[R&F] Will joint wars destroy any chance for better diplomacy?

[Tomice]

I'm really looking forward to R&F, especially the new diplomatic features seem very interesting.
We really needed more reason to care about friendships/alliances other than good terms for resource exchange and avoiding wars. I really hope for long-term alliances worth caring about.

But the joint war feature is a very rigid concept, and I fear it counteracts any attempts to have realistic, meaningful diplomacy. Its stiffness blocks the many nice concepts like casus belli from working properly IMHO.
But as I'll point out later, it seems easy to fix!

PROBLEMS:

• Joint wars are always formal wars. It either allows you to bypass having a casus belli or makes having one pointless, nullifying the interesting concept.
• Joint wars only work when both attackers aren't already at war with the target. This means that you can't currently ask an ally to help you when attacked!
• Currently there is no way to convince a third civ to join a war.

SOLUTION:
There is no need for the joint war feature as it exists now, its functionality could easily be fulfilled by a more flexible system. What we really need is an option to ask another civ to go to war with any target, being able to choose a casus belli.
Asking another civ declare war on someone would not automatically mean we have to as well, but offering a joint war would be MUCH cheaper. It's all about "decoupling" war declarations in the trade screen, making asymmetric offers possible.

As example, imagine we are in negotiations with Rome.
In previous wars, Rome lost a city both to India and Mongolia, but Mongolia is stronger. Rome also lost an allied city state (Kumasi) to Mongolia. It furthermore denounced America. It is on neutral terms with England and a declare friend with China.

The options in the diplo screen could look like this (regarding what Rome offers):

• Declare reconquest war against India - 100 gold
• Declare reconquest war against Mongolia - 150 gold
• Declare protectorate war against Mongolia - 200 gold
• Declare formal war against India - 300 gold
• Declare formal war against Mongolia - 400 gold
• Declare formal war against America - 600 gold
• Declare surprise war against England - 1500 gold
• Declare surprise war against China - 2500 gold

We would have similar items we could offer Rome on our side of the trade screen.

To replicate the joint war feature, offering a declaration of war against the same target would count as a significant discount on the price it would cost to just send Rome into the war alone.
Also, If the player already was in war with the target, it would also count as discount, but less so. Offering a weak civ a liberation war against its arch-enemy might even result in a large plus on our side of the trade screen.

As you see, we would have the choice to choose which kind of war our ally was supposed to wage - should Rome just help us to liberate Kumasi from Mongolia, or should they declare all-out war against them? The latter option would be more expensive, of course (to compensate for the bigger warmonger penalty Rome would get).
If the AI asks an allied player for help, they would usually prefer to get a formal war, because it would hurt our common enemy more. But if its too expensive, they would also happily take our declaration of a limited war. It would count as less gold-equivalent on our side of the trade screen, naturally (except maybe liberation war).

ADVANTAGES:

• Seems realistic to implement, should be possible within a patch - most functionality is already there.
• We could ask our friends for help, both offensively and defensibly
• We could take coordinated action with more than one civ
• The casus belli system would always apply, giving it more meaning
• By choosing the casus belli, we could specify what we want our partner to do (limited or large-scale war)

 

[stealth_nsk]

[*]Joint wars are always formal wars. It either allows you to bypass having a casus belli or makes having one pointless, nullifying the interesting concept.

Joint war gives only minor warmonger penalty reduction (Formal war). Casus Belli are still preferable.

[*]Joint wars only work when both attackers aren't already at war with the target. This means that you can't currently ask an ally to help you when attacked!

Yep, asking another civilization to join war is a totally different case.

[*]Currently there is no way to convince a third civ to join a war.

Yep, asking another civilization to join war is a totally different case.

===

I believe the game needs "join war" offer with ability to add Casus Belli by the civ invited to the party. This would solve all the problematic cases.

 

[Tomice]

I believe the game needs "join war" offer with ability to add Casus Belli by the civ invited to the party. This would solve all the problematic cases.

Creating a "join war" feature (without "t") would surely help a lot.
You couldn't do some fancy stuff like convincing a strong AI to do the dirty liberation work for you, but otherwise it would solve most of the issues I mentioned.

EDIT: After thinking about your proposal for a bit, it would still not solve the issue of casus belli being ignored in joint wars. Plus we would help two systems.

I still think my proposal is clearer and actually simpler. It just has the problem that it's far harder to describe than it would actually look on the trade screen.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Creating a "join war" feature (without "t") would surely help a lot.
You couldn't do some fancy stuff like convincing a strong AI to do the dirty liberation work for you, but otherwise it would solve most of the issues I mentioned.

