So what I am afraid of, is that if there will not be enough balance for aggressive expansion as it was in CIV IV, there will be a winning strategy where players in multiplayer would just stack militaristic cultures on each other and just trample everyone eventually.

As historically Civilizations like that had an issue, that they would overextend and then civil wars start and they would crumble to small countries.

And imagine if you mix Japanese Bushido Culture with, Prussian Army Professionalism, Spartan war pride and Russian meat shield strategy. You get a professional army that is highly motivated, doesn't fall back, is high in numbers and the machine guns are actually shooting at the enemy nut the back of their soldiers.


The idea is that there needs to be some sort of mechanism that doesn't allow for a country to expand too fast without some sort of consequences for doing so.

Fame mechanic will help here a bit. You can only get fame by building things, not destroying

But yes, there also has to be some over-extension mechanic, since you can get peaceful fame AFTER you conquer lots of territory. Without over-extension blobbing  and conquering in early-game will just be the only choice to reliably win.

Catodion wrote:

Fame mechanic will help here a bit. You can only get fame by building things, not destroying

But yes, there also has to be some over-extension mechanic, since you can get peaceful fame AFTER you conquer lots of territory. Without over-extension blobbing  and conquering in early-game will just be the only choice to reliably win.

I do not think this is correct. I somewhere read or heard that every action in the game gives you fame. So conquering a city will give you fame as well. It was even stated that you can win a game by being a "cruel" leader. Because even the "bad" civilizations are famous...

Pretty unsure about that though. And I can't find the source atm.

Well you are right but that's making the situation even worse because you aren't forced to build fame peacefully after you conquer everyone because you accumulated enough fame with conquering.

Either way, i fear that without an over-extension mechanic, the conquering will become the most rational gameplay style to win in every situation. Which is a really bad game design if true. However we don't know much yet about the game, so most of this is just educated speculation.

Hello,

We have some surprises in our bag to offer a challenge to warmonger :) 

Going for war needs to be valid and enjoyable, but it also need to be a challenge. There will be tools for others to protect themselves and reinforce this challenge for warmongers before the war hit them.

Cheers,

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

We have some surprises in our bag to offer a challenge to warmonger :) 

Going for war needs to be valid and enjoyable, but it also need to be a challenge. There will be tools for others to protect themselves and reinforce this challenge for warmongers before the war hit them.

Cheers,

Cool. Maybe it will be a resitance mechanic? After you conquer a city at least some of the tiles, either in the city or just in the region, will have a trait called "resistance" and won't give you any resources until you spend a few turns with your units quelling that resistance (sort of an inverse pillaging). Different factors will affect how much of the city/region start in resistance, and if you don't quell them quickly it will spread. Furthermore, the more tiles that are resisting, the greater bonuses the original owners will get in a counterattack, either through tile bonuses or a flat increase in strength.

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

We have some surprises in our bag to offer a challenge to warmonger :) 

Going for war needs to be valid and enjoyable, but it also need to be a challenge. There will be tools for others to protect themselves and reinforce this challenge for warmongers before the war hit them.

Cheers,

This is good to hear. I find aggressive warmongering to be much too easy in both the recent iterations of Civ and Endless Legend. 

I think there are a variety of mechanics that can limit warmongering effectively, and I'd like to see a multifaceted approach in Humankind.

One mechanic I really hope to see is something to represent the necessity to resupply and feed troops while at war. Historically this has had huge effects, but isn't really accounted for in a lot of 4X games. So I hope HK will implement either a flat food cost (in addition to production cost) for creating troops, and a food maintenance cost (in addition to the usual money maintenance costs). Furthermore I think that the maintenance costs should scale based on your troops' location on the map. Lower maintenance costs within your territories or borders, medium maintenance costs in neutral land, and high maintenance costs in enemy territory. This will provide a realistic challenge for the attacker while keeping a defensive army within your borders won't be too costly.

Apart from that, I also agree with the suggestion of a resistance or instability modifier in recently conquered cities. It would give the defending player a chance to retaliate and cost the attacker some time and/or resources to manage the new rebellious population. Then if the attacker doesn't have stable enough government, ideology, political support, etc. They won't be able to truly reap the benefits of conquering. This seems more realistic and a lot more interesting than just whoever builds the biggest army and snipes cities first wins. And it opens up the option to give some militaristic cultures unique traits to manage conquered populations better or something like that.

