Too often: No counter-action except declaring war

[beginner_]

Diplomacy is much too limited. Many actions from the AI you just have to either accept or declare war on them. There is no middle-ground really. If you ask the AI to stop spreading religion or spying on you, chances are they will simply ignore you. Then you can denounce them but that doesn't help to undo their actions either and in general is rather useless except making them more pissed at you and more likely to ignore your requests.

The new punishment for using inquisitors just makes this worse as AI can spread their religion and your counter-measure just gets very painful. All you can to it take it or declare war or on higher levels simply don't even try to get a religion.

The issue with the too many defensive pacts adds to this problem as it makes declaring war very costly.

If the AI keeps stealing your land with citadels, there is no counter due to the 1 tile rule between citadels. The first one placing a citadel wins. Only counter is war (or Autocracy Lebensraum policy but that is way too late and not your ideology of choice for peaceful victory). It can't be that a very cheap action (1 great general) doesn't have a counter besides DOW and taking the city.

In fact in general the only real counter is war, AI does the same. Once you get too far ahead they all start DOW you and you will suffer huge war weariness penalties. Therefore it's often simply easiest to do authority & Autocracy and don't even plan for a peaceful game. Once too far ahead, they simply hate you regardless of any diplomacy actions you do. Just tried a peaceful game. Doesn't work. Both neighbors initial friendly at some point declared war on me. Then I take 1 or 2 of their cities and everyone calls me the bad guy.

There needs to be some counter actions with tooth. Denouncing is useless. Control of world congress too much to ask. Some kind of new ground unit, an actual "special forces" unit that can enter enemy lands in peace time and do mission like destroying citadels. Or being able to capture missionaries/prophets in your own land (or outside) without DOW. There could be a similar mechanism to spies. in some cases the civ know who did the action (and can act up on that info) or sometimes thew civ doesn't know. Yeah that would be quiet complex I assume but pretty cool.

A simpler solution for the defensive pact issue would be that AIs enter peace negotiations or offer it directly after max 10 turns if they entered the war under a defensive pact. The problem is that far away AIs rarely offer peace because you are not hurting them and not taking their cities.

Yet another solution is to simply reduce war weariness by default (not very sophisticated) or make it depend more on the actions of the AI. If an AI kept spreading their religion and refused to stop, your war weariness will be reduced. AI stole land? war weariness reduced a lot because your people will be behind you. Also denouncing before DOW should also reduce war weariness (maybe already the case? no idea) while declaring surprise war for no obvious reason to a friendly civ could increase war weariness.

Currently I feel it's best to plan for war from the beginning even if you ultimately aren't going conquest victory. War is a good option to cripple the AI while expanding and getting stronger. Hence making every game very similar or needlessly complicated.

Thoughts?

 

[CppMaster]

Yet another solution is to simply reduce war weariness by default (not very sophisticated) or make it depend more on the actions of the AI. If an AI kept spreading their religion and refused to stop, your war weariness will be reduced. AI stole land? war weariness reduced a lot because your people will be behind you. Also denouncing before DOW should also reduce war weariness (maybe already the case? no idea) while declaring surprise war for no obvious reason to a friendly civ could increase war weariness

I like the idea of Causus Belli from Civ6 that you have different reasons to go for a war that reduce diplomatic penalty. They could reduce gaining war weariness in this mod, because soldiers would be more motivated to fight.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I agree with your sentiment, but not all of your examples.

Denouncing is useless. Control of world congress too much to ask.

Control of world congress on your own is very difficult, but you don't need to be in control to sanction someone - all you need is enough people who also dislike them. If an AI is using great generals to steal land from all their neighbours, they're going to make a lot of enemies.

Denouncing is actually a lot more useful when used in moderation. It's not intuitive of course, you would think that denouncing multiple people should have more effect than dencouncing, but it tends to just help AIs you denounce form a block against you. Whereas I find if I limit my denouncement to 1 or 2 and be friendly to others (even if they do things that make my life difficult) I have a much easier time getting convincing the rest of the world to dislike the person or people I dislike the most.

I do like the idea of land theft, spying or similar things reducing war weariness somewhat because your people will be behind you in the fight though .

 

[Delvemor]

I might just have been lucky but usually when an AI tries to spread their religion to me the first time they do it before defensive pacts are a thing. In my experience, warning them is never enough. But declaring war lets you spread your own religion to your cities and dissuade the AIs from trying again once the peace treaty is signed. About the land stealing, there is not much to do but when it happens to me the AI responsible of it is very likely to declare war on me anyway.

