War weariness and war score: a clear problem.

[Rails646]

Gday.

New poster but I've been lurking forever (since 2016), but I had to post about this. This has been the first major issue I've run into where there is literally hardly anything you can do to get out of it.

So obviously in this game you aren't expected to utilise a play-style which is largely devoid of another (say; almost totally peaceful or almost totally at war). And recent changes have been released whereby not only going to war has been nerfed (because "domination was a 100% victory chance"; which I must disagree with; playing on a small map is pseudo-cheating with dom). But merely BEING at war (DoW'd) has also become a severe handicap. Now I absolutely do not wish to imply any negatives towards the devs, but simply that this change (in practice) falls short of logic, effectiveness as well as being unjust. Lets look at the following:

An antecedent example: If you are at war (notably a defensive war) with an enemy, no matter how many units of theirs you kill; you are almost always at a huge negative warscore being the defender. (See Martin Fencka's deity, epic one-city korea playthrough, where he killed dozens of enemy ships, they didn't kill a single of his units and yet they had 50 warscore because they plundered some silly trade routes; something largely unavoidable in defensive conflict).

Two key points:

1) If you are playing a domination/warmonger game you are probably going Authority->Fealty or Authority->X. So, for the play-style that these war weariness and war score buffs have been made they have a clear path towards alleviating this problem; and in a well-planed, focused war they are unlikely to feel the weight of this recent change (considering the focus on military infrastructure, policies and the ensuing supply cap increases) .

2) If you are not playing a domination/warmonger you are probably not going authority; arabia, china, korea, india, etc, etc. In a progress->X or tradition->X game and the focus on defensive wars (with possible, but limited counter attacks) and further; the focus on culture/science/dip infrastructure, it's actually these play-styles that are really the most affected. No matter your style, you cannot expect to not build up an army and at least wage defensive wars in the higher difficulties. In fact; in the highest diffs you can't really expect to stay at your initial 5/6 cities; and kind of need to widen a bit at least.

In all; the allegedly intended targets of this buff don't need to change much (their usual strategy via authority, and then often fealty, allows them to barely feel this malus if they do things right). But if you are not playing in that vein; in the middle-to-late game where the AI has a trillion units, want to stop you winning, and want to win themselves; they will declare no matter your diplomacy if you are a) adjacent or near and/or b) winning. EVEN if you have the defence and tactical ability to crush the enemy army; your war weariness and war score will invariably cripple your production, economy, happiness, and the list goes on (this is over at least a dozen games in recent weeks as a "tall" style; and I didn't have this issue when I played for conquest).

You then have to pay them 5000 gold to peace out when you've lost a single unit and they've lost 25.

I believe this should change back (part-way) to how things were a few months ago (only regarding war weariness and war score of course; other than that, this project has been thoroughly incredible in its progress). I feel the extent of the malus (particularly for successfully defending civs) with non-authority/fealty is simply too huge, crippling and illogical. If you disagree with me please feel free to express it, maybe I've been biased by certain factors. However after watching Martin Fencka since forever, and seeing a player of his calibre (probably better than all of us) complain persistently about the incomprehensibility of this change; I felt I had to as well, because I have to agree completely.

Anyhow, let me know what you think, and if you disagree let me know why.

Cheers.

 

[kkkitten]

This is interesting , I want to try out a tradition-tall-defensive civ game now to see how it is (haven't played that since September patch). Which difficulty, map settings, and civ/CS numbers do you play on? Also, I think having very few cities increases warscore penalties a lot more, so wars with OCC would be pretty devastating. I wish I was good at reading source code so I could tell you more one day maybe

 

[Minh Le]

I believe it depends on unit supply (not 100% sure thou). You cannot get your war score up in OCC unless youre able to destroy about half of your enemy cities (but it suppose to be a challenge). But the AI will accept peace when they have high war weariness so just be patient.

 

[tu_79]

I can't say about war score, but war weariness increase was needed.
For instance, trade routes return home when dowed, so this should not be an issue. And there's also this mechanic that no one seems to be informed: razing enemy cities increase HUGELY your war score.

Now, war weariness is supposed to shorten the lengths of wars. If the player keeps fighting when weariness strikes, because the goals are not yet achieved, then he'll pay for it. The idea is to use your first wars training your units. If you can't get your first conquests, then yield and try again next war. Or either plan your attack more tactically.

