War after the fall patch

[Cromagnus]

And there's your problem. You should care.

That is, you manipulated the situation the wrong way round. Aim and plan for a situation where your friends and allies are the smaller ones and where your first victim is a bigger civ. Then you can leave him some leftovers and move on to the next target.

With only scrap cities your first victim is as good as eliminated and more than likely someone else will finish him off after which you can take the rest assuming you want them. Or leave them to your second victim after you take his best cities. Rinse and repeat.

You actually have warmongering easier with the new sliding scale system based on cities taken. You just have to be smart about it and work the system, not against is.

I manipulated the situation wrong? Because I got DoFs and trade routes pouring in science from the other two civs. I was supposed to attack one of them? Yes, clearly, you're never allowed to attack Venice anymore. It means perma-war with every AI. Fine, I get it. Stupid, but I get it. Next time I'll DoW my friend, lose my trade routes, attack the hard target protected by archers in forested hills, and oh wait, get perma-DoW'd anyway.

You actually think warmongering has gotten easier?

This isn't about whether it makes sense from a historical or Roleplaying point of view. War is now imbalanced.

Keep in mind that:

1) The AI now forward-settles more aggressively post-patch, leaving you less room to expand.
2) The AI is now *much* more likely to early DoW because of the lower unit threshold and increased tendency to spawn units.

But the player is now punished for attacking cities more harshly than ever. That's all fine with you?

I feel like I'm defending 2+2=4 here.

They went overboard with the patch, it's that simple.

 

[Cromagnus]

Fall patch, how I loathe thee.

I decided to attempt to play along with the fall patch's BS warmongering penalties today.

Here's the scenario: Zulu - Deity - Continents - Standard.

(Why continents? Because of the new warmongering penalty, for Domination, Continents is the new Pangaea imho, because if you manage to wipe out your continent before first contact, there's no penalty... but I digress)

I spawn in the middle of a large continent.

Assyria, China and Portugal all forward settle on me, leaving me only one expo spot with no unique resources. Korea and Arabia I find eventually with my scout, meaning there are only two civs on the other continent. Runaway? You betcha!

As usual, Korea is on the other side of the continent and becomes the tech runaway.

I decide to tough it out anyway, rar! Scout, monument, shrine, +2 faith from gems pantheon, I've got 5 gems in my two cities, so 11 faith/turn. I actually get a religion, and I go Pagodas/Initiation Rites, because nothing else good was left.

I go full Honor. I manage to make friends with a cultural CS, so I have reduced upgrade costs by turn 57. I chop forest to pull off the oracle in my production-heavy capital, so I finish the Honor tree by turn 80. I upgrade my 4 archers for 50g each.

I build an Ikanda and spew spearmen out of my secondary city, and get NC by turn 85 despite going for Oracle first. Rar.

I have 20beakers/turn from trade routes with Assyria, China and Portugal. Rar. I complete Civil Service by t90 and build aqueducts.

I'm friends with everyone except Assyria, who I've warned about building cities, and denounced. Portugal shares my dislike for Assyria, and denounces too.

Assyria DoW's Portugal, and captures one of her 3 cities.

Here's where it starts to get BS. NO ONE DENOUNCES.

Excuse me? What happened to auto-denounce, auto-DoW? Only for the player? Oh I see.

Well, no matter, I'm going to be everyone's best friend by Liberating Portugal's city, so I try to get everyone to DoW Assyria, and no one's interested. So it's up to me, I DoW, wipe out his units in the field, and Liberate Portugal's city.

Everyone loves me right? Wrong. No one but Portugal appreciates the liberation.

KOREA AND CHINA THINK I'M A WARMONGER. Excuse me? Well, at least they didn't denounce.

So, right around the time I complete Civil Service, I upgrade 6 spearmen into Impi for 50g apiece. I charge Assyria. Nuke more of his units, pillage and capture his forward-settled city.

Major Warmonger Penalty. Even though he has more cities than me. Hey, ok, why not.

