&^$%ing Capitulation Mechanics

[Framesticker]

I'm really, really frustrated now, so I'll just use this to vent out and then go about winning again.

So after pretty much securing Emperor, I moved to the difficulty I've understood most top-level players can win on regularly - Immortal. I went for a Shuffle map (just because it's so random and unpredictable. I got a (seemingly) Archipelago Snaky Continents map as Hammurabi and made my way through the ancient age (GLH, getting Kublai, my only neighbour, to Friendly with religion and fair trade, and other tactics I've learned to become essential on the high levels. After meeting a very hard selection of neighbours to peacefully play with (oversized but backwards Shaka who ate Sury's cookies, MASSIVE, unopposed in GNP Churchill and his friend at that Gilgamesh, and wonderspamming culturewhoring Gandhi) I decided to launch a rushbuy Marine/Fighter war to take down Kublai, then propel the land advantage to either go to Space or take the massive English beast down. After doing just about anything to keep the AI backwards and hateful against each other while teching peacefully myself, I launched a MASSIVE stack against Kublai on 1840. Churchill was already at a fake war with him (probably the only war in the game I didn't cause myself) and except for some icy-tundra cities at the edge of my homeland I didn't bother to settle, he didn't do any real damage.

So I took 6 of Kublai's 12 cities. And he wouldn't capitulate yet to me. But what does he do as I prepare to take anothe city?

HE CAPITULATES TO BLOODY CHURCHILL.

Now, normally I wouldn't be afraid to declare on him, but to actually raise such a force I just shut my slider down after Industralism, and he'd had Mechanized Infantry and espionage told he was teching for Modern Armor. I decided to still redeclare on Kublai, possibly salvage the game - I did mange to finish Kublai off, but after a stack of 30 Mechanized Infantry/Modern Artillery landed on my homeland I just called it quits.

God, I'm pissed.

Thanks for listening.

 

[kossin]

Churchill had more war success most likely.

Suicide some siege to decimate a "medium" 30 unit stack

 

[Framesticker]

Churchill had more war success most likely.

Suicide some siege to decimate a "medium" 30 unit stack

That's the point - I took 2/3 of his ENTIRE homeland continent, decimating over 70 units in the procces. Churchill did NOTHING except take 2 icy-tundra cities in the end of the world. And I observed.

And yeah, I used my Fighters to decimate that SoD, but it still took over my continent fairly easily when 6 more of these landed.

 

[Agramon]

If he landed comparable stacks that survived kublais intervention, you probably wouldn't call that war success, if it yielded only tundra cities. Nevertheless it probably cost a decent number of Kublai's troops. Even senseless slaughtered troops in a vain battle about 2 tundra cities obviously are to be taken serious

Solution

1)Slaughter more troops.

2)Bribe Churchill out of war.

3)Play with vassals off.

4)Play CiV

In my recently finished Emp game I had to let Perry die because he wouldn't capitulate to me, because I let my vassals do the job. Not that it matters much, but at some points the vassaling system is not suitable implemented. (You'd definitely find a lot of people calling it broken too)

 

[kossin]

That's the point - I took 2/3 of his ENTIRE homeland continent, decimating over 70 units in the procces. Churchill did NOTHING except take 2 icy-tundra cities in the end of the world. And I observed.

And yeah, I used my Fighters to decimate that SoD, but it still took over my continent fairly easily when 6 more of these landed.

How did you observe it?

Did you lose troops? Cities swap hands?

Did you have EP vision?

The mechanics don't cheat... well you can consider them as cheats in some cases but the game cannot bias against the mechanics.

 

[vicawoo]

There's a worst enemy multiplier.

 

[ahcos]

on a sidenote, let's say you want to finish off kublai completely but you are afraid that he capitulates to churchill first - would it work to declare on churchill so that you might get the "we are afraid of your enemies" from kublai towards churchill so that kublai doesn't capitulize because he's afraid of churchill's enemy (you)? ofc this won't work when your powerrating is below churchills if i'm not mistaken, but let's assume you had twice churchills power for this example to work. let's also assume that church did enough damage to kublai, and so have you, so that he's willing to capitulate just to save his ass.
or am i totally mistaken, and the AI will just cap to the one with the highest war success?

anyway, that vassalage system is clearly painful+annoying, although "no vassalage" doesn't make it any better - that way you'll create incredible huge leviathans (had monster-catherine once, 40+ cities and an almost entire 5-civ continent on standart size) who are just unbeatable as they'd be with 3 vassals.

 

[fathertuck]

It ruines your game (and your day) when this happens.

