Warmonger penalty makes this game boring

[Loxas]

If you declare war about 1800 or later I can understand civilizations being angry and hypocrite about it, but earlier than that? Nonsense

But getting a heavy penalty for declaring war at 1000 AD is just ridiculous. Has every nation declared war on Genghis Khan? Is there any other guy more "warmonger" than the Khan? Or the Ottoman empire annexing city by city every city in middle east, has anybody stop trading with the ottomans because they are warmongering? Or the portuguese empire conquering some cities here and there in Africa, Asia, America, etc, did anyone decide to stop trading with them?

 

[Victoria]

Every victory in this game is best won through warmongering and warmongers complain most.

which of the following are true of you?

1. You declare surprise wars
2. You never joint war
3. You raze cities
4. You never denounce other civs
5. You take over city states

 

[playshogi]

You can take cities from the AI with no warmongering penalty. 1) Goad them into declaring war on you 2) defend yourself well and threaten to capture their capital, but do not capture any cities. 3) when the AI sues for peace, ask for 1 of their cities. Usually you will have to pay them in gold, or art, or luxuries. 4) Keep warring and pillaging until the AI concedes a city or is willing to sell you the city you really want. 5) no warmonger penalty and not even the complaint "you occupy one of our cities".

Why do you care about warmonger penalties anyway? Even if you capture cities the warmonger penalty will erode over time as long as you don't raze a city. Even if you declare war in the scenario above, the warmonger penalties will disappear rapidly when you don't capture a city. It's also possible to capture a city and then give it back in the peace deal in exchange for the city you really wanted.

 

[EpicWestern]

Actually agree with the OP, I think warmongering penalties need to be overhauled for flavor purposes. Gameplay wise I gotta agree with Victoria, it's not like domination is too hard because of them. They're just kind of annoying in the same way having a huge "unhappy" empire in civ5 is annoying.

 

[gettingfat]

I actually agree with the op. The key point the op raised is .... It's just not realistic. There were many other reasons in history that prevented a medieval powerhouse from expanding aggressively, like difficulty in ruling conquered people and a wide nation, diminshing return of occupying cities far away from inefficiency of cold weapons, logistic issues.... Not because of some dislike by your neighbors. After all, in the old time people mostly followed the rules of jungle. The weaker ones were more likely to fear the king lion than hated it and remembered it ate their deer friends five hundred years ago. This warmonger thing is imho just a very arbitrary factor to force players to rely less on military measures in a grossly oversimplified game world.

 

[Victoria]

You can also use firetuner and start with 5 units of modern armour purely for scouting purposes OFC.
The trouble with modding directly into global parameters is they'll be lost in the next patch.

Is it warmonger penalties that make the game boring or the ability to war incessantly without real penalty

 

[historix69]

I think the unrealistic/unhistoric Warmonger-Denouncing breaks immersion.

If you play on a very big earth map (Giant Earth) where it takes a long time to travel from Europe to Asia and you try to rebuild the Roman Empire and then leaders of India or China or Scythia permanently denounce you as Warmonger in classical/medieval times for taking cities and eliminating some of the too many european civs is just insane.

There should be a distance modifier for diplomacy and war depending on era. Nobody cared in previous eras about wars far away until the modern newspaper/telegraph/propaganda was developed. If you play on a tiny map where every civ is direct neighbour of all other civs it is different. But Civ is supposed to play on a World Map so era and distance should matter ...

Another way would be to have diplomats like in Civ 1 which have to travel on the map, e.g. from capital to capital, to denounce, etc. If you are far away, the diplomats won't reach you for a long time ...

 

[Victoria]

What is the big real about denouncing?
I use denoucing to make friends and start wars all the time... its a standard diplomacy tactic... its not like the civ necessarily hates you.
Denouncing happened all the time in history... and quite often based on total lies...
This game has a lot more complexity in it already than other civs ... sure they may add a distance factor but I doubt it... They need to keep game turn times down and this is where I imagine they have to make compromises.

I do think some of the warmongering needs to be fixed but in general if you want to go an make lots of surprise wars, raze cities and genocide races then you are going to win the game easily... the best they can do is to annoy the hell out of you for taking such an easy brutal route.
I much prefer to try take a civ or 2 in the ancient/classical and then just capitals after than... You get nothing like the hate nor the unhappiness not the warmonger and the game has more dimensions... but everyone is different.... This is not really supposed to be a game of pure steamroller tough. Just they do not punish you enough... if they did people would whinge more about that mechanism being unfair or unrealistic.