AI has now much fewer units, to make up for the limited war duration.

Edit. The intended behavior is delaying domination victories, so they become into line with the others, and making wars more tactical (that's a buff for humans). I understand that this change of paradigm might be problematic for players playing with the older system.

 

[kkkitten]

AI has now much fewer units, to make up for the limited war duration.

Can you clarify on this change? What do you mean by AI has fewer units

 

[tu_79]

Can you clarify on this change? What do you mean by AI has fewer units

This came from unit supply. AI has more units than the player, but it is manageable. Also, a problem that showed before is that AI was able to produce units non stop, practically you were fighting against carpets of units. Now war weariness limits supply and the AI ability of producing that many units during wars, so you are guaranteed to fight against reasonable numbers.

 

[kkkitten]

This came from unit supply. AI has more units than the player, but it is manageable. Also, a problem that showed before is that AI was able to produce units non stop, practically you were fighting against carpets of units. Now war weariness limits supply and the AI ability of producing that many units during wars, so you are guaranteed to fight against reasonable numbers.

No wonder I've noticed that I'm not getting infinite unit spam from AI now; it used to be a nightmare especially since I disable Nuclear Weapons. I'm enjoying my wars a lot more these recent patches!

 

[vyyt]

No wonder I've noticed that I'm not getting infinite unit spam from AI now; it used to be a nightmare especially since I disable Nuclear Weapons. I'm enjoying my wars a lot more these recent patches!

It's not recent, it's been like this for over a year (I know because I miss the unit spam a bit)

 

[bigcat88]

If they plundered your caravans, has troops near your borders and you only defend - war score must be negative or zero.
They block your from trading, block your borders, trying to break through the defenses.
from wiki:
is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality

In one of my games, I tried a defense war(all my Elite Troops was at war on other continent). It was awful. AI don't want to peace at all, cause don't see a threat from me.
When my offensive troops returned home and disembark at AI territory - AI offer me a peace treaty at the same turn.
Another way is to ask someone to declare war at AI - it helps.

If you haven't good offensive troops and no one willing to help you - there still is a possibility to play! Declare war on someone who has no troops, it will help you to decrease war wearness. AI always do that.

P.S.: On November version I was able to vassalage Austria without conquering any city(warscore was greater then -80). Just plundered all, and waited 20 turns for revolution.

 

[kkkitten]

Declare war on someone who has no troops, it will help you to decrease war wearness. AI always do that.

How does that decrease war weariness? Is it because you're at war with an additional civ?

 

[Enginseer]

An antecedent example: If you are at war (notably a defensive war) with an enemy, no matter how many units of theirs you kill; you are almost always at a huge negative warscore being the defender. (See Martin Fencka's deity, epic one-city korea playthrough, where he killed dozens of enemy ships, they didn't kill a single of his units and yet they had 50 warscore because they plundered some silly trade routes; something largely unavoidable in defensive conflict).

Hmmm.. killing a dozen enemy... but only having one of your troop die per dozen... this sounds so familiar... surely we could've just won on a casualty advantage based on historical wars! Also you can avoid getting pillaged trade routes in defensive conflicts. If you're not OOC then you trade within your cities. All of your trade routes(to enemy) are immediately recalled during a declaration of war. Having a trade route pillaged means your people's will in your leadership is untrustworthy and breaks ur war score.

1) If you are playing a domination/warmonger game you are probably going Authority->Fealty or Authority->X. So, for the play-style that these war weariness and war score buffs have been made they have a clear path towards alleviating this problem; and in a well-planed, focused war they are unlikely to feel the weight of this recent change (considering the focus on military infrastructure, policies and the ensuing supply cap increases) .

Yes, meanwhile Progress will grow infrastructure and Tradition will grow people at an extreme fast rate if left unchecked. Authority civs don't get to grow and instead become the civs that keeps those civs in check.

2) If you are not playing a domination/warmonger you are probably not going authority; arabia, china, korea, india, etc, etc. In a progress->X or tradition->X game and the focus on defensive wars (with possible, but limited counter attacks) and further; the focus on culture/science/dip infrastructure, it's actually these play-styles that are really the most affected. No matter your style, you cannot expect to not build up an army and at least wage defensive wars in the higher difficulties. In fact; in the highest diffs you can't really expect to stay at your initial 5/6 cities; and kind of need to widen a bit at least.