Basically I believe the issue that I and many other 4X (and particularly Civ) players have is when war is simplified to merely one or two factors: who has the most troops (production), and who has the most science (higher tech troops). I hope to see a more realistic system that intertwines various aspects of your empire: production, population, technology, political support, tactics, economy, logistics, ability to integrate new cultures, etc.

Zugg_zug wrote:

Basically I believe the issue that I and many other 4X (and particularly Civ) players have is when war is simplified to merely one or two factors: who has the most troops (production), and who has the most science (higher tech troops). I hope to see a more realistic system that intertwines various aspects of your empire: production, population, technology, political support, tactics, economy, logistics, ability to integrate new cultures, etc.

This!!

Now, most games have a financial cost to maintain troops, is there a reason that this won't work if made stronger and dependant on how far away the unit is?

Based on the PAX West panel, it looks like there will be some sort of in game political value system (IIRC they mentioned progress vs tradition and homeland vs world). This system could have penalties if you stray too far to one side, for instance if you are too militaristic (ie homeland value) there is a coup or civil war event triggered, while if you are too pacifist (ie world value) there is increased cost to build and maintain units and decreased morale during wars. 

I would also propose some form of nationalism in conquered territories starting in the Industrial Era. In addition to an initial resistance upon conquest, there is a memory for conquered cultures and minor factions that triggers waves of instability and revolt long after they have been pacified due to the rise of nationalism. An empire that spanned the globe in the Renaissance Era (like Spain) now sees formerly pacified territories break away and tear the empire apart in the Industrial Era (like Latin America). 

This secondary wave of resistance could also be implemented starting in the Medieval Era if there were religious resistance from unconverted conquered cities (like the Mughals failing to entirely convert India to Islam and facing Hindu resistance to their rule).

Perhaps one way to balance the stacking of millitaristic cultures could be to ensure that they offer little to no economic bonuses, thus incentivising players to pick cultures to ensure that they have an economic foundation to support their millitarism.

strattactalk wrote:

Perhaps one way to balance the stacking of millitaristic cultures could be to ensure that they offer little to no economic bonuses, thus incentivising players to pick cultures to ensure that they have an economic foundation to support their millitarism.

Exactly. Also, militaristic cultures need to have a clear lack of scientific/technologic output even when they conquer the scientific cities of other civilizations. 

There would need to be a system that would not allow someone to inherit all the culture/science generation of a city just because they conquered it. Conquerors would have to heavily focus on re-development in order to reap the same level of benefits that the previous owner of the city had. 

The absolute worst mechanic of civilization series is that someone conquers a good city and immediately starts benefiting from that in science and culture over-night provided that they haven't pillaged everything beforehand. This severely handicaps a peaceful/growing playstyle and promotes very gamey maneuvers like letting AI build wonders/districts basically FOR YOU reap the benefits from. This never happened in real history.

Make turtling a good and viable strategy for non-militaristic civilizations. This will also make the AI harder to exploit and take advantage of. I like that civilization 6 had quite harsh diplomatic consequences for warmongerers. This has to be present in some way in this game too, otherwise the game becomes to one-dimensional by focusing on military might and nothing else.

Catodion wrote:

Exactly. Also, militaristic cultures need to have a clear lack of scientific/technologic output even when they conquer the scientific cities of other civilizations. 

There would need to be a system that would not allow someone to inherit all the culture/science generation of a city just because they conquered it. Conquerors would have to heavily focus on re-development in order to reap the same level of benefits that the previous owner of the city had. 

The absolute worst mechanic of civilization series is that someone conquers a good city and immediately starts benefiting from that in science and culture over-night provided that they haven't pillaged everything beforehand. This severely handicaps a peaceful/growing playstyle and promotes very gamey maneuvers like letting AI build wonders/districts basically FOR YOU reap the benefits from. This never happened in real history.

How about this? After a city is conquered a large portion of the influence (and maybe fame) produced by the city are still collected by the original owners, since even if you rule them they still have their own cultural identity. The amount collected this way would decrease over time, and could be accellerated by things such as increasing your own population there, killing off the original population, or certain buildings or districts.

