This game's peace mechanics is broken

[Bei1052]

In my current game, Alex declared war on me sometime around turn 80.

It's now turn 217, and Alex still won't make peace with me without me giving up four cities (two cities were his originally), all my gold and all my excess resources, even though I've taken two of his cities and killed close to 60 of his units (this is a conservative estimate) while he's killed, maybe, eight of mine-- most of which were sacrificial catapults early in the game.

What gives? This isn't the first time something like this has happened and the AI refuses to make peace without me giving up something ridiculous, even though it's losing. Sure, the military adviser has been all "I urge you to sue for peace immediately!" the entire game, but this really shouldn't matter. In Civ IV, even if the AI was stronger than you, if you killed enough of its troops with minimal losses, it would offer up at least some gold.

But not in this game. I've found that the only way to actually get out of a war when the AI declares on you, is if you somehow reach military parity which, I've found, is virtually impossible on anything higher than King.

 

[Unresolved]

There was a thread recently which detailed the exact point values in war. Somewhere in the S&T forums. To summarize it, the longer the war, the less chance of peace. You need to be superior in economy and/or military might. And if you're an immediate threat(right outside one of his cities), then you're more likely to get a good deal. I have no problems getting peace deals up to and including Immortal.

 

[Bei1052]

Not to sound like a whiner, but I shouldn't need to troop spam simply to get Alex to make peace with me. The fact that I've killed so many of his troops while suffering minimal losses, coupled with the fact that I've taken two cities to his zero, coupled with the fact that literally nothing major has happened for the last fifty or so turns (every so often he'll send two or three troops into my border which are instantly killed) should be enough to make peace without me giving up half of my empire, all of my gold, virtually all of my resources, my mother, my sister, my soul, my dog and my apartment.

 

[Unresolved]

You can't get a peace deal by playing defensively. You need to pose a threat. You need to go on the offensive before you get a peace deal(unless another AI DoWs them). You don't need a large army, you just need an army that's hurting the other civ.

 

[The QC]

You can't get a peace deal by playing defensively. You need to pose a threat. You need to go on the offensive before you get a peace deal(unless another AI DoWs them). You don't need a large army, you just need an army that's hurting the other civ.

I think he knows that. The point is: this does not make for a great playing experience.

I've given up a few games because of this kind of situation. Sometimes an enemy can't break down your defenses and you can't break down his defenses and you can't convince him to stop the war, even though it does nothing for him. It slows the game down to a crawl, isn't fun and there's no strategic justification for it, since the enemy does not have anything to gain from going on like this. The calculation for relative strength and for when a peace deal is justified does not work well at all and should be changed.

Generally, I find that I enjoy combat in CiV more than the combat in previous games, but only in moderation. Once you get into an interminable slog of a war it becomes irritating and it kills my desire to play further.

 

[Unresolved]

If you're not able to break through his units, then why would you expect a favorable(or even neutral) peace deal? Obviously you're not strong enough to pose a threat, so the AI will demand a peace deal that is favorable to them.

 

[wetroofwoof]

wow that's tough. 2k games needs to make a patch prontoo for this guy.

 

[The QC]

I think you guys are being too dismissive of other people's experiences. If you like to always play aggressively, you will never encounter this and of course you don't care. But it affects others. is it so hard to understand?

A few people on this board seem to be in the mindset that everything in the game is the right decision. It's sort of the opposite of the people who are stuck in the mindset that CiV is a "dumbed down" because it doesn't have city health. Neither attitude is very helpful.

It's clear to me that the devs want peace to be brokered when there is no use for the war. It's just that they haven't found the best method to make that measurement.

If you're not able to break through his units, then why would you expect a favorable(or even neutral) peace deal? Obviously you're not strong enough to pose a threat, so the AI will demand a peace deal that is favorable to them.

But he can't break through my lines either...

Let me ask you this: would you indefinitely continue a war where you are not winning anything and is just a meat grinder for your units? I really doubt that.

 

[Unresolved]

I'm not an aggressive player. I prefer playing peacefully. But I've only ever gotten into 2 wars that dragged on and on. One was my fault where I DoWed the runaway when I had 6 units. The other was on Deity which was expected. As long as the AI's units are on the attack(and you're on the defense), he has the upper-hand. If the roles were reversed, you'd likely get a white peace deal unless he really hated you.

 

[alpha wolf 64]

The AI would be much better if it would access its chances of winning when discussing peace. It seems to know when not to declare war, so it should use those same criteria to decide when to give up. Lets see, I have crushed your army, taken 3 cities and have 2 more on their last hits, yet you want 4 of my cities for peace? Die you scum sucking AI.......

 

[The QC]

I'm not an aggressive player. I prefer playing peacefully. But I've only ever gotten into 2 wars that dragged on and on. One was my fault where I DoWed the runaway when I had 6 units. The other was on Deity which was expected. As long as the AI's units are on the attack(and you're on the defense), he has the upper-hand. If the roles were reversed, you'd likely get a white peace deal unless he really hated you.