China Denounces me. Arabia backstab denounces me. On the next turn, Assyria takes back his city because he had two siege towers out of view behind the city and hills.

So I take it back on my turn. (Another Major Warmonger Penalty)

Now Korea denounces me. Because I captured -yet another city-.... NOT.

Assyria takes it back with his last siege tower. (I would kill off these units but they're behind hills and inside the firing range of his other cities)

So, I take it back one more time. (One more Major Warmonger penalty)

This time, EVERYONE DOWS me, INCLUDING PORTUGAL WHO I JUST LIBERATED.

I've taken exactly ONE CITY from a warmonger who has more cities than me and I'm now a Pariah, despite Liberating Portugal's city.

Right about now, I get Education on T110 and Mercantilism. Not fricking bad for starting with Honor on Deity, I might add. But it's moot. I now have 4 different fronts, and China is owning my 2nd city with double-tap crossbows. I've lost all my trade routes. I could feebly fight back as they slowly out-teched me, but this game is toast.

Seriously, I dare you to tell me this is balanced. Come on, say it.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

You give me a dare? Huuuuh? Ohhh, it's on like donkey kong!

It's balanced. You'll notice that the same happens to the AI's doing that thing. Game-wise, you did the same thing as conquering 3 cities of the same civ, or so I assume. Is it fair? I don't think so, but since every conquest leads to halving the population of a city, it's not that unreasonable

Similiar stuff happens to AI too. Every time Genghis is in the map and is on one of his CS-killing sprees, by his second (sometimes first) conquest every single person he has met is denouncing him and asks you to join in on war against Mongolia - this is why DoF with GEnghis is always a bad idea. You'll get half of the hate he gets.

 

[Moriarte]

So, you're saying deity is becoming properly difficult?

Excuse me? What happened to auto-denounce, auto-DoW? Only for the player? Oh I see.

It is connected to army strength. And since Ashurbanipal was probably #1 in the world in military, due to towers, no one dared to denounce/DoW. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if diplomatic modifyers are "softened" for deity AIs, for the sake of difficulty.

(Why continents? Because of the new warmongering penalty, for Domination, Continents is the new Pangaea imho, because if you manage to wipe out your continent before first contact, there's no penalty... but I digress)

Did they change that with the patch? I am pretty sure i saw few civs denounce few turns after meeting me, just cause I erased couple of civs beforehand.

 

[ense7en]

Yeah the warmongering penalties have become a joke.

It makes early warmongering basically impossible on higher difficulties, since once you've taken a few cities (even if the AI is the one who DOWs you), you are loathed by the entire world and will get DOWed from everyone.

It's ******ed, absolutely ridiculous.

I don't understand how they thought this could be okay.
Only way domination is an option now is if you are so strong you can steamroll through everyone.

 

[Callonia]

It's deity, of course the AI will cheat.

The sooner you understand that, the sooner you'll be happier.

 

[joshua43214]

Maybe I am confused...
Do we have a new definition of warmongering?
We are supposed to just build units so we can capture workers? Why not just build freaking workers?

Warmongering means capturing cities and taking slaves for workers! I do not mind a ramped up penalty, but the system right now means you have to turtle forever then do a late game rush. Which is just pointless, you will get a faster turn to victory just launching a spaceship for all your effort at that point. Early conquering makes the game fun and interesting. The old system of 1 free DoW was better. Maybe this should be brought back and the ramped up hate scaled way back for taking cities.

 

[Aenthin]

I once got a tiny bit of warmongering penalty for just waging war against the Aztecs even though I didn't send any troops to his border. DoF'ing Assyria might have something to do with it but they didn't really do anything either. It was just a massive cold war between the two of them with me not doing anything.

I eventually signed a peace treaty and, although it took a while to wear it off, I no longer had the warmonger penalty. Shaka still hates my guts though, but that's Shaka.

 

[Zaimejs]

I don't understand warmongering, so I'm glad you posted this. So it's just better to seek a peaceful solution rather than going to war?

