[R&F] We need to talk about the "you occupy one of our cities" penalty, loyalty and the cede mechanic

[leandrombraz]

I learned how this works here in one of Victoria's deep dive into the game systems, so most of you know how it works. You conquer a city, you get a permanent -18 "you occupy one of our cities" penalty on top of the warmongering. To get rid of the penalty, you need to give one city back to the AI, either in the peace deal or normal trade. It can be any city, you can build a city in the middle of nowhere and give it to them. It's a mechanic that make no sense, it's misleading together with the cede mechanic (I'll talk about that later) and it encourage a really cheap strategy (giving bad cities to the AI).

Loyalty add yet another cheap strategy to deal with this questionable design choice. You can build a city in a good spot where you have a lot of loyalty pressure, give it to the AI to remove the penalty, then wait for the loyalty system to do its trick. There it is, penalty removed and you didn't even waste a settler. This begs the question, why in the name of Sid is this even a thing? Can we hope that Firaxis will look at this mechanic and redesign or just remove it?


That bring us to cede, the most misleading, pointless mechanic I ever saw in my gaming career. Players usually think cede do one of this two things: Remove the penalty we already talked about or remove the occupied status of cities you captured. It doesn't do any of this things, it allow you to trade the city with other leaders if it isn't a capital (you can ask to cede a capital though, which does nothing). It also give you more warmongering than just taking the city without cede, which means you don't want to ask the AI to cede. You won't trade the city, you don't want warmongering. That also begs the question, why in the name of Sid is this even a thing?

Firaxis need to take a look at this mechanics. Again, it's misleading, I often see players in forums (usually steam forum) who think cede will remove the penalty when it actually give you more penalty. More commonly, I see people who think it remove the occupied status, which is removed when you make peace. Firaxis need to give it an actual use that make sense and is intuitive or just remove both the penalty and cede from the game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I still think it's a bug. Cede should remove most of warmonger penalties. Not sure about conquered status, though.

 

[leandrombraz]

I still think it's a bug. Cede should remove most of warmonger penalties. Not sure about conquered status, though.

I think it's a mechanic that was supposed to do one thing, they didn't like how it worked and changed to what it's now. IIRC it used to remove the occupied status back when the game wasn't even released yet, in the demo build streamers/youtubers were playing. It's basically left over from a mechanic that is no more.

 

[h0nk0815]

I also think this has to be reworked. Atm it's the best strategy to conquer a city you don't want and trade it with a city/cities you do want in the peace treaty negotiations. Only in this case you don't get the negative modifiers.

 

[Uberfrog]

Loyalty add yet another cheap strategy to deal with this questionable design choice. You can build a city in a good spot where you have a lot of loyalty pressure, give it to the AI to remove the penalty, then wait for the loyalty system to do its trick. There it is, penalty removed and you didn't even waste a settler. This begs the question, why in the name of Sid is this even a thing? Can we hope that Firaxis will look at this mechanic and redesign or just remove it?

I agree that as it stands this is a silly mechanic, and they should change it so that the penalty is only removed when the city in question is returned, not any arbitrary city.

But is anyone really going to go to this effort to lose a measly -8 penalty? If you're fighting a lot, that's a drop in the warmonger hate ocean.

 

[leandrombraz]

I agree that as it stands this is a silly mechanic, and they should change it so that the penalty is only removed when the city in question is returned, not any arbitrary city.

But is anyone really going to go to this effort to lose a measly -8 penalty? If you're fighting a lot, that's a drop in the warmonger hate ocean.

I would do that if I'm not going for domination and I'm just doing a bit of harmless conquering. In this kind of situation, I always conquer one more city than I want to keep then I give it back after I swap some tiles to the city I will keep..

 

[PYITE]

If city occupancy could only be removed by cede it would make the game far more challenging. Peace deals would be much less lopsided because you would have to pay for the cede cities. This would be a huge nerf to aggressive warmongering. Now that there are free cities that the loyalty mechanic brings, any city that you capture but doesn’t get the cede should become a free city.

 

[Victoria]

But is anyone really going to go to this effort to lose a measly -8 penalty?

I suspect
@leandrombraz missed out the 1 in front. The penalty is -18 which is whopping but easy to exploit and even if you do not, you do not suffer a lot fro it anyway.

You can build a city in a good spot where you have a lot of loyalty pressure, give it to the AI to remove the penalty, then wait for the loyalty system to do its trick.

The more complex the game the more it is exploitable. I suspect January is the month they try and recode what we point out in forums now. Please Dev's make warmongering of some punishable effect rather than just Civ;s being scared of you.

I still think it's a bug. Cede should remove most of warmonger penalties. Not sure about conquered status, though.

Giving back a city whether ceded or not has always been the removal of all warmongering for taking that city.

Atm it's the best strategy to conquer a city you don't want and trade it with a city/cities you do want in the peace treaty negotiations.

Yes... and in reality cities are not trad able. Dear loyal citizens, you are now no longer Roman, you are Celtic. Give me a break. We should not be able to just trade cities!

 

[leandrombraz]

I suspect
@leandrombraz missed out the 1 in front. The penalty is -18 which is whopping but easy to exploit and even if you do not, you do not suffer a lot fro it anyway.


The more complex the game the more it is exploitable. I suspect January is the month they try and recode what we point out in forums now. Please Dev's make warmongering of some punishable effect rather than just Civ;s being scared of you.

Giving back a city whether ceded or not has always been the removal of all warmongering for taking that city.

Yes... and in reality cities are not trad able. Dear loyal citizens, you are now no longer Roman, you are Celtic. Give me a break. We should not be able to just trade cities!

