Things I think should be fixed

I Am Jeff · August 16, 2003, 14:15

What happens in most civ3 games I play is that once they other continent is discovered everyone trades etc. But eventually either someone on the other side of the continent I am on or on the other continent will declare war on me because I will not give them spices, gems, territory map, 47 gold etc. Now really it is the middle of middle ages, boats with sending forces is difficult so I always say no way. They end up declaring war and what happens is that they send a knight or 2 and it does not phase me. But if I am in republic I get war weariness, this is one of the issues that needs fixing and I will talk about it later on.

The next problem is when you yourself make a demand, whenever I make a demand (no matter how powerfull I am) they always laugh at me. To fix this after you make a demand and they do not give you what you want you should have the option of going to war because of that demand.

When 2 civs make an alliance against another civ they should automatically allied with eachother for the duration of the alliance. Which is why I would like to be able to chose the amount of turn you could be allied, ranging from like 10-??. This will help prevent those massive world wars.

This happens to me a lot. (Human is Civ A) Civ A Gets Civ B to goto war with civ D. Civ A gets Civ C to goto war with D. Then Civ D gets civ E to goto war with A. Then Civ E gets Civ (B or C) to goto war with Civ A.

To fix this is pretty simple, When Civ A gets B and C to goto war against civ D, civ A would allied against war with with B and C, thus automatically B and C should be allied. This would create a triple alliance that will not goto war with eachother for the allotted amount of turns. This adds much more to the game allowing for WWI or WWII like wars, where alliances like this occured.

I think out of everything in Civ3 war weariness is done the worst (however an improvment over civ2). I am in Republic or Democracy. Minding my own business and a civ half way around the world declares war on me. He will not attack me to the extent of hurting me. Any small force the AI can make would fail in a journey. Here you would get war weariness and that is wrong.
Then when your at war and your people are rioting because they want peace, yet when you try to make peace they refuse your envoy. Your people should understand with the government that they are doing there best to make peace but it is no use. Your people should do something to show they are unhappy with the war but this is just not right.

The other problem is when your fighting a defensive war, I think your people get to weary too fast. They are fighting for their country and national pride and should get BONUSES for this. War weariness should not accumlate and when you can go on the offensive your people should want it to show who is boss and to prevent it in the future. Obviously after a while they would get fed up with the war, but for a while there should be no war weariness penalties.

So what should be done is that you get war weariness based on the amount of troops in enemy territory, not based on the fact that a "state of war exists". So the more troops you have in enemy territory the more weariness you get. But you should not get weariness right away. Weariness should only start accumulating if:

1. Your fighting a war in enemy territory with a lot of losses. (regardless of how long you have been at war, except for maybe a couple of turns)

2. You troops have been in enemy territory a long time.
Regardless of loses. But if victories are swift with practically no loses war weariness should no accumlate.

War Weariness SHOULD NOT accumulates based on (I know you already get less war weariness for defensive wars but it is still too much for most situations):

1. How many civ you are at war with.

2. Fighting a defensive war, unless it has dragged on for A LONG TIME. The only exception to the long time is if the enemy civ will not make peace. But even so little war weariness should occur.

War weariness should disappear faster, but this may not be nessasary if some of the other things help with the problem. The main problem is war weariness when your not fighting or fighting a defensive war. Finally civs should not declare war when they have no way of exerting their power. If a civ knows it can not impact an enemy it should not demand or declare war. I touched on this earlier.

There are a lot of pet peeves I have with this but I can not think of them now. Anyone else agree with me?

vmxa1 · August 16, 2003, 18:21

Quote:

Originally posted by I Am Jeff
What happens in most civ3 games I play is that once they other continent is discovered everyone trades etc. But eventually either someone on the other side of the continent I am on or on the other continent will declare war on me because I will not give them spices, gems, territory map, 47 gold etc. Now really it is the middle of middle ages, boats with sending forces is difficult so I always say no way. They end up declaring war and what happens is that they send a knight or 2 and it does not phase me. But if I am in republic I get war weariness, this is one of the issues that needs fixing and I will talk about it later on.

If the AI declares war on you and you are in a Republic form of government, you have little to fear from WW.
Let them send a few units for you to whack and eventually they will ask for peace. It is not a stain on you citizens, if you have marketplaces and a few luxs hooked up. I stay in war for a 1000 years as a Republic civ.

vmxa1 · August 16, 2003, 18:24

Quote:

Originally posted by I Am Jeff

The next problem is when you yourself make a demand, whenever I make a demand (no matter how powerfull I am) they always laugh at me. To fix this after you make a demand and they do not give you what you want you should have the option of going to war because of that demand.

