You Stole MY Vassal! (a thread to vent)

I normally don't post anything like this, but I hate Hate HATE when an AI that I am absolutely destroying decides to capitulate to my war ally 5 turns after he DoW and I have taken out the capital, 2 other cities, and most of the army. That is some BS!!! . What is the threshold for this? Is it different for each leader? This was Genghis Khan and he capped to Charlemagne.

What a bunch of horsecrap. I usually don't rage quit and reload from an earlier autosave, but I just might do it here.

Without having looked at the code, I think I can recall that taking the capital will make the AI more willingly to vassal.
Also I guess the <iMakePeaceRand>80</iMakePeaceRand> makes them also easier to vassal (or more difficult the higher it is.) 80 is for the Khan, 10 is for Gandhi.
Actually there is a <VassalRefuseAttitudeThreshold>ATTITUDE_PLEASED</VassalRefuseAttitudeThreshold>, but I guess that is for peace-vassaling only.

Happened to me once- my enemy capitulated to my other enemy, right before I could finish kick stomping her. I then reloaded an auto save to the turn before and bribed an ally to declare war on my enemy's preferred master and I vassalize the civ I was fighting.

While picking out specific reasons why an AI won't cap is generally pretty easy, working out exactly whats going on within capping mechanics isn't as straightforward.
The way power values are used allows situations where, two or more equal power values can have drastically different power values in capitulation terms.

Most of the things that influence it being,

• AI personalities
• Whether or not they are a land target (If not it doubles the power requirement for capping!)
• Whether or not the potential master is the potential capitulee's worst enemy (increases required power by 1.3333 if they are)

The war success a civ has against the potential capitulee is also a factor, this is supposed to bias surrender to the civ that was most effective. I separated this from the list as I don't know how it works exactly, and because its pretty obvious that it fails in its stated purpose! Bolded the bit that looks important. Unfortunately my brains barely functioning today, so i'll leave interpretation to someone else for now

I haven't seen any mention of capturing a capital having any influence however.

The effect of capturing the original capital may not be directly in that code. I think the power rating takes a pretty big dive when you capture the original capital which is what affects the formula. Thanks for posting info, everyone. This actually also happened earlier in the game (but the first time, I think damage dealt was more equal). I decided to continue the game, anyway, and DoW on Charlemagne. Boy, that sucked. We were close allies (Friendly status with no negative modifiers) and Charlemagne conducted a decent war of attrition.

Now my game has basically fallen flat. It's taking too long to beat down on Charly and the other continent has nearly caught up in tech while I was seeking military techs. If this ever happens again, I'm reloading from an earlier autosave. I might just turn vassals off (even though I prefer to keep as close to normal game rules as possible). Either way... grrrrr

Yeah, the capital is usually a high pop city with a lot of defenders. When you kill the defenders and take it your opponent's power decreases a lot, while your own power goes up (population also counts to your power rating). This might often give an illusion that you have to take the capital to make them cap. In terms of war success, the capital doesn't count any higher than any other city.