you conquer and hold a couple capital cities you have to buy/bribe your votes, which means you should either play with what you have or build up an economy that allows you to do what you want.

It creates meaningful choices and fallout based on early decision, and I fully reject that this is a bad thing.

• Yes the first vote is free, but you will not be able to influence any outcome of any voting. Which is especially important when is about giving victory points. You are also prevented from adding any discussion to the WC for the remaining of the game. Is also turns all competitions meaningless. So in fact once you conquer a capital, the game is pushing you to go completely military.
  
• Having a permanent negative modifier for war in ancient age does not make any sense, and goes against the design on the game, and coes in contradiction with the grievances system.
• You get more punished the earlier you conquer a capital. When the warmonger penalties are nonexistent. Which again, contradicts the design of the game.
• You get equally punished by conquering 3 civs or 5, or 10.
• Conquering more than one civ in practice removes you from the DV entirely. Without any effective mean to contrarrest this effect.
• The penalty ignores the casus belli and who declared the war.
• The prize you pay for conquering a capital early game is more than 1000 DF, which is indeed more than the production cost of an early city. When you are not supposed to be penalyzed at all for a war in ancient age.

How is this a good balance? This does not create any choice. It pushes you to be either completely pacifist or completely ignore diplomacy, WC, emergencies and competitions.

you've completely disregarded suggestions around it.

I did not, did you read what I said?. I actually apreciated the suggestions that were made and proposed some ideas of my own.

 

[DWilson]

Yes the first vote is free, but you are not able to influence any outcome of any voting. Which is especially important when is about giving victory points. You are also prevented from adding any discussion to the WC for the remaining of the game. Is also turns all competitions meaningless

I already responded to this- you can buy however much DF you want and can vote freely. I also think you're playing inefficiently if you think you have to force the votes. A big tactic to DV is to determine how the AI will vote, and then vote accordingly. Voting for other civs' interests yields DVP. Your job is to figure out how to do so. And it absolutely doesn't make competitions meaningless (if anything it makes them vital for their DVP and DF without DF costs for you, outside of maybe 30 DF to propose them)

Conquering more than one civ in practice removes you from the DV entirely. Without any effective mean to contrarrest this effec

No, it doesn't. There are many ways to get DVP, and most of them don't require that you possess the most DF- you just need to play strategically. I addressed this in a previous post, and you seem to have ignored it. And even if that weren't true, you can buy DF.

The penalty ignores the casus belli and who declared the war.

Sure, because it's not about grievances, it's about holding a foreign entities capital, which you do not need to do.

The prize you pay for conquering a capital early game imore than 1000 DF. When you are not supposed to be penalyzed at all for a war in ancient age.

And a capital city over the course of the game, as well as an AI without one, is worth significantly more than 1000DF. Including worth more than the investment spent taking it. As to not being penalized, you're not generating additional international grievances, your getting a separate diplomatic penalty for holding a capital.

How is this a good balance? This does not create any choice. It forces you to bei either completely pacifist or completely ignore diplomacy, WC, emergencies

How are you playing the game? By your own posts, taking one capital is not overwhelming or insurmountable. How is that completely pacifist? You're also absolutely not forced to ignore diplomacy (which would be very dumb, given that it's easy to befriend and ally the AI once you have a comparable empire to theirs or better). Emergencies and competitions are almost all completely unaffected (except the Nobel Peace Prize, but honestly come on), and if you're struggling to get them proposed, again, you simply need to bribe the AI. And the WC is more challenging, but still completely doable if you invest the effort in playing it.

If you don't want to respond and insist on repeating the same comments, that's fine. But I'll leave it here, as I believe I have adequately refuted your hyperbolic claims. The balance is fine, and the change is a good one.

 

[Victoria]

warmongering should be rewarded, because it is a ton of work

really? You don’t think the cities are enough reward?