As for science . . . I don't know. I mean, it makes complete sense that if you get access to their books and workers you could quickly learn to replicate the advancements of the people you conquer. The way most tech systems work doesn't really match in that regard anyway, or how most cultures that interact tend to learn each other's secrets anyway. Perhaps if science cultures were less about getting ahead of their rivals (unless they are on another continent and thus less likely to pick up your knowledge immediately) but more about being the first to learn these things, gaining fame for it. Basically, if you are the first in the world to discover a tech you get a large fame boost, while you also gain a fame boost if you are the first to gain a tech among everyone you know, such as how China invented printing first but Gutenberg didn't know that at the time and is thus still famous. This would make military conquest less of an advantage for science since everyone is on more of an equal footing anyway.

Also, what about having "Heroes" that aren't military focused avoid cultures having a lot of war? Many German scientists fled during World War 2, so we got the fame for their inventions a lot of the time (Einstein's theories for instance).

As for science . . . I don't know. I mean, it makes complete sense that if you get access to their books and workers you could quickly learn to replicate the advancements of the people you conquer. The way most tech systems work doesn't really match in that regard anyway, or how most cultures that interact tend to learn each other's secrets anyway. Perhaps if science cultures were less about getting ahead of their rivals (unless they are on another continent and thus less likely to pick up your knowledge immediately) but more about being the first to learn these things, gaining fame for it. Basically, if you are the first in the world to discover a tech you get a large fame boost, while you also gain a fame boost if you are the first to gain a tech among everyone you know, such as how China invented printing first but Gutenberg didn't know that at the time and is thus still famous. This would make military conquest less of an advantage for science since everyone is on more of an equal footing anyway.

Also, what about having "Heroes" that aren't military focused avoid cultures having a lot of war? Many German scientists fled during World War 2, so we got the fame for their inventions a lot of the time (Einstein's theories for instance).

No, i didn't make myself clear.

What i really meant was that i don't support getting easy access to increased generation of science in order to research future technologies just by "inheriting" buildings that generate science on per-turn basis in cites that get captured. I think specialist buildings such as universities, theatres, temples, libraries should just automatically be removed from the city after the city gets conquered. 

As for technologies that were already discovered/researched it's a different story. I think the occupier should gain some % for the technology progress of the loser if the attacker does not have the technology yet. (just like Alexander the Great ability in civilization 6). 

As long as muscleheads like me can still have fun. I do acknowledge that this game is for everyone, not just us Warriors.

Also, stacking Warrior Cultures doesn't have to be only for conquering... it can also be for just being very strong vs getting conquered for less cost, while being willing to ally with peoples that are chill & civil. ;) (Hey neighbor! I'm having trouble figuring out this sciency stuff... ya willing to trade aid in Science? I'd be willing to take your people under my military wing & defend you in addition to my own in exchange... those Cavemen Savages on your other Border, never liked'em anyway!)

It would be a shame to nerf into the ground expansion like what was done in Civ V. The maps are so large but with all of the penalties attached to expansion, namely the unhappiness system, they always feel so empty even into the late game. While blobbing certainly shouldnt be the only strategy you at least should be able to expand across the map without suffering undue penalties to keep it from feeling so dreadfully empty.

I'm a big fan of the expansion balance in EU4 before some recent DLCs threw it off. There was a system where AI would protect smaller countries and limits to how many big allies a big country can have, such that alliances were never too big, but also it wasn't hard to get a buddy. When you expand you would first want to get a claim on enemy territory, then make a territory core, then incorporate them as a state. Overexpansion without the proper administration resulted in large penalties, most notably rebellions. Each time you took enemy teritory you gain aggesive expansion points which causes enemies to form coalitions (defensive pacts) agaisnt you. There weren't explicit stat penalties like Civ 5, but instead internal struggles and external threats which made holding a large empire together hard to do. I'd love to see civil wars and fall-of-the-roman-empire events, rather than "your wonders, social policies, research, etc. cost more".

The small countries and city states are vital to military balance. By having independant states you allow military expansion without neccisarily being an all-or-nothing fight agaisnt another player, but also you have alternatives options for assimilating other states peacefully. A common criticism of Civ is that in 400 BC one player would be "Greece", totally organized at the nation level. In reality in 431 BC Sparta went to war with Athens. I hope that lesser AIs might branch out of your Civilization and other starting Civilizations to create nearby city states, and that there would be a power struggle to conquer, vassalize or assimilate them, and then keep them under your control.

