War weariness is *insane*

[iheartdaikaiju]

I lost 20 happiness everywhere when declaring war on Napoleon in my last game. It was a formal war because we were hostile, in theory 0 added penalties.

How the heck do you wage war in this game? I've noticed less severe penalties when I trick the AI into stupid suicidal attacks, is that pretty much what I have to do or are there mechanics you've discovered that work around this?

Help me wipe that smug expression off Napoleon's ugly face please and thanks in advance!

[Rhapsody]

Not much more to it than fielding superior forces and supporting yourself. Having an ally or friends can help too, even if they are not able to participate directly, since even the AI can support you on your wars if they have influence to spare.

Preparing for later wars can be facilitated by not overbuilding influence buildings like monuments and dungeons. It's kinda busted how they keep providing influence even in the modern era, but that's how the game works.

Diplomatic and militaristic attributes will also go a long way to helping you increase war support.

[iheartdaikaiju]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Not much more to it than fielding superior forces and supporting yourself. Having an ally or friends can help too, even if they are not able to participate directly, since even the AI can support you on your wars if they have influence to spare.

Preparing for later wars can be facilitated by not overbuilding influence buildings like monuments and dungeons. It's kinda busted how they keep providing influence even in the modern era, but that's how the game works. :captainclown:

Diplomatic and militaristic attributes will also go a long way to helping you increase war support.

I feel completely lost where war support is concerned, does the game tell you the formulas it's using to calculate this? I didn't even know until checking the comments it was influence related. I had an ally and a ton of suzerainships and a lot of income but I'd just spent influence before the war integrating a city-state, I bet that's what did it but I would really like something I could use to plan and predict with numbers if the game makes it available.

[Rhapsody]

It's on Civilopedia, search for "war". Pretty sure there was some kind of tutorial pop-up about it too, but not sure.

But yeah, it's worthwhile to have a reserve of influence at hand. You can also see your opponents' influence income, but not their reserve.

[iheartdaikaiju]

The only link to influence I saw is the fact you can take the war support action. Are you sure your initial war support has any direct link to influence?

Anyway that screen was super helpful and I realize what happened, I attacked someone with allies and although I had allies of my own they do *not* reduce the penalty, where their allies *do* add 1x penalty *per ally*. So a -5 becomes a -10 when their buddy joins in, and a -15 when two buddies declare on you for attacking their friend.

From the looks of it influence doesn't really help you all that much, the thing to do is to just make sure you have roughly 5 happiness income extra per person allied to the enemy. In the early game anyway, you definitely don't make enough influence to take the war support action once per ally you're at war with. Happiness income is *exponentially* easier to get than several hundred influence per turn in the ancient era.

E. I just realized I was talking to you in two places, I gave the helpful award in the other thread, but since that one has a bit of drama I'll continue the conversation here.

[Batailleuse]

never had issues to be fair, my cities are swimming in hapiness, to a point i just put 1-2 units in cities to defend in case of wars, andi just wait the other civ to just collapse and ask to make peace, and usually snipe a city for free because i have better score.

i had a few instances of war happening where i did nothing but wait, and got their capital (or very least one with wonder) as reward for peace treaty...

[iheartdaikaiju]

Originally posted by Batailleuse:

never had issues to be fair, my cities are swimming in hapiness, to a point i just put 1-2 units in cities to defend in case of wars, andi just wait the other civ to just collapse and ask to make peace, and usually snipe a city for free because i have better score.

i had a few instances of war happening where i did nothing but wait, and got their capital (or very least one with wonder) as reward for peace treaty...

It's really not an issue in age of exploration onward. It's only a problem in antiquity.

This game is the opposite of all the other civ games in this respect. Typically there's no penalty for being fast and waging war with your neighbors in the early game and it's fairly easy to be everyone's friend even if you were a total bastard at the beginning of the game. 7 is not like that at all.

But yeah, from exploration onward you're swimming in both happiness and influence. I just had to adapt my playstyle. I kind of prefer this honestly, I don't have to very carefully plan all my turns in the early game and manipulate the AI into making mistakes in the late game. The difficulty in this game is lowered dramatically from that point of view and makes for more relaxed, enjoyable play.