You can declare war anytime you wish, I presume you mean with no reputation hit. If so, why do you think you should be able to extort someone and when they fail to knuckle under get to go to war with no rep hit?

vmxa1 · August 16, 2003, 18:30

Quote:

Originally posted by I Am Jeff

When 2 civs make an alliance against another civ they should automatically allied with eachother for the duration of the alliance. Which is why I would like to be able to chose the amount of turn you could be allied, ranging from like 10-??. This will help prevent those massive world wars.

This happens to me a lot. (Human is Civ A) Civ A Gets Civ B to goto war with civ D. Civ A gets Civ C to goto war with D. Then Civ D gets civ E to goto war with A. Then Civ E gets Civ (B or C) to goto war with Civ A.

To fix this is pretty simple, When Civ A gets B and C to goto war against civ D, civ A would allied against war with with B and C, thus automatically B and C should be allied. This would create a triple alliance that will not goto war with eachother for the allotted amount of turns. This adds much more to the game allowing for WWI or WWII like wars, where alliances like this occured.

This can be complex, but I do not think that if you pay me to join you against D, that binds me to fight any and all of your enemies. If I have an MPP with someone and you attack them, I must declare against you, no if ands or buts. You must take care to plan you wars with this in mind.
It can be complex and you may not be able to avoid conflicts. If no MPP's, then get any alliance with everone you do not want to fight. If MPP comflicts, let the one the is a problem, attack your units first to get the MPP invoked on your behave.

vmxa1 · August 16, 2003, 18:39

Quote:

Originally posted by I Am Jeff

I think out of everything in Civ3 war weariness is done the worst (however an improvment over civ2). I am in Republic or Democracy. Minding my own business and a civ half way around the world declares war on me. He will not attack me to the extent of hurting me. Any small force the AI can make would fail in a journey. Here you would get war weariness and that is wrong.
Then when your at war and your people are rioting because they want peace, yet when you try to make peace they refuse your envoy. Your people should understand with the government that they are doing there best to make peace but it is no use. Your people should do something to show they are unhappy with the war but this is just not right.

The other problem is when your fighting a defensive war, I think your people get to weary too fast. They are fighting for their country and national pride and should get BONUSES for this. War weariness should not accumlate and when you can go on the offensive your people should want it to show who is boss and to prevent it in the future. Obviously after a while they would get fed up with the war, but for a while there should be no war weariness penalties.

So what should be done is that you get war weariness based on the amount of troops in enemy territory, not based on the fact that a "state of war exists". So the more troops you have in enemy territory the more weariness you get. But you should not get weariness right away. Weariness should only start accumulating if:

1. Your fighting a war in enemy territory with a lot of losses. (regardless of how long you have been at war, except for maybe a couple of turns)

2. You troops have been in enemy territory a long time.
Regardless of loses. But if victories are swift with practically no loses war weariness should no accumlate.

War Weariness SHOULD NOT accumulates based on (I know you already get less war weariness for defensive wars but it is still too much for most situations):

1. How many civ you are at war with.

2. Fighting a defensive war, unless it has dragged on for A LONG TIME. The only exception to the long time is if the enemy civ will not make peace. But even so little war weariness should occur.

War weariness should disappear faster, but this may not be nessasary if some of the other things help with the problem. The main problem is war weariness when your not fighting or fighting a defensive war. Finally civs should not declare war when they have no way of exerting their power. If a civ knows it can not impact an enemy it should not demand or declare war. I touched on this earlier.

There are a lot of pet peeves I have with this but I can not think of them now. Anyone else agree with me?

I think the issue of WW is hitting you harder than it should. I often play games where I stay at war for very long periods of time. In all forms of gov, except Dem. I do not use Dem, unless religious.

WW is handled by marketplaces and lux. You get temples, cath in core cities and if need be use the slider.
Sometimes, entertainers as well. IOW do what ever you must to keep the people in line. Most of my games are Emperor or Monarch and a few deity games. This means you have unhappinness much sooner, so you learn to deal with it. This takes micromanaging. In my book you must micromanage to win at the higer levels anyway.
I really do not see a problem with WW in Civ at all.
Would the game be easier with less WW and coprruption, sure.