Catodion wrote:

As for science . . . I don't know. I mean, it makes complete sense that if you get access to their books and workers you could quickly learn to replicate the advancements of the people you conquer. The way most tech systems work doesn't really match in that regard anyway, or how most cultures that interact tend to learn each other's secrets anyway. Perhaps if science cultures were less about getting ahead of their rivals (unless they are on another continent and thus less likely to pick up your knowledge immediately) but more about being the first to learn these things, gaining fame for it. Basically, if you are the first in the world to discover a tech you get a large fame boost, while you also gain a fame boost if you are the first to gain a tech among everyone you know, such as how China invented printing first but Gutenberg didn't know that at the time and is thus still famous. This would make military conquest less of an advantage for science since everyone is on more of an equal footing anyway.

Also, what about having "Heroes" that aren't military focused avoid cultures having a lot of war? Many German scientists fled during World War 2, so we got the fame for their inventions a lot of the time (Einstein's theories for instance).

No, i didn't make myself clear.

What i really meant was that i don't support getting easy access to increased generation of science in order to research future technologies just by "inheriting" buildings that generate science on per-turn basis in cites that get captured. I think specialist buildings such as universities, theatres, temples, libraries should just automatically be removed from the city after the city gets conquered. 

As for technologies that were already discovered/researched it's a different story. I think the occupier should gain some % for the technology progress of the loser if the attacker does not have the technology yet. (just like Alexander the Great ability in civilization 6). 

One solution could be the "Klingon scientists gets no respect" concept. People do science, not buildings. Building are just tools. Militarists would look down at scienists for not being "tough enough". Have different culture have different values and priorities. The USSR could make amazing warmachines, but not a basic pack of hand wipes. It should be cheap for military cultures to get good generals, units and bonuses to land grabs, but don't think that they can rule an entirely new people at sword point very easily. Fame needs to be contextal, if you are a superpower people treat you differently and have higher expectation of what you can do for them. Maybe we need a game more like EU4 than the traditional 4X game.

"Klingon scientists gets no respect" is implicitely in 4X, such as the penalty in Endless Space 'Space cadets'. When you conquer a city you don't typically kill all of the universitie's professors and replace them with those of you own culture/race. They won't be happy to serve you at first, and so it's expected that there is an assimilation process. I do like that in EU4 military tradition was something you built up through war experience, rather than just an immediate bonus because your culture is inherently better at war. The university system is itself a tradition that takes time to build up. I think it would be interesting if there were stats which represented which values were accepted in your culture, such as venerating science, and perhaps late game propaganda would allow you to spend money to increase those values.

I am most interested to see how Amplitude addresses this issue, because this is such a huge issue for all 4x games, and it is a thin line to tread.  The difference between making conquest the only way of winning, and making conquest a painful slog is very small.

In my opinion, it can be addressed a number of ways.

Steep assimilation requirements tied to culture would be one way of slowing conquest blobbers.  The conqueror would have to keep a sizable garrison in the city to keep order will an assimilation process happens.  If the conquered is a larger power, then possibly one could have a production queue for "sending resistance aid", spending production to slow an assimilation rate.  If the conquerer ignores the happiness/assimilation debuff, i.e. moving the conquering army away, or not leaving a large enough garrison, then the conquered get the ability to attempt to "retake" the city by means of a spawned army or something.

Or possibly something related to culture relations, ethics relations, or diplomatic relations.  For instance, if you are a scientific civ conquering another scientific civ, then the unhappiness malus to being conquered is less, or if you conquered a civ that has an extremely low diplomatic relations value with you, there is an increased unhappiness malus.

Or even more weirdly/experimentally, one way to limit the unhappiness malus would be to improve the quality of life in the city.  For instance, building better infrastructure/improving the conquered civilians way of life could, in the words of Gul Dukat, "Show them that they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness."

All of these would slow down a purely militaristic civ.  Either they have to spend more time building improvements or keeping unhappiness in line, or at least planning their invasion carefully.

Normally, military victories are slowed down by the following natural mechanics :

- A warmonger player tends to be hated and assaulted by other AIs.