Once you get too far ahead they all start DOW you and you will suffer huge war weariness penalties. Therefore it's often simply easiest to do authority & Autocracy and don't even plan for a peaceful game.

I disagree. If all you do is defend your lands and protect your trade routes (when possible) with very few losses war weariness is perfectly manageable. A "peaceful game" is not really a thing on higher difficulties, but at the same time you don't NEED Authority and Autocracy, all you need is being able to defend yourself, you don't need to conquer a lot if at all.

The problem is that far away AIs rarely offer peace because you are not hurting them and not taking their cities.

Not true. They will offer peace if neither of you have any warscore, which is very often the case.


I really like the idea of modifying war weariness or diplomatic penalty from a war according to prior actions made by the AIs or the player. So basically I agree with this suggestion but kind of disagree with pretty much everything else.

Currently I feel it's best to plan for war from the beginning even if you ultimately aren't going conquest victory.

To be fair it was always the case, will always be. It's the nature of the game, I mean you have an empire right ?

Hence making every game very similar or needlessly complicated.

Nothing would make every game more similar than being able to play peacefully the whole time, getting away with most wonders, not having to protect my borders diligently, not having to stop a runaway once in a while. Having to deal with fierce competition is the point of the game. I don't disagree with having more options but let's face it, war is unavoidable.

 

[Cokolwiek]

So, many of your points are perfectly valid. However I do think that the developers have already a lot on their hands and in any case, diplomacy has never been so clear and realistic as now. I remember how it was when I started playing VP, and due to mostly @Recursive changes it became even more realistic and enjoyable throughout the last year. It is also the problem of modding the interface in the game. And I wouldn't say most of this is that bad to be honest.

Also, it just simulates a real life. Sometimes you can't do a thing apart from denouncement and sanctions. And you shouldn't go to war. Ukraine lost Crimea and parts of developed, coal-rich Donbass borderlands to Russia. China was violating human rights, constructing illegal artificial islands and military bases throughout the disputed South China Sea region, and stealing intellectual property of U.S. companies for decades now. Saudi Arabia continues totalitarian measures against many of its citizens. Who gives? Some of those issues propelled the U.N. sanctions but that's all. States have different interests and cannot abruptly sever ties or declare war over such issues, unless you want to multiply that suffering and injustice.

 

[JamesNinelives]

States have different interests and cannot abruptly sever ties or declare war over such issues, unless you want to multiply that suffering and injustice.

Unless you are already dominating the world either by military, scientific, or diplomatic means . Which... honestly I'm glad is not the case IRL, at least not to the point that there is one obvious runaway. I know people IRL who support either a strong USA or a strong China leading the rest to a bright future. But my Civ instincts suggest that might not go so well for smaller nations :|.

 

[Vhozite]

I’m a big fan of the war weariness reduction based on certain actions.

Also, while I don’t agree with everything OP says, I do think citadels could do with a discussion. Tile stealing is extremely powerful and (afaik) the fact that there is basically no good counterplay to them is problematic imo.

Are people ok with the current state of citadels and tile stealing? I don’t want to derail this thread too much, but personally if tile stealing in its current state was toggleable id turn it off.

 

[Recursive]

Diplomacy is much too limited. Many actions from the AI you just have to either accept or declare war on them. There is no middle-ground really. If you ask the AI to stop spreading religion or spying on you, chances are they will simply ignore you. Then you can denounce them but that doesn't help to undo their actions either and in general is rather useless except making them more pissed at you and more likely to ignore your requests.

The new punishment for using inquisitors just makes this worse as AI can spread their religion and your counter-measure just gets very painful. All you can to it take it or declare war or on higher levels simply don't even try to get a religion.

The issue with the too many defensive pacts adds to this problem as it makes declaring war very costly.

If the AI keeps stealing your land with citadels, there is no counter due to the 1 tile rule between citadels. The first one placing a citadel wins. Only counter is war (or Autocracy Lebensraum policy but that is way too late and not your ideology of choice for peaceful victory). It can't be that a very cheap action (1 great general) doesn't have a counter besides DOW and taking the city.

In fact in general the only real counter is war, AI does the same. Once you get too far ahead they all start DOW you and you will suffer huge war weariness penalties. Therefore it's often simply easiest to do authority & Autocracy and don't even plan for a peaceful game. Once too far ahead, they simply hate you regardless of any diplomacy actions you do. Just tried a peaceful game. Doesn't work. Both neighbors initial friendly at some point declared war on me. Then I take 1 or 2 of their cities and everyone calls me the bad guy.

