Why the warmonger penalty is unrealistic...

[Mai Pipi Styngs]

As far as realism goes Hitler made sure he had allies/puppets before he went to war. Talk about diplomacy...how about convincing an asian nation, Japan, to ally with a white supremist state? Napoleon had allies, convincing the Russians to join with him at first, they later "backstabbed" him as the game would put it. Even the Mongols, as the intro says, used cunning diplomacy to divide their enemies making them weak before your conquering armies. Diplomacy, in real life, is every bit as much a part of successful warmongering as raising a huge army. Whether the game mechanics accurately represent this is a matter of debate. Personally I think it's close enough.

 

[happyturtle]

Shorter This Thread:

GhostSalsa: "This mechanic is making the game less fun for me"

SemperFi2382 and others: "You're wrong! You're having exactly as much fun as you deserve! You did a BAD THING by going to war, and now you have to pay for it."

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Come on, guys. Just because you hear screaming voices when you attack a city doesn't mean that anyone is REALLY getting hurt and dying. You all know that, right?

 

[SemperFi2382]

DOWd and razed it and aqcuired Shanghai too through a peace deal. That doesn't award you a warmonger penalty if I'm correct.

I think you still get the penalty, but I'd have to test that to make sure. I think it is only a minor penalty though, so not nearly as bad as taking it yourself. I rarely take cities via peace offering simply because it feels like too much of an exploit considering how easy it is to get the AI to roll over and play dead.

 

[satchel]

Shorter This Thread:

GhostSalsa: "This mechanic is making the game less fun for me"

SemperFi2382 and others: "You're wrong! You're having exactly as much fun as you deserve! You did a BAD THING by going to war, and now you have to pay for it."

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Come on, guys. Just because you hear screaming voices when you attack a city doesn't mean that anyone is REALLY getting hurt and dying. You all know that, right?

I see both sides of this.

With the caveat that I am a mid-level, mostly peaceful player, I haven't had much trouble with the warmonger penalty myself. In my last domination game, I had a more troublesome penalty from not moving troops away from borders when asked (that penalty stayed with me the entire game, with every civ!), than I did from the warmonger penalty. The latter did get worse over time, but I kept it in check by mostly only capturing capitals - not wiping out entire civs). And by the time I was down to the last couple of capitals I really didn't care what they thought of me. I mean, by the time you've taken half the capitals of the world, it's only reasonable expect the other civs to wise up to you and maybe stop selling you their incense or whatever.

I have watched Let's Play videos made by far superior players than myself on much higher levels, and watching them manage the challenge of diplomacy while aggressively attacking neighbors was quite fascinating.

All of that said - it may be more effort and planning than I personally enjoy, and might even be one of the reasons I will never be an Immortal or Deity player (just as I never was in Civ III, for which I even wrote a diplomacy strategy article for this very site). And there are some flaws in the implementation that have already been discussed ad nauseam.

So I understand why the OP gets sick of the penalty. I think having the option to dial it down is a reasonable thing to ask for without being chastised for being a lazy player or an incompetent player or an inflexible player. Civ is a game, and most of us play it just for fun, not in competition with anyone but ourselves. The game gives us a myriad options to play with, and some of them can make the game easier - if you want to, you can pick your most favorable map type, your most favorable civ, your most favorable neighbors. You can turn off victory types that you aren't good at or aren't interested in pursuing. So why get on someone's case for wanting the option to dial back the warmonger penalty?

I get where the OP is coming from. I hope there is a mod out there that tone down the penalty for him/her. I wouldn't play the mod myself, but I understand the complaints about the penalty.

 

[SemperFi2382]

So I understand why the OP gets sick of the penalty. I think having the option to dial it down is a reasonable thing to ask for without being chastised for being a lazy player or an incompetent player or an inflexible player. Civ is a game, and most of us play it just for fun, not in competition with anyone but ourselves. The game gives us a myriad options to play with, and some of them can make the game easier - if you want to, you can pick your most favorable map type, your most favorable civ, your most favorable neighbors. You can turn off victory types that you aren't good at or aren't interested in pursuing. So why get on someone's case for wanting the option to dial back the warmonger penalty?

The issue is that it breaks the game by essentially making war meaningless. If you can use war willy-nilly to get what you want, and you're not going for a Domination Victory, then you've made war your get out of jail free pass.