All of this is correct, but honestly diplo victories are just ***** currently

100% agree, hence why I cannot be bothered going on. Think the nerf is great

 

[oSiyeza]

I already responded to this- you can buy however much DF you want and can vote freely. I also think you're playing inefficiently if you think you have to force the votes. A big tactic to DV is to determine how the AI will vote, and then vote accordingly. Voting for other civs' interests yields DVP. Your job is to figure out how to do so. And it absolutely doesn't make competitions meaningless (if anything it makes them vital for their DVP and DF without DF costs for you, outside of maybe 30 DF to propose them)


No, it doesn't. There are many ways to get DVP, and most of them don't require that you possess the most DF- you just need to play strategically. I addressed this in a previous post, and you seem to have ignored it. And even if that weren't true, you can buy DF.


Sure, because it's not about grievances, it's about holding a foreign entities capital, which you do not need to do.


And a capital city over the course of the game, as well as an AI without one, is worth significantly more than 1000DF. Including worth more than the investment spent taking it. As to not being penalized, you're not generating additional international grievances, your getting a separate diplomatic penalty for holding a capital.


How are you playing the game? By your own posts, taking one capital is not overwhelming or insurmountable. How is that completely pacifist? You're also absolutely not forced to ignore diplomacy (which would be very dumb, given that it's easy to befriend and ally the AI once you have a comparable empire to theirs or better). Emergencies and competitions are almost all completely unaffected (except the Nobel Peace Prize, but honestly come on), and if you're struggling to get them proposed, again, you simply need to bribe the AI. And the WC is more challenging, but still completely doable if you invest the effort in playing it.

If you don't want to respond and insist on repeating the same comments, that's fine. But I'll leave it here, as I believe I have adequately refuted your hyperbolic claims. The balance is fine, and the change is a good one.

You are entiled to your ideas. But your reasons why you think it is balanced do not make it so.

Having 0 diplomatic favours for the entire game and having to brive the AI for some whenever a WC is about to happen is far more expensive than what you earn by conquering an early civ and is not a balanced way to play.

You can call me hyperbolic, and say I disregard all suggestions that have been made all you want. This is simply a lie.

Taking one capital in ancient era should not be punished at all. And FXS made the intentional decision to not have grievances because of it. Saying that the system is perfectly balanced is obviously incorrect. Punishing a style of gameplay far more than it is reasonable is not how balance works.

I actually agreed with the intent of the changes and we discussed many ways to make it fair. Talking in absolutes and rejecting any change that does not fit your playstyle is totally not helpful.

Think the nerf is great

The nerf is a good idea. But i think it should be tuned down and adjusted, either for the number of capitals you conquer, for the era you are in, the population of the city or for the circunstances of the war. Also the mechanic could include a penalty for wiping out a civ, razing cities, conquering city states, and have some more positive modifiers to reward friendly choices or wining competitions or emergencies.

I dont think it is unreasonable at all, to say that the current implementation is shallow and needs more balance.

he idea is to stop Dom being used for other means.

With this I fully agree now. I just think the current implementation prevents the DV path for players that do not have a pacifist playstyle.

A prize comparision, for the people who thinks that you can easily brive the AI to get the points you need for voting and play normally the DV. You conquer an enemy capital early game (turn 50). It costs you - 5DF per turn for the rest of the game. This could be around 1000 DF points for the entire game. AI values 1 DF as 1 GPT, so this would equal to a 30000 gold penalty.

Should be hard to agree that this is a fair trade.

 

[UWHabs]

I wouldn't mind if that penalty slowly degraded over time. Perhaps each era it drops by 1? So conquer a civ in the classical era and it's -5 for the rest of the current era, -4 for the medieval, -3 for renaissance, etc... That would at least somewhat let things fade over time, but would still essentially always be present until you get to the future era.

But it's enough of a penalty that I have to think twice sometimes. Although on the flipside, if I take out one civ early, I'm already in the negatives for favor, so the other part of me just says that I may as well keep conquering since the difference between -3 and -13 is pretty marginal...

 

[oSiyeza]

I wouldn't mind if that penalty slowly degraded over time. Perhaps each era it drops by 1? So conquer a civ in the classical era and it's -5 for the rest of the current era, -4 for the medieval, -3 for renaissance, etc... That would at least somewhat let things fade over time, but would still essentially always be present until you get to the future era.