I Am Jeff · August 16, 2003, 22:02

It is not just the war weariness, it is the fact that a civ as far away from me as possible and it is before you get faster ships (or ships that wont sink) declares war on me because I wont give him some luxury. It is like the Aztecs declaring war on Japan in the real world, it is just silly.

In one game I played, I was playing an almost all defensive war. I had temples, marketplaces, cathedrals, police stations etc, and the the 2 civs attacking me would not accept my envoy for a long time. They were getting huge losses, but I could not get enough to attack them. And even with the huge loses of the enemy and the relativly low losses for me the war weariness was still hurting me. I could not afford a change of government.

About the confusing Civ A alliance with . . ., maybe they should include mutli civ alliances. Like the treaties that helped contribute to wwI, they may have mentioned this for conquests. I also find it very annoying that when you make an alliance vs someone, the civ you made an alliance with sometimes ends up in an alliance with you.

Now about threating enemy civs, I am not talking about rep hits but doing this should hurt your rep (or help depends on how you look at it). When they threaten me either they backdown or the declare war right away. When I threaten the civs they always laugh at me, even if I am the dominant power. There needs to be something that shows the civs that when you demand something you will declare war. This way in the future they know you will declare war and maybe this time give in. This will make your civ like a bully, and letting you keep other civs in line through use of terror instead of being nice. Right now I think it is pretty hard to do this to any civ.

As it is now, they laugh at you so when you declare war they do not know it has to do with the demand.

vmxa1 · August 16, 2003, 22:57

Yes they are not able to keep track of your action to predict your future possible actions. When you say you are much stronger, does the Mil Advisor say we are stronger compared to them? Your knowing you can beat them and them understanding you can are not the same thing.
I find that if I am being taken lightly, the AI percieves me as weak compared to them. If I show as being strong compared to them, then rarely take liberties.

After around 1.29F the AI is very slow to accept peace, no matter how you are bashing them.

My way of dealing with WW is to go to republic ASAP (yes, I will sometimes do Monarchy first) and stay there.
Now if I get 4 or more luxs, I can deal with happiness with minimal stress. If I can get more, then it is even better. Swap excess lux/resources what ever to get a lux imported if need be.
If I am so late into the game as to have Polce Stations, then I will muster a bunch of transports and head for the sucker that is causing grief. Three or four ships to escort is usually enough. 6-8 transports with tanks/MI will set them straight real fast. I drop in on a city and will often raze it and use a settler brought along for this purpose to build a new one. Now I rush buy an airport. Start air lifts of units to the beach head and put out their lights.

skuzzy · August 16, 2003, 23:26

I feel one thing that should be changed that I've noticed even though I've only been playing a few weeks is that when you take over an enemy city and you store 10+ units in the city for fortifcation and health that if you have that many units in there despite the civs surrounding culture that the city should not be able to overthrow your newly installed governor. The fact that you have such a large army in the city should count as dictation over the city. Even though I learned quickly from leaving troops in the actual city it still annoys me that the idea is even remotely feasible.

eric2075 · August 16, 2003, 23:45

I also feel that the game would be much more enjoyable if you and the ai civs could have reputations for following up on your threats. In other words, if Catherine is always demanding tribute but backs down when refused, your advisor could say "Just ignore her, she's full of hot air". And it would be the same for the human. You could establish a reputation for following through on your threats. Of course, the ai would also have to be fairly consistent, it appears to be pretty random now. Oh well, just a thought for civ4.
edit-spelling

vmxa1 · August 17, 2003, 03:56

Quote:

Originally posted by skuzzy
I feel one thing that should be changed that I've noticed even though I've only been playing a few weeks is that when you take over an enemy city and you store 10+ units in the city for fortifcation and health that if you have that many units in there despite the civs surrounding culture that the city should not be able to overthrow your newly installed governor. The fact that you have such a large army in the city should count as dictation over the city. Even though I learned quickly from leaving troops in the actual city it still annoys me that the idea is even remotely feasible.

Someone will probably know this, but I am sure I read a thread about the formula that suggest the number of troops/units needed to prevent flips.
In short, the troops are having an impact, but 10 may not be enough if you have more than 10 resisters and a strong cultural connection.