There needs to be some counter actions with tooth. Denouncing is useless. Control of world congress too much to ask. Some kind of new ground unit, an actual "special forces" unit that can enter enemy lands in peace time and do mission like destroying citadels. Or being able to capture missionaries/prophets in your own land (or outside) without DOW. There could be a similar mechanism to spies. in some cases the civ know who did the action (and can act up on that info) or sometimes thew civ doesn't know. Yeah that would be quiet complex I assume but pretty cool.

A simpler solution for the defensive pact issue would be that AIs enter peace negotiations or offer it directly after max 10 turns if they entered the war under a defensive pact. The problem is that far away AIs rarely offer peace because you are not hurting them and not taking their cities.

Yet another solution is to simply reduce war weariness by default (not very sophisticated) or make it depend more on the actions of the AI. If an AI kept spreading their religion and refused to stop, your war weariness will be reduced. AI stole land? war weariness reduced a lot because your people will be behind you. Also denouncing before DOW should also reduce war weariness (maybe already the case? no idea) while declaring surprise war for no obvious reason to a friendly civ could increase war weariness.

Currently I feel it's best to plan for war from the beginning even if you ultimately aren't going conquest victory. War is a good option to cripple the AI while expanding and getting stronger. Hence making every game very similar or needlessly complicated.

Thoughts?

War is an integral part of civ. Not planning on changing this. However, in the major rework of the diplomacy AI I'm working on, I aim to add some new options to enrich diplomacy in addition to fixing the existing logic. In addition to reworking interactions and dialogue, I've considered having agreements to stop doing things be tradeable (although anything like that is still a long way off).

The Defensive Pact issue should be a bit better in the next version now that I've fixed a bug and modified AI logic when considering DPs. There's an ongoing discussion about whether they should be limited in other ways.

I do think you're underestimating the power of denouncements and alliance building, however. As far as the World Congress, you're not intended to be able to control the entire thing on your own unless you're truly dominant, but as James pointed out, you can get other civs with common interests to assist you in passing a proposal.

RE: Wars extending for too long, there's a known issue with this I'm working on addressing. War weariness balance is a separate discussion from diplomacy, however.

I like the idea of Causus Belli from Civ6 that you have different reasons to go for a war that reduce diplomatic penalty. They could reduce gaining war weariness in this mod, because soldiers would be more motivated to fight.

Considering implementing this as part of my rework, although that would be difficult.

So, many of your points are perfectly valid. However I do think that the developers have already a lot on their hands and in any case, diplomacy has never been so clear and realistic as now. I remember how it was when I started playing VP, and due to mostly @Recursive changes it became even more realistic and enjoyable throughout the last year. It is also the problem of modding the interface in the game. And I wouldn't say most of this is that bad to be honest.

Also, it just simulates a real life. Sometimes you can't do a thing apart from denouncement and sanctions. And you shouldn't go to war. Ukraine lost Crimea and parts of developed, coal-rich Donbass borderlands to Russia. China was violating human rights, constructing illegal artificial islands and military bases throughout the disputed South China Sea region, and stealing intellectual property of U.S. companies for decades now. Saudi Arabia continues totalitarian measures against many of its citizens. Who gives? Some of those issues propelled the U.N. sanctions but that's all. States have different interests and cannot abruptly sever ties or declare war over such issues, unless you want to multiply that suffering and injustice.

China is torturing political dissidents, aggressively claiming land from other nations, and worst of all...STEALING OUR COPYRIGHT! How dare they! Sorry, I just found that funny

I agree with this argument, you will have to tolerate certain problems and provocations if you want to preserve your diplomatic relationships. Just a fact of how diplomacy works (and life!) - but I do hope to find a way to make this more enjoyable as a mechanic.

Unless you are already dominating the world either by military, scientific, or diplomatic means . Which... honestly I'm glad is not the case IRL, at least not to the point that there is one obvious runaway. I know people IRL who support either a strong USA or a strong China leading the rest to a bright future. But my Civ instincts suggest that might not go so well for smaller nations :|.

It may be foolishly optimistic, but I have my hopes of a bright future if things go well in November! Haha!

But you make a good point, if I were a ruler I wouldn't want to be a small fish in today's world. Eep!

 

[InkAxis]

I like the idea of Causus Belli from Civ6 that you have different reasons to go for a war that reduce diplomatic penalty. They could reduce gaining war weariness in this mod, because soldiers would be more motivated to fight.

