Why i want the war-weariness back in the expansion!

[Matsume]

Hi guys, i came here to ask if im the only one that thinks the game gets boring when some warmonger leader (talking about you Alex...) on later ages declares war on you and then sends his almost infinite soldiers that just keep coming and dying at ours walls/well placed army for like 50+ turns? (thats specially true on higher difficulties, due to AI production boost /unit spam)

I started to note that since my change from warlike player to a more cultural/scientific kind of person. Its becoming soo annoying in some games and i was trying to remember how this was countered in Civ IV (and real life) then i remembered of our beloved War-weariness!!

For those of you that dont know it let me give a quick explanation :
War-weariness in Civ IV used to give unhappiness to civs at war over time and some factors like losing units ( human lives in real world ), cities and the like caused major unhappiness , to the point one side had to capitulate or the like to finish the war asap. It was a temporary but effective way to stop stupid and endless wars, and off course, there were ways to deal with, some civics ( the civ iv equivalent of the policies) that would boost or decrease the severity of these factors.

So, this is my suggestion/plea bring the War-weariness back!
It would help small but well developed/defended civs to end those boring, repetitive, and waste of time useless wars that the AI starts end fast cause the population of the attacker/ owner of the lost units (again,human lifes in real life) would no longer support a war like that so costly. I would be a temporary unhappiness, linked somehow to the number of units/cities lost, and could start at printing press and then becoming stronger at each future era ( the power of the media!).
I thinks its a nice idea and a must have since vanilla, but , would go along with the expansion theme well too, please make it happen, say no to infinite clone armys!
Modern Society is against war! specially against attacker costly ones! remember Vietnam...

Thats it, sorry the for the wall of text, but i really wanted to express how boring the game gets when it turns into a TOWER DEFENSE CIV GAME.

 

[bcaiko]

Negative reinforcement mechanisms poison the water of the game and only serve to tick off the player.

Instead, Brave New World is doing the right thing and giving the player active, affirmative reasons to not want to go to war. If trading makes more money, the player will generally choose not to go to war (or stay in war forever).

I doubt many players agree with you that war weariness is a good mechanism to bring back. We can all hope this new system will be more engaging and effective.

 

[Halcyan2]

Eh, since AI's currently get massive happiness bonuses, war-weariness is likely to disproportionately benefit the AI's rather than players. (Unless you have war-weariness *only* for the Declarer, and none for the Target. However, even Civ IV had war-weariness for the Target, albeit a smaller penalty).

Also, with the AI's "interesting" means of measuring military strength and refusal to call for peace often even if you are trouncing him, there is the high potential to get locked into a war not of one's own making. Would really suck to get penalized for that with unhappiness.

 

[aluelkdf]

I want to see war weariness come back too. Sometimes wars stalemate and drag on for a thousand years. The other civ is not gaining anything, but will refuse to make peace (unless if I hand over a bunch of cities, which is never going to happen). When this happens it's not realistic and is not even fun. It really just hurts both civs because they are too busy building units to expand or build science buildings.

In a scenario like this, the other civ is stalemate and is not gaining anything. But with war weariness they do have something to lose by refusing peace, which will give the civ more incentive to make peace.

 

[Matsume]

In a scenario like this, the other civ is stalemate and is not gaining anything. But with war weariness they do have something to lose by refusing peace, which will give the civ more incentive to make peace.

Thats exactly why i think it should be back somehow, maybe not like Civ IV, but make it so that after some time of useless war the leader has to do it because of his own people are forcing it to do it. I know, i know the Ai have ultra bonuses to happiness, but he can also have ultra bonuses to unhappiness ... maybe diplomatic hits as well, lack of votes in the UN, lets polish the idea a little.

 

[Buccaneer]

No, it would make the AI fight even less harder or frequently. We need to make the AI more difficult to fight not less.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I also feel that the proper way is to make more incentives for staying at peace, not more punishment for wanting to war. And even if we were to punish people for going to war, I would do it by removing the puppeting option entirely.

 

[Matsume]

No, it would make the AI fight even less harder or frequently. We need to make the AI more difficult to fight not less.

Maybe you're missing the entire point of this thread, we want it to fight and to fight effectively and to achieve this we cant have the AI being "busy" fighting "eternal unwinnable wars" against a strong defensive/superior tech civ while there are others, possible weaker civs, arround the world.
The question is exactly this, the AI need to know when to finish a failed invasion and switch targets or focus on science or any other thing for the moment(the world is not only the player lands, and conquest isnt the only path to victory).

 

[Louis XXIV]

I see the problem with a stale war and agree that war weariness would fix this. I agree with others that positive reinforcement for peace is a better solution and that it might encourage the AI to make peace before anything meaningful gets accomplished. However, the former might not be achievable entirely and the latter can be remedied by pushing back war weariness (after all, stalemates are the concern, not any war).

I don't want war weariness to be tied predominantly to the success of the war. That always seems to punish the loser in the war, which means the successful civ has his job of conquering get easier not harder. Obviously, there's already a check to limit the overly successful conqueror. That being said, I could see staving off war-weariness a bit for success simply because you'll get hit with that happiness hit anyway and you don't want to be twice penalized.