Vlado · August 17, 2003, 04:17

As far as I nkow when it comes to WW in republic it's fairly easy. As vmxa says, temples etc does the major job to keep your people happy but, and this is the big thing, keep enemy troops off your soil! If they declare on you you get a boost in happiness first and this can kkep you going for a long time eventhough they refuse to make peace. But if they land on your soil your people get WW very fast. So, loosing men etc aint that bad, but enemys at your gate is.

Last Conformist · August 17, 2003, 08:46

Re: making demands:

If you opt to renegotiate a peace treaty, and is significantly stronger than the AI civ, you can usually extort a tech or a pile of gold. And if you don't break any treaties (RoP, gpt, resource trades) by going to war, your rep stays shiny too.

Formula for flip probability:

Quote:

P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/D

where:
P = probability that it will flip this turn
F = # foreignors, with resistors counting double
T = # working tiles under foreign control (out of the max of 21, no matter what the cultural boundaries are atm)
Cc = 2 if foreign civ has more local culture than you, 1 otherwise
H = .5 for WLTKD, 2 for disorder, 1 otherwise
Cte = Total culture of the foreign civ
Cty = Total culture of your civ
G = # garrison units
D = factor based on relative distance to capitals

Now reorganizing this gives the required garrison as:
G = (F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty)

As you can see there is a nice set of extra factors there. Now when you take a city Cc is likely to be 2 for a long while. And then there is the culture ratio. And this is a true ratio so it could be 1.1:1, 2:1, 5:1 depending on how much culture each of you has

The national culture factor is probably the reason why some seem to have no problem with culture flips and others do. Since if you have strong national culture, this value might be approaching 1/2, which can keep the garrison down at a 1:1 ratio. However, if conversley the AI civ in question has double your culture, you are going to need 4 units for every foreignor and tile to prevent a flip.

I Am Jeff · August 17, 2003, 15:47

I do not know off the top of my head what my military advisor says. That screen got messed up in PTW (runs real slow and is a pain to see how you compare to other civs. And when you get spys, see how many of each unit they have. THIS IS A DEFINITE FIX FOR conquest). Usually when I start getting aggressive I wait untill are militarys are equal untill I start conquering. But latter In the game when I have a big empire with a lot of production power and a large military, I still do not remember them ever giving into a demand.

I also have never tried getting more on a renegotiated peace treaty. Because they ask to renew it and I get a yes or no like option. I take yes most of the time because I may need to avoid the war. Do I have to chose no and then make a new peace treaty?

I Am Jeff · August 17, 2003, 15:49

When I conquer I sometimes raise bigger A.I. cities because they take forever to end resistance in. You should just use a settler to make a new city and maybe use some of the foreign workers to add a pop or 2 to speed up the city building process.

skuzzy · August 17, 2003, 16:42

Yeah, I usually raze cities unless it contains wonders in which case I try my best to maintain it only to see it hop back over, but thanks for the formula, should help a lot -.- Oh and another thing I noticed... Accelerated Production doubles everything but the timeframe remains the same... shouldn't the years double too?

gunkulator · August 18, 2003, 17:22

Don't forget to starve down any AI cities you keep, or build workers. Paradoxically, this helps reduce the chance of a flip.

I Am Jeff · August 18, 2003, 17:26

You would think that if people are starving they would work the land to get food for themselves. Like you said the conquered cities starv themselves instead of farming and feeding themselves, kinda dumb isn't it.

vmxa1 · August 18, 2003, 18:40

People often fail to do what is good for them, when they are mad. Starving will bring them back to their senses.

skuzzy · August 18, 2003, 23:00

the true words of a natural born dictator

vmxa1 · August 19, 2003, 12:29

Quote:

Originally posted by skuzzy
the true words of a natural born dictator

That cracked me up, thanks for the laugh.

Jaybe · August 19, 2003, 16:48

Jeff, also check out
"War Academy: AI Attitude" article at CFC
Note: This might have some affect on any practice of razing cities.

I rarely raze, nor will I put a LOT of upgraded units to suppress resistance. If it flips ... well, that's what reserves are for: to quickly take it back. As you may have noticed in the flip formula, having more culture is beneficial. Flips don't bother me anymore, though it may inspire me to starve them down to pop 1 in a more "focused" way.

Panag · August 24, 2003, 11:48

Quote:

Originally posted by gunkulator
Don't forget to starve down any AI cities you keep, or build workers. Paradoxically, this helps reduce the chance of a flip.

hi ,

yes and no , a couple workers and settlers are okay , but if you really want to prevent a flip you need to build and get lux , ......

have a nice day