Global Tension mechanic idea

[lucid ice]

I'd like to see there be some sort of global mechanic regarding tensions between the different civs.
It could start very small in the earlier ages as connections and information aren't as wide spread etc.
But in the modern age, and any potential ages after it could be a really interesting feature.
Could be something like army sizes + any wars declared, spying, settling new towns close etc. A massive one would be the creation of nukes, and ultimately the use of a nuke would make it skyrocker.
You could reduce it doing special projects and diplomatic actions.
As the tension gets higher all civs receive diplomatic penalties to reflect the strain, making alliances harder to keep, more wars likely to happen.
Could have events etc all tied into it.
Any more ideas, please jot them down!

Total war Shogun had a realm divided mechanic, so when you got too powerful (or an ai) everyone just ended up at war, to try and stop victory - so could work to help snowballing

[dry merlin]

could have decisions guided by some kind of 'strategic interest' metric.
negative strategic interest would represent an interest in opposing a given civ. it goes negative with civs who forward settle, who conquer cities in wars, who break alliances, who reject endeavours. anything that would make a civ less likely to work with you.
positive strategic interest would represent an interest in working with a given civ. it's higher with small civs (to work together against big civs), civs you trade with, civs who keep alliances and have friendly relations, etc.
as tensions increase, strategic interests have a bigger role in determining relationships. alliances fracture and poles realign.
essentially, as a way to make diplomatic relations change more, and more systematically. atm i find most games, there will be a handful of friendly civs, and any civ that becomes hostile will be irreperably hostile for the entire game, and chain declare war every time the truces run out. i also mostly play diplomatic and it's not for lack of trying to do reconciliation, making trade routes, and ultimately wasting influence on trying to be friendly and avoid wars.
but if likelihood to declare war could scale with tension (and perhaps also be modified by some kind of threat assessment based on military/tech strength if it isnt already)
and if opinions could realign based on strategic interests,
the macro diplomacy could be a lot less stale.

[grand holly]

I think a tension system would work in Civ 7. I played Hearts Of Iron 4 which has a global tension and its very flavourful and helps that game. What i'm not 100% sure about is what problem its trying to solve. Do we want leaders to have lower relation values? Do we want war to be more likely? Are we just trying to make things easier to predict?

What would be the benefits and downsides of having high and low tension? Would it be a single value that affects everyone equally or unique numbers that affect a specific civ-to-civ relationship? Does low tension give buffs to peaceful victory conditions like culture?

We already have ideology which is somewhat supposed to be a driver of conflict in the modern age. Would ideology take more of a backseat and be just a multiplier of tension effects?

[rocky lark]

❗ i've been summoned ❗
(although i'll have to read in detail later 😅 )

[rocky lark]

combining tension and cold war as a end-of-age-crisis opens up some interesting possibilities, especially when you (as shown by reality) weave in the ideologies chosen during the age.

As the mild start there could be a iron curtain risen, ending and prohibiting ideology-crossing agreements and especially alliances. Increasing the buff / debuff of being same / different ideology

to increase,

• 1. we could tap into the military machines that accompanied the real cold war (nasa / wp) and that were clearly dominated by their respective "figurehead" (usa / udssr). Ingame appearing as the strongest civ of each ideology - needs to be measured though, through all categories with extra weight in military and economy i'd say - taking control over every military unit of the ideology. Basically a permanent city-state-army-levy
• 2. cold war was a war of spies and coups. to reflect that agressive diplo-action should be cheaper, shorter and more powerfull (when not countered). Add an additional one that can change the ideology pf smaller civs too. 😈 the empowered diplo-actions could be already considered for phase 1, maybe all 3 phases with getting extremer every phase

as culmination for 3rd phase we make the cold war burning hot. (is a forced war between the ideology-blocks to extreme? 😂 )

[rocky lark]

sounds promising, although how to make it distinct (and more of an impact) from the relation-system already in place. 🤔 currently, the overlap is substantial 😅

(yea.... dis is now about 2.5 minutes old because of the timer 😂 which is - to be honest - understandable in a channel like this ^^)

[lucid ice]

O yeah, like most of the posts I make it’s a starting point 👀

Needs some love and ideas

[rocky lark]

(problem determination part)
reading over @lucid ice and @dry merlin , with a pinch of my own first brainstrom (before i changed gears to cold-war-crisis 😅 ) it feels like most of the actions, especially the nuclear ones, have too less of an impact when imagining them in a world as connected as the one of this era.