Yes, without "t". And yes, the feature is exploitable, so needs to be done very carefully. I remember Civ3 - Civ4 days...

 

[Victoria]

I have no issue with additional mechanics to make the system better.
To me joint war is a mechanic designed to help the civs group into different factions. When I have met people I will use joint war for exactly this purpose. If I ever want to declare I will look for anyone to joint war with me.
I think I know the current diplomacy system fairly well and I disagree that joint wars limit the ability to improve diplomacy.
You can have other types of inclusive wars and still leave it there. The thing is I LOVE joint wars, they work for me. There is code in the XML for requesting help but it’s tuned down to be useless. I guess at some stage I should tune it up amd see if it somehow activates but I doubt it’s in the LUA, I have seen no sign.

 

[Art Morte]

Joint wars are total crap in this game.

- Why limited to only two civs?
- Why cannot ask a civ to join an on-going war?
- Why cannot tell "give me 10 turns to prepare", like was possible in 5?
- Why the AI often does nothing in a joint war and makes peace as soon as possible?
- Why does the AI trade joint wars like they're just a harmless afterthought?

I don't know which feature in the game would be worse implemented than joint wars.

 

[Victoria]

I don't know which feature in the game would be worse implemented than joint wars.

Ceded cities

Why cannot ask a civ to join an on-going war?

They can if they want, there is nothing stopping them

Why the AI often does nothing in a joint war and makes peace as soon as possible?

Because this is a diplomatic act. Its still useful in war but it is about diplomacy primarily.

Why does the AI trade joint wars like they're just a harmless afterthought?

Do they?... I am not so sure. Its more often than not far away civs that declare... its a way they are upping their trade relations with each other.
You may be quite surprised to know that the log shows very heavy AI civ diplomacy which ends up with them researching science from each other.... many whine about how fast the AI gets science and how useless diplomacy is.... to me its just about whining rather than investing. And if you play a warmonger game of course joint wars are not for you, diplomacy beyond the early stages is for the peaceful.

There is nothing stopping you joining wars or having others joining wars.
It seems like you want bribe to start war or join war type options which are possible additions, sure... at least we have joint wars rather than nothing... but then most people do not seem to play diplomatically and so would be happy if the annoyance was removed. To me they are an important tool in my game and getting 800 science for a tech mid - late game is not bad.

 

[sonicmyst]

I personally invite AI civ to do a joint war if they refused to be friends with me. I can also do nothing during the war, wait until I can ask for peace, then ask for friendship to the allied civ again.

 

[Victoria]

I'll find a strong civ somewhere else and joint war someone with them and get an extra city or two out of it. Naturally without encouraging any runaway apart from me.

 

[steveg700]

Joint war is what it is: a highly-limited, watered-down substitute for something players used to be able to do. That you can't get other civ's to go to war without you, that you can't bring in more than one civ to a war, that you can't ask for help once you're at war---these are all more-or-less elements of intentional design rather than temporary oversights. Certainly in Civ V war requests could be abused, as the player could mash his rivals into each other for a trifling cost while sitting peacefully and productively on the sidelines until the time ripens to come and pick up targets of opportunity. Like a lot of fixes we see in Civ VI, it is pretty a ham-fisted fix. Should an option lead to low-cost exploitation, don't bother fine-tuning the cost, just limit or eliminate the option.

Maybe emergencies are intended to be the next stage, making large-scale wars possible without any individual agency. A world war happens when the game says one is allowed.

Certainly doesn't help the narrative of the game that me and England can have good relations, we're sharing a continent merrily, and I'm satisfying her agendas, then boom! War with her and Persia off in the middle of nowhere. Ten rounds later after a scant few shots fired by any party, everybody wants peace and England is a green smiley again and a few rounds later wants her embassy back and then sues for friendship not too long after. And then in about twenty turns after that, it happens all over again.

 

[Gedemon]

I've only started to have a look at diplomacy for modding this WE, and IMO the problem is not the concept of joint war mechanism itself, but the whole oversimplified diplomacy of civ5/6 and the lack of many third party modifiers.

I mean relations related to wars are almost always two-way only (civA <-> civB) and a global "warmonger" value.

The modifiers that can be applied to third party civs (friends and enemies of the targeted civilization) exist only for declaration of friendship, denounciation, alliance and surprise wars.

But there are none for all other types of wars (including joint war, which at least give a small diplo boost to the 2 civs making the joint DoW), which means a friend, an allied or an enemy of a civilization will care if you denounce that civ, but will not care at all if you declare any war to it, the only exception being the surprise war.

AFAIK there are no third party modifiers for spying, trading, respecting/breaking promises, etc...

