in which cases won't the AI stop war ?

[Datian]

I had some wars that the AI refused to end since the beginning of the game. Typically, a neighbour would attack me, I would teach it a lesson by capturing his best cities and leave it the two silly ones on the tundra ; then I would ask for peace, and he would refuse, I kind had the feeling that it was upset. Sometimes, it would ask itself the next turn.
Most of the time however, kill enough of its units, and it's convincing enough.

This last game with Mali, I had a surprise DOW from Nubia in ancien times, which took me indeed by surprise. Nubia was quite distant, there were like 15 tiles between our cities, we had two ones each.
I struggled against its Pitati archers - I hadn't discovered archery myself, but the unexpected help from barbarians who took the tiles around my capital (but were unable to capture it, being barbarians), gave me the time to mount a sufficient defense.
Then came the vampire, I fought it off with my archers and got rid of the Pitatis.
I asked for peace, Amanitore refused.
The vampire came back, with half health. Despite being as strong as a swordsman, it was no match for three warriors supporting each other with two archers behind them, so I took it down a second time. And a third.
I asked for peace, Amanitore refused again.
Things went on and on, with the vampire coming alone, or with a horseman, or a new Pitati. By then I had a wall of swordsmen, then crossbowmen, the war was over. I mean, I had lost a scout luring the barbs, that was all.
100 turns later, Amanitore still refused. She had lost her third city to Harald, her suzerainity over every CS, and quite frankly it was ridiculous.
I decided to end it all, take her two cities (in a nice place by the way), and do something else.

It makes me wonder, in which cases won't the AI stop war, ever, whatever happens ?
Is it related to the vampire, which came back again and again and gave Amanitore the illusion of strength, or that I couldn't kill enough of her units ?

 

[tsf4]

Sometimes the AI just keeps in war. I play defensive, so times before I’ve pushed back that initial wave of troops and then are warring with them for multiple eras and no fighting. And then out of the blue a white peace or if I ask they are like, ok as long as I get 2 gold. Really weird!

 

[enKage]

What is your strength ranking?
AI is very unlikely to sign a peace if their strength is higher than yours, even if your 5 archers constantly kill every incoming wave, if they have 6 warriors anywhere on the map, they consider themself stronger than you.
Also AI give absurd price for peace during intervention.
Sidenote - being a third party in a war (fe. you was foced to a war by declaration on your ally) usually means you can whitepeace after 15 turns dependless on strength ratio

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

I have the endless war thing happen to me. That's why now I very rarely stop until the AI is destroyed or so crippled they never bother me again.

 

[Datian]

What is your strength ranking?
AI is very unlikely to sign a peace if their strength is higher than yours, even if your 5 archers constantly kill every incoming wave, if they have 6 warriors anywhere on the map, they consider themself stronger than you.
Also AI give absurd price for peace during intervention.
Sidenote - being a third party in a war (fe. you was foced to a war by declaration on your ally) usually means you can whitepeace after 15 turns dependless on strength ratio

I didn't check the score, but in the end, I was approching her cities with 5 swordsmen, 3 crossbows and 2 catapults : not counting the archers and boats scattered around, it was much more than her 2 crossbows... and a vampire. She had no iron and given the shape of the map, I don't think she had troops anywhere else. Yet she didn't even accept a bribe.

 

[DanQuayle]

If you have a military emergency against you and the AI player is participating, it is much less likely to peace out.

 

[Datian]

If you have a military emergency against you and the AI player is participating, it is much less likely to peace out.

That wasn't the case, she attacked me in ancient times, the kind of swift wars that end shortly... usually.

It reminds me another game where Eleanor was down to one island city, with a military might of zero (I had to go on a protectorate war and things went out of control )
Again, she didn't want to hear about peace.
This happened many times, I've always wondered what triggered this black knight scenario ("Just a flesh wound ! I'll bite you to death !") I think the astronomic amount of grieveances intervenes.

However, in my Amanitore story she had no grievance, I think the vampire messed up the AI perception of its own might, but still.