In my last game I was in a war with cyrus who wouldn't capitulate to me even though he had only one city left. He was on a one tile island and refused to give up. He was at the same time in a war with another AI and I just waited when he would capitulate to that AI. He didn't, and I took him eventually out, but guess if I was frustrated beyond belief.

 

[i_imperator]

My solution to this type of peace vassle garbage is nukes, i play on monarch so it might be easier to do this than immortal. Rush Buy ICBM's,Nuke em and their master's to hell and then we'll see who caps to who. Enough said.

 

[Framesticker]

My solution to this type of peace vassle garbage is nukes, i play on monarch so it might be easier to do this than immortal. Rush Buy ICBM's,Nuke em and their master's to hell and then we'll see who caps to who. Enough said.

I suppose I could've done that. I interestingly have VERY few exprience with Nukes - I should try that out.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Yeah, A.I. can be gay when it comes to capitulations. From my experience, it is easiest to cap a civ in Pangaea. The fastest cap I had was 1 turn where I simply took a city from Hatty and her power rating was at 1.8. On the other hand, civs in Archipelago can be very hard to cap because of colonies.

Colonies generally bring down the average power rating and somehow factor into the capitulation heuristics of some A.I.'s. The fact that it's harder to have an 8 tile land border between civ's also makes it harder for them to consider surrender.

I've had Hammurabi refusing to cap even after losing 20+ cities to me and losing all but one of his units. I 'fixed' this by going into world builder and removed his vassalage status with his 2 (similarly decimated colonies. Then immediately, he offered to cap.

 

[vicawoo]

Hey, don't use gay as a pejorative. I forget why.

 

[r_rolo1]

That's the point - I took 2/3 of his ENTIRE homeland continent, decimating over 70 units in the procces. Churchill did NOTHING except take 2 icy-tundra cities in the end of the world. And I observed.

And yeah, I used my Fighters to decimate that SoD, but it still took over my continent fairly easily when 6 more of these landed.

1) How many units did you lost in the process ? war sucess is not just what you kill, it is what you kill vs what they kill. If you killed 70 units, but lost 80 ( pretty normal if you suicide siege ), your bank account is on the negative Churchill probably killed 5-6 units and captured the cities with no loss ... that alone gives him the necessary 40 war sucess points needed for the AI to consider capitulation to him.

2) Unlike some people think , if 2 people are elegible to be a possible master via capitulation, it is not automatically the one that has the biggest war sucess that gets the vote. The code discourages the AI of capitulating to the people that have the smaller count , but there is always the chance of that happening ( and for the good, since vassals are also considered for this maths ... )

 

[Framesticker]

1) How many units did you lost in the process ? war sucess is not just what you kill, it is what you kill vs what they kill. If you killed 70 units, but lost 80 ( pretty normal if you suicide siege ), your bank account is on the negative Churchill probably killed 5-6 units and captured the cities with no loss ... that alone gives him the necessary 40 war sucess points needed for the AI to consider capitulation to him.

2) Unlike some people think , if 2 people are elegible to be a possible master via capitulation, it is not automatically the one that has the biggest war sucess that gets the vote. The code discourages the AI of capitulating to the people that have the smaller count , but there is always the chance of that happening ( and for the good, since vassals are also considered for this maths ... )

1) I killed about 80 units (just checked) and lost 8 Marines in the process (there was no suicide siege since I was using Fighters).

2) Thank you - that is nice to know. I'll keep that in mind in my next games, or perhaps I'll just play with Vassals off (which'll make the game more difficult, but much more reasonable).

 

[Bei1052]

The vassal mechanics are broken. Be glad he didn't vassalize to a civ he wasn't at war at, as then you'd be dragged into a war versus, at least, two people.

 

[kossin]

Broken? No. Poorly implemented? Yes!

 

[Farm Boy]

Now that you are up into immortal, I think some tac-nuke experiments are past time!

 

[Framesticker]

Now that you are up into immortal, I think some tac-nuke experiments are past time!

Not Tac Nukes by itself really, my games usually either a) become peaceful after a very early war (with, say, Axemen or Swords) or b) are full-fledged warfare games which usually stop being challenging after the Cannon era or so. I don't have much experience with units like Tanks or Gunships and etc.

 

[i_imperator]

Have a look at TMIT's Justinian's lets play,I Know its nearly a year old but that will teach you all you need to know about nukes (ICBM's and Tat nukes) and tanks.

 

[Framesticker]

Have a look at TMIT's Justinian's lets play,I Know its nearly a year old but that will teach you all you need to know about nukes (ICBM's and Tat nukes) and tanks.

Will do. I think it's the only Let's Play by TMIT I haven't watched