- Having a large empire is difficult to defend all of its territory.

- The newly conquered cities need time to be productives (assimilation mechanism specific to Endless Legend).

So normally it will be fine.

I remind you that the 4X are and above all are war games, and I remind you that War has historically resolved more conflicts than culture. So the fact that aggressive players are rewarded if they are good is positive.

Well, we know that in this game that while a few medals/stars can be earned through conquest, most of them require other things in order to accomplish this. Even if you do get 6/7 stars from battles and expansion, that just means how much you have to fight in the next era in order to get those same stars becomes much greater, so the marginal benefits become less and less the more battling you do. Meanwhile, if your neighbor has been peaceful but has at least fortified their home then when you attack them even if each side kills the same number of units and you take several territories they'll have actually gathered more stars and thus more fame than you did because they need to kill fewer units to earn them. While early game this might make sense because it lets you snowball your production, science, wealth, etc. it's still a risk that becomes even moreso as the game goes on.

To be fair, this is a problem that every 4x game has really struggled with. Very, very difficult to get right. The line is so fine and difficult to tread that games usually end up falling either on the "all war" or "all peace" side of the equation, neither of which are desirable.

Fundamentally, I think there's two main approaches you could take. One is to make war itself more difficult, and the other is to have penalties to expansion that balance out the effects of successful war. While most 4X games that have tried to tackle this problem have used a combination of the two, I would say Civ V and VI erred more on the former, and a game like EL more on the latter.

Personally, I massively favour the second option. Civ V has fairly significant penalties to expansion, but it mainly tried to fix Civ IV's horrific warmongering by just making war quite difficult to engage in. Cities have big health bars, good defensive damage and powerful bombard attacks. Units can't move into rough terrain and attack on the same turn, making them easy prey for the defender's ranged units. And generally, the one-unit-per-tile system slows down war dramatically, giving the defender time to prepare and build more units. The result is a tedious, drawn-out slog where each player has to issue small, micro-ey commands to a million units every single turn. It's not fun at all and it's by far the thing I like least about the game.

On the other hand, in Endless Legend (and as a disclaimer, I've played a lot less of the game than I have Civ games, but this is how it seemed from what I have played) the superior power in a war will generally take victory with comparative ease. The war is fast, fun, and decisive, the way it should be; however, the warmonger has to be extremely careful that they will not massively overextend their empire in the process, crushing their happiness and ruining the output of all their cities. To me, THIS is how you balance war. Make the war fun and quick, but make the penalties come once the war is over.

Another thing I should say is the problem must not be solved through diplomacy alone because this does nothing for multiplayer, where the "war question" can be at its most severe. 

So, combining both points, imagine you're playing a 6-player game. Your 2 nearest neighbours are very strong players, and the players on the other side of the map are weaker. You don't think you'll win through early aggression against these stronger players so you play a more peaceful sim-city strategy. You play this strategy very effectively, but one of the other good players kills the 2 weaker players with ease, takes all their land and is able to massively out-compete you throughout the remainder of the game, due to an advantage they had access to that you didn't. Issues like this occur as a matter of routine in multiplayer 4x games and the solution, in my opinion, is to focus on balancing the benefits of war, rather than the difficulty of war or the diplomatic repurcussions.

The balance between war and peace will always be a struggle in 4X games but there are some possible paths to mitigation. 

Espionage and sabotage options through a spy system, if capable of providing substantial penalties to the enemy or bonuses to owner can be a great balancing feature. This can be provided through allowing espionage bonuses to stack through peaceful diplomatic relations or actions which is then penalized more heavily if your spy is caught and it's revealed you've been undermining peace through subterfuge. 

Advanced military research is a good balancing factor if the advanced technologies are good force multipliers or provide substantial advantages. In this way, a 'peaceful' faction surrounded by more militant factions can balance the scales by having more powerful units even if they have less of them because they don't have the production powerhouse of a vast empire. Alternatively, highly advanced defensive technologies making attacking a peaceful faction a lot harder is another way to balance the engagement. 

It comes down to the decisions made by the player. A player pursuing a more peaceful game progression (by choice or by necessity) will have to balance military research with other research if they suspect they will fall under attack. You can choose to forego all defense and fast track a win condition if you want but that comes at the risk of an opponent probing your defenses and finding them lacking.