War Weariness and Conquest Victory

[Xetheral]

Question: Is a modern-era Conquest victory on Huge/Marathon/No Vassals basically impossible? Or is the unhappiness produced by war weariness bounded in some way where it won't continue to go up linearly with every foreign combat?

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Background: I've never before actually had the patience to try to win with a late-game conquest victory on a big map without vassal states, so I figured I'd finally give it a try and disabled all the win conditions except time and conquest. Now I'm wondering if my goal even possible with the war weariness mechanic.

There's about 500 cities on the map (Tectonics/Mediterranean). I control a quarter of them and it's turn 900. So if I take an average of two cities every three turns, I should still be able to win before I hit the turn limit.

Charlemagne (with whom I've never been at war before) controls half the cities (including the Statue of Zeus). He attacked a Defensive Pact partner of mine, and then sent a stack of about 1200 units towards my capital. I obliterated it with mobile arty and mech infantry in my own territory (which if I understand correctly means no war weariness for me and massive weariness for him), and then advanced into his. I've taken (and razed--they had too many corporations) half a dozen of his cities since then, killing several hundred more units. War weariness just hit 54 unhappy people (before Jail). I'm at Future Tech 40 or so, so I've only just had to start touching the culture slider, but he's got over 200 more cities.... Worse, I can see into some of his cities, and he's got zero unhappiness from war weariness. I know at the higher difficulties (this is emperor) the AI gets lots of bonuses, but I didn't think the AI was entirely immune to unhappiness due to war weariness? (In the diplomacy screen he has a positive war weariness rating vs my ally, but that too isn't showing up as unhappiness in his city screens.)

Either way, he's got a bit more than a thousand more units left in his territory, plus whatever he builds in the hundreds of turns it will take to conquer his half of the map. That suggests war weariness will hit at least several hundred unhappy citizens per city before the game ends, which is certainly unsustainable. Blitzing the city with the Statue of Zeus would help, but not enough.

(The game in question is modded, but not in any way that affects war weariness. I'm using a homebrewed civilization and I tweaked a few rules, like turning off nukes and the national wonder limit.)

 

[elitetroops]

Police State combined with Mt. Rushmore reduces war weariness in all your cities by 75%. Add a jail and it is gone. But I must admit I can't tell how those work in relation to SoZ. I'd assume the -100% counters the +100% from SoZ to bring it to normal levels, but wouldn't bet my life on it. Anyway, take out SoZ asap, build Rushmore if you don't have it yet, switch to PS and build Jails if necessary. That should do the trick.

 

[elitetroops]

Had to test this. It seems SoZ makes no difference if you have PS+Rushmore+Jail. Effects of war weariness are completely negated with that combo, even if he has SoZ.

 

[Xetheral]

You're right, thanks!

 

[s.bernbaum]

If you manage your wars appropriately, you should be able to destroy your opponents one at a time, which cancels the war weariness due to the destroyed AI. I mostly play huge maps and marathon. When I go for a Conquest victory, I almost always wait until the modern era. If I need to balance off war weariness or any other source of unhappiness, I increase the culture slider, which lets several of the buildings contribute increased happiness to balance it off. As elitetroops said, I also build jails and Mount Rushmore, although I have never had to switch to Police State. I have not found SoZ forces me to do it any differently.

 

[Xetheral]

If you manage your wars appropriately, you should be able to destroy your opponents one at a time, which cancels the war weariness due to the destroyed AI. I mostly play huge maps and marathon. When I go for a Conquest victory, I almost always wait until the modern era. If I need to balance off war weariness or any other source of unhappiness, I increase the culture slider, which lets several of the buildings contribute increased happiness to balance it off. As elitetroops said, I also build jails and Mount Rushmore, although I have never had to switch to Police State. I have not found SoZ forces me to do it any differently.