[aplikantgold]

Originally posted by iheartdaikaiju:

The only link to influence I saw is the fact you can take the war support action. Are you sure your initial war support has any direct link to influence?

Anyway that screen was super helpful and I realize what happened, I attacked someone with allies and although I had allies of my own they do *not* reduce the penalty, where their allies *do* add 1x penalty *per ally*. So a -5 becomes a -10 when their buddy joins in, and a -15 when two buddies declare on you for attacking their friend.

From the looks of it influence doesn't really help you all that much, the thing to do is to just make sure you have roughly 5 happiness income extra per person allied to the enemy. In the early game anyway, you definitely don't make enough influence to take the war support action once per ally you're at war with. Happiness income is *exponentially* easier to get than several hundred influence per turn in the ancient era.

E. I just realized I was talking to you in two places, I gave the helpful award in the other thread, but since that one has a bit of drama I'll continue the conversation here.

You initial war support has nothing to do with influence.

It depends on:
- type of war (formal or suprise war)
- if suprise war it depends on your relations - higer the relation when declaring suprise war attacked civ has higher support from the start
- it comes also from attributes, wonders and leader specific attributes (and maybe from other things like civs uniqe, dont know for sure, only playing Augustus with Rome/Normans/France for now :))
- in each era you have war support punishment from razing cities

After initial war support calculations you can spend your influence points to make it better for you, each point costs more influence.

Your enemy allies dont count as -1 war support, when they join war against you they count as another enemy, so depending on situation and influence they spend they can add more than -1. If youre at war with one civ and then 2 of their allies join war and everyone has +2 advantage over you (so youre -2 with everyone) youre at - 6 war weariness points. Each point is -3 happiness, so youre at -18 happiness and also -2 with everyone in combat strenght (each minus point count as -1 combat strenght).

Your allies dont reduce your war support minus points because everyone have their own war weariness score. So when they join your war they war support points (if they have positive score) weaken your enemy (in the way that they have more minus happines points, because combat strenght is only their vs your enemy, it doesnt add for your combat score).

[Aluminum Elite Master]

It's not the initial war declaration that worries me, as that can be controlled and accounted for, like others wrote, by making sure relations are not great and that it's a formal war.

What always frustrates me is that *winning* the war seems to *drop* your score. As in, I took two cities and lost no units, and my war weariness increased despite not having lost a unit and gained ground. It's yet another mechanic that punishes getting too much of a lead, because unlike HumanKInd, taking cities seems to further drop the war-score... in HumanKind, taking a city greatly boosted it for you, which is both intuitive (you gained ground, your people are confident in the direction of the war) and sound gameplay (you were rewarded for good gameplay).

[aplikantgold]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

It's not the initial war declaration that worries me, as that can be controlled and accounted for, like others wrote, by making sure relations are not great and that it's a formal war.

What always frustrates me is that *winning* the war seems to *drop* your score. As in, I took two cities and lost no units, and my war weariness increased despite not having lost a unit and gained ground. It's yet another mechanic that punishes getting too much of a lead, because unlike HumanKInd, taking cities seems to further drop the war-score... in HumanKind, taking a city greatly boosted it for you, which is both intuitive (you gained ground, your people are confident in the direction of the war) and sound gameplay (you were rewarded for good gameplay).

No, war weariness doesnt work this way.

Its not connected with "how good youre doing" in war. Its completely seperate thing. During the war each side can spend influence points to support their war effort. So its based on your influence income and decision to spend it on war support. So in your case you took 2 cities and AI decided to put influence points in war support to help its units and to make your life harder by decreasing your happiness.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by aplikantgold:

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

It's not the initial war declaration that worries me, as that can be controlled and accounted for, like others wrote, by making sure relations are not great and that it's a formal war.

What always frustrates me is that *winning* the war seems to *drop* your score. As in, I took two cities and lost no units, and my war weariness increased despite not having lost a unit and gained ground. It's yet another mechanic that punishes getting too much of a lead, because unlike HumanKInd, taking cities seems to further drop the war-score... in HumanKind, taking a city greatly boosted it for you, which is both intuitive (you gained ground, your people are confident in the direction of the war) and sound gameplay (you were rewarded for good gameplay).