And no nation has become successful by stagnating their development and growth.

In all the allegedly intended targets of this buff don't need to change much (their usual strategy via authority, and then often fealty, allows them to barely feel this malus if they do things right). But if you are not playing in that vein; in the middle-to-late game where the AI has a trillion units, want to stop you winning, and want to win themselves; they will declare no matter your diplomacy if you are a) adjacent or near and/or b) winning. EVEN if you have the defence and tactical ability to crush the enemy army; your war weariness and war score will invariably cripple your production, economy, happiness, and the list goes on (this is over at least a dozen games in recent weeks as a "tall" style; and I didn't have this issue when I played for conquest).

Yeah, that's why you warmonger effectively or at least engage in Gift Diplomacy to prevent every AI from waring on you.

You then have to pay them 5000 gold to peace out when you've lost a single unit and they've lost 25.

Exaggeration. When you have negative war score then you pay them that much which is usually uncommon since you're spending the gold on troops... right?

I believe this should change back (part-way) to how things were a few months ago (only regarding war weariness and war score of course; other than that, this project has been thoroughly incredible in its progress). I feel the extent of the malus (particularly for defensive, non-authority/fealty civs is simply too huge, crippling and illogical. If you disagree with me please feel free to express it, maybe I've been biased by certain factors. However after watching Martin Fencka since forever, and seeing a player of his calibre (probably better than all of us) complain persistently about the incomprehensibility of this change; I felt I had to as well, because I have to agree completely.

The bias is that defensive wars are never historically successful(because why would the enemy be weary? The war isn't happening in their territory.) What ends up happening in "defensive war" is you win a decisive battle and then turn the tide of the war reaching a comeback and then destroying the enemy's will to war.

How does that decrease war weariness? Is it because you're at war with an additional civ?

You gain temporary war fervor (reduction of all current war weariness), but that easily disappears.

 

[suriv]

I am just curious how many of the people commenting here has actually seen the Let's play by Martin Fencka and think that it is okay to have games like that.

 

[Enginseer]

I've seen it. His OCC playthrough barely tries to approach the enemy on their own territory unless they are on his continent. It's definitely a loss on his part.

 

[suriv]

I've seen it. His OCC playthrough barely tries to approach the enemy on their own territory unless they are on his continent. It's definitely a loss on his part.

Why would he approach enemy territory in a peaceful play? And you surely dont expect him to approach enemy territory with a supply cap of 5?

Edit: I have played plenty of OCC in the last half year or so on deity and won. But it started feeling gimmicky. I mean I won the game but any half decent player would kick my rear with a supply cap of 5 until medieval era. And now I feel this win isn't much different from hoarding scientists and bulbing them in vanilla

I feel the game should set general guidelines and few rules, thus allowing a variety of gameplay and win conditions. I am sorry to say this, but the last few patches have been moving more toward rigid play style (and favoring war mongers).

 

[andersw]

I am just curious how many of the people commenting here has actually seen the Let's play by Martin Fencka and think that it is okay to have games like that.

I've seen it and played with the mechanic and I'm definitely not a fan of it but it seems most others are perfectly ok with the "warweariness from opponents bad play" so I'll probably have to use older versions if I don't want it.

 

[tu_79]

Why would he approach enemy territory in a peaceful play? And you surely dont expect him to approach enemy territory with a supply cap of 5?

Edit: I have played plenty of OCC in the last half year or so on deity and won. But it started feeling gimmicky. I mean I won the game but any half decent player would kick my rear with a supply cap of 5 until medieval era. And now I feel this win isn't much different from hoarding scientists and bulbing them in vanilla

I feel the game should set general guidelines and few rules, thus allowing a variety of gameplay and win conditions. I am sorry to say this, but the last few patches have been moving more toward rigid play style (and favoring war mongers).

Favoring warmongers? The most common complaint I here about recent changes is how it nerfed warmongers, and you seem to think the opposite.
And why do you think this is a rigid gameplay? Are you talking specifically about OCC? I suppose you're playing with OCC enabled when setting up the game, otherwise it's not a real OCC game. I heard about players trying to play OCC without actually setting the game up for it, having supply problems.

Anyways, the mod never aimed to balance OCC or MP.

