The forever war problem

[civistys]

I'm a long time casual (Prince) Vox Populi player and while I think the mod is getting better and better, I've had some really annoying games lately. Basically at one point or another every game devolves into a forever war -- one AI decides on conquest and never stops. I mean hours and hours of war. And that's not how I want to play Civ.

There's a related discussion about military scaling at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/military-scaling-discussion.685825/ but I'm too casual here to debate changes to game mechanics. What I want is to change the game just for myself now, so I'm looking for ideas to do that.

In my mind the crux of the issue is that units are far, far too cheap. Even if I beat the AI's attack force, it doesn't matter as even a modestly large AI can easily keep replenishing it forever (at least from medieval onwards). The AI will have tech lead (unavoidable in medieval-renaissance) and it's impossible for me to gather a force good enough to beat them decisively until very late in the game. So a mid-game war against a large enough opponent that can spew out units forever will be a defensive fight. And that fight never ends, I think they would happily go on for 6 hours if I kept building units too to counter the offensive.

Except that I get worn out much earlier. I still want to play the game, mind you, so my solution (which someone might consider slight cheating ) is to use the in-game editor mod to just delete the enemy units.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Some switch to tune down aggression? Disable conquest victory? Both seem to take away too much. Ideally I would like something such as

• Make units much, much more expensive so that a constant replenish wouldn't be possible. You get one wave and that's it
• Radically decrease army cap to make wars a small scale affair, not a two-day click marathon with carpet armies
• Have exponential war weariness that would eventually break any economy on an endless war of aggression

I'm already playing with min city distance 4 to decrease the density a bit to promote playing tall. Moving to 5 is a disaster to AI as they can't then settle efficiently. I could also just play on easier setting but the rest of the game would then be way too easy.

 

[FinMc]

It sounds like (as you said) you're being out competed on industry/tech and then getting attritioned into oblivion.

I have a few suggestions
1) start settling border cities with defense in mind. Ensure you can control the approach to your city by camping on hills, make them march through rough terrain so you can shoot them more, etc
1a) defensive roads/forts. Build these in your border areas, roads to cross rivers/get on crucial hills and forts if you can (also I hope you're using great general citadels). Cut down forests that block your archers lines of sight (leave forests that slow enemy approaches)

2) what is your army comp like? You don't need to beat them decisively, you just need to prevent them from killing units/taking cities. Archers are your DPS, on defense your #1 mission is to get them to logistics so they can shred AI.
2a) you probably need more units, you need enough to be able to cycle them off the front so that they don't die
2b) do not let units die, XP is everything
2c) beeline techs for composite bows, crossbows, etc if you are worried about being pushed.

3) this is slightly unhelpful but you should probably get better at the early game and building your economic engine. It's expected to be somewhat behind the AI but if you're fighting their knights with spearmen you've lost and no amount of tactical micro will help you.

I don't have great advice for 3) aside from try watching the openings of the handful of vox populi YouTubers to see how they start their games, they play diety so you don't need to go as hard as they do, but you'll probably learn something

 

[Stalker0]

I think FinMc is taking the wrong approach. civistys is not looking on how to play better, they simply want the AI to either be less aggressive or have fewer armies. There are probably some difficulty file changes someone could reocmmend so that the AI can build less units for example, that might be an easy adjustment.

 

[FinMc]

I think FinMc is taking the wrong approach. civistys is not looking on how to play better, they simply want the AI to either be less aggressive or have fewer armies. There are probably some difficulty file changes someone could reocmmend so that the AI can build less units for example, that might be an easy adjustment.

That's fair, I don't know how to adjust such things so that's all the advice I could offer lol

 

[civistys]

I think FinMc is taking the wrong approach. civistys is not looking on how to play better, they simply want the AI to either be less aggressive or have fewer armies. There are probably some difficulty file changes someone could reocmmend so that the AI can build less units for example, that might be an easy adjustment.