 

[historix69]

It probably depends a lot on map size, number of civs and gamespeed.
The bigger the map the more cities to take to compete with other empires or to control strategic positions, the more Warmonger points, the more reason to denounce.
More civs = more sources of denouncing.
Slow gamespeed = more rounds of denouncing.

Do you play Giant Earth map (Ynaemp) with all civs on marathon game speed?

I do think some of the warmongering needs to be fixed but in general if you want to go an make lots of surprise wars, raze cities and genocide races then you are going to win the game easily... the best they can do is to annoy the hell out of you for taking such an easy brutal route.

I usually do not start surprise wars. In most games I settle peacefully but when AI neighbours declare war against me I take the opportunity to strike back and correct borders.

Taking over cities by war or peace treaty is about the same (cities change owner) except that one creates warmonger points and the other doesn't. You not always have the opportunity to get cities in a trade and the game also does not run forever so you cannot wait forever for the perfect diplomatic coup which gives you a couple of cities without diplomatic penalty.
Razing cities in Civ 5 / Civ 6 is genocidal because the devs implemented it as genocide and not as a displacement of population. (Compare with Civ 3, ethnic population, etc.) However when I want to build a Suez canal or Panama canal, I don't have a problem to sacrifice (raze) some AI cities for the strategic gain.I think in Civ 4 and Civ 5 razing cities was more important to correct the bad city placement by AI. In Civ 6 you usually don't care (except for the canal cities.)

Everytime the AI denounces me, they give me a Casus Belli, which is a stupid strategy when my military and economy power is a multiple of theirs and we are neighbours.
In real history a strong empire usually became hegemonial power of a region and smaller nations either formed an alliance to destroy the hegemon or came to an arrangement and maybe had a profit from common trade etc.
The denouncing is stupid (or it is badly implemented when they try to exchange diplomatic status with other civs via denouncing. I would expect 2 civs talking in secret about a 3rd civ they don't like instead of both coming to the 3rd civ and denouncing it in public unless they are willing and prepared for war which AI usually is not.)

 

[Victoria]

You make some fair points and no, I tend to play standard size and speed continents. If you play a larger map with slower speed then you have more time for WM points to go.

A denounce,met giving you a casus is not stupid. The civ may well be denouncing you to get on better with other civs, part of alliance forging and I do feel like the AI encourages war.

A lot in this game can be picked on, it has more to pick on than earlier versions. War weariness I would like to see better implemented and more of it but I imagine I am in the minority.

There is so much about this game that does not match real life that using real life arguments just does not gel with me. The mechanics are designed implemented then have to be changed for balance. Not everything will end up as intended.

 

[historix69]

I think if you know the Warmonger mechanics, it is easier to avoid the penalties.

In my first game I beelined for renaissance tech (Cartography), so while my empire was mostly classical, the Warmonger Penalty was tripled. (Ancient : 0, Classical : 6, Medieval : 12, Renaissance : 18)
I was surprise attacked by my neighbours and since I wanted to have cities without overlap, I razed all enemy cities which overlapped with my cities. It counted as formal war (no denouncing, no Casus Belli) and razing cities caused triple penalty, probably 3 x 18 = 54 points per city or so ...

That is the design of Warmonger Penalty ... if you know the traps, you can avoid it ... but how many players bother to look so deep into the parameters to develop a strategy to minimize Warmonger Penalties?

If people don't like the Warmonger mechanics, it is better to mod it and have fun with the game instead of abandoning the whole game due to frustration/dislike.

Edit :
I would divide the game in 2 parts : before and after research of Diplomatic Service (Renaissance). Before D.S. there is no warmonger penalty, no denouncing, no Casus Belli, no difference between normal war and surprise war, only the usual penalty for attacking own friends (backstabing) or friends of others, etc. Negative Modifiers from war should vanish after 2 eras. (Or is France still angry about Caesar conquering Gallia?) Casus Belli and Denouncing would become essential when both civs in a DoW have D.S. and only other civs with D.S. would care for Warmonger Rating, Casus Belli, etc.