 

[Cromagnus]

The AI is very inconsistent about dowing each other. In my last attempt Bismarck dow'd me on t50, and I didn't have composites yet, so I lost ulundi to his unit carpet. I had 2 cities, he had 5. No one even denounced him.

I won't try to convince you it's broken. If you ever do some warmongering on deity, make sure to post your thoughts on how it plays now. I'm always curious to hear other people feel Domination is balanced vs science, diplo and cultural victory.

 

[Gamewizard]

Sounds to me like you would be happier playing immortal.

 

[Aaron90495]

I agree. Warmongering needed a nerf, but the devs went overboard. The best fix would be a Casus Belli system, but that would need an expansion, and I sadly doubt we'll be getting any more of those.

The genocide penalty makes a decent amount of sense; if you wiped out an entire civ, other civs SHOULD be mad at you *in general*. I still think the penalty should be decreased with civs with whom you have a DoF, not just those who are at war with the common enemy. Regardless, the warmonger penalty needs to scale with the amount of cities AND the proportion of cities you took; taking all of a civ's cities when they have 20 should be a huge offense, but taking all 2 (or 1) cities shouldn't be (nearly) as severe.

 

[rodrigoq]

My pangea/diety/large/marathon game last night was/is ******ed. Going back to it later today.

I am a world threat, after taking 2 cities. But the AI isn't denouncing as much.. which is nice, however all my friends backstabbed me. This is fine, They are close, and my army is huge, and Siam is my religious competitor, has stonehenge, and will regret DoW'ing me.

Napoleon is my bestest friend EVAR! No warmongering penalty from him, he's my best bro, but only because i'm at war with 80% of the known civs. Guess he likes to see blood flow. We're having a romantic date, where we roflstomp assyria and I take all the good cities. (he doesn't know that yet)

Fall patch.. we should just have a Civ-facebook status for our empires and set it to "Warmonger" and save ourselves the hard feelings that come later.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Please refrain from creating additional threads on identical topics. Threads merged

 

[Moriarte]

I don't understand warmongering, so I'm glad you posted this. So it's just better to seek a peaceful solution rather than going to war?

It certainly helps being peaceful for at least 100 turns. The only exception i can think of: Meet somebody at turn 10, DoW, get a worker and keep pressuring him, pillaging, capturing even more workers/settlers. Don't make peace, so he can't denounce you. Later in game, when your cruel nature becomes apparent to the world, you can make peace.

 

[ToodleElNoodos]

I'm guessing as someone pointed out, you're playing on Deity, doesn't that change the whole thing?

I know on Prince level, things follow the rules more consistently, but I don't think you're suppose to expect that on Deity. Unfortunately, things aren't suppose to be balanced in the players favor, which is what the hardest mode is suppose to do. *shrug*

 

[EK834]

The warmonger penalty really aught to scale by era. In the early eras, taking over another civ should not have the severe diplomatic penalty which it does in the modern era. Really, the war monger penalty should be almost nothing until the Renaissance and then scale up from there.

It's in the mid-game (Classical and even more Medieval/Renaissance) the warmongering penalty should be somewhat smaller (shared religion could become as a major a key in neutralizing the warmongering penalty as liberation), since war and empire building/colonisation became common place and seen as perfectly legitimate means of diplomacy and religion took care of washing out the rest (from enslaving infidels to taking control of their lands or eradicating them). Though even then there were those like Venice that usually preferred more peaceful diplomacy and feared the economic instability brought by wars, and their cost. But they warred enough too. The papacy had lost pretty much all power to hold back Spain/France/Austria from conquest.

In the ancient era when nations are glorified city-states connected culturally, the penalties should be high and war could lead to the extermination of a culture/people. It's tribal/racial conflicts, often with virulent, irreparable hatred. Someone mentions the Huns and the Mongols. Those are good examples. The conquests of the Mongols horrified even ancient Japan through the little of them they heard from China, long before the Mongols tried to invade. The Huns were so feared and detested their name is still evoked as synonym to barbaric and violent.

Economy became more and more complex and the pre-modern/modern eras value more stability.