Yes, this is basically it. I want to downscale the wars, they include way too large carpets for my taste. And the issue is not just the initial carpet army, but that currently any reasonable industry allows near infinite replenishment of the said army. And I greatly prefer a peaceful play style. Obviously every game has some war, but these current wars cause too much attrition on me. It's just too much to enjoy.

I've played Civ5 some 3k+ hours so I assume I mostly know the tactics, keeping units alive, cycling them and so on but I just don't want to do that hour after hour.

 

[rkkn]

the AI has some difficulty-based production cost multiplier, so adjusting that might help. I have no idea where it is though

 

[civistys]

the AI has some difficulty-based production cost multiplier, so adjusting that might help. I have no idea where it is though

That would damage the AI competitiveness overall though, wouldn't it? I don't want to crater the AI overall production. I'm just pining for more limited scale wars, so if units are more expensive it should also apply to the human player. I'm pretty sure Vox Populi used to basically have that years ago when units were much more costly.

I'm pretty sure this is not just my experience since this has been discussed before, like in the thread I linked at the initial post. So I have to assume others don't mind the long wars that much? Maybe I'll check some YouTube plays like FinMc suggested to see how their gameplay proceeds.

Edit: For reference in my current game I'm just entering industrial era with 18 cities, military cap 74, and I have zero will left in me to manage 74+ units. Maybe 25 would be closer to optimum. Maybe I should go for smaller maps.

 

[usadefcon1]

I'm a long time casual (Prince) Vox Populi player and while I think the mod is getting better and better, I've had some really annoying games lately. Basically at one point or another every game devolves into a forever war -- one AI decides on conquest and never stops. I mean hours and hours of war. And that's not how I want to play Civ.

There's a related discussion about military scaling at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/military-scaling-discussion.685825/ but I'm too casual here to debate changes to game mechanics. What I want is to change the game just for myself now, so I'm looking for ideas to do that.

In my mind the crux of the issue is that units are far, far too cheap. Even if I beat the AI's attack force, it doesn't matter as even a modestly large AI can easily keep replenishing it forever (at least from medieval onwards). The AI will have tech lead (unavoidable in medieval-renaissance) and it's impossible for me to gather a force good enough to beat them decisively until very late in the game. So a mid-game war against a large enough opponent that can spew out units forever will be a defensive fight. And that fight never ends, I think they would happily go on for 6 hours if I kept building units too to counter the offensive.

Except that I get worn out much earlier. I still want to play the game, mind you, so my solution (which someone might consider slight cheating ) is to use the in-game editor mod to just delete the enemy units.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Some switch to tune down aggression? Disable conquest victory? Both seem to take away too much. Ideally I would like something such as

• Make units much, much more expensive so that a constant replenish wouldn't be possible. You get one wave and that's it
• Radically decrease army cap to make wars a small scale affair, not a two-day click marathon with carpet armies
• Have exponential war weariness that would eventually break any economy on an endless war of aggression

I'm already playing with min city distance 4 to decrease the density a bit to promote playing tall. Moving to 5 is a disaster to AI as they can't then settle efficiently. I could also just play on easier setting but the rest of the game would then be way too easy.

The AI knows how big your military is at all times. So the bigger your military is the less likely they are to pick a fight.

I keep an eye on my unit supply. If it's low (even if I think my military is big enough) I have every city build one military unit so the AI doesn't mess with me.

 

[andersw]

Best way is usually to have a lot of skirmishers and ranged, let the enemy enter your lands (sucks because of pillage) and pick them off, helps a lot if you road around boarder cities that you suspect to be at risk, after you killed enough either start push into enemy land or peace out.
Wars are tedious if that is not your cup of tea.
But as others said, just sitting on a bit army helps vs some agression.

 

[CppMaster]

For reference in my current game I'm just entering industrial era with 18 cities, military cap 74, and I have zero will left in me to manage 74+ units. Maybe 25 would be closer to optimum. Maybe I should go for smaller maps.

Is this Standard map size? 18 cities is a very big empire, so no wonder that wars take time.

So you just want more expensive units? That should be just some SQL changes, modders know for sure where to change that.