(own thoughts)
From the guts it would feel right to layer it. With a base layer applied to all in the same way (global tension) and one more focussed on what the individual civs have done (contribution-% to global tension maybe?)
As you said, the ideologies are already working into that direction abd it would be historically logical when those allignments influence how civ see each other. Although I am aware a 3 layered system where you have another layer that determines the inter-civ-tension-results by whether they are alligned or not, would be too tedious to dive into, play around and espacially balance ☠️ 😂

[dry merlin]

its not to make relations lower or make war more likely,
it's for relations and war/peace to be more varied.
right now, if relations are hostile, they're almost certainly hostile for the rest of the game.
and if you fight a war, you're probably fighting a war with that ai for the rest of the game on repeat unless you wipe them out.
tension would make periods of war, and periods of peace, to both be features of a normal campaign,
and allow relationships to shift more over time, so that your friends and enemies vary throughout a normal campaign.

[grand holly]

How would tension make, for example, someone you’ve been hostile with the whole game now not hostile? Or are you saying that’s just how the game is not something that tension would try to change?

Would high tension force war upon you? Or just make it more likely that the AI declares? How would that work with human players?

For what it’s worth I do like the concept I just can’t quite see the best place to use it right now. Have more questions than answers (as you can see!)

[dry merlin]

tension would alter which variables have more effect on relations.
during high tension, strategic interests matter more: players oppose strong militarised empires that own land they coveted etc, and like players they trade with, who are small, etc. meanwhile things like past wars, sanctions, previous age, and leader agendas start to matter less.
so during high tension, you can find unlikely allies due to strategic partnerships, as diplomacy has more of a clean slate (without there being nothing to replace it to prompt hostilities)
and during low tension, you can have periods of peace even if the world hates you.

[grand holly]

That sounds a lot like the game taking control of player actions. If tensions are high, and I as a player don’t want to oppose strong militarised empires. What then?

Who covets what land? That would be a completely new mechanic and again how would it apply to human players?

Does low tension enforce peace? What if I want war?

Clean slate I kinda like. Bit like how GB and France were fighting each other for 1000+ years then suddenly realised they were better as allies!

[dry merlin]

diplomacy already does that.
borders touching make you unfriendly.
ai declaring war on you makes you unfriendly.
ai sanctioning you makes you unfriendly.
discovering espionage makes you unfriendly.
making peace makes you unfriendly.
what if i don't want to be unfriendly with my neighbours? or i don't want to begrudge ai who sanction me? etc.
diplomacy is always a realm of the game you can't fully control, bc its the realm where you interact with other players. and a core premise of any game is that other players have their own agency and interests.

coveting land: not a new mechanic! previous games had forward settle penalties simply based on proximity (to capital?). some function of proximity and value (resources, yields, natural wonders) could determine what a player covets.

low tension doesn't enforce peace, only makes ai less likely to declare wars, and makes hostile relations less likely (so formal wars more difficult). main way to get hostile relations during low tension will be sanctions, which will have larger impact during low tension and smaller impact during high tension.

[rugged sail]

I like the idea of encouraging unlikely allies and the idea of managing both individual relationships as well as global ones. I especially like the development of nuclear weaponry being related to increased tensions. Even the significant development of military could be a way of increasing tensions or by performing military practices in cites that neighbor other countries. This could also be a precursor for bringing in diplomatic victories.

[jagged wharf]

I voiced this in another comment of mine, but here I say it again as it is the perfect context. Wars should combine, get renamed and after some point this should lead to a '"war crisis" or "world war" due to global tension mechanic. Currently no matter how many wars happen, the world just runs as is.

As an example, Victiora2 implemented this. They had this world tension scale and if it tipped certain threshold, the world would be thrown at a world war with the countries that are currently at war, combining them based on alliances and/or defensive pacts, also offering other countries if they had geopolitical interest in that region. Now, I don't expect Civ7 to implement all this intricate paradox mechanics, but it should give the basic idea.