Actually, what usually tends to happen is that he acknowledges he can't break through, by retreating his troops into a defensive position. If I don't take the bait and waste units (and I continue to build units to keep up with whatever he measures), he won't attack again, although a few units may move forward here and there, giving me the opportunity to snipe them.

But he still thinks a pace deal is worth a few cities of mine.

The case I'm talking about is my most recent such incident, where "he" was Attila. He was doing well otherwise, but not exceptionally, and the war was preventing us both from being able to compete with Babylon and the Ottomans.

 

[Miravlix]

Maybe this is more about choice of words, because I completely fail to see the broken part of how the game works.

The player can learn how the game works and take advantage of it, there is no broken part where the player is unable to deal with things. Could it be different? Sure other games has a war score system, where killing units and stale mates is considered in the score, but that not how CiV is coded.

The way ciV strategy works, means you messed up by allowing the AI to even get to a point where is considered going to war with you a good idea. You have a ton of options for rigging diplomacy and you made the choice of not making your Empire strong enough military vise.

 

[Bei1052]

You can't get a peace deal by playing defensively. You need to pose a threat. You need to go on the offensive before you get a peace deal(unless another AI DoWs them). You don't need a large army, you just need an army that's hurting the other civ.

I didn't say I played defensively.

Granted, he did DOW me, but I ended up crushing his initial invasion force then taking two of his cities. That was literally about a hundred turns ago. Since then, I've set up a defensive wall along my borders (at first three pikeman, with the middle one on a citadel with the other two on a fort and three crossbowmen, but now three infantry with five artillery behind them) that he simply cannot get past.

What you're saying is that I should build troops, march them towards his capital and try to take a city I don't want nor need because the AI is too dumb to realize that it's wasting it's time. I'm sorry, but no. That's asinine.

The kill ratio has to be something like 8/9:1. Under what circumstance can the AI think it's "winning"?

 

[Browd]

I'm reminded of the old joke that insanity is defined by repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results.

What you describe is stalemate. You might think that stalemate should be recipe for a white peace, but as the AI keeps building units to replace those it loses, it will still think it can crush you. The tactical situation, including placement of citadels, doesn't appear to affect the AI's o overall assessment of its ability to win. The only thing that will change the AI's mind is to change the situation.

To change the AI's assessment, you can pay someone (or more than one someone) to DOW the AI (making it reassess its odds of defeat), ally some militaristic CSs (to effectively increase your and your allies' military score), and/or take the battle to his home cities, killing more units and impairing his capacity to replace units that you kill (pillaging improvements and roads). If you don't want his cities, raze them or sell them to some weak AI.

Or let the stalemate continue until you launch your spaceship or claim a diplo victory.

 

[PhilBowles]

There were improvements in one recent patch to the conditions civs will offer for peace (it used to be very binary - you give up everything, or they do. Now there are more gradations in what they'll offer or accept), but unfortunately the conditions under which a civ recognises when it's losing are still very poorly-defined. AI civs have bonuses to the numbers of units they have, but still base most of their calculation on who's winning or losing based on overall military strength, without taking account of unit losses on either side or other tactical considerations.

They only seem to see city losses as significant if there are several, or if they lose cities on their home continent. Usually, the quickest way to get a good deal from the AI is to send a few units to threaten their capital; if you have more attackers than they do defenders, they will often conclude they're losing.

Sometimes they will make peace if under pressure elsewhere - for instance I played a defensive war against Genghis in my recent game (he wasn't a threat and I had wars with more important civs to worry about), but after several other major civs declared on him he sued for peace by offering me Samarqand. You can exploit this by forming defensive pacts when you see an army building on your borders, or by bribing other civs to go to war with your enemy afterwards. I think the way the AI looks at it is to consider the combined military strength of all its enemies, so if you ally with a militarily powerful civ you can often force a reasonable peace from them.

The other option is to increase your positive modifiers by making friends with their friends - that seems to be what called off Elizabeth in my current game.

The calculation for relative strength and for when a peace deal is justified does not work well at all and should be changed.

Fully agreed. I'd also add that one issue seems to be that the AI is poor at objective-setting. In all Civ games, the main reason civs go to war is that they don't like you. War is basically envisaged as a sanction for playing the diplomacy game badly. This isn't very reflective of reality and it makes it hard to obtain peace since, after all, if their reason for going to war is that they dislike you, then they aren't going to stop disliking you. In the real world, wars occur for strategic reasons, such as (in Civ terms) "I see that oil I need for aircraft production/to deny you aircraft production" or "that city's in a desirable spot that I'd like", and end when that objective is achieved or it's clear that it won't be. The AI should really be programmed to decide whether a war is warranted based on its own objectives (does it need resource X, say?). Civ V seems to model this slightly better than past incarnations - a civ whose expansion is blocked by your city will attack that city. Often an AI will target a particular city it wants to capture and will sometimes even recognise when the attack has failed and make peace. But the hatred-based wars still tend to dominate.