 

[andersw]

Y on normal size pangea low sea 18 means I've conqeuerd atleast one if not two civs and filled up dead space.
This sounds like op play large or huge map.

 

[civistys]

Y on normal size pangea low sea 18 means I've conqeuerd atleast one if not two civs and filled up dead space.
This sounds like op play large or huge map.

It's standard size pangaea, and min city distance 4 to thin it out more. One civ is gone. Yeah it's a fairly big empire, partly aggressive forward settling and partly filling up space towards the aggressive enemy to deny them the land. Without this that AI would have built those cities and would be that much bigger a threat early on, with even a larger army. So yes having a large empire here was an attempt to keep the competition smaller, but still wasn't enough.

I would like large/huge maps but then it gets even worse, you will always get a snowballing aggressive civ that fills every tile with units.

So you just want more expensive units? That should be just some SQL changes, modders know for sure where to change that.

That's one idea I had to test if it makes the game nicer for me. I'll look for the SQL files, thanks for the tip. So as far as I see the options are

• Large armies allowed, but expensive to build -> war will be over eventually as you can't rebuild the units during war
• Cheap units, but low military cap -> easy to replenish the army, but it will always stay small
• Re-introduce severe penalties for playing wide instead of encouraging it

Base Civ and early Vox Populi allowed building tall, but it's no longer possible. You have to go wide or get outcompeted. And that leads to massive armies and game devolving to tedious micromanaging of war. So don't get me wrong -- I like wide empires, and the first hour of war is fun in VP, and I like that the AI is pretty capable. But I need to scale the war down since currently I don't enjoy the game any more as I don't play it mainly for the unit micromanaging aspect.

 

[Tekamthi]

Has anyone ever made a mod that converts all/most units to temporary? With all the discussion of too many units, it would be interesting to experiment with (albeit somewhat of an extreme change, I realize). Want a big army? you must build it for each era. Perhaps game-long units, upgraded through multiple eras spanning thousands of years, should be the exception rather than the norm... its not something we see irl at all, even abstractly... no army unit that I'm aware of has been maintained from ancient times through to the present, but I often see this in-game

 

[andersw]

It's standard size pangaea, and min city distance 4 to thin it out more. One civ is gone. Yeah it's a fairly big empire, partly aggressive forward settling and partly filling up space towards the aggressive enemy to deny them the land. Without this that AI would have built those cities and would be that much bigger a threat early on, with even a larger army. So yes having a large empire here was an attempt to keep the competition smaller, but still wasn't enough.

I would like large/huge maps but then it gets even worse, you will always get a snowballing aggressive civ that fills every tile with units.


That's one idea I had to test if it makes the game nicer for me. I'll look for the SQL files, thanks for the tip. So as far as I see the options are

• Large armies allowed, but expensive to build -> war will be over eventually as you can't rebuild the units during war
• Cheap units, but low military cap -> easy to replenish the army, but it will always stay small
• Re-introduce severe penalties for playing wide instead of encouraging it

Base Civ and early Vox Populi allowed building tall, but it's no longer possible. You have to go wide or get outcompeted. And that leads to massive armies and game devolving to tedious micromanaging of war. So don't get me wrong -- I like wide empires, and the first hour of war is fun in VP, and I like that the AI is pretty capable. But I need to scale the war down since currently I don't enjoy the game any more as I don't play it mainly for the unit micromanaging aspect.

You can go tall but its harder and tall here isnt 3 cities, its more like 6 cities.

 

[Zares]

I got tired of endless wars and too many units to manage too. Besides playing tall and tradition civs, I use some of Bal's mods - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bals-gameplay-mods-naval-supply-reduced-supply-etc.674584/ - and edit them to my liking. For example, Lower Supply Cap mod reduces overall max units cap, and increases cost of them. Also, it reduces HP of cities and defensive buildings, so it's easier to capture cities, or... lose them. Before, I found sieging some single cities for 2-3 eras (Epic speed). Too long, some of the problem was low costs of units, so, like you noticed, AI could replenish them too fast. With the mod, if a city isn't able to maintain production of defensive units that can boost defense of the city, then it's easy to damage them with siege units.