Can't overcome a certain civ for a Cultural Victory? Kill them...
Losing the Space Race? Kill them...
Not enough Delegates? Kill them...
Short on points? Kill them...

What's really stopping you? It's the fact they're saying the warmonger penalty is making the game "too hard" when in fact it's keeping the game from being "too easy". The bottom line is that if the warmonger penalty is that much of an issue, then maybe the player should have not gone the easy route and used so much war that the penalty stacked up that high to begin with.

 

[qemist]

... you've made war your get out of jail free pass.

Can't overcome a certain civ for a Cultural Victory? Kill them...
Losing the Space Race? Kill them...
Not enough Delegates? Kill them...
Short on points? Kill them...
What's really stopping you?

Your reply assumes that the human player can just kill an AI whenever he wants. What does that about the AI's war making ability? What should be stopping the player from doing that is an effective system of alliances and an AI that wages war well enough.

It's the fact they're saying the warmonger penalty is making the game "too hard" when in fact it's keeping the game from being "too easy". The bottom line is that if the warmonger penalty is that much of an issue, then maybe the player should have not gone the easy route and used so much war that the penalty stacked up that high to begin with.

Why not? why does war have to be the easy route?

 

[Jaybe]

I think you still get the penalty, but I'd have to test that to make sure. I think it is only a minor penalty though, so not nearly as bad as taking it yourself. I rarely take cities via peace offering simply because it feels like too much of an exploit considering how easy it is to get the AI to roll over and play dead.

I don't remember if there is a warmonger penalty for taking a city for peace (discovered by hovering when you get the annex/raze/puppet choice).

What frustrates me most is that a city acquired through peace treaty loses its city-center food/hammers/gold. You can see where this is in effect by
(1) COUNTING tile yields when citizen management is on, or
(2) having citizen management OFF and seeing the city-center yield having NOTHING.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Of course it is. You're arbitrarily defining your extremely narrow playstyle - either conquer super-early or only attack unpopular civs - as multifaceted and my suggestion for alternate playstyles - aggression for fun without boring calculations of who is the imaginary dimplomatic bad guy this round, and wanting to use early UUs that are completely worthless in the current game balance - as the "only play one way" faction. That's false, I'm tossing the rest of your unhelpful reply. You're not whining because the game is letting you play the one way you want. Congratulations on being happy and not wanting the game to be better or more diverse.

The AI reacting dynamically to what the human player does = narrow playstyle
The AI doing the same thing regardless of what the human player does = better and more diverse

 

[Paszczak]

The problem with warmongering in Civ 5 right now is not the penalty for taking cities - it's the fact that once an AI becomes upset with the player for whatever reason it will act completely unreasonable for the rest of the game, and refuse to give the player a fair trade, even if the AI in question would benefit from the trade much more than the player would.

In my last domination game I was backstab-denounced by my former friend Suleiman because of my alleged "warmongering", which was quite ironic because all I was guilty of at that time was joining in Suleiman's wars and taking maybe 2 cities for myself . Once he became guarded I decided to go ahead and denounce him back and so did 2 other neighbours, who shortly after DoWed him.

The Ottomans were suffering from ideological pressure at the time and were running -15 which gave them a nasty penalty in combat. I had 3 or 4 luxuries available for trade which could easily fix them and they had tons of gold, but of course they refused to give me more than 3GPT because hurr bloodthirsty one shows his face... As a result the Ottomans lost their capital, their 2nd and their 3rd city which effectively eliminated them from the game.

I think there's something wrong when the AI values hating player's guts (for whatever reason) over its own survival. But I guess this goes beyond adjusting some modifiers and a whole expansion would be needed to address this and other glaring issues with diplomacy.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

In other news, I steal Indian worker -> 10 turns -> make peace -> next turn DoF

 

[Ll1442]

Honestly, with BNW managing the warmonger penalty is much easier. There's a lot of factors to consider, and its usually either an early war (before you meet everyone), only taking cities when it's a minor penalty (the game tells you how big of a hit you'll take), and/or liberating to lower your warmonger penalty (which the game tells you how much of a liberation bonus you get).

where do u see how big the penalty is?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Rollover the city name while at war

 

[Ll1442]

What if your AI neighbor Montezuma attacks you and takes a bunch of your stuff on turn 35? Will you decide that it happened a long time ago, and be nice with them a few turns later? If you discover another continent, containing the mighty Roman civilization that's made up of cities with names like "Washington" and "Istanbul," would you be wary, or would you decide it was fine? That what you want to the other civs to do for you. Fair is fair. I mean, not trusting Rome based on that would not be realistic whatsoever.

