Stupid AI sue'ing for Peace

[GfxJG]

So basically, I was playing this game on Prince as America, and was warring with Pachacuti. There was a makeshift border of citystates between our cores, if you know what I mean. So yeah, he had started expanding beyond said border into "my half", which was threatening (he was also ahead of me in score). I bought a few Minutemen after completing Big Ben, at which point he had two cities on my half, and went to war. Both cities fell within a few turns, and the wave of measly Riflemen (I still had Minutemen) were slaughtered, and I only used Oligarchy and GG's, nothing else. So yeah, then I got Rifling, and got No Terrain Cost Riflemen from that. I then proceeded to annihalate his incoming army of like 5 Rifles, a few Cav's and 1 or 2 Cannons.

Then he asks for Peace. I'm winning the war, and guess what he asks for?

He gives me:
Peace Treaty (10 Turns)

I give him:
Peace Treaty (10 Turns)
Ridiculous amount of gold
All my Luxuries (6)
All my Resources
All my Cities, except Captial
Open Borders

I laughed in his face, and proceeded to blow him off the planet. I think from I got that idiotic request, it was like 20 turns before he was gone, and I think he had like 12-15 cities =P

Discuss times where the AI has made insane demands, even though you're winning/barely even fighting.

 

[GfxJG]

Oh goddamn wrong section. Someone move this please. *facepalm*

 

[berninicaco3]

ha, yes, they can be irrational that way.
I don't know if it depends on the civilization: when I beat up England, she offered me some fine incentives (that was early in the game).
When I beat up France, he gave me all of his cities and all of his gold for peace, leaving one city for himself, of course.

But when I beat up Siam and Persia, they both were, at best, Peaceeace (no cities, no resources, no nothing), even when down to just a couple cities left and the death knell ringing.

Also, my military advisor I think lacks some grey matter. He thinks wars are good or bad based, I can only presume, on numbers of units: not location, nor even action. I might be in a "war" with a civ I've barely met, we won't have exchanged a single shot, and he thinks it's going badly. I think it's wholly ignorable.
Or I might be in a war and he thinks it's going well-- I think that the brunt of my army is 20 turns away, and I'd struggle to gain the upper hand until they might arrive to save my towns over there.

 

[joncnunn]

It looks to me like both the Military advisor and the AI care a lot more about the number of military units you both have than the quality of the units.

So when you have a few powerful units vs the AIs swarm of warriors, it greatly undervalues your strength resulting in their demand.

In addition, it's calculation doesn't care about where on the map they are, so if it's army is spread out in penny packets all over the map, it's greatly overestimates it's own strength.

After you kill enough of their units so that you now have significantly more units than they do, the AI will catch on, but this often takes wiping out almost all of their units.

 

[Bibor]

Discuss times where the AI has made insane demands, even though you're winning/barely even fighting.

The demands you encountered (or offers you receive) are capitulations. The AI probably didn't re-evaluate its position yet. Its not uncommon that after a few turns they ask for a regular peace treaty instead (or even capitulate themselves). The vassal system was broken in CIV4, although this one could use some tweaks as well.

 

[Dentalfury]

I've had a similar encounter in most games I've played. The AI swings wildy between demands and capitulations.

For example, the game i'm playing currently. Huge/Pangea/Prince. Playing as Alexander and was going for a science win and doing fairly well score wise with two small puppet empires to the north and south of me while my entire empire is located in a central location on the super-continent surrounded by about 8 civs.

In short order after I counquered my two early puppets, Germany/India who actually DoW'ed on me first, everyone denounced me and DoW'ed me within 10 turns. So, 8 front war and I had only a vague idea where half of these guys were. Needless to say things got tense and about half of the AI's launched significant invasions(15+ units) within say 10 turns. After 500 years of brutal attrition I finally got the upper hand and started launching a significant offensive into one of my neighbors (Siam). I was desperate to make peace so I could get on with building up my infrastructure or at the very least consolidate my military and steam roll whoever was left. After taking about 3 of his cities I kept offering peace after every turn which he declined. Then without warning, he not only wanted peace but he offered his entire empire, about 15 cities minus his capital, plus all his gold obviously. This was actually a blessing and curse because I had no idea he had so many cities and it threw my happiness rating into chaos to about -37 for almost 20 turns (Theocracy was a godsend!)

It was odd because after that almost all of the civ's wanted peace and offered me tons of gold and luxuries basically all within 3 turns.

I know the AI is dumb to the extent that they only look at raw numbers and tech levels when it comes to gauging military strength. One however, might assume that after loosing a few cities an AI would offer striaght peace with gradually better terms over time depending on the military situation instead of refusing to even negociate peace to total surrender or a relatively decent sized empire minus 1 city.

 

[UrbanX]

I laughed in his face, and proceeded to blow him off the planet.

I had something similar with ghandi after taking all his cities except his capitol. after refusing his peace treaty which included me giving him luxuries and gold, i offered one. a simple peace treaty with nothing else included between both civs. he declined so i later took his capitol. i remember thinking, how stubborn/foolish can you be.

 

[dubrown]

Well, it's not perfect and the peace offering has really never been perfect in any Civ game from what I recall. So you'll have some very strange offerings at times but I still feel CiV AI is decent in this area.

Though I've had my share of strange behaviour, in one game germany was outteched, outgunned and just one lousy city short of annihilation and still stubbornly refused peace. But well, I guess the AI realised that whatever it did it'd loose so it might as well go on fighting...

 

[CivMcNut]

That's odd to hear about. In my games they're always offering me all their resources, gold and cities just to get peace with me. I haven't had it the other way around yet. It does sound from other people here that your military strength plays a big role in this.

 

[joncnunn]

I've also noticed that in Civ 5 after the AI does send a capitulation to you deal (all their resources; luxaries; gold, and usually including cities), that if that was early enough in the game, the AI might declare war on you again after they've rebuilt their army following having their resources back.

 

[Pac-Dragon]

One thing I've noticed is that if I declare war on a civ, after I previously accepted a capitulation deal, they will never offer a 2nd capitulation. They seem to only ever offer generic peace deals from then on. I've tested this both by declaring war at the end of the 10 turns of forced peace, then reloading and declaring 30 turns later instead (i.e. when all of the capitulation deals have expired).

Does anyone know if other civs will stop offering capitulation deals if you declare war again on a different civ that previously capitulated? I'm in a game now where I declared against Russia over 30 turns after she capitulated and now none of the other civs are offering capitulation deals when losing their wars to me.