Honestly the causus belli system from civ 6 is perhaps my favorite mechanic from that game, that mechanic totally changes diplomacy with regards to war. And that you can get unique causus bellis and that some UAs leverage it is very cool. I would really like it in VP but it would probably be difficult to implement.

 

[beginner_]

To be fair it was always the case, will always be. It's the nature of the game, I mean you have an empire right ?

True. I think currently the balance is too much in favor of war, the exact opposite of BNW were turtling with 4-city tradition usually is the easiest way to win.

off-topic:
And about empires, even on standard Maps (and low difficulty, prince/king) building an map spanning empire never worked for me. At some point you have too many conquered cities with missing buildings leading to too much unhappiness. Razing is also an issue considering the airplane cap of 2 (and I really don't like razing). Meaning conquest victory gets problematic and slow especially towards the end of science tree when unhappiness always seems to spike very high for me so that even core cities need a gazillion public works.

 

[Stalker0]

This is the

I’m a big fan of the war weariness reduction based on certain actions.

Also, while I don’t agree with everything OP says, I do think citadels could do with a discussion. Tile stealing is extremely powerful and (afaik) the fact that there is basically no good counterplay to them is problematic imo.

Are people ok with the current state of citadels and tile stealing? I don’t want to derail this thread too much, but personally if tile stealing in its current state was toggleable id turn it off.

I love citadel stealing as it is. Yes it can be frustrating when an AI steals your tail, but it’s actually away the AI competes with you that is not war. And I do it to them all the same.

 

[DeAnno]

I agree Citadels are actually pretty fair now. If I place a Citadel to steal something they place one opposed to it and steal it back and then the rest of the 4 adjacent tiles can't have Citadels anymore. So these Citadel wars don't really go on forever, at least not over the same land.

 

[Delvemor]

This is the


I love citadel stealing as it is. Yes it can be frustrating when an AI steals your tail, but it’s actually away the AI competes with you that is not war. And I do it to them all the same.

I agree. I will more often be on the receiving end of it, but I'm fine with that as long as I can do the same to the AI when it really matter.

 

[Emperorman1]

Could casus belli declarations of war be done like events?

For example: I got my city converted by AI. Now I get empire-wide event: Fight for your faith! All war weariness and diplo penalties halved when fighting against civ x (the converter) for next 20 turns.

Any new conversion would reset the timer.

Same could be done with stealing land, spying, stealing a city-state. The reductions could be adjusted to reflect the severity of the offense. How would this work?

 

[Cokolwiek]

Considering implementing this as part of my rework, although that would be difficult.

That would certainly a nice addition, however I would be in no rush to implement it if I were you. I don't feel they will make any substantial difference and you already made DiPlOmAcY GrEaT AgAiN through your work (not really again, because Firaxis' one was a misunderstanding to say the least). If you are going for domination and warmonger aggressively, diplomatic penalties in their current state are of minor concern. When you only declare once in a while or just to secure some more land early while playing peacefully, there are again negligible so you can ignore them usually.

China is torturing political dissidents, aggressively claiming land from other nations, and worst of all...STEALING OUR COPYRIGHT! How dare they! Sorry, I just found that funny

But in reality it isn't and amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars that were not paid in taxes (hampering things like social programs development, fighting with poverty, or medical research) and to families of developers, not only to corporations. Not that what the U.S. showed through its dominance was any better than China. Tortures at Guantanamo? Check. Aggressively invading nations and sponsoring autocracies like Saudi Arabia because of its oil interest? Check. Shamefully sponsoring Iraq in its invasion of then-peace-seeking Iran during 1980s which resulted in around half a million military and civilian deaths and more extreme position of guarded Iran now? Check. Doing the same now with Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and causing famine and displacements of millions (100,000 deaths in last five years alone, and another 80,000 children dead from starvation)? Check. Ignoring Rwandan genocide because Clinton was busy with Monica Lewinsky and America enjoying its prosperity? Check. Sponsoring cycle of poverty and crime through war on drugs and neglect of certain Black and Latino communities at home? Check. And that's only on top what they have done in Vietnam or much-lesser known Indonesia. China? Just lifted 850 people out of poverty according to American-led World Bank, not Chinese government. America and China are empires, so they behave like every empire do. Despite the whole "peaceful, better, democratic, happy times" propaganda in the West, "The Political Instability Task Force estimated that, between 1956 and 2016, a total of 43 genocides took place, causing the death of about 50 million people". That's without most of what Mao had caused in China, and without Stalin's atrocities in Eastern Europe. And it's not some shady organization, it's U.S. governmental research project.
I don't want to enter politics discussion by the way, what I referenced were just historical facts everyone can check, I just did that to provide bigger picture.

