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

[leandrombraz]

Thks for the info Victoria... I'm really not the kind of player who instinctively thinks outside of the box... I ususally play the game as I logically feel it was designed to play, and do not really much look under the hood... So usually I don't mind if the way I play is not optimal, as I don't really play in context of winning in the fastest way or collecting as many score points possible.

But THIS ? this is totally unnacceptable to me... I will never ever again accept a cede offer until this is fixed, and yes, I will get compensation but accepting all the rest they have... In fact, seems to me totally more logical now to accept cities that I HAVEN'T conquered if I'm willing to take the warmongering hit from it, instead of accepting the cede, if the hit is pretty much the same anyways

You can bet most people play like that, reason why I think Firaxis need to give some love to this broken mechanic ASAP, it affect how people feel while playing the game considerably. Every time I see someone complaining about warmongering, I just imagine they ceding every city to get less warmongering, then not even noticing that they got more and still have -18 on top of that from the occupy my city penalty, which they don't know how to get rid because the whole thing is as counter intuitive as it gets.

 

[pgm123]

The tooltip is correct, the city is occupied and will only grow after you make peace. There's no need to ask the AI to cede the city, it will grow regardless as soon as you make peace, cede doesn't do anything useful. If it's not growing after you made peace, then you got the bug that Victoria mentioned above. You need to choose to keep the city before you make peace, if you make peace first the city will stay occupied for the rest of the game.

Is it possible that Sumer and Spain have been at war the entire game? It looks like a nice spot for a city, so it surprises me that it hasn't grown in the last 100 turns. There's a chance I just didn't pay attention and it was smaller when conquered, but it's still small and was a capital.

 

[Duuk]

This mechanic makes absolutely no sense. I hope it's massively reworked in R+F.

 

[Jaybe]

As the game knows when a city is non ceded (it does not count toward empire points in a score victory)

In my last game I was conquering China’s large cities and noted how my score was climbing (the game ended before peace was made). Are you implying that my score would have declined once I made peace?

Edit: While I gained much land, the jumps in score were so much that I figured the cities’ populations were the main drivers.

 

[Equilin]

Anyone reported this to the official figures (official twitter, FB page, Beach twitter, etc.) yet? So we can know which one is a bug and which is intentional?

 

[Karmah]

Ahh a touch more clarification for you.

You are Victoria and have just attacked Catherine in a surprise war in the classical age.

The 'light' classical warmongering penalty is 4 but because it is a surprise way you get -6 for backstabbing the backstabbing B...
Cathy has 3 cities... you take one of these (you get half of declaration penalty per city) so you get an additional -3 warmonger points
10 Turns after declaration you still have 5 of the 9 warmonger points left (they degrade 1 per 2 turns)
At this point you make peace and can choose from the following

1. Just make peace and you will be at -5 warmonger points and -18 for occupying their city
2. Give the city back which removes the -3 for capture so you are at -2 WM points
3. Have the city ceded to you which gives an addition -3 WM points so you are now at -8 with -18 for occupying the city
4. Swap that city for another city in the peace deal. The giving back removes the -3 and the -18 but getting a city in a peace deal gives nothing so swapping city A for city B you end up with -2 WM points and no -18

Personally option 4 sounds also like an ironic exploit.

Yeah well when the alternative to the exploit is unlogical/idiotic ,you are kind of forced to use it ....

I haven't played much recently and I know I always do 3 ("cede to me the cities I conquered") ,if I go say option 1 won't I be carpeting the world with ugly cities having the 'occupied' graphics ?

 

[Victoria]

While I gained much land, the jumps in score were so much that I figured the cities’ populations were the main drivers.

Lol, maybe they have removed that feature somehow.. I definitely tested it back in about march

 

[Disgustipated]

There's a good chance this feature is reworked and/or fixed in R and F. Seeing as this future could have a huge impact on conquered city loyalty.