But it's enough of a penalty that I have to think twice sometimes. Although on the flipside, if I take out one civ early, I'm already in the negatives for favor, so the other part of me just says that I may as well keep conquering since the difference between -3 and -13 is pretty marginal...

Agree with your idea and your comment. If in adition, the ancient era does not get the penalty, I think your idea will work without that early problem.

Also, it is worth thinking, how this affects an AI that manages to conquer a capital. I dont think they would consider the penalty at all. And probably will make them very easy to exploit, selling them DF they will not be able to use anyway.

 

[kaspergm]

Too early to say if it's balanced or not, but in my current game, where I was not even going for domination, I conquered the Nubian capital very early because she DoW'ed me, and I've been sitting on a big solid 0 in diplomatic favor all the way up to and including the renaissance so far - so yeah, it's pretty damaging in this case.

 

[oSiyeza]

Too early to say if it's balanced or not, but in my current game, where I was not even going for domination, I conquered the Nubian capital very early because she DoW'ed me, and I've been sitting on a big solid 0 in diplomatic favor all the way up to and including the renaissance so far - so yeah, it's pretty damaging in this case.

That was my experience. I was playing the apocalypse mode. So is worth noting that I could also not get any Aid for disasters. I then conquered another capital and won a SV at the end while befriending all other civs. I got 0 diplomatic favor for the entire game.

 

[Sostratus]

It costs you - 5DF per turn for the rest of the game. This could be around 1000 DF points for the entire game. AI values 1 DF as 1 GPT, so this would equal to a 30000 gold penalty.

Should be hard to agree that this is a fair trade.

Well, you end up in practice sitting at 0 most of the time, you don’t go negative. Nor does having 0 diplomatic favor incur any other cost on your empire - but the biggest disconnect is that DF is only used for the world congress and selling. You are still part of the WC and gain all the benefits it passes, you can still win all the competitions etc. This isn’t stellaris where they can actually sanction you hard enough to ruin your life.

Now, if being negative on the ol’ diplo made my people unhappy, or something, that would be another story.

Of course, you can’t exactly pivot out of holding an enemy capital, especially if you’ve wiped them out. So in that sense, going domination locking you out of diplo is a little harsher than something like, totally ignoring holy sites and religion early to campus spam and then pivoting into religion victory. But when you go for dom, you are implicitly committing to an eventual world wide invasion of every country so from that perspective, once you take a capital the rest is waiting for you to “finish the job.”

 

[leandrombraz]

I wouldn't mind if that penalty slowly degraded over time. Perhaps each era it drops by 1? So conquer a civ in the classical era and it's -5 for the rest of the current era, -4 for the medieval, -3 for renaissance, etc... That would at least somewhat let things fade over time, but would still essentially always be present until you get to the future era.

But it's enough of a penalty that I have to think twice sometimes. Although on the flipside, if I take out one civ early, I'm already in the negatives for favor, so the other part of me just says that I may as well keep conquering since the difference between -3 and -13 is pretty marginal...

If it fades over time, it will fail on its main objective: to prevent people from winning a diplo victory by conquering everyone. As long as the player can get more favors than the last remaining AI, he can win the diplo vote.

 

[Thormodr]

The penalty doesn't make logical sense, IMHO.

I can see why they did it for a anti warmongering penalty. That's fine.

But to limit my world influence? I can't effectively vote on world affairs because my empire is huge?

I'd prefer the penalty to be -4 or even -3. That way it is tough to overcome but not impossible.

 

[oSiyeza]

Well, you end up in practice sitting at 0 most of the time, you don’t go negative. Nor does having 0 diplomatic favor incur any other cost on your empire - but the biggest disconnect is that DF is only used for the world congress and selling. You are still part of the WC and gain all the benefits it passes, you can still win all the competitions etc. This isn’t stellaris where they can actually sanction you hard enough to ruin your life.

Now, if being negative on the ol’ diplo made my people unhappy, or something, that would be another story.