For warmongering, they've finally added a modifier to lower its penalties when attacking a civ that is at war or denounced by others, but none to raise those for the friends/allies of the attacked civ

But anyway as long as we don't have the possibility of creating "real" alliances (ie composed by more than 2 civs) I don't think that we can have "real" diplomacy in the game, so while the new alliances in R&F are welcome, I place my hopes for diplomatic consistency in a second expansion (or the access to the DLL source code)

 

[pietro1990]

The problem i have with joint wars is that they coount as a formal war.

Just the fact that you bring a budy with you doesn't make it a formal war because you didn't denounce the player. Its a free way to declare war withouth penalties withouth denouncing.

My fix : joint war is only available to targets who you both denounced.


for example :
I play greece and i denounced rome AI.
China also denouced rome AI
I can now ask china for a joint war against rome

This would fix the problem Ai would declare war even though they have +30 positive modifiers because there is no denounciation.

 

[newbie2]

The problem as I see it, is that a joint war is both sides of the same coin: it is both the war, and the justification of the war. The AI attacks because they freely can declare war, and they can freely declare war because they found a buddy to attack with. So you're stuck in a loop, unlike all other wars in the game that require an oustide justification (except the surprise war).

If the joint war required a proper CB (like denouncement/formal war, a holy war or colonial war, etc...), it would make more sense and feel much less random


And give civilizations who are friends/allied with eachother, the ability to call in their friend if they are attacked. Now there is no possibility to ask an AI to join a war that was started against you. You only have defensive pacts, which dont do the job properly, and come way too late in the game to be usefull

 

[kaspergm]

Joint wars are total crap in this game.

- Why limited to only two civs?
- Why cannot ask a civ to join an on-going war?
- Why cannot tell "give me 10 turns to prepare", like was possible in 5?
- Why the AI often does nothing in a joint war and makes peace as soon as possible?
- Why does the AI trade joint wars like they're just a harmless afterthought?

I don't know which feature in the game would be worse implemented than joint wars.

The problem as I see it, is that a joint war is both sides of the same coin: it is both the war, and the justification of the war. The AI attacks because they freely can declare war, and they can freely declare war because they found a buddy to attack with. So you're stuck in a loop, unlike all other wars in the game that require an oustide justification (except the surprise war).

If the joint war required a proper CB (like denouncement/formal war, a holy war or colonial war, etc...), it would make more sense and feel much less random

And give civilizations who are friends/allied with eachother, the ability to call in their friend if they are attacked.

SO
MUCH
THIS

Seriously, the one good thing about Joint War is that it's better than cheesy Civ5 system of bribing the AI to go to war for you. But the way that AI handles Joint War is absolutely disastrous. They'll basically take any Joint War offer thrown at them, and it makes all attempts at diplomatic strategy collapse completely. If both players needed to qualify for Formal War before being able to do a Joint War I think it would be ok, but as it is now, I'm sorely tempted to download the mod that removes the option completely from the game.

 

[pietro1990]

SO
MUCH
THIS

Seriously, the one good thing about Joint War is that it's better than cheesy Civ5 system of bribing the AI to go to war for you. But the way that AI handles Joint War is absolutely disastrous. They'll basically take any Joint War offer thrown at them, and it makes all attempts at diplomatic strategy collapse completely. If both players needed to qualify for Formal War before being able to do a Joint War I think it would be ok, but as it is now, I'm sorely tempted to download the mod that removes the option completely from the game.

I played with the mod it makes the AI passive. it seems the Ai doesn't know how to use any other causic belli like formal war. (denouncing you then declaring)

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Keep in mind. Declaring a Joint War has two purposes.

You automatically get a boost of +5 with any leader you shared a war with, AND THEY don't consider your warmongering as harshly if at all.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The AI needs to stop mindlessly selecting to Joint War when it becomes available. That's the main problem and needs to take way more into account.

 

[newbie2]

Im watching Marbozir play and I see "military alliance: +5 combat strength against units from civilizations at war with you and your ally".

As there is still no way to call in an ally when you are already are at war, or when being attacked without defensive pact (because its way too late in the game before it becomes available, Im afraid this will be quite useless. At least for the defender. I have the feeling the AI will gladly make military alliances and then joint war you....

 

[Thormodr]

Definitely needs to be improved.

Definitely better than the disastrous Civilization 5 where you could sit back and bribe other Civs to declare war on each other and you would reap the benefits, though.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Definitely better than the disastrous Civilization 5 where you could sit back and bribe other Civs to declare war on each other and you would reap the benefits, though.

You meant Civ3 and 4 probably? Civ5 had it restrained.