Surrendering immediately in Ancient/Classical

fortydayweekend

Warlord
Joined
Nov 20, 2009
Messages
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Is anyone else doing this a lot on HK level? I'm finding that surrendering is often good value, especially if the neighbouring Huns have 3-4 stacks of Horde inside my borders as soon as they declare.

If they don't have any territory claims you can usually get away with around 1600 gold in reparations. On the margins gold is used for rush-buying and that's equivalent to about 500 industry or so at that stage of the game, which is maybe 1-2 turns of combined city industry.

Sure, you do take a hit to development by not being able to buy any new trade goods or rush buy, and you will probably need to move some workers into traders to get out of debt quicker, buy you can still keep building and researching and the stability hit is manageable.

The alternative is to put all your pop and industry into building a lot of units, with almost guaranteed losses and no guarantee that you'll actually win. Losing a war will definitely cripple your growth. Even winning and getting a city might not necessarily be a better outcome if it means losing a lot of units and diverting pop away from research.

So I'm finding that I'm doing a quick calculation to work out whether I can win and very often choosing to just surrender immediately to be able to keep focusing on growth. I'm looking at what their units are, what I can build, what terrain I can fight on etc. In my current game I can build Carthaginian war elephants and I have some swords and archers but the Huns have 4 stacks of Horde and the terrain is very broken and next to a coast. It's on an isthmus so he'll bring all his stacks into battle just by accident, no opportunities to fight piecemeal. There's a good cliff for my archers but no way for my elephants to surround him, and they'll be outnumbered even if I turn every pop I have into an elephant. Also, the battle would be taking place next to my second city and tying up production there for a few turns. I don't think I can win, or at least not at a huge cost in terms of industry and research.

It seems to make sense to just not build any units, pay the gold, and keep teching and building towards Medieval, where there are more powerful counter-units like pikes and the opportunity to beeline ahead to gunpowder or chivalry for a timing attack.

I should say this is based on not cheesing neolithic and not having amazing start locations. With a strong start you can be so far ahead that nobody attacks you and you're always on the offensive. And it's very situational, many superior AI forces can be beaten with the right terrain and tactics. I also play with settings that mean having 2-3 close neighbours so early wars are almost guaranteed.

Anyway I'm starting to see surrendering as a likely part of the opening strategy and working around it - picking Merchant cultures and not building any more military units than I need to handle the independents, and making sure to buy all the available trade before getting declared on. Is anyone else doing something similar?
 
I've done it quite often when I feel that I can't win the war or can't win the war in a reasonable time frame. I don't like to give up territory though...
 
I've done it quite often when I feel that I can't win the war or can't win the war in a reasonable time frame. I don't like to give up territory though...

Me neither... so claiming territory then becomes part of the strategy. Surrendering is a delaying tactic so it makes sense to use every other delaying tactic available - mainly by not causing grievances. So if there's a strong, aggressive or militaristic neighbour I'll avoid too much forward settling, and build holy sites near the border if it looks like their religion is spreading too much. And obviously not attacking them or making any of my own demands.

Sometimes there's a really nice territory on their border but there's no point claiming it if they're going to have a claim on it and I can't defend it - luckily though resources don't run out and they'll still be there for the taking in Medieval.
 
picking Merchant cultures and not building any more military units than I need to handle the independents, and making sure to buy all the available trade before getting declared on.

@fortydayweekend you can also consider hiring a lot of mercenaries, like real life Carthage did. I think those spearmen walking in stacks of 4 are trying to tell you something))
 
@fortydayweekend you can also consider hiring a lot of mercenaries, like real life Carthage did. I think those spearmen walking in stacks of 4 are trying to tell you something))

Maybe this is bad strategy but I usually conquer those cities long before I can buy any units off them.

It would likely work better on less crowded maps where they have a chance to survive.
 
Sometimes I'm so busy fighting the AI that I don't have troops anywhere near a fairly new independent. So if I can I will hire some mercs and use them to conquer their own city. I just don't understand why sometimes I can hire mercs and other times not. There are two mercs you can't hire for sure: those that are in the city guarding it and those that belong to a city that is about to expire. But a lot of times I see mercs well outside their city and not about to expire and yet I can't hire them and there is no hint as to why.
 
Sometimes I'm so busy fighting the AI that I don't have troops anywhere near a fairly new independent. So if I can I will hire some mercs and use them to conquer their own city. I just don't understand why sometimes I can hire mercs and other times not. There are two mercs you can't hire for sure: those that are in the city guarding it and those that belong to a city that is about to expire. But a lot of times I see mercs well outside their city and not about to expire and yet I can't hire them and there is no hint as to why.

Well, did you invest influence or gold to make it possible to hire them?
 
Yea I wonder if it is a bug. I have sole influence over Sus and one pack of mercs has the rent button while the other pack of mercs next to it doesn't. Neither are considered defenders. I love the game but there are so many bugs that I guess you just have to accept these things. The current Mars Colony bug is really annoying also.
 
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