Could you give me more advice on how you manage it without Police State? I'd rather stick with Representation and Universal suffrage, but even with Mt. Rushmore, a Jail, and 60% culture my capital still has unhappy people. I'm at war with only one civilization, but the number of unhappy people increases anywhere from 2-12 per turn of war. It's been 8 turns since I started this thread, and unhappiness in the capital from war weariness has gone from 41 to 87 (with a Jail and Mt. Rushmore). Here's a screenshot of the current happiness summary:

 

[Staler87]

I may be wrong but I think you really just have to bite the bullet and go for police state.

 

[Xetheral]

I may be wrong but I think you really just have to bite the bullet and go for police state.

That's what I'm thinking too, but if s.bernbaum has a way around it I'm all ears.

 

[georgjorge]

Is that a size 40 capital?

War weariness is higher the larger a city's population. If all your cities are that large it might have been better to keep them smaller but more productive (through workshops or Kremlin-whipping), also saving upkeep. But that's pure theory for me, I haven't played games with such high number of cities and units so far.

Anyway, it sounds like a really epic game!

 

[Xetheral]

Is that a size 40 capital?

War weariness is higher the larger a city's population. If all your cities are that large it might have been better to keep them smaller but more productive (through workshops or Kremlin-whipping), also saving upkeep. But that's pure theory for me, I haven't played games with such high number of cities and units so far.

Anyway, it sounds like a really epic game!

Yes, it's size 40. It's getting +22 food per turn from Sushi. (Between National Park and the high population, the city has 30 priests. Not optimal, but seemed appropriate for a Cthulu-themed civ.) None of the other cities are quite that big, but over fifty of them are 30+. It may well have been a mistake to let everything grow that big, but I'm using a hybrid economy and I needed the specialists. (I also wanted to see just how big an empire I could get, as long as I was going for epic.)

And yes, it's really epic. Maybe too epic! Even with Stack Attack the major battles at the start of this war took the computer 5+ minutes apiece to resolve. (Doing it manually for 1000+ units would have been more tedious than I'm willing to suffer through.) I'm just glad that elitetroops pointed out that Police State enabled a 100% reduction in war weariness, or else I'd have to abandon the game over 50 hours in, or edit the xml to reduce the war weariness.

 

[Ghpstage]

At that point you don't really have any option other than Police State.
With earlier planning you could have benefited from using nukes rather than normal combat, as they give a flat amount of WW while destroying a potentially unlimited number of units.

 

[Xetheral]

At that point you don't really have any option other than Police State.
With earlier planning you could have benefited from using nukes rather than normal combat, as they give a flat amount of WW while destroying a potentially unlimited number of units.

Good to know, thanks. Alas, I turned off nukes... the only other time I tried a game anywhere close to this scale Ragnar went nuke-happy and the whole world turned to desert. That wasn't fun. (Nor was the several-minutes of screen-shaking from the nukes each turn.)

 

[6K Man]

Congrats on playing a game that's even more time-consuming that the settings I play (K-mod or LoR, oversized map, 20+ civs, no vassals).

Anyway. I know Police State sucks compared to US or Rep, but the amount of commerce you're pouring into luxuries/culture probably exceeds the extra benefit over PS that you're getting from either of the latter 2 civics. So, like others have said, I think you have to bite the bullet and go PS.

My suggestion would be to build or steal (if you haven't already) the Cristo Redentor; you can swap in and out of US for rushbuying with it.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Your city sizes may be why my method is not working for you. I usually stay in Rep but my cities are usually in the teens or low 20s, not 30s and 40s for pop. I think it is rare that I have to push the culture slider higher than 30 at most. Also, I tolerate the WW unhappiness for a while, during my military push. I tend to build up enormous stacks that steamroll any opposition and have two or three of such stacks before I attack. I then typically take between two and four of the enemy cities each turn, while my airforce is crippling their field armies. After a few turns, they typically don't have any signifiant assault forces left and they fold up pretty darn quick. My approach may not work at high difficulty levels. I play at Prince currently, since my games are long and I like to work my way through playing all of the leaders.