Grievances (Civ6)

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Grievances is a new gameplay mechanic in Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. It replaces the Warmongering system as a way of determining diplomatic reactions to a leader's actions towards others, and ties heavily into both the normal diplomatic relations between civilizations and into the new Diplomatic Victory.

Mechanics

Grievances are a score which each pair of nations keep for each other, depending on what happened recently between them. For example, Denouncing, Declaring war or taking a city of the other civilization will all bring up Grievances against you; and vice versa. So will breaking promises, etc. - all acts which are considered 'transgressions'. All of these will bring up the Grievances score of nation A against nation B (or vice versa, depending on who perpetrated which action), and the exact balance of these Grievances affects how other nations will judge these actions. If, for example, the Grievances score of nation A is bigger than that of nation B, the world will favor nation A, and vice versa. This means that further transgressions will be ignored diplomatically by other leaders, as long as the Grievances score is in favor of the offending party. However, these transgressions will accrue their own grievance score, tipping the balance. Eventually, the world will start noticing transgressions and this will affect relations with other leaders, adding negative score to them.

In essence, Grievances are an equation which is determined on the level of each pair of players, before being brought up as a possible penalty before the other leaders. While the warmonger penalty was a straightforward computation of warlike actions taken by each player, which would cause a direct negative effect with all other leaders, the grievances system takes into account many more actions than just combat ones and it also takes note of the actions of the opposite party. Both are then compared against each other and allow players to 'justify' aggression with past transgressions committed against them.

Grievances decay

As in the real world, leaders tend to 'forget' the transgressions of the past. The Grievances score between each pair of nations has a decay rate whenever the two nations are not at war with each other (no decay when they are at war!). This rate depends on the Game Era, and goes from fast to slow, as the game progresses. This mirrors the old Warmonger score differences, as related to Game Eras, and preserves the diplomatic tendency of diminishing tolerance towards aggressive behavior. However, instead of the penalties increasing with Game Eras and then decaying at the same rate, now the penalties stay the same with Eras, but the decay rate slows down - the leaders will remember transgressions for far longer, and consequently react negatively towards the transgressor for longer periods.

Grievances Grievance against Gorgo and Alexander will decay faster than other leaders due to their agendas.

Causes for Grievances

Compared to the old warmongering system (where only outright aggression could have international consequences), the gameplay situations which can cause Grievances Grievances are many more, and include practically the entire field of diplomacy! Here are the general areas where you could expect generation of grievances:

• Warfare. This remains, of course, the main cause for accruing grievances. Declaring war (even with a Casus Belli in most cases), conquering cities, razing cities, as well as retaining cities after a Peace negotiation all inflict grievances.
• War declarations to friends or allies. When third parties declare wars on your friends, you get Grievances against them, even if you don't Declare an automatic war. Note that this is also true when the friend entity is just a City-State!
• Relationships between leaders. Many diplomatic actions could become causes for grievances - Denouncing, refusing to make a promise, reneging on a promise, etc.
• Spying. Being caught spying now also inflicts Grievances (against you, of course).

And here is a complete list of Grievances Grievances causes and their exact numerical values:

Event	Grievances Accrued
City Razed	200
Surprise War Declared	150
Formal war declared	100
War of Territorial expansion declared	75
Holy war declared	50
Colonial war declared	50
War of Retribution declared	50
Ideological War declared	50
War declared on a City-state friend or ally	50
City-State Conquered	50
Golden Age War declared	25
City Occupied	25
Denounced	25
Refused Promise	25