Grievances

[Blitz4]

Could someone explain the tl;dr of grievances to me?

My understanding is grievances do nothing in the game other than tell a nation how upset all other nations are with them, but do nothing in the game. Is that right?

[Stormwinds]

You're not entirely wrong, though conquered cities face a loyalty malus that scales with the amount of grievances that you have caused their original owner.

[sauluxville]

Grievances cause a negative diplo modifier with that AI. Also, if you cause grievances to one AI, all other AI will take offence regardless of their relations with the afflicted AI and will acquire a negative diplo modifier towards you as well.

If you caused a lot of grievances to one AI and have no declaration of friendships or alliances going with other AI, this could snowball to a wave of denunciations by every remaining AI. When denounced, you can't have open borders with the AI, establish delegations/embassies and declare friendships alliances. That may hurt your culture victory attempt somewhat if you're going for it, and probably AI will not trade luxuries etc. with you or may offer crappy prices.

If you had an established declaration of friendship/alliance with some AI, those AI will still display potentially huge negative diplo modifiers towards you but as DoF/alliance is unbreakable and has a fixed expiry date, those AI will remain friendly/allied to you. And they will agree to renew the DoF regardless, provided you offer the renewal on the turn of expiry, unless the end of the game is very close, then they will refuse the renewal no matter what.

So one of the ways to play might be choosing your trade partners/friends and locking them into friendships, then obliterating everyone else with no consequences.

However, given that the AI is mostly clueless and can barely play the game anyway, you can roll over them without paying much attention to such fine points.

[Oaks]

Also grievances help you get away with conquest without incurring/incurring less war monger pentalty from other civs.

[Blitz4]

Thank you. From what I've heard, they were intended to replace that war monger system, to fix when you went to war with one civ which could've caused all other civs to band against you?

The fact that no amount of grievances can shatter a friendship/alliance is bananas. So I'm going to save up these 4 nukes here and if I just position my subs & bombers just right, I can hit the capitals of all civs that aren't my friend on the same turn. And my friend, he's my buddy, we're friends until the end. We're going to live in this beautiful new world I've created. My citizens, they will everything I say.

If grievances replaced war monger, then I believe that scenario shows this isn't the best way to solve the problem.

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by sauluxville:

However, given that the AI is mostly clueless and can barely play the game anyway, you can roll over them without paying much attention to such fine points.

One of the tings that attracted me to civ. If I wind up loving the game more than all other games, it won't be hard to train an AI to beat good players, it would just take a long time given my budget and the game must support full recording & playback of multiplayer games. I'm not as experienced at civ6 over civ5. I do like many of the ideas in both games.

[Aachen]

Originally posted by Blitz4:

.... The fact that no amount of grievances can shatter a friendship/alliance is bananas. So I'm going to save up these 4 nukes here and if I just position my subs & bombers just right, I can hit the capitals of all civs that aren't my friend on the same turn. And my friend, he's my buddy, we're friends until the end. We're going to live in this beautiful new world I've created. My citizens, they will everything I say ....

That’s less to do with grievances than simply being part of the game rules. Warmonger penalties didn’t cancel alliances or DoFs either—and truces and denouncements are handled similarly. About the only situations I recall overriding any agreements (I think) would be emergencies.

[Blitz4]

Thanks. I believe they removed the ability to record & replay games. I'm sad. I enjoy civ6. I'm going to go back to civ5 and eventually complete my AI project, which would be easy to transfer over to civ6 once they add the ability to record & replay games. was wrong.

[iheartdaikaiju]

One thing that I can add to the already excellent answer above, is that in Civ VI grievances work both ways. That's what's new and what distinguishes them from warmonger penalties. If an opponent has converted some of my cities, I get grievances against them, meaning that will also make other AI more understanding if I turn around and go to war with the jerk. They unfortunately drop off very quickly. But if combined quickly with something like a colonial war - 50 grievances plus the 25 from your denouncement (but I had 25 grievances against them) - you can have a nearly consequence free war even if you don't have any friendships or alliances should a backwoods AI start poking the bear.

One other important difference : promises give you diplomatic favor in congress. This is conceptually very silly compared to V, but mechanically very smart. In V, if you wanted to get the AI to view you as a backstabber forever, it was very easy to just make a promise and break it and you have a frenemy for the rest of the game feeding you cities populated with wonders. In VI, things are a little more challenging, because they forget - you get the reward for making the promise, you get punished with additional grievances when you break it, time passes, and they go away, and one era later they have a smiley face and you have to go through the trouble of tweaking their nose all over again from scratch.

What I don't like about it though, is that if you say "screw off" and don't make a promise... you still get punished with additional grievances. There is literally no reason not to make the promise. You aren't making a promise. It's a demand, with the option of getting 30 free diplomatic favor.

The idea with grievances encouraging you to denounce instead of surprise war, is to encourage you to give the AI time to prepare for war if you only want to fight one AI. By making you denounce them, then wait several turns, then declare a formal war, incurring fewer grievances, you give the AI time to switch its priorities. This is very similar to the 10 turns to prepare for a join war mechanic in civ 5. Just without the joint part, and it's you initiating it against the AI.

[Divirt]

The stronger the country you play for, the more accusations and condemnations you will hear.
Because of ai, in the first centuries, other civilizations are more often ahead of you, everything appears there simply * Out of thin air *. And everyone is smiling.
As soon as you have a clear superiority, they begin to reproach and condemn you.
Maybe the game spurs the player to war).

[Goresh]

Fighting a war too long is generally bad.
I have found even when you never start a war, even when you are fighting a purely defensive war against surprise aggression, fighting too long will see you eventually denounced by everyone as a war monger.

[Stormwinds]

Originally posted by Goresh:

Fighting a war too long is generally bad.
I have found even when you never start a war, even when you are fighting a purely defensive war against surprise aggression, fighting too long will see you eventually denounced by everyone as a war monger.

You don't generate grievances when fighting a defensive war unless you turn it into an offensive war. Pillaging and killing units generate 0 grievances.