War in Fall From Heaven

[Isaiah]

One of the things that has plagued all war games I have played is the Build a mighty empire/Army and conquer the world strategy. I find in most games by turn 300, I have an army capable of conquering the map and so I rampage. My economy sustains me and the game ends.

I am hoping there could be a way of using war weariness to make a long war untenable. This would cause human players to seek out small victroies (When fighting a comp, I have never only taken one city because if I can take one , I can take all 20 and 20 is better than one lol). I would like some penalty that is so high that I simply cannot continue a war after taking several cities (call it war weariness, unrest in conquered cities that requires additional resources, or my troops just wanna go home to there loved ones to tell stories and drink brew.

I would avoid applying this to the AI if possible, but think it would be helpful is making the game a more stategic victory based game. I take the city that would mean the most to me, not just mop upo the entire civ.

You could link it to a "War monger Factor" that would slow your research, cripple your culture and cause negative relations with other civs. This factor would slowly decrease, relative to how high it got and how long it has been since you were at war. You could also factor in the bulding of military units as an increase to the factor.

Just my thoughts. I play only MP, and so once one player declares war, all do because they have to get there piece of the pie from the AI before there is none left (lol)

 

[Kael]

There is, but I dont know how "fun" it would be. You could simply increase the maintenance costs of units while you are at war.

So trying to maintain a large war would be a burden to civs with large armies. Civs with smaller armies may be able to outlast larger enemies, you would be incented to either conquer quickly or build up a significant war chest before the war began.

Fairly realistic, easy to modify by civic choices, but not all that fun.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

On what level are you playing. When I wage war in FFH2 against a big empire [a hard war with loses] my war wariness goes sky rocketing and all my cities are revolting. But for that you have to fight a big empire having a lots of sacrificial cannon fodder if you lack siege equipment.

Try a higher level game with the AI on your continent. It will overexpand and if you want land for your self then you will have to war with it before you get to T4 techs. Stacks of Doom of Paramanders nearly destroyed my wicked empire last time if not for Loki. WW was very high so I had to sue for peace after recapturing my citie [the AI started the war!! ] Next war [that I started out of revenge] I also had to end quickly cause at the start of the war I got ~-6 in all my cities just for starting the war.

To sum up. In my last game I had everything what you were craving for

 

[MrPopov]

many civs have different war weariness tolerances. The palace for them gives either a bonus or a penalty to WW for the empire.

 

[Lady Wandbender]

If I may offer some suggestions:

Do a win/lose of a unit (in a stack or adjacent) have a big impact on moralle, if moralle falls below a certain threshold the unit deserts, either as a barbarian, or just out of the controlling players hand with the addtion of a sergent unit that could bring wayward (AWOL) back into line.

Have a check so for X squares away from a base (city or fort within your territory) each unit (depnding how you'd want to mod this with promotions) may desert as above.

Put a check when in enemy territory every unit (again with possible promotion exceptios) suffer both a -% to health and a chance to desert

give peace loving civ's a higher cultural border with higher effects from above

use random events on units in stacks (outside of cities) you could get real creative from anything from plauge to mutiny to loss of combat effectiveness.

give the AI a chance to "buy" (like the old spy unit could from civ1 and civ2) enemy units within thier cultural border

Because the AI is what it is, when at war with a human player that they did not start start generating units within the human player's territory and have raiders/slave catchers within the human players territory based upon the relative strength of the human player's military/tech. Destroying improvements/grabbign workers, and you could do the same "invisibly" with cities, grabbing population and destorying buildings. I know this looks like a cheat for the AI but it simply does a lousey job of being at war and this will help even the odds.

 

[Isaiah]

Valis, sound exactly like what I am looking for. As I mentioned we play MP with 6 Ai's all teamed in 2's and there are 3 humans (not allied). We typically play Wheel, hub or lakes since these seem to give the most balanced terrain. I am guessing the AI must be stronger in SP, as it never puts up much of a fuss in MP. We play at Prince and Monarchy level (last times winner must play monarch lol) to keep the play fair. Occasionly the weekest player is allowed to play noble but certainly nothing lower. We play with no AI building req' as this seems to improve the quality of their armies, but most often they build tons of Adepts. it has happened once that the AI over ran a player when they got summon skeleton and they had like 30 adepts casting it.

I like the idea of increasing war weariness, but wouldn't this hurt the AI as well. I'm a bit old school (been programming business systems for 20 years now, but have dabbled in gaming AI) and I think that giving the AI an edge (ie, further viewing, better battle odds ect, is a fair replacement for human inguinity (wow I should learn to spell).

