Escalating / dampening feedback in AH

  To be fair I think most politicians tend to avoid war.  In modern tomes and developed states anyway.  Its very bloody expensive and even if they have no clear electorate they need to appeal to it can be very costly in human terms which can led to unrest.  They might bluster and pose but its generally just not in their own interests to actually start a shooting war.  You really need someone with the mentality of a street thug or who's a raving lunatic to be that eager to start a war.

  Also I can see exceptions to your statement above.  Were the leaders of the military and navy in imperial Japan taught Sun Tzu as if so they don't seem to have listened at all.  Also while politician leaders and public opinion, along with some autocratic monarchs played major roles in triggering WWI a lot of the military, most famously in Germany seem to been eager as well.

  A lot of politicians are self serving idiots who do a hell of a lot of damage to their countries and societies but that tends to make them avoid war.  You can see the paranoia about 'escalation' in Ukraine and how its led to so much additional suffering for the Ukrainians as a classic example here with the limited aid and limits on what they can do with it.

  One thing that occurs to me with the problem in the modern age is that most computer games involving wars tend to push this myth.  You conquer a province and while there might be problems for a while winning loyalty, which can be done in a number of ways depending on the game you tend very quickly to gain additional resources in terms of manpower, wealth and raw materials and generally due to AI weaknesses only your nation gets rolling it can fairly quickly become a virtually unstoppable juggernaut. 

  i think the key thing might be the fact this applies mostly to modern politicians with a dependency on the electorate.  Those who do not, who have often gained power by non-democratic means are too often less responsible.

  In terms of games I'm more familiar with some of the early Total war games and their spin offs, which tend to have issues with culture and with popularity but an experience player can overcome them to a degree.  [For instance in Medieval II total war, after about a century of game play Egypt and most of the Levant is now Catholic - as culture in the game is based on religion, Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim - and no one in France, N Italy or western Germany have any issues with an English monarch ruling them].

  Another game I've played - Arsenal of Democracy, a HOI2 spin off does have a lot of complexities for control of conquered areas and unrest.  You get only about 10% of the manpower, industrial production and resources as well.  However they have a massive out in that if you release such conquered territories as a puppet they get the full allocations and are loyal allies.  In a multi-player group I've played with in the past that means that by the time the war comes - as the game starts in 1936 - much of the British empire is independent and pumping resources into Britain - as you get excesses over a certain level of storage of the various resources types.  Similarly Germany and Japan rapidly release many conquered areas which means the latter has a significantly more powerful China allied to it - since a puppet inherits the tech of the ruling nation when released.  Even more farcical it means that when Japan conquers Australia and New Zealand - which again happens frequently in the variant the group uses they quickly become faithful allies despite all the cultural and racial differences.

  I must admit I haven't played Civ for a  long while.  Played v2 for a long time until it became obsolete as my system developed then I was busy with other games so it was a while before I looked for a new version of Civ and it was so alien to what I was familiar with and with no clear guidance I never got back into it.