Heck, personally I wouldn't trust Monty based on things that didn't even happen in the current game.

It would be too easy to game the system if the AI just forgot so quickly. Somehow I doubt that this is actually a concern about realism.

Dude, u can change the names of cities so as to cover up conquests from past time. Might not work on AI as they would know, but it could be fun trying on multiplayer

 

[Ll1442]

Come on, guys. Just because you hear screaming voices when you attack a city doesn't mean that anyone is REALLY getting hurt and dying. You all know that, right?

reminds me of another thread, where they considered: what if your game is the reality of a parallel universe. then we got a lot of hurt and dead people...

 

[Barghaest]

I think you still get the penalty, but I'd have to test that to make sure. I think it is only a minor penalty though, so not nearly as bad as taking it yourself. I rarely take cities via peace offering simply because it feels like too much of an exploit considering how easy it is to get the AI to roll over and play dead.

There is no warmonger penalty for cities acquired through peace deals. I've played quite a few games where I kept an eye on the warmonger penalty and "gifted" cities give none. DoWing and capturing a city are the only two sources of it that I have seen (and it doesn't matter if you puppet, annex or raze the warmonger penalty is the same, only the unhappiness is modified).

 

[Barghaest]

What frustrates me most is that a city acquired through peace treaty loses its city-center food/hammers/gold. You can see where this is in effect by
(1) COUNTING tile yields when citizen management is on, or
(2) having citizen management OFF and seeing the city-center yield having NOTHING.

This has been "fixed". I complained about it recently and was told it was supposedly corrected and I found out the issue. If you are granted a city during an opponent's turn and select whether to Annex/Puppet/Raze while it is still computing AI turns, the center tile becomes bugged; however, if you just let the popup sit there (blocking your view) until it comes around to your turn to select what to do with cities gifted to you, the center tile operates correctly.

I haven't seen if the issue occurs if I receive the city as part of a peace deal on MY turn (actively requesting it) because I don't really get many opportunities to do this... either the AI refuses my requests or I'm not interested in initiating the peace treaty.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Good to know!

 

[qemist]

The problem with warmongering in Civ 5 right now is not the penalty for taking cities - it's the fact that once an AI becomes upset with the player for whatever reason it will act completely unreasonable for the rest of the game, and refuse to give the player a fair trade, even if the AI in question would benefit from the trade much more than the player would.

Welcome to obstaclism. The AI does not focus on its own interests. Mostly it is coded to do things the developers think will put obstacles on the player's path to victory. This is why the AI often seems unreal and frustrating to deal with. You mention one example: the AI would seemingly rather die than give you a fair trade because he lost a war to you (that he started) 2,000 years ago.

(Is warmonger penalty decay not in BNW?)

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Welcome to obstaclism. The AI does not focus on its own interests. Mostly it is coded to do things the developers think will put obstacles on the player's path to victory. This is why the AI often seems unreal and frustrating to deal with. You mention one example: the AI would seemingly rather die than give you a fair trade because he lost a war to you (that he started) 2,000 years ago.

(Is warmonger penalty decay not in BNW?)

A lie propagated by inept players to validate their own high opinions of their poor performance. Diplo is so easy in this game. I wrote a guide on how to do it and I'm a ing moron.

 

[Barghaest]

(Is warmonger penalty decay not in BNW?)

Yes, it is present. it's more noticeable in slower paced games (although in Marathon, Opinion Duration is also extended, not sure if that affects it).

When I first starting working on my mod (almost ready! Currently running an alpha test of the packaged mod to make sure it's WAI) all I adjusted was research duration and when you get about 200-300 turns per era you really notice the warmonger penalties fading. Spend one entire era at peace and even the worst penalties are almost completely faded.

I believe there is a minimum value from some of the greater penalties (25% once you reach severe and 40% once you reach critical) that never fully decays. So if you do quite a bit of heavy warmongering, you'll always have some penalty lurking in the background... enough positive modifiers will counteract it, but if you've ever warmongered up to Severe or higher penalties, it doesn't take much to bring back the ill will of the AI.