One thing I will suggest is that war weariness shouldn't start counting if you offer straight up peace. That way you don't start getting it because the enemy wants every single city and you can't avoid it just because the AI won't give you everything.

 

[bcaiko]

Sometimes wars stalemate and drag on for a thousand years. The other civ is not gaining anything, but will refuse to make peace (unless if I hand over a bunch of cities, which is never going to happen). When this happens it's not realistic and is not even fun.

That's a result of the AI's calculation for peace negotiations being fubared, not a problem with mechanics. The AI overvalues its outdated miltary units and military units that cannot actively engage in battles, and strikingly undervalues cities. (You see this when you offer to give a city to the AI in friendly trade negotiations, too.)

The solution to that is to fix the AI's calculations, not to punish the player with war weariness that won't likely effect the AI.

 

[aluelkdf]

That's a result of the AI's calculation for peace negotiations being fubared, not a problem with mechanics. The AI overvalues its outdated miltary units and military units that cannot actively engage in battles, and strikingly undervalues cities. (You see this when you offer to give a city to the AI in friendly trade negotiations, too.)

The solution to that is to fix the AI's calculations, not to punish the player with war weariness that won't likely effect the AI.

The AI should be punished with war weariness too. War weariness is a very real part of human civilization, and it should be represented in the game. This does not mean that war weariness should be so strong it hampers all wars, there needs to be a balance. Basically like somebody else was saying, the AI needs to be able to recognize a failed invasion, and know when to call it quits. Eternal wars really make no sense.

 

[sickVisionz]

I wouldn't mind seeing it return. I don't run into the issues that the OP has, but I remember one time specifically when like half the world declared war on me at random and I fought off most of them solely because they just declared war but weren't actually doing anything. Most of them took a peace treaty but there was one civ that was at war with me for like 500 years of time. He wasn't sending any units out to attack me, but his attitude was like "there can never be peace". Also important to note that I'd never even met or interacted with him outside of our civs initially meeting.

War weariness would be great because maybe that guy would have been less of a pain had his happiness taken a hit. Instead, I just forgot about the war and kept being hit with random scouting ships or embarked units dying every once in a while.

 

[Juanholio]

I'm not sure if war weariness should return but I agree wholeheartedly that civs on higher difficulties should have some other metric than 'my army is bigger than yours' to maintain a war footing - they pretty much always will until you get established and catch up. I've switched to playing more immortal games these days and there are games/parts of games which just suck when Attila (or whoever) decides you are puny and wages war almost indefinately from the other side of the map.

I've had games where they've not even bothered to send a single unit to my borders and others where I've killed everything that comes near without loss and they still demand the usual all resources/money & cities for peace. I find this pretty annoying. Especially when you tech up, build some strong advanced units and ultimately pass some unknown threshold which means they no longer consider you puny and offer balanced peace and even sometimes follow up with a DoF!

This situation is, however, infinitely better than a far-away civ DoW'ing' and moving their stack-o-doom though half a dozen other civs they have open borders with to smack you down.

 

[WillBill]

its good to came back, them perphaps monty calm down after 100 units kill in a stopable war that he allways started.

 

[Arachnofiend]

I wouldn't mind seeing it return. I don't run into the issues that the OP has, but I remember one time specifically when like half the world declared war on me at random and I fought off most of them solely because they just declared war but weren't actually doing anything. Most of them took a peace treaty but there was one civ that was at war with me for like 500 years of time. He wasn't sending any units out to attack me, but his attitude was like "there can never be peace". Also important to note that I'd never even met or interacted with him outside of our civs initially meeting.

War weariness would be great because maybe that guy would have been less of a pain had his happiness taken a hit. Instead, I just forgot about the war and kept being hit with random scouting ships or embarked units dying every once in a while.

The problem is that the AI has practically infinite happiness in Civ V in order to give it a leg up against the player. War weariness would only hurt the player and in the most annoying way possible.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I would tend to agree with having a War Weariness mechanic back in place. But it would have to be much more advanced than the previous "hit everyone the same no matter what"

#1 Weariness should be 0 if war is going well during time frame X...after that period then it kicks in...
#2 Some civs (built for war) should actually benefit from war no matter how long.
#3 Weariness hitting allied CS first...then the main civ makes sense too.
#4 weariness should be able to be combated by something buildable or makable like "propaganda" or entertainment, or new resources or land gained, or "nationalism"

 

[steveg700]

War weariness wears me out.

 

[seasnake]

Just make offering a peace treaty lower war weariness in your cities, and then the mechanic makes sense. You're fighting a war, war weariness is forcing down troop morale/etc., you can offer peace. If the AI takes it, war over and weariness gone. If the AI doesn't you lose some weariness. Further, refusing peace after like 20 turns of war increases the penalties (for the refusing party, of course).

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

^^^ I like!

 

[seasnake]

I'd also suggest a fine thing for a UA would be to have a reduction of war weariness penalties, or it could be part of a social policy (either autocracy or Piety would make sense for thsi).