Civ Illustrated #1 (Know Your Enemy)

[Major Tom]

Its interesting to know which civilizations are easier to get to capitulate. The only time I've ever gotten Sitting Bull to be willing to capitulate I was besieging his last city, and just a little bit ago I was able to get Catherine to capitulate after I just wiped out one of her stacks and captured two lightly defended cities.

It is in the info if you read carefully. Resists capitulating: Sitting Bull 10/10,
Cathy 0/10.

 

[ArchGhost]

Well, it's not exactly as clear cut as that. There are other extenuating circumstances that can lead an AI to be more or less resistant, or to change from game to game. For example, if an AI is a unit spammer it's likely they'll have less incentive to capitulate quickly as they sometimes have reserves elsewhere, or he (it's common with Monty and Shaka) thinks he can take you still because his power rating is still decent due to so many units spread out in all his cities despite having a stack wiped out, cities taken, and the requisite war success in your favor. Another example is AIs will give up quicker if you take their better cities (larger, more wonders) first instead of last, particularly the capitol. I've had AIs refuse capitulation before because they had unescorted catapults on missions to attack my units in their just-captured cities, despite the fact siege weapons can't take (garrisoned) cities by themselves in any capacity, or even kill units for that matter. As soon as they suicide their cats, boom, "Willing to talk" next turn. Attitude has a bit to do with it too; if an AI REALLY hates your guts, they may spite you all the way down to their last city, especially if they bribe others on you. If you were pretty good buddies before you slipped the dagger in their back, they tend to give up easier.

This isn't to say the guide isn't accurate or to discredit it the work done by those that put it together or researched the underlying mechanics, and thanks to all of you who did! I'm just pointing out that it's rarely so absolute and it's truly more of a "guideline" than fact; the AI is still unpredictable and very wily! Think of the times when you are pulling an early assault, make sure to diligently cut off metal or horses only to find out the punk is getting it in trade anyway with no way for you to stop it because you can't force/buy out the provider and he's getting some AMAZING deal on it, like Iron for a...Corn that he settled a city on... It's like that. The game is just out to get you sometimes. Other times, you have Gandhi or Huayna randomly vassal to you as you are gearing up to backstab somebody else. Chaotic at times.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Actually, these are set in the leader XMLs. Everything you mentioned is correct but is all used in the calculations based on the leader's XML settings. So, for example, if Catherine is willing to capitulate early in a war and you were able to literally replace her with Sitting Bull at that very instant, he would likely not capitulate nor even be any where near his capitulation threshold. These stats are set in the XML and are not situational. It's why some leaders consistently won't capitulate even in the most dire circumstances while others will consistently bend the knee with relatively little effort.

 

[Fippy]

I think you cannot count on some numbers..
Gandhi has capitulating 0/10 listed, yet in my current game i took 3 cities from him, killed ~30 units (lost 4-5), have 17 cities myself and he has 6 and yup you guessed it.."we are doing fine on our own", no capitulation with hugely inferior units and stuff

I know it's cos there's Sury with only 2 cities and probably no army as vassal of another AI, but it's still a bit ridiculous. Seems like only that matters.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I think you cannot count on some numbers..
Gandhi has capitulating 0/10 listed, yet in my current game i took 3 cities from him, killed ~30 units (lost 4-5), have 17 cities myself and he has 6 and yup you guessed it.."we are doing fine on our own", no capitulation with hugely inferior units and stuff

I know it's cos there's Sury with only 2 cities and probably no army as vassal of another AI, but it's still a bit ridiculous. Seems like only that matters.

I've rarely run into the "we are doing fine on our own" problem, but I've heard it come up before.

TheMeInTeam mentioned it here:
Trying to understand the mechanics of capitulation

...

Final note:

The AI will never vassal if their power is > world's average power, no matter how bad you're bending them over. No matter if you have 6000 war success and 5x their power. No, as long as they are above the AVERAGE power, as long as they're a couple little putzy colonies and 1 city vassals elsewhere, they are still "doing fine on their own". This is true even if those vassals happen to belong to you, by the way, such that LOWERING your average power by world builder deleting your own vassal would ALLOW capitulation when it wouldn't otherwise.

But people still like telling me that this mechanic is fine.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My gosh reading some of my older posts makes me raise an eyebrow. Still, that version of me knew Civ 4 better than today's, it's just been too long since I spammed Civ 4 games to remember it all.

Not only is there the base capitulation factor, but also the average power *and* extra considerations like war success and islandtarget. If you want someone to capitulate in a hurry:

• Kill lots of their units
• Don't lose any units to them
• Have someone else fighting them that has at least 8 tiles bordering
• Nuke them for flat WS (and not losing units) if available

While I realize "hit them and don't get hit" isn't exactly ground-breaking enlightenment, it helps when you pull it off. I'm not sure the AI's cap factor varies like their peaceweight (which can be significantly higher or lower than the base value, on RNG), but yeah an AI with huge resistance like Sitting Bull or Genghis Khan would be a real pain to capitulate. At least those two examples are sucky AIs when it comes to actually winning games.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm a bit confused now. Playing a game, and Lincoln just peace vassaled to Frederick, despite being only Cautious with him (when he bent the knee). The below is said about Lincoln, which I assumed meant he needed Friendly status to peace vassal to both the human and the AI. Does the AI, again(!!), play by different rules?