 

[Isaiah]

I like this suggestion too

If I may offer some suggestions:

Do a win/lose of a unit (in a stack or adjacent) have a big impact on moralle, if moralle falls below a certain threshold the unit deserts, either as a barbarian, or just out of the controlling players hand with the addtion of a sergent unit that could bring wayward (AWOL) back into line.

Have a check so for X squares away from a base (city or fort within your territory) each unit (depnding how you'd want to mod this with promotions) may desert as above.

Put a check when in enemy territory every unit (again with possible promotion exceptios) suffer both a -% to health and a chance to desert

give peace loving civ's a higher cultural border with higher effects from above

use random events on units in stacks (outside of cities) you could get real creative from anything from plauge to mutiny to loss of combat effectiveness.

give the AI a chance to "buy" (like the old spy unit could from civ1 and civ2) enemy units within thier cultural border

Because the AI is what it is, when at war with a human player that they did not start start generating units within the human player's territory and have raiders/slave catchers within the human players territory based upon the relative strength of the human player's military/tech. Destroying improvements/grabbign workers, and you could do the same "invisibly" with cities, grabbing population and destorying buildings. I know this looks like a cheat for the AI but it simply does a lousey job of being at war and this will help even the odds.

 

[Tarquelne]

A couple of very simple things you could try:

We play at Prince and Monarchy level

Play at higher difficulty levels!

We play with no AI building req' as this seems to improve the quality of their armies, but most often they build tons of Adepts.

Use xienwolf's modmod module that allows the AI to directly build mages. (First link in sig.)



A couple of simple things you could try, which might be exactly what you want:

Modify a couple of files in the mod's Assets/XML/Gameinfo directory: CIV4WorldInfo.xml and CIV4HandicapInfo.xml

Jack the "WarWearinessModifier" for each size (or just the sizes you use) way up in the WorldInfo file.

Then, in the HandicapInfo file, decrease the AI's war weariness modifier.

So human war weariness goes up but you can make the AI's much lower.

If you want to keep your overall difficulty down with regard to things like maintenance costs and happiness you can tweak those things in HandicapInfo, too. For example your custom "Immortal" level might use the default "Immortal" settings for the AI's modifiers but "Prince" settings for all the human-player modifiers.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

In .30 I'd have objected to all this because there was no good builder victory condition, but now that tower of mastery is viable I wouldn't mind it as much. If any of these ideas are implemented, though, for the love of god, make them apply to the AI as well, not just the human.

I like the WW and maintenance related ideas more. Wandbender's ideas are way too random for my tastes. Combat in both FfH and normal Civ4 is already plagued by too much randomness as it is, don't add more.

 

[Ecofarm]

Site belched, x2post.

 

[Ecofarm]

Valis, sound exactly like what I am looking for. As I mentioned we play MP with 6 Ai's all teamed in 2's and there are 3 humans (not allied). We typically play Wheel, hub or lakes since these seem to give the most balanced terrain. I am guessing the AI must be stronger in SP, as it never puts up much of a fuss in MP. We play at Prince and Monarchy level (last times winner must play monarch lol) to keep the play fair. Occasionly the weekest player is allowed to play noble but certainly nothing lower. We play with no AI building req' as this seems to improve the quality of their armies, but most often they build tons of Adepts. it has happened once that the AI over ran a player when they got summon skeleton and they had like 30 adepts casting it.

I like the idea of increasing war weariness, but wouldn't this hurt the AI as well. I'm a bit old school (been programming business systems for 20 years now, but have dabbled in gaming AI) and I think that giving the AI an edge (ie, further viewing, better battle odds ect, is a fair replacement for human inguinity (wow I should learn to spell).

Sometimes, we play the same except deity difficulty. Sometimes we lose, when a player gets declared on by 2 pairs of AIs and overrun before either of the other 2 players can get help to them.

Sometimes we play without the AIs teamed, depending on how many cities they will each get (dependant on map size, number of civs, and settings (such as no_settler and advanced start). Sometimes, we play teamed but tech separate, because it is fun to see what everyone else is doing. If 2-3 of us tech together, there is really no amount of deity AI that can beat us, unless they are all teamed.

Here is what I want for christmas:

Instead of just assigning "team" in staging room, I want "Ally". This would cause the 2 civs to be able to share vision, like in a team, and see inside cities and all that good stuff... but no team tech! This would make MP vs. AI much more fun, since seeing what others are doing is awesome but teching together breaks game.

 

[slowcar]

f my cities are large enough it can happen that they get like 20 unhappy faces within 10 turns of a war that was declared on me. i'd certainly not like war weariness to get any stronger, at least not without more ways to fight it.
in vanilla you can cut it to 0 if you combine the correct civics, national wonders and buildings.