No, war weariness doesnt work this way.

Its not connected with "how good youre doing" in war. Its completely seperate thing. During the war each side can spend influence points to support their war effort. So its based on your influence income and decision to spend it on war support. So in your case you took 2 cities and AI decided to put influence points in war support to help its units and to make your life harder by decreasing your happiness.

Does the AI actually use that system, though, correctly, is what I always wonder?

If it does, then yeah, that would make sense. I'll have to go back and read a bit more... I thought taking a city was a drop in war support just innately, but if the AI is reacting and spending the influence when it sees a city go down, then that would make sense.

[DadouXIII]

The AI does use the system correctly yes, they will pump their score with Influence.
If other AI civs also dislike you, they will ALSO pump your opponent's score up with THEIR influence.

[iheartdaikaiju]

Originally posted by DadouXIII:

The AI does use the system correctly yes, they will pump their score with Influence.
If other AI civs also dislike you, they will ALSO pump your opponent's score up with THEIR influence.

I agree with you, for the benefit of others though I think it would be better if we made what is happening explicitly clear. Influence does not have an automatic impact, by itself. Having a large influence pool not being spent on anything will not help your war support. There is a specific war support diplomacy action you can spend influence on, and that impacts war support.

Sorry I know it sounds like I am being pedantic, just people's use of the term influence in the way you've used it here made it very difficult for me to find the correct information; I did not even think to look up the term war support or indeed the word war as I thought it was just a colloquial descriptor, until aplikantgold pointed it out, and I went down many rabbit holes searching for details on the influence mechanic. I am only trying to prevent others from following me down all the dead ends I bumped into trying to find out how war support works.

It's best, since as far as I know there is no information on the city screen that tells you whether you founded a city earlier in the game or whether you obtained it from other players, to budget 5 happiness per potential enemy in a war to declare a war in your least happy city, so you do not have a system shock that will make taking the war support action difficult.

Happiness, not influence, is what determine your base war constitution score. It's best to think of happiness as your great people points and influence as the faith or gold that push you over the threshold when getting great people in Civ 6.

[Rhapsody]

Happiness doesn't do anything for war. So long as it's 0 or above, the settlement will be content and happy. Greater numbers will only result in more celebrations and conditional effects like Ashoka's buffs from extra happiness.

War support, if against you, will cause war weariness that manifests as combat penalty for your troops, combat bonus to your adversary and happiness penalty to your settlements (but no additional happiness to your opponent).

Influence can be spent to support wars between any players.

[iheartdaikaiju]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Happiness doesn't do anything for war. So long as it's 0 or above, the settlement will be content and happy. Greater numbers will only result in more celebrations and conditional effects like Ashoka's buffs from extra happiness.

War support, if against you, will cause war weariness that manifests as combat penalty for your troops, combat bonus to your adversary and happiness penalty to your settlements (but no additional happiness to your opponent).

Influence can be spent to support wars between any players.

I am going to have to disagree here.

The entire penalty - correct me if I am wrong - to war weariness is per-settlement happiness, -3 in settlements you made, -5 in settlements you acquired, -7 in settlements you acquired in that war.

If war "weariness" does anything meaningful from a game mechanic standpoint, other than decrease happiness, if there is any other directly applied penalty to influence, gold, culture, science, or production, I will be happy to admit I am wrong, but my problem was the fact I declared war in the ancient era and suffered a massive and immediate happiness penalty which destroyed many of my buildings, even though it was a formal war and it was the very first turn, and the only way I can see to prevent this is to have a higher per-settlement happiness.

Civ 7 uses Civ 5's local happiness, so even if you have a lot of happiness per turn, your cities will still be under threat of revolt and lose buildings if you do not have a lot of happiness in those cities, and influence will not do anything to help this situation because this penalty is applied immediately once the enemy civ's allies enter the war. You do not have a chance to respond to this with influence before you are impacted.

Am I wrong with any of that? Again my interest here is not to argue, my interest is to make sure people searching these forums have accurate information, and I see no way to prevent the immediate shock that is not increasing the per-city happiness enough in the ancient era to survive it without loss of buildings.