 

[Recursive]

That would certainly a nice addition, however I would be in no rush to implement it if I were you. I don't feel they will make any substantial difference and you already made DiPlOmAcY GrEaT AgAiN through your work (not really again, because Firaxis' one was a misunderstanding to say the least). If you are going for domination and warmonger aggressively, diplomatic penalties in their current state are of minor concern. When you only declare once in a while or just to secure some more land early while playing peacefully, there are again negligible so you can ignore them usually.



But in reality it isn't and amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars that were not paid in taxes (hampering things like social programs development, fighting with poverty, or medical research) and to families of developers, not only to corporations. Not that what the U.S. showed through its dominance was any better than China. Tortures at Guantanamo? Check. Aggressively invading nations and sponsoring autocracies like Saudi Arabia because of its oil interest? Check. Shamefully sponsoring Iraq in its invasion of then-peace-seeking Iran during 1980s which resulted in around half a million military and civilian deaths and more extreme position of guarded Iran now? Check. Doing the same now with Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and causing famine and displacements of millions (100,000 deaths in last five years alone, and another 80,000 children dead from starvation)? Check. Ignoring Rwandan genocide because Clinton was busy with Monica Lewinsky and America enjoying its prosperity? Check. Sponsoring cycle of poverty and crime through war on drugs and neglect of certain Black and Latino communities at home? Check. And that's only on top what they have done in Vietnam or much-lesser known Indonesia. China? Just lifted 850 people out of poverty according to American-led World Bank, not Chinese government. America and China are empires, so they behave like every empire do. Despite the whole "peaceful, better, democratic, happy times" propaganda in the West, "The Political Instability Task Force estimated that, between 1956 and 2016, a total of 43 genocides took place, causing the death of about 50 million people". That's without most of what Mao had caused in China, and without Stalin's atrocities in Eastern Europe. And it's not some shady organization, it's U.S. governmental research project.
I don't want to enter politics discussion by the way, what I referenced were just historical facts everyone can check, I just did that to provide bigger picture.

I'll clarify my statement - the atrocities they commit are not funny. It's just funny how you finished off really weak compared to your first two examples.

 

[Cokolwiek]

I'll clarify my statement - the atrocities they commit are not funny. It's just funny how you finished off really weak compared to your first two examples.

Of course, I got it the first time. I just wanted to provide a counterweight because it looked like China is the only one guilty, which is completely not the case, and info why I don't consider copyright infringement weak compared to my other examples. Had there been none of it, China would be in much worse economic and thus political position to install the same bases you consider strong arguments in the first place. We're not talking some Microsoft software, but mainly highly-advanced space exploration and medical equipment, resource processing machines, cars, aircraft parts, weapons, industrial and chemical engineering processes and tools used in mining, factories and refineries.
Those infringements resulted in possibly trillions of dollars by now and this money, along with strong economy and technological parity with the West China had gained as a result of practicing them, validate and enrich the position of its dictatorial regime now.

 

[Recursive]

Of course, I got it the first time. I just wanted to provide a counterweight because it looked like China is the only one guilty, which is completely not the case, and info why I don't consider copyright infringement weak compared to my other examples. Had there been none of it, China would be in much worse economic and thus political position to install the same bases you consider strong arguments in the first place. We're not talking some Microsoft software, but mainly highly-advanced space exploration and medical equipment, resource processing machines, cars, aircraft parts, weapons, industrial and chemical engineering processes and tools used in mining, factories and refineries.
Those infringements resulted in possibly trillions of dollars by now and this money, along with strong economy and technological parity with the West China had gained as a result of practicing them, validate and enrich the position of its dictatorial regime now.

Good point.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I have my hopes of a bright future if things go well in November!

Best of luck! I do have a couple of good friends in the USA who I care about dearly <3.

 

[azum4roll]

Could casus belli declarations of war be done like events?

For example: I got my city converted by AI. Now I get empire-wide event: Fight for your faith! All war weariness and diplo penalties halved when fighting against civ x (the converter) for next 20 turns.

Any new conversion would reset the timer.

Same could be done with stealing land, spying, stealing a city-state. The reductions could be adjusted to reflect the severity of the offense. How would this work?

Technically the "event" already exists for some of the passive-aggressiveness done by the AI, like spying. It just needs to be copied to everything, with a positive effect (less WW and diplo penalties) if you choose to declare war right then.