Of course, you can’t exactly pivot out of holding an enemy capital, especially if you’ve wiped them out. So in that sense, going domination locking you out of diplo is a little harsher than something like, totally ignoring holy sites and religion early to campus spam and then pivoting into religion victory. But when you go for dom, you are implicitly committing to an eventual world wide invasion of every country so from that perspective, once you take a capital the rest is waiting for you to “finish the job.”

I disagree, diplomacy should not be all all or nothing thing. And you can actually conquer one or two civs, and do not go for a world wide invasion of every country. This would imply war / diplomacy being mutually exclusive paths. I understand some players may see it this way. But I honeslty like a flexible play style. I dont think civ would benefit for playing like this, with commiting to a type of victory so hard. I like to think that you are able to play like you roleplay an empire. And you are not hurting you SV everytime you create a holy site.

The problem is also that WC is not specific for DV. Is a mechanic you have to use. And if you are forced to endure it as a chore, because you are locked from it very early. I dont think that works for the game.

If it fades over time, it will fail on its main objective: to prevent people from winning a diplo victory by conquering everyone. As long as the player can get more favors than the last remaining AI, he can win the diplo vote.

I also think this is not the case. I did not want to conquer everybody or be a warmonger. As I said, should be possible to have some wars to expand early your empire and end peacefully. Progressing to a victory makes harder to get other victories because the resources you put into it, not because the game hard locks you into any path.

The method of UHHabs will work as long as you cannot abuse the military to get more points than them. If you conquer all civs but one. That will put yourself into a -30DF points per turn that you will never be able to recover from, even if the penalty goes down 1DF per era.

I don’t understand. framing this as it has to be an all or nothing thing. Balance means precisely punishing war diplomatically, but not as hard as you are forced into a particular playstyle.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

really? You don’t think the cities are enough reward?

Well yes, cities, pillage yields and peace treaties actually. They're definitely enough reward. But there is an amount of penalties that can render that reward smaller than the pay-off, and we're getting very close to that. Getting 5 Diplo favor every turn is massive for the economy. Units are already a heavy investment if you want to finish games fast. I ain't asking for better rewards for wamongering, the rewards are fine, honestly a little too strong still in the case of pillaging/peace treaties. But I don't think it should be penalized this way. I think amenities, loyalty and relations to other Civs should suffer from warmongering. Currently the penalty for taking cities is just crippling your own economy and accepting you will never, ever vote on the WC. There's better ways to implement a warmonger penalty than that.

 

[Sostratus]

just crippling your own economy

Is it really that crippling?
Even at 1 favor for 2 or 3gpt, your favor income in isolation is quite small. You get 1/2/3/4 favor per turn from government level, 1 per suze, and a couple from alliances although those come later.
Assuming this is early war, is giving up 15 gpt really that substantial in the context of taking over what is likely 2-4 cities? You can sell of any transient favor gain from promises and stuff that turn if needed. I don't really actively market my favor so I'm not super aware of how integral it is to some playstyles.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Is it really that crippling?
Even at 1 favor for 2 or 3gpt, your favor income in isolation is quite small. You get 1/2/3/4 favor per turn from government level, 1 per suze, and a couple from alliances although those come later.
Assuming this is early war, is giving up 15 gpt really that substantial in the context of taking over what is likely 2-4 cities? You can sell of any transient favor gain from promises and stuff that turn if needed. I don't really actively market my favor so I'm not super aware of how integral it is to some playstyles.

As long as the 1 GPT "bug" is still in the game, it really is. Especially when maintaining an army.

Also, it's not 15 GPT total, it's much more. Let's say you are sitting at 5 favor/turn and you take a cap. Every single turn you would have gotten 5 Diplo favor, which translates into 5 GPT. In theory, you are missing out on 25GPT after 5 turns. 100GPT after 20 turns. Diplo favor and strategics are the reason why people sometimes sit at 300GPT on T100. Of course this is not possible in a real game since you cannot always get an AI to be at0 bulk and have GPT, but it's pretty close.

One good thing: All the trading was super tedious anyway, I hated it. My absolute least favorite part about playing fast.