Peace negotiations

Atropos

Beware my geekhood
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Messages
700
I'm currently in a rather tense game on Deity. As the Khmer, I had a beautiful capital site after moving a bit (two golds, corn, and approximately a billion flood plains - especially great with an Expansive civ), but quickly got boxed in by everyone's favorite madman, Montezuma. To make matters worse, the Fractal map rolled what was essentially a Pangaea. Everyone except one civ on the continent quickly adopted the same religion and started trading like mad, resulting in a very high tech pace. With little land (four cities) and no economic traits, I had no chance of keeping up. Expecting a war with Monty sooner or later however much I mollified him (and I actually changed religions twice in ten turns because he changed his), I decided to head for my very overpowered UU as I had ivory. Just as I started whipping out elephants, though, I saw him start researching feudalism (my espionage rate was high). Coupled with the fact that virtually all his cities were on hills, this nearly made me give up hope. I decided to soldier on, however, and soon declared war on Asoka, who had founded several religions (though he only had one shrine) and was the only civ not in Hinduism. I was pretty much just going through the motions as I knew he would have longbowmen soon, but my elephants did surprisingly well against longbows with plenty of catapult support and I gradually pushed him back and took six of his cities.

Now I control plenty of land, but am falling behind on technology. He has pikemen, which are decimating my elephants, and I think it would be a good idea to make peace for a bit, maybe gathering a new stack to take his last two cities. He's been dogpiled by Monty as well (who hasn't taken a single city so far in spite of sending huge stacks at him ... what a loser) and is desperate for peace.

Now, here's the thing. I desperately need every beaker I can get in techs from him, since I'm so far behind. However, there isn't any "would this deal work?" button when at war. How can I tell if he will accept a deal without actually offering it to him?
 
I usually start with demanding all/many of my enemy's techs which he of course refuses and than lower my demands step by step until he accepts or I think it's not worth it. It's annoying but leaves me with the feeling I got the most beakers possible squeezed out of him.
Sometimes you can also get 2 cities.
 
In a situation like that I wouldn't consider a reload to be cheating, since there probably should be a 'Would You Accept This Deal' button in peace talks, but that's just my view. Otherwise, I'd go with Dan and lower your demands a little bit each time.
 
Hit "Let's bury the hatchet. What's the price for peace?" The AI will give you their best offer for peace (or something close to it), including techs. You can usually tinker with the offer a bit to get something more to your liking (e.g., swap one tech the AI is offering for another), but this will tell you fairly precisely the magnitude of the concessions the AI is willing to offer.
 
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