Any chance to extort something from the AI

[Vasil]

... while obviously dominating in a war?

I made some experiments:

- AI (Washington) declares war, I drop 3 nukes on his biggest cities and leave it be, because I don't want to make cross continent invasion. In like 10 turns it offers me peace and asks me for all my luxuries and resources + ~500g + ~30 GPT. I refuse and drop 3 more nukes. All I get is the same request after 10 turns. I just refused and in like 30 turns it just offered peace with no conditions.

- AI (Darius) declares war and loses capitol + all but 2 cities. I offer peace and ask
for 5 g (not GPT) besides the peace. AI just refuses.

Well ... was anyone more successful than me in this and am I the only one who considers this behavior a bit illogical?

 

[Michl2602]

It seems to me, that they patched this to the better. At least AI doesn't come up with all she has
anymore after you stole 2 workers like before patch on lower levels.

I personally like this much better.

PS.: I also couldn't get anything out from the AI losing a war. I tried to get some cities (because what do you think to get from an AI with 0G, -7 GPT or alike?), but njet.

 

[DaveGold]

I would suggest trying extortion when the AI is already at war with another enemy so would have good reason to buy you off.

 

[BobDole]

Don't even bother. The AI is totally screwed up when it comes to extortion. One time I went to war with Washington and it was going well, but it was going to take some time to take all of his stuff.....until he just flat out gave it to me as part of a peace treaty, which was so good (all but his capital in terms of cities) I couldn't pass it up. In the same game, I went to war against Askia cause someone asked, and never participated AT ALL, and yet managed to get all the gold he had (not much) and 3 luxury resources just to make peace. And again, in this same game, Monty declared war on me and we got in a huge war. Even after capturing 5 cities....he was demanding that it should be ME giving up cities (all of them, plus all of my gold, resources, and Open Borders). He FINALLY gave in and gave me some gold for peace like 50-75 turns and another 2 city caps later or something.

So yeah, you can be dominating a war and not even be able to make peace. Or you can get a crazy peace deal that makes no sense at all. Bringing up my war with Monty again, he'd tell me he'd want peace cause I was beating him down, but that a deal wasn't possible cause I didn't have enough stuff to bribe him with, even though I was wiping the floor with him...it's just all over the place.

 

[Keejus]

The AI will only pay you to stop a war once, I'm pretty sure. I guess that by the time you're in a second war, they don't expect you to ever stop declaring war if they keep giving you things for free.

 

[snarzberry]

I'm always left wondering when I'm taking enemy cities on the way to the capital and there like four additional cities that I need to get through before I'm there. Then the AI offers me those four cities for ten turns of peace. Ok thanks, it would've taken me longer than ten turns to take them by force and now my army will see you at the capital in ten turns instead of 25.

 

[Civ4Brains]

A lot of the time i just let them keep their cities - it will still be hard for them to make a decent recovery, it usually maintains the buffer between me and whoever their other neighbor(s) and i don't take a massive happiness hit.

I know we all witness the AI make stupid decisions like this but if I am actually provided with the means, like in the peace offering scenarios, to turn bad AI decisions into sensible ones then I would much prefer to do this and keep the game interesting.

 

[ElWanderer]

Sometimes the AI will surrender almost everything they have. I've not enough experience to make a firm conclusion, but wiping out most if not all of their army and threatening their capital seems to have the desired effect. In my current game, threatening a capital alone wasn't enough - I ended up taking Moscow then flattening the Russian army.

On the other hand, even if you're running a high kill ratio against them, they will try to extort daft amounts from you for peace if they're not actually threatened (I guess they can always pump out more units). Somehow they think they're "winning".

 

[Babri]

I think that the 10 turns peace treaty can be changed by 20 or 30 etc just like changing sum of gold & GPT, which suits the looser better if he wants some more time to build up his army.

 

[General Tso]

It may be a coincidence due to my game play style, but it appears to me that the amount that you can extort is based mostly if not exclusively on each of the two Civs military power. If you are considerably stronger than they are then you can exhort a lot of things from them. If they are a lot stronger than you then they will demand things.

 

[xsinx]

In my experience there seems to be a certain time after which the AI will sue for peace. When doing so, it will either demand or offer different amounts of stuff or simply propose a neutral deal and all this will be based on the current situation. The biggest factor I have seen so far is presence of units near a city, either yours or theirs. When I am about to capture a city, I will often get a very generous offer from the AI to stop the war.. If on the other hand they have a bunch of unit on my turf but are unable to progress, they will make insane demands (all I have basically). If the war has been waging for a long time without any progress from either side (a defensive war for example), they will often just offer a neutral deal.

 

[magnus333]

I'm fairly confident that the AI primarily determines what they will give you based on the ratio of strength of your units in their lands vs strength of their units.
If you have a lot of units in their lands, they will give you everything. If you have a lot of units in your own lands and they have none, they don't care much.

 

[wcbarney]

I once had a really super-friendly Ghandi as an unwanted neighbor on a relatively small peninsula (Emperor level, standard Pangeia map, standard speed). I tried to provoke him into a war 'cause his 3 cities were basically in my way. So I told him not to settle close to me; and he said "OK," and then never settled close to me. OK, so then I demanded his only copy of the marble luxury resource; he said "Sure, anything to keep the peace." Well, this strategy wasn't working out, so I just DW on him and wiped him out in something like six turns.

So, yeah, sometimes extortion does work.

 

[TopGearFanatic]

I've noticed that if you start to raze cities, then the AI will be willing to give more in a peace treaty.

 

[jojorah]

If the ai gives you a deal that you think wouldnt be fair than dont accept. Its kinda lame i know but its better than coming to the forums to cry about it

 

[Revoran]

Some work on how the AI calculates who is winning in a war needs to be done. Hopefully in the next patch. As i've said in other threads I would like to see more historical behaviour from the ai rather than more human player-like behaviour. That being said, it makes sense from the standpoint of an AI imitating human players that if you've been declaring war left right and center as soon as peace treaties are up, they wont trust you to not just declare war on them again after the treaty expires. In that scenario, why give you anything when you will just try and take it from them later?

 

[Phoenix_Reaper]

Just about 30 mins ago I took 3 or 4 of Neopleons city's and during that time about 3 times he offered peace with him taking his cities back. After I took his second biggest city he gave me 3600 Gold and peace. =)

 

[cman2010]

I have not played since the december patch but at that time the ai would declare on you then if you killed there invaders you could usually get them to offer a flat peace treaty then if you managed to invade and take a city they would offer everything they had except there capitol. While that was messed up this seems to drastic a change you should at least be able to get some gold and lux resource like everything else they have done with this game they have gone overboard on fixing this as well.

 

[Pac-Dragon]

I don't think the location of your units matters (i.e. in your territory vs. their's). I've had a few "peaceful" spaceship wins on Emperor where multiple times an AI would invade, lose a ton of units in my lands, and then offer up a capitulation deal. In the end, I had a decently sized puppet empire and never directly conquered a single city. I'm pretty sure the AI only cares about power ratings.