 

[xienwolf]

Ecofarm: You could make a small modification to the DLL to enable all Players to see each other's Technology Research. And even make it be toggled by a selectable option in the game staging screen.

I do not think that you could make it so that only CERTAIN players can see each other's Tech too easily though.

 

[Isaiah]

I am not saying use WW although this is what the markers of the game intended, it's just I find that once I have a ready army for war, I bulldoze the AI's and have absolutely no incentive to stop until they are wiped out. I am looking for a way to make it more costly to continue the war than the rewards that I get for wiping them out. Some sort of war monger penalty that will slow me down (and also my opponents down).

What about a defender bonus such that the more the defender loses, the higher the bonus to the remaining strength of there troops. (I know cannon fodder free for all to increase the bonus).

I do not have the answer, but I figure someone who could take a good game and MOD it into something this good could surely have some insight.

 

[nihonjeff]

I do not have the answer, but I figure someone who could take a good game and MOD it into something this good could surely have some insight.

The well-known, well-documented issues with the AI will be sorted out as the last part of the development process. Keep in mind that this mod is a work-in-progress. Once the AI is up to par, hopefully they will be more able to fend off the human player's warmongering.

Until then, just up the challenge by increasing the difficulty and turning off the AI Building Requirements from the custom game setup menu. Not the ideal solution, I know, but remember that we are all, essentially, beta testers.

As for War Weariness itself, I've never found it to be underpowered. If anything, the opposite. I've had solid economies driven into the dirt because in the middle of a gigantic intercontinental anti-AV holy war with the AC at max, my Luchiurp citizens refused to work, citing their profound dissatisfaction with the massive combat losses sustained by my... fireballs.

Yeah... I really think that, if it's at all possible, summons should have no effect on War Weariness.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, the fact that the War Weariness completely disolves if you wipe out the other Civ is one of the incentives to continue which cripples using WW to do as Isaiah is seeking.

Kael's idea of greatly increasing support costs during war is a good one. And one of the Guilds attempts to "beef up" a defender who is losing ground. Plus there are diplomatic relation penalties with people who get along with your target (which might also go away when you kill them, not sure) and I believe there is a diplomatic penalty for having wiped out a Civ completely.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

"You declared war on our friend" doesn't go away if the friend dies.

There is no direct diplomatic penalty for annihilating someone. What there is is a spike in the AC for annihilating someone, which makes people of different alignments hate you more.

Summons used to cause war weariness, but I've been shown that they don't anymore.

 

[Ecofarm]

Ecofarm: You could make a small modification to the DLL to enable all Players to see each other's Technology Research. And even make it be toggled by a selectable option in the game staging screen.

I do not think that you could make it so that only CERTAIN players can see each other's Tech too easily though.

I want to see their vision, watch their battles and look in their cities. It's much more fun to wait for a turn to end because someone is fighting when you can watch the battle.

 

[nihonjeff]

Summons used to cause war weariness, but I've been shown that they don't anymore.

Really? My Luchiurp game was an older version, but I don't recall seeing that change in any of the changelogs... do you know what version that took effect in?

Personally, I think the effects of War Weariness should lessen significantly as the AC grows, perhaps even disappearing entirely when the AC gets into the 90s. I think it goes against the feel of the setting when your crusading forces of good are battling to drive back Hell itself, only for your civilization to collapse because people on the homefront are angry that the war is dragging on so long. Makes perfect sense in vanilla Civ, but very little in a dark, apocalyptic fantasy world where demons threaten to devour your children if you don't go out and kill them first, and the very nightmares of the gods roam free.

Also, I think Kael was dead on when he commented that increasing unit costs over time would make the game less fun. Fun (for me, at least) is unleashing your powerful late game units on your hated foe in a battle with all of creation at stake. Not fun is having to make peace with said hated enemy so your own civilization doesn't implode from the strain of trying to keep your people happy. Additionally, I think said mechanic would actually hurt the AI a lot more than it does the player (at least at this point in development). In my experience, I'm the one that tends to field a smaller, flexible force of experienced, high-powered units against an AI that sends mass rushes of cannon fodder (even with No Building Requirements turned on).

 

[Zechnophobe]

There is, but I dont know how "fun" it would be. You could simply increase the maintenance costs of units while you are at war.

So trying to maintain a large war would be a burden to civs with large armies. Civs with smaller armies may be able to outlast larger enemies, you would be incented to either conquer quickly or build up a significant war chest before the war began.

Fairly realistic, easy to modify by civic choices, but not all that fun.

Since there are civics where War is a necessity, you could consider making some existing civics only work when NOT in war. Maybe you just can't maintain a City States approach to government, while at war with another civ.