Generally, I find that I enjoy combat in CiV more than the combat in previous games, but only in moderation. Once you get into an interminable slog of a war it becomes irritating and it kills my desire to play further.

This can be the case, but quite often I can allow the war to go on passively while doing other things - it does slow play when attacks actually come, but often you can just have units on standby (and if playing wide have a couple of production cities devoted to units while the rest play for the usual victory conditions).

If you're not able to break through his units, then why would you expect a favorable(or even neutral) peace deal? Obviously you're not strong enough to pose a threat, so the AI will demand a peace deal that is favorable to them.

Why shouldn't you make the same calculation? If the AI isn't strong enough to break through your units, why should it expect you to accept a peace deal that favours it? And in stalemates both sides have an incentive for peace because unit production and maintenance takes resources (usually more for the AI, which will typically lose more units, but the AI usually has more units and resources anyway).

 

[Unresolved]

Why shouldn't you make the same calculation? If the AI isn't strong enough to break through your units, why should it expect you to accept a peace deal that favours it? And in stalemates both sides have an incentive for peace because unit production and maintenance takes resources (usually more for the AI, which will typically lose more units, but the AI usually has more units and resources anyway).

Because he was describing a stalemate in HIS territory. If the AI is the one attacking, then he has the upper-hand, losses or no losses. If I'm stalemating in the AI's territory, then I also expect a semi-favorable peace settlement and I often get it.

 

[dangermouth]

PhilBowles comments about the AI not setting objectives and using them in its evaluations make sense to me. I also think the AI is not using its history in the game and its historical trends in its evaluations. Instead the AI looks at the current status only. So it does not see that its once very powerful force has been reduced to your equivalent or less, it only comes to the conclusion that its force is maybe now roughly equivalent to yours and so a good outcomes are possible for the AI. Of course we know the AI is playing without a brain.

Of course it is hard to determine how to evaluate recent outcomes and how much weight to give them. In real history, recent setbacks would have led to the US giving up after Pearl Harbor or Russia suing for peace many times before Stalingrad. A lot of decisions about war and peace are not based on reason.

 

[iamdanno]

The reason this sucks so bad is because these "jihads" that the AI gets into with you slow down your production and progress towards your goals, and most of the time they allow another civ to steamroll and win.

 

[PhilBowles]

PhilBowles comments about the AI not setting objectives and using them in its evaluations make sense to me. I also think the AI is not using its history in the game and its historical trends in its evaluations. Instead the AI looks at the current status only. So it does not see that its once very powerful force has been reduced to your equivalent or less, it only comes to the conclusion that its force is maybe now roughly equivalent to yours and so a good outcomes are possible for the AI. Of course we know the AI is playing without a brain.

Of course it is hard to determine how to evaluate recent outcomes and how much weight to give them. In real history, recent setbacks would have led to the US giving up after Pearl Harbor or Russia suing for peace many times before Stalingrad. A lot of decisions about war and peace are not based on reason.

Having said all that, however, I've just had a game when the AI behaved very much in its interests. Augustus was for some reason an era ahead of everyone else, and friends with me for most of the game since first contact. He periodically approached me about attacking Maria Theresa or Theodora (4-civ map) but I declined, and he didn't go to war on his own despite having a gigantic, advanced army.

He got upset with me after I adopted Freedom, and did the usual sabre-rattling and insults as well as moving units threateningly close to my territory. I had some good will with him - neither of us liked Austria, and I'd saved his workers from barbarians at one stage. All the time I was thinking "come on Augustus, just build the spaceship. You're winning so have no reason to attack".

It says something about my experience of the AI playing in its own interests that I was surprised when this is exactly what he did. For all his threats, he was only involved in one war all game, with Theodora. I wasn't involved in any (Theodora, a very close neighbour - as in I met her in turn 1 - had been friends right from the start of the game). I even managed to normalise relations with him using an embassy and a couple of gifts (I was frantically trying to convert a majority of his cities to my religion in case that would help too, since he had no native religion).

His play was the tightest I've ever seen from an AI science victory to boot - none of the long delays, build-one-piece-at-a-time, forget-to-build-the-stasis-chamber play I usually see. He completed Apollo, within a few turns had his first booster and another I saw in transit (which was assembled the following turn), he went for Hubble (which AIs very rarely do, and certainly not in the right order), and took off.

 

[kkapalk]

This is the only part of the game that annoys me too. I recently had Monty go to war against me. He sent several units, which I dealt with easily on my home turf. He lost quite a few units, then asked for a peace deal with several of my cities. I obviously rejected this silly demand. The next time he asked me he wanted one city for peace. A few turns later he once again wanted an insane amount of cities. (I think it is every ten turns they renew their peace offers, I am not sure). Shortly after this he offered one of his cities for peace! This I accepted. I just find it a shame the AI sways so erratically with their differing peace deals. It must be immensely hard to program the AI to work out reasonable and sensible peace treaties I suppose, as it has to try and calculate all the advantages/disadvantages for each player in any given war.