In one of my games I was declared on by babylon around 1AD. I razed 2 of his cities and then just played defensively as I was going for a culture victory. I was killing probably 10 of his units to every 1 he killed of mine. Every turn I would check to see if he was ready to make peace yet. Hundreds of turns later he still wouldn't even talk to me about peace. Finally around 1850AD he finally offers a peace deal and offers me 4 of his cities and all his gold/resources/etc. I mean WTH? I wanted to make peace hundreds of turns earlier and I would have done it for free and he wouldn't even give me the option. And now he offers me half his empire even though I haven't done anything but defend my cities. Makes no sense.