capitulate as soon as possible?

[gaash2]

I started playing with Vassals on the past couple months but I am not sure how to play this optimally yet. In general, should you capitulate someone as soon as they are willing to capitulate? I've been playing this way but sometimes it seems like I should take more cities before just capping them (they often cap after 1 or 2 cities if I show up with a big enough force). Is there a peace vassal risk if I keep taking cities that makes it not worth it?

 

[Macksideshow]

It depends where you are at in your game and what your goal is. Are you easily the most powerful civ and trying to wrap up the game asap or just started a breakout and needing to accumulate land and power? What value do the remaining enemy cities have to you vs. what will it cost in turns/material/gold to capture and hold them? What chance your enemy will capitulate/vassal to someone else?

It's not usually a simple answer and you need to analyze the game situation turn by turn. (This is the answer to 95% of civ4 questions)

Some typical end case situations where heuristic rules can apply are: You are warring to dom/conquest victory and have enough units to win = Capitulate asap is faster. Or you are aiming for space and are warring from tech/military advantage = Capture all remotely useful cities before considering capitulation (land = power).

Avoid stirring up the hornets nest that comes from your opponent vassalling to a more powerful civ than yourself. This will result in a DOW from that civ which you might not want. If you can get a peace treaty with that powerful civ through beg or giving in to their demands they can not do that which is good derisking.

 

[Snowbird]

Is there a peace vassal risk if I keep taking cities that makes it not worth it?

The more you beat up the guy, the more you need to beat the next guy (they look at something like average (median?) power for deciding to capitulate).

I would say strongly consider capping them ASAP (assuming on reasonable difficulty level), unless there are good and clear reasons not to do so (capturing critical world wonder for example).

 

[Gasp]

I recently encountered a situation where I thought lets cap them all ASAP and it turned out to be slower than taking all their land.
You've to watch out where you are with the domination victory condition. I capitulate all civs but one and missed like 4% land to reach domination. That last civ got Rifling on the way and became too strong for me to hope taking enough land with my Cuirs.
Therefore, had I conquered HC's 3 last cities instead of vassaling him I would have gotten a faster victory by domination. (I'm really uncertain wether or not that sentence is grammatically correct haha)

 

[rah]

If you can get a peace treaty with that powerful civ through beg or giving in to their demands they can not do that which is good derisking.

This aspect I sometimes forget and usually end up paying for it. GOTTA REMEMBER

 

[gaash2]

haha yes i forget to do that a lot also ... Still learning how to play with vassals on