 

[AriochIV]

My guess is that the AI has a calculated sense of whether it is winning or losing, and that sense can be completely wrong and get stuck that way. Kind of like the random AI catapult unit that gets lost on a particular hex and remains there for the rest of the game.

 

[PhilBowles]

The AI seems to declare war with the aim of capturing specific cities in most cases, and won't declare peace until they achieve that objective - if they do, they'll then often make peace even if they're still in a stronger position than you. It will also very rarely make peace if you've captured a city from them unless you also have a much stronger military.

 

[Linklite]

The AI seems to declare war with the aim of capturing specific cities in most cases, and won't declare peace until they achieve that objective - if they do, they'll then often make peace even if they're still in a stronger position than you. It will also very rarely make peace if you've captured a city from them unless you also have a much stronger military.

Doesn't seem to work like that on mine. They'll often accept or even sue for peace, even though all that's happened is that I slaughtered their army.

 

[Galvatron]

My guess is that the AI has a calculated sense of whether it is winning or losing, and that sense can be completely wrong and get stuck that way.

You're right. And like mentioned earlier by others it factors in its military into the equation. Which means if it thinks a war is competitive but it has an army it'll stay in. Or if its winning but it has no army it might consider stopping.

A big problem with the ai imho is how strength is calculated. I bet fixing that would improve the amount of times it thinks it can beat my nukes with catapults.

 

[sonicmyst]

From my experience it is based on combination of military score, leader agenda, and if they are warring because of a scored competition.

 

[Finvola]

I had a situation in my Ethiopia game earlier. I spawned in the middle of the map and 5 other civs started settling towards me. Next thing I know, Catherine's right next to me. I didn't really have anywhere else decent to settle a city nearby and the others were forward settling quickly too. For the record, I normally play on huge continents so it wasn't like they didn't have much space to go. Anyway, I knew there was going to be an ancient war. Japan was already hitting the CS and had also settled a city near my other border. So I decided to attack Catherine and take the city she settled near me. She wouldn't accept peace, soooooo I took her out. Next era, English Eleanor and Cleo joint war dec'd me. Cleo sent a total of one chariot archer my way and that was all I ever heard from her. I don't remember what Eleanor had, maybe a spearman, a horseman and a couple of archers. A couple of turns after that Japan surprise war decced me. I defended my territory and watched their military forces dwindle as I picked them off with my archers and crossbows. Eleanor and Cleo were weaker than me but Japan was stronger when he declared. Cleo accepted peace, I never saw anything more coming from her but that one chariot. Eleanor was down to 0 and wouldn't accept peace. None of them had grievances about Catherine by the way, they just thought I was an easy target I guess. I asked Eleanor for peace a couple of times. When she kept saying no I decided to start taking her cities. She had no walls up. I don't know why she thought war was a good idea or what she was doing after I killed off her military. I think she was trying to build a wonder, because priorities.

She only asked for peace as I was about to take her capital and I was like "Nah, you had your chance for peace." and I took her out. Japan wouldn't accept peace and he was surrounded by mountains. His numbers were pretty low by then because he sent everything my way at the beginning and then I sent some CS allies to harass him while I tried to find a decent and relatively safe way into his territory. He did have crossbows, walls and barracks up in two of his cities....but turned out he didn't have any mountains or walls or archers to protect his capital once I found it. Silly goose. Then he realized I meant business, started asking to make peace towards the end, but I ended up killing him off too. I asked him several times for peace before I decided to go into his territory, he had his chance!

When I started this game as Ethiopia, I had no intentions of conquering like that. I did plan for early war, but I didn't anticipate Eleanor declaring war. I absolutely expected Japan to attack me, but Cleo was the only one to accept peace. I never even killed that chariot. It ran away before I could finish it off. After that, I just focused on culture like I had set out to do. Scotland was one of my neighbors too but surprisingly he didn't lecture me too much about fighting with neighbors and we were allies! He never went to war with anyone, which was also surprising because he's usually a hypocrite and attacks his neighbors.