 

[MIS]

OP, there are civs that minimize the warmongering penalties - you could try those.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not going to buy realism arguments in this game, but there are some reactions in the game that are meta-examples of game throwing by the AI. If we're to see improvement, that's where it is.

The AI should care a lot more about runaway nation expansion than it does about warmongering in general, because that's the activity that threatens to actually win.

Right now, assuming you need to avoid fighting everyone at once you can just pick 1-2 allies, attacking 1-2 other nations, then keep your allies at least cordial while you whale on the other nations that get pissy. After that point you're too large to shut down anyway.

If you want to play an actual diplomacy game past that yes just look into what counts and start doing crap like killing tons of units + threaten AI capital so you can shake them down for cities you didn't actually occupy.

 

[Arent11]

The AI should care a lot more about runaway nation expansion than it does about warmongering in general, because that's the activity that threatens to actually win.

(1) Simply reintroduce tech/eureka trading & make civs deny favorable tech trades to warmongers/on higher difficulties with humans.
(2) Introduce a degradation of relations with runaway civs, to the point that everyone allies against you. Provide a little feedback through messages, so that players understand what is happening & why everyone allies against them.

-> all that was in existence already as early as master of orion 2 or alpha centauri.

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm curious about something that happened in one of my last games. Gandhi and Hojo declared a joint war on me. (BTW, Gandhi was always trying to get me to join him in joint wars. He *loves* war, he just wants to make sure he has plausible deniability about starting it) I captured Delhi, then ceded it back returned to him in exchange for Mumbai and some other big city. Did I get a warmonger penalty for any of that? (sure, a temporary one while I occupied Delhi. I have no problem with that)

I couldn't tell, because I was a warmonger already. I also captured Tokyo in that war, and I didn't give it back.

 

[Victoria]

Any city gained in a deal you get no WM for.
Giving (not ceding) a city back removed WM penalties for taking that city.

 

[zxcvbob]

D'oh! I said that wrong. I returned Delhi, not ceded it.

 

[historix69]

Introduce a degradation of relations with runaway civs, to the point that everyone allies against you.

All civs ganging up against the leading civ would probably turn CIV into a "total" war game with permanent war and city razing ("you tried to win so we burn down your cities ...) The human player would have to take out opponents without drawing too much attention or he must be strong enough to fight against the rest of the world. Domination then would be the likeliest VC, culture/tourism and religion would be less likely.
The game would become predictable. The player could easily manipulate it by gifting cities to stronger or weaker civs to not become too strong himself.

I don't think they will implement this ... too many players would complain.
"Leading" would also override late game factions/government types ...

 

[Archon_Wing]

Just piss them off. Do the opposite of their agenda, settle cities in their face. Tell them off when they tell you not to. (Do broken promises impact other leaders?) Then just kill their army and pillage their lands. Given that pillaging heals you in this game, do a lot of pillaging.

Also note the leaders that don't mind warmongering as much. If you notice people that don't denounce you for your shennigans, then make good use of them as friends. In one game, everyone denounced me for starting crap, but Cleopatra was apathetic. A while later and it's revealed her agenda is Darwinist, so she proved to be a useful ally.

For obvious reasons when you go to war, make it fast. If you end up stalling , that means you messed up. You want to do everything in one fell swoop as opposed to having multiple wars to do one thing.

 

[Arent11]

All civs ganging up against the leading civ would probably turn CIV into a "total" war game with permanent war and city razing ("you tried to win so we burn down your cities ...) The human player would have to take out opponents without drawing too much attention or he must be strong enough to fight against the rest of the world. Domination then would be the likeliest VC, culture/tourism and religion would be less likely.
The game would become predictable. The player could easily manipulate it by gifting cities to stronger or weaker civs to not become too strong himself.

I don't think they will implement this ... too many players would complain.
"Leading" would also override late game factions/government types ...

But that's what would happen if you play against humans. They would team up on you. It would result in a challenging endgame.

And in fact, a "defensive" victory condition like space race or culture would allow you to concentrate on defense. That's what happened in alpha centauri: You had to defend against everyone while going for transcendence or economic victory. If you went for domination it seemed sometimes easier, however, I don't know anyone who complained about that & suspect many people tried transcendence for the pure challenge.