Proud AI?

[Shadzy19]

I just recently started playing again after a few months break and trying to get back at my old level emperor/immortal .
The betterAI definatly makes the game it bit more challenging it seems .

Now at topic , I was playing a emperor game standart map epic speed continents game as India (not Ghandi the other 1 forgot his name) and got boxed in by roosevelt early game , no copper close , not a single happy resource and with roosevelt putting both washington and new york on a hill with 4 archers inside any type or rush was offcourse useless .
Needless to say I got off a very bad and slow start since I couldnt grow my city's and fell behind in tech quite bad Toku was on the other side of Roosevelt but I only found out about that a later.
I tried a first war the moment I got cats so builded about 15 swords and 10 cats and managed to break down new york just to lose it again a few turns later so had to go back to peace , I bribed Toku in the war though to keep him busy since Rooseveld had a tech lead off about 5 techs at us at this point .
With lightbulbing philo and paper I managed to get back into the game since I could trade around a bit to get me feudalism and maces and could finally get me some 2upgrade units.
While Toku kept him busy in the south I prepared my second war going with mainly maces and cats and a few longbows to keep the xbows busy .
This war went a lot better and I managed to capture all the big american city's , I just hoped to take 1 or 2 city's and sue for peace to get me some techs .
Now the thing is , Roosevelt wont give me a single tech!
He's up 3 techs and only has 4 small city's left , yet he rather dies then give me a single tech!

So the question is , how does a AI decide when to give up techs for peace ?

I felt kinda bad after having to attack a AI twice my size and 3 times my power level and more advanced units , finally beat him down and then he wont even give me a tech for his life!
Does this happen a lot of was this a isolated case , I honestly cant remember if it always was like this , but as im planning to give immortal a go in my next game and try for a early war to extort some techs I hope I wont run into another AI that rather dies then gives me some techs.

 

[Immaculate]

Victoria did that to me in my game. I even got her down to one city, posted a boat off her coast so she couldn't work coastal tiles, and put Impi on every single one of her land tiles while converging trebs and macemen around London (her last city). Results: no techs for peace (she had guilds and optics, neither of which was a monopoly tech). Bombard defenses down to zero. Results: no techs for peace. Destroy all units within her city except for one last lonely catapult. Results: no techs for peace. Consequences: No more victoria. She may have died, but the Zulu still don't know how to upgrade their horse archers and have about 0% chance of circumnavigating.
I think maybe the financial-type, builder-type civs have less of a chance of being extorted, or maybe this is just another isolated case?

 

[Dirk1302]

I've played emperor 2.08 the last months, i fought quite a few wars but i never got offered more than 1 minor tech even when the AI was down on his knees as in your case. I don't count on it either, i fight wars to get breathing space.

 

[shadow2k]

Victoria did that to me in my game. I even got her down to one city, posted a boat off her coast so she couldn't work coastal tiles, and put Impi on every single one of her land tiles while converging trebs and macemen around London (her last city). Results: no techs for peace (she had guilds and optics, neither of which was a monopoly tech). Bombard defenses down to zero. Results: no techs for peace. Destroy all units within her city except for one last lonely catapult. Results: no techs for peace. Consequences: No more victoria. She may have died, but the Zulu still don't know how to upgrade their horse archers and have about 0% chance of circumnavigating.
I think maybe the financial-type, builder-type civs have less of a chance of being extorted, or maybe this is just another isolated case?

They will never give you a tech once you've taken them down to OCC. You can see this working when they actually will give up a tech to you at two cities, then you take one, and the tech goes off the table.

Regardless of that, we abused the hell out of "Pointy Stick" research in C3. It was way too easy to exploit the AI's into techs for peace over and over. War was a research strategy...I even saw players letting the AI build a new city, only to raze it in 10 turns for a new tech. In C4, if you go to war...you'd better not be expecting anything substantial out of a peace treaty. They'll even give up cities before techs at times, which makes no sense to me.

 

[Shadzy19]

Ok good to know , I coulda sworn i used to get 2-3 techs in the older patches but I can be wrong its been to long .

Guess il just adjust a bit and better watch those unit costs

 

[shadow2k]

Ok good to know , I coulda sworn i used to get 2-3 techs in the older patches but I can be wrong its been to long .

Guess il just adjust a bit and better watch those unit costs

They will give techs, and sometimes 2-3 of them, even in 2.08 Warlords. But they'd be the really cheap ones, and it's also a difficulty level thing. You have to do enough damage to them for them to give up techs, but you also have to leave them enough so they don't feel as though giving them to you is only delaying the inevitable.

For example, if you take 4 cities from a Civ on Prince early enough to where the techs are cheap, they may not have much left. And in reality, you may not have killed that many troops either, so they'll be less likely to deal. If you go up to Emperor and take 4 cities, that may be only half their empire, you've done way more damage in terms of dead troops, and therefore, they want peace before they think they're too far gone to come back from the brink of elimination.

The other thing, is that a lot of it is timing. Alpha can sometimes take a while to get to. And right after that seems to be when they don't want to give up techs. You can get things like the 4C's (COL/CAL/CURR/CONST), but shortly after that...the techs get too expensive to just give to you, unless you've done a ton of damage AND left them with enough to feel like it's worth it. There is a pretty fine line it seems. I wish I knew where it started and ended.