 

[suriv]

Favoring warmongers? The most common complaint I here about recent changes is how it nerfed warmongers, and you seem to think the opposite.
And why do you think this is a rigid gameplay? Are you talking specifically about OCC? I suppose you're playing with OCC enabled when setting up the game, otherwise it's not a real OCC game. I heard about players trying to play OCC without actually setting the game up for it, having supply problems.

Anyways, the mod never aimed to balance OCC or MP.

On paper it is supposed to nerf warmongers .. but warmongers have high enough supply cap that the reduction doesn't have any material impact. In the hands of a human player a supply cap of 30 - 40 is more than sufficient. Lower happiness which effects production, gold supply, barbarian spawns are not really much of a problem either for warmongers (look at the Minh Le Lets play .. -200 happiness). If any the spawning barbs provide extra. culture and xp. I would be happy to see how one survives a -200 happiness on a peaceful play and win

FYI .. I play with OCC option enabled .. not a soft OCC. And the reason I bring this up is that it adds variety to the game. And I truly think VP has potential to exceed the original game by having wider canvas where people can play a game of their own. I somehow think that the version of VP a year back allowed wider options than the game today where each n every game seem to follow a specific pattern if you want to win the game.

I might not be able to explain it properly .. but the situation is similar to the real world libertarian vs authoritarian regimes. The more you strive towards balance .. the more you lose in terms of freedom.

 

[kkkitten]

It's not recent, it's been like this for over a year (I know because I miss the unit spam a bit)

my bad vyyt, it was an old mod I had that was causing this spam I can link you it but don't blame me for sudden crashes

I am just curious how many of the people commenting here has actually seen the Let's play by Martin Fencka and think that it is okay to have games like that.

I watch him regularly and yes, the war weariness seemed harsh; adjustments can always be made, however...

I somehow think that the version of VP a year back allowed wider options than the game today where each n every game seem to follow a specific pattern if you want to win the game.

I don't know about this one. I might be very wrong (and someone correct me pls if I am) but warmonger and Authority generally have been considered the best way to play for a long time. Fencka himself says this, and has played Authority Deity since 2016. Maybe this is the case where if you're new to a game and/or play on lower difficulties, you'll find you won't min-max as much and play more variety

 

[suriv]

I don't know about this one. I might be very wrong (and someone correct me pls if I am) but warmonger and Authority generally have been considered the best way to play for a long time. Fencka himself says this, and has played Authority Deity since 2016. Maybe this is the case where if you're new to a game and/or play on lower difficulties, you'll find you won't min-max as much and play more variety

Actually warmongering is the easiest win in VP (especially if you use naval units and you need not even go authority to do that). That is what I started with and quickly got bored and playing CV only victory, peaceful play, no villager steal, no settler harass etc. When I say it was better few versions ago, the religion was overpowered allowing a unique kind of victory, so was the happiness management with varied sources of unhappiness, each civ was OP in its own way thus allowing for a different peaks etc. Kinda like DOTA .. imba heroes every patch with no true balancing but fun.

BTW Fencka doesn't min-max. What I really likes in his gameplay is the infinite patience he displays when he does wars especially with 100 odd units. Crazyg is the minmax guy (or gal?)

 

[chicorbeef]

I don't know about OCC but warscore/war weariness work fine for me, both being an aggressor and a defender.

As for warmongering itself? It's about investment, risk/reward. While you build an army, Tradition guy builds wonders. Do you have the ability to tech to/build a good enough army fast enough and use it efficiently enough to reap the rewards from Authority and your conquered territories? Some Authority games you just conquer one civ then stall out, some you conquer one civ and consolidate, some you springboard to conquer the whole world.

I have a Russia game where it took 3 eras to conquer Rome going Authority drowning in unhappiness/war weariness while everybody else got on with their lives, nearby Inca totally blew out the world and won a science victory. I have another game where I conquered my continent as Songhai with Mandekalu Cavalry and the game was won by that point (won formally by invading the other continent...). Same difficulty (Immortal). The difference was in conquest speed, infrastructure choices (I was unaware of the Barracks-Forge-Arena combo and made random building choices, under prioritized Culture), I chose Statecraft in my Russia game but never leveraged it enough and eventually lost my CS allies, failed to sanction or liberate stuff. I have had Tradition Arabia games go good as well and Tradition Korea games go terrible. Same deal with Progress (though personally, I struggle with this tree the most). It's all relative and I think they're pretty balanced.