Warmonger penalty based on population size?

[PaleJackal]

What if the warmonger penalty was equivalent to the size of the city you conquered? Maybe with the assumption that a size 15 or 20 city was the highest the 'warmonger' rating could go?

Furthermore, the warmonger 'scale' could increase as you went through the ages - capturing a size 5 city in the early game could be a big deal, since it only takes 20 (or whatever) warmonger points to get an extreme penalty. However, in the Industrial era, the capture of the size 5 city would be worth less since it now takes 100 (or whatever) warmonger points to get an extreme penalty.

It would punish early game warfare less, and it would allow you to wipe out small cities without invoking a massive diplomatic penalty. If warmongering needs to be punished via diplomatic penalties, that's fine, but at least let the reward be appropriate to the penalty.

Sorry if this idea has been suggested previously!

 

[Autoclave]

interesting idea. But you cannot judge cities based on their pop size alone. Cities also have borders and withing those borders are all sort of resources which a nation considers its own.

 

[PaleJackal]

True, but if you base it on population size, then a city changing hands several times results in less of a warmonger penalty, which IMO, makes sense, given that the warmonger penalty is really a mechanic by which the AI reigns in domination-style players.

A player who loses a city they captured, and then re-captures it later, is not more of a threat than a player who never lost it in the first place...