It was a brainfart, idk what happened to that 1

Now that you mentioned it, City Trade will be a serious problem if they didn't do something to prevent potential exploit. You could sell a city that have good loyalty for tons of gold then just wait for it to flip back to your empire, mostly if you're in a golden age and the other leader is in a dark age. They need to remove city trade or think of measures to prevent this, like program the AI to value cities according to their influence over the city, in a way that they won't accept a city that is likely to flip back to the previous owner.

 

[Temppu]

I suspect
@leandrombraz
Yes... and in reality cities are not trad able. Dear loyal citizens, you are now no longer Roman, you are Celtic. Give me a break. We should not be able to just trade cities!

Just to point out: there are historical cases pretty close to consider as "trading cities". Specifically, when the Finns warred the Soviets a couple of times in years 1939-45, both peace treaties included giving some land to the Soviets, and consequently, cities among the land. Nevertheless, this is quite far from trading one city to another city, which is indeed very bizarre.

 

[pgm123]

Just to point out: there are historical cases pretty close to consider as "trading cities". Specifically, when the Finns warred the Soviets a couple of times in years 1939-45, both peace treaties included giving some land to the Soviets, and consequently, cities among the land. Nevertheless, this is quite far from trading one city to another city, which is indeed very bizarre.

There are older examples as well. The Romans ceded cities to the Persians for peace so they could focus on the Avars or Bulgarians. They weren't conquered by the Persians, but it was easier to give it up to not fight about it in the near future.

 

[bbbt]

The warmongering penalty is only one half of the cede equation.

The other half is that 'occupied' cities don't grow. So in theory if you end the war with the AI, and they don't officially 'cede' the city to you in the peace deal, it should be presumably permanently occupied and not grow. However, it literally does nothing at this point, the city is only 'occupied' while at war.

Hopefully there will be some fix for this coming with the loyalty mechanic.

 

[Karpius]

Yes... and in reality cities are not trad able. Dear loyal citizens, you are now no longer Roman, you are Celtic. Give me a break. We should not be able to just trade cities!

Just to point out: there are historical cases pretty close to consider as "trading cities". Specifically, when the Finns warred the Soviets a couple of times in years 1939-45, both peace treaties included giving some land to the Soviets, and consequently, cities among the land. Nevertheless, this is quite far from trading one city to another city, which is indeed very bizarre.

There are older examples as well. The Romans ceded cities to the Persians for peace so they could focus on the Avars or Bulgarians. They weren't conquered by the Persians, but it was easier to give it up to not fight about it in the near future.

Cities, counties and duchies were often traded throughout European history. I highly recommend "Vanished Kingdoms, the History of Half-Forgotten Europe" by Norman Davies. Well written and rather compelling.

 

[Xefjord]

I don't want to see them get rid of city trading, I just want to see AI factor loyalty into when they trade cities

 

[Duuk]

Holy hell I had no idea that was how cede worked. Obviously I need to research this. It explains why I get warmonger attacked.

 

[Victoria]

Obviously I need to research this.

Not really, just ask and I shall hopefully clarify. I have dug deep on this one and it just stinks.
Gilgamesh wants to cede 3 cities to me? don't be silly .... Do not Cede any to me Gilga, instead give me all your gold and luxuries.... happy with that deal?... great!... I'll even sell you a city back once you have got more money and get rid of my -18 that way.... or because I am Victoria and get a free unit with every city I will settle a city on ice and sell it to you. Pffft.

I have serious issue with the way Ceding currently does (does not) work
I have some issue with trading cities in peace deals but we cannot get rid of it because it is correct, just change the way it effects people.
I have ZERO issue with banning any other city selling.

 

[Shadowhal]

I would say the cede idea isn't a bad idea but I too was somewhat confused when it didn't really do anything compared to just ending the war on normal peace. Smells of something that needs fixing.

More experienced players may have a better assessment of this, but my thought would have been to have a temporary occupied status after ending the war without cede. Say 2-3 turns per city size. Enough to make cede useful but not too much to make a permanently occupied city borderline useless. (Of course ties in with a potential need for other mechanisms to disincentivise ics but ok, different topic. Right now more cities doesn't seem to carry much disadvantage even if many are quite small).

Bu maybe there will be a few tweaks with the xpac that the deva havent mentioned yet. Iirc g&k overhauled the combat system a fair bit and not sure whether that was an advertised main feature.

 

[darkace77450]

It's a mechanic that make no sense, it's misleading together with the cede mechanic (I'll talk about that later) and it encourage a really cheap strategy (giving bad cities to the AI).

It encourages but doesn't force a cheap strategy. You can refrain from exploiting this mechanic and lose nothing. As with the AI sending settlers your way without an escort, offering you lopsided trades to their detriment, and a host of other AI blunders, you can refrain from exploiting these AI shortcomings if doing so enhances your enjoyment of the game. It would be nice if they were addressed on Firaxis' end, but they don't have a huge impact on gameplay if we don't want them to.

 

[Hammurabbit]

I agree with Victoria - no city trading! City trading opens up for exploits like the ones mentioned above.
I would suggest a simpler mechanic.
Occupied cities: Not productive at all, only offers protection to troops inside it.
Cities can only be ceded in peace deals. If they are not ceded they have to be given back.

With loyalty, you'd have to be strategic about which cities you take in a peace deal. If you can't keep them loyal, better give them back and get some money instead, or a smaller city that you can keep loyal.

 

[Art Morte]

Wait, when did they change the cede mechanic that cities now grow - once peace is made - even when they haven't been ceded? I've completely missed that.