That's already reflected in the game to an extent, with so few cities in Ancient that the warmonger penalty is very high. It could be lowered a bit more in the mid-game with an increase again in Industrial before rising to a maximum by the Modern or Information Era. Personally I'd have included more means to deal with this through the WC after it becomes the UN (eg: emergency sessions so embargoes can happen much faster, and resolutions for other civs to declare war against a warmonger in the name of the Congress and thus without penalties.. but all cities gets liberated after the war, thus the goal is to destroy the warmonger's armies etc.), and means to create ideological defensive/offensive alliances instead of what we have now, though. But even with Ideologies, if you go Adolf Hitler on the world, you end up with liberal Democracies and Communists fighting on the same side...

An idea might be to make the warmongering penalty all but vanish in time, and pretty fast, if a warmonger disbands enough of his army to be inferior in strength to another civ, or if his army is sufficiently destroyed. That could be a way to clean the slate, for players who conquer not for domination but to acquire a large empire to gun for science or culture afterward. That's how nations like Germany or Japan "lost" their warmonger status: they were defeated and disarmed. The cold war ended when Russia lost most of its "empire" of annexed satellites.

 

[joshua43214]

I won't try to convince you it's broken. If you ever do some warmongering on deity, make sure to post your thoughts on how it plays now. I'm always curious to hear other people feel Domination is balanced vs science, diplo and cultural victory.

Rolled up an Inca map and was actually going to play a peaceful science game and discovered that Assyria was 6 tiles from me
Farmed up all his workers and settlers and kept him nicely hemmed in while I went about researching Education and expanding my empire. accidentally made allies with a CS while patrolling Assyria's borders and got a couple free cats. Bribed Askia to DoW Assyria as well. Took his cap (only city) on T107 and was DoW'd by everyone with in 3 turns.

so...
Since I got the Petra, and have 4 CB's with lvl3 promo, 2 cats, a Pike, education on T108, I may as well take over

Seriously though. Do the dev's really expect us to sit around and be abused by folks like Assyria when our capitols are right on top of each other? If they think its fair to put civs like Shaka and Assyria in the game in the first place, then I think its fair to rub them out on sight.

 

[Magus Maximus]

I will add to the discussion and side with Cromagus and describe a ridiculous scenario that happened to me a few days ago:

I was playing as the Inca. Settings are Emperor, Large, Continents, 12 civs. In my continent were the Romans, Japan, Siam, Venice, Arabia and Celts. Early in the game, Rome takes Osaka from Japan and two other Siamese cities (including their capital). I took one Siamese city myself. A few turns later I took for myself the two cities Rome had originally taken from Siam and got Osaka out of the peace deal which I promptly liberated back to Japan since the tooltip said I'd gain Major diplomatic bonus for doing so.

To recap, up to now, Rome had taken three cities and so had I. Only I liberated Osaka, supposedly erasing some of my warmongering penalty.

A good 40 turns go by, Rome attacks Japan again, this time without any success. I didn't attack anyone else that whole time.

Next thing I know Japan and Rome double DoW me (as in they allied against me) out of nowhere. Arabia, Venice and Siam joined them next turn. Mind you, I was sending about 5 caravans to Venice at the time they DOWed me. Interest to note that Siam forward settled on all of its for neighbors (including a city 4 tiles from Kyoto) and the only one who DOW him was Caesar who had to go through Japan to do it. I'm ok with Siam convincing Arabia to join against me since I had actually attacked Siam before and didn't really have much of an interaction with Arabia. But Japan should have NEVER joined Rome against me. Not only did I liberate their city but they had trade routes going to me.

TLDR:
-Rome attacks Japan twice
-I give Japan back their city
-Japan joins Rome on war against me.

and this was before I chose an ideology.

In my opinion, this makes no sense at all

 

[Pepo]

early war is broken.if before the patch is was difficult due unhappines and other nations hating,now is impossible.seriously,in Rl people doesn't hate usa for conquering german cities in ww2. in the classical ages nationa didn't care if other nations were at war with another nation. this system,imo,should be removed.i think that having ideological wars latter on is enougth