Will possibly peace vassal to human player: Friendly

They didn't share borders and nobody were at war at the time, but he was small enough to qualify since I smacked him up a bit earlier. But I was pretty sure it shouldn't be possible unless he was friendly?

Spoiler :

 

[Kaitzilla]

I'm a bit confused now. Playing a game, and Lincoln just peace vassaled to Frederick, despite being only Cautious with him (when he bent the knee). The below is said about Lincoln, which I assumed meant he needed Friendly status to peace vassal to both the human and the AI. Does the AI, again(!!), play by different rules?


They didn't share borders and nobody were at war at the time, but he was small enough to qualify since I smacked him up a bit earlier. But I was pretty sure it shouldn't be possible unless he was friendly?

Spoiler :

View attachment 490490

That is really bizairre!

Clearly Lincoln is Pleased, but it says Friendly.
I will investigate it.

Does anyone know what this might be?

 

[WastinTime]

Clearly Lincoln is Pleased, but it says Friendly.

Isn't that just because he is a vassal now?
----------------------------------
I'm pretty sure HC became my peace vassal at Cautious in that recent gauntlet and I never figured out why. Maybe he loved my other vassals?
Probably not the same as this Lincoln thing.

update: I figured it out here.

 

[elitetroops]

There's also some hidden modifier. Buffy.004 shows +3 for first impression between those two.

 

[Major Tom]

elitetroops has a good point (also WastinTime), what mod do you use Pangaea?

 

[Anysense]

Friendly at +4 is weird by itself, even with hidden +3 its only +7 in total. Where does the rest of it come from?

 

[Pangaea]

This is with Buffy .003 as it's a game I hope to finish and submit for the HoF.

Think the Friendly status is automatic because he's a vassal now. I've seen that before. But before the vassalisation he was only Cautious (subtract the +2 for defensive pact). I specifically checked out this thread to see if he would peace vassal, because I thought it might be at pleased, and he could flip up there, particularly if the right religion happened to spread to Frederick. That's why I was surprised and confused when he suddenly peace vassaled like that. He's not supposed to do that until Friendly, and as you can see he was far away. I know about some hidden modifiers, but that only affects the "numbers" shown, not the actual status (hence why sometimes you will see 0 and on for instance Mansa and Gandhi.

Edit: Checked out the .xml file in case the guide was incorrect for some reason on this point, but it's not. Threshold at pleased means he should only peace vassal at friendly (the coding of these thresholds is a bit illogical).

<VassalRefuseAttitudeThreshold>ATTITUDE_PLEASED</VassalRefuseAttitudeThreshold>

 

[Pangaea]

There's also some hidden modifier. Buffy.004 shows +3 for first impression between those two.

Isn't this random to a certain extent? Or is that just with the human player? I don't mean totally random (it's clearly not), but within a band. The game loves to use random numbers everywhere.

 

[Anysense]

Was playing a game with BUFFY and saw Mansa pleased towards me at turn 13

Spoiler :

 

[Folket]

Isn't this random to a certain extent? Or is that just with the human player? I don't mean totally random (it's clearly not), but within a band. The game loves to use random numbers everywhere.

I think it is random +/-2. Up to a max of +4.

I looked at the code and there is one row that allows you to change at what time a AI peace vassals.

iAttitudeModifier += (3 * kLoopTeam.getPower(true)) / std::max(1, getPower(true)) - 2;

It seems to be summed over all other teams. i.e. If an AI has many very strong land neighbours they are willing to vassal at lower attitude.

 

[Anysense]

That random thing fits my case. If Mansa's base attitude was fixed +1 then further +1 from "your small civilization is no threat" would not make him pleased, unless there is another hidden modifier.

 

[Folket]

That random thing fits my case. If Mansa's base attitude was fixed +1 then further +1 from "your small civilization is no threat" would not make him pleased, unless there is another hidden modifier.

The random modifier I think only effect AI to AI relations.

For Mansa we have
<iBetterRankDifferenceAttitudeChange>4</iBetterRankDifferenceAttitudeChange>
so it looks like you could get up to +3 relations with him from being weak.

With him at the top and you at the bottom it makes sense.

 

[Anysense]

Mansa's just peace vassaled to Joao. No suprise here, he will peace vassal even at cautios, but why is he friendly at +2? What hidden modifiers could give further +8?

Spoiler :

 

[Folket]

I think the hidden modifier is called being a vassal.