You can easily comment out changes you don't like. Or change values.

I would still like some more ways to reset AIs negative attitude. So many games where they attacked me, lost their first war, and held grudge forever, so they kept attacking me whenever they could. Man, I already defeated you a few times, let me build some wonders lol. Then, to stop this from keep happening, I need to capture a few more cities, and make them vassal, even when playing a peaceful civ.

 

[msw1]

100% agree. It's fun the first few times but after playing this game for a while it becomes so boring to just fight endless defensive wars over and over again. And God help you if your opponent has Zealotry and can just spam units to throw into the meat grinder every turn.

It's like playing a chess game that has reached a draw, except where the only way to get a draw is for your opponent to agree to it, and they refuse to draw.

 

[y10]

I definitely agree with Zares that the Reduced Military Supply mod is excellent for addressing this problem.

 

[Nano_Magnus]

I had the same problem, I simple dont enjoy any more the endless wars jaja my temporaly solution is to pick all civs in the setup, and I always pick civs that dont want to be at war every single day of their lives I usually ban Zulus, Romans, Mongols, Danes, etc, that kind of civs never get tired of wars and they will betray you even if you were allied with them since the beginning of times, and it's really anoying.

Other civs would pick a fight here and there and maybe a betray, but not every time, but saddly the only way to enjoy my games lately is picking the most peacefull civs I could find, or simple play islands so the wars are not anoying, but I wish that some time in the future this agression vision of the MOD change and not every game should be islands nor every time I should pick civs

I love this MODs and currently is the only forum that I check every week, but lately it looks like is more war oriented than a developing civs game, every time it remind me more to the total wars type than the civilization type

But I still be playing the MOD even if not change anything, but it would be awesome to had the chance to play other styles, for example no long ago I talked about the impossibility right now to won the game with a single city if you not previously pick civs and map for that, and there were a lot of responses about that is not the way that I should play anyway jaja but in CIV 5 there is an option called single city challenge, and it is my favorite style of game, but right now it is almost impossible, I only made it picking pacific civs and on islands map so there is no agressive AI taking the entire map at the middle of the game.

Again best MOD ever, but slowly becoming a Total War game for me

 

[y10]

I had the same problem, I simple dont enjoy any more the endless wars jaja my temporaly solution is to pick all civs in the setup, and I always pick civs that dont want to be at war every single day of their lives I usually ban Zulus, Romans, Mongols, Danes, etc, that kind of civs never get tired of wars and they will betray you even if you were allied with them since the beginning of times, and it's really anoying.

Other civs would pick a fight here and there and maybe a betray, but not every time, but saddly the only way to enjoy my games lately is picking the most peacefull civs I could find, or simple play islands so the wars are not anoying, but I wish that some time in the future this agression vision of the MOD change and not every game should be islands nor every time I should pick civs

I love this MODs and currently is the only forum that I check every week, but lately it looks like is more war oriented than a developing civs game, every time it remind me more to the total wars type than the civilization type

But I still be playing the MOD even if not change anything, but it would be awesome to had the chance to play other styles, for example no long ago I talked about the impossibility right now to won the game with a single city if you not previously pick civs and map for that, and there were a lot of responses about that is not the way that I should play anyway jaja but in CIV 5 there is an option called single city challenge, and it is my favorite style of game, but right now it is almost impossible, I only made it picking pacific civs and on islands map so there is no agressive AI taking the entire map at the middle of the game.

Again best MOD ever, but slowly becoming a Total War game for me.

For me, if I disable the AI victory competition (available in the advanced options in the in game setup) and play on an easy difficulty, the AI tends to leave me alone if I leave it alone. If you want to play on a higher level, but still not have the AI be aggressive, I think there are some ways to adjust that AI aggressiveness, in the Difficulties XML file.

 

[azum4roll]

The AI plays to win. Why would they leave you alone and let you win easily?