EMO #2 - Louis XIV (OCC)

[ben-jammin]

@ben-jammin

Yes, it's quite hard to make AIs capitulate in OCC games. You could check the first game of the series as it's meant to be played to military victory. In that game I noticed that AIs were willing to capitulate only when they were down to one city (with the exception of last AI which had one just settled city more).

From some earlier games I recall that AIs won't actually go independent right away when they can. I think I capped some AIs in some of the earlier OCC games on the forum and they were still capped in the end even though they had settled bunch of cities back.

I capped three of my direct neighbours, two of them I had to reduce to a single city. They settled more cities but didnt break free. I was trying to use a strategy in which I left their cities with culture bordering my own (or my vassals') because I know this is one factor in the cap mechanics. It is of course much harder to make an AI capitulate if they have their own vassals, though it is possible.

AIs won't cap if they could instantly break the cap and go independent. You must bring them below either 50% of your pop or 50% of your land (or both) before they will cap. In a OCC, I would think this would mean reducing them to one city (maybe two cities once in a while, if your cap has particularly high pop or culture and those two cities are particularly pathetic).

Not sure about that, I think I capped at least one AI that had more than 50% of my land and population, but shared a fair number of border tiles.

 

[Jastrow]

Well, it turned into 1878 in the end. I had forgotten that I need another 22 years or so after finishing the ship. Still, the Micro was pretty sloppy throughout the entire game. If I find time to have a second run, I suspect I will beat 1850 on that try.