Ways to AIs capitualting to other AIs

[cnote2781]

In my last game I encountered an issue that was pretty frustrating. It was Monarch, and I was playing as Mansa Musa (first time playing him; spiritual + financial are nice traits and I ended up liking him. But I digress).

My neighbors on the continent were Hammurabi (immediate neighbor) and Toku (mostly on the other side of Hammurabi, but a couple cities next to me. Hammurabi and I were at Friendly for the entire game (until the end when I dropped a state religion and started stealing techs from him). He was the tech leader in the game by a good margin (I couldn't quite catch up, since I was often at war). I took out Toku with rifles/cannons easily.

I decided not to target Hammurabi next because he was friendly and worry about the rest of the world. Maybe this was my mistake (but he had a big tech lead, so I figured the other civs would be easier). The problem was that every other civ I attacked (I was easily winning each war), capitulated not to me, but to freaking Hammurabi. In the end he was the master of Saladin, Ghengis Khan, and Isabella. And I was the only other civ. I ended up nearly catching up and beating him in a space race, but due to all the civs putting full espionage points on me, I couldn't quite get there.

How can I prevent this peace vassaling from occurring? With Ghengis I was checking every turn whether he would capitulate to me, but he never would; until suddenly he capitulated to Hammurabi. I've seen this happen in other games but never to this extent, where it lost me the game.

 

[Paw]

It's frustrating when it happens, and I've never had it happen with 3 civs in the same game (all vassaling to another AI before their at least willing to capitulate to me), so in terms of that I'd say you just got some pretty rotten luck there.

That said, Why didn't you just attack hammurabi? Sounds like if you were taking out the rest of the world (at least until they vassaled to him), you probably could have taken him out, or at least dented him enough to slow his research.

However, the only way I'm aware of to completely eliminate the chance of this happening in the future is to disable vassals before the game starts in the custom game options.

 

[cnote2781]

It's frustrating when it happens, and I've never had it happen with 3 civs in the same game (all vassaling to another AI before their at least willing to capitulate to me), so in terms of that I'd say you just got some pretty rotten luck there.

That said, Why didn't you just attack hammurabi? Sounds like if you were taking out the rest of the world (at least until they vassaled to him), you probably could have taken him out, or at least dented him enough to slow his research.

However, the only way I'm aware of to completely eliminate the chance of this happening in the future is to disable vassals before the game starts in the custom game options.

I didn't attack him because he was far more advanced that I was. For example, he had infantry long before I did. I figured I could have taken a few of his cities but I would've burn through my whole army. Also, he was friendly to me while all of the other civs were annoyed. I was already at risk of getting DoW by any of the other civs. But like I said in my post, it was probably the wrong decision to not attack him. Oh well.

I just realized I screwed up the title of my post and don't know how to edit it

 

[Wulf38]

Before starting a war, If you ask any civs that are pleased or friendly to spare 1 gold "for a good friend", it creates a 10 turn peace treaty with them. I think this blocks your enemy from peace vassaling to them (since peace vassaling causes the new master to get dragged into the vassal's wars, but they can't if there's a peace treaty). This is good practice before declaring wars anyway as it prevents people from being bribed into the war against you.

 

[Derakon]

Presumably the AI's thinking "Crap, I'm getting my ass handed to me by the human. Hey, powerful other faction! Can you protect me from the human please?" And it worked!

Personally, I've removed vassaling from my games because I don't like its mechanics. I hate having a random third party take civs over after I've gone to all the effort of building up an army to destroy them (and then using that army to good effect).

 

[Bibor]

Actually I agree. Mutual protection pacts are really okay, but Vassals are just something that helps AIs. Player vassals are nothing but trouble *except* if the game is already won (for example having 15 cities on a normal map).

 

[Ichabod]

AFAIK, they didn't peacevassal to hammurabi, since that would make Hammy declare on you. So they must have capitulated to him, wich means that he was at war with them. In that case, the only thing I can suggest is to bribe Hammy out of war, wich is pretty hard when you're less advanced.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Vassal mechanics started broken in warlords and stayed that way through BTS 3.19.

For capitulation, you have factors like "average power of ALL civs, even your own vassals" and "land target vs not" and "war success" to deal with. For peacevassals, you have abusive equivalents of permanent alliances.

It is very possible to swiftly and soundly end a game via "chain" capitulations: you get kind of big, cap 1 civ, then use it as a spring board to declare on the next. The new target's stack will enter vassal territory, where you can mop it at will using siege + cleanup or bypass it and hit enemy cities, making sure to keep your vassal with at least 8 border tiles with the enemy, which gives you a HUGE multiplier towards capping even if your vassal does absolutely nothing. Of course, now you have 2 vassals and yet ANOTHER cap target.

This can lead to really silly things like a 50 turn standard map world pangaea conquest, using only rifles/cannons, even on the highest difficulties possible (though you DO have to be good to overcome deity bonuses and get the technologies in time to get big in the first place).

Really this game comes down to 1 thing: securing enough land to win (either early or by abusing a tech lead) without falling too far behind whatever 1 or 2 AIs are actually in contention to win the game. Then, you just overwhelm everything as the AI does not have the remotest clue on how to fight using collateral initiative, air power, navies, or nukes. You can kill markedly stronger opposition at tech parity with relative ease once you hit renaissance+.

 

[goodolarchie]

AI (e.g. Hammurabi) isn't picky about when to accept a capitulation as a ceasefire, they'll do it immediately after it's available rather than trying to pick up extra cities... as you've well witnessed! There are a few strategies to mitigate this:

-Take out Hammurabi with your cannons first if he's the real threat. You've basically won at this point.

-Bribe him out of war, or into another. It can be hard without techs to trade. Great Merchant gold can help. Two good trade chips in the Renn/Ind era are Biology and Medicine, AI is late to research them and they're decent for topping off your population caps.

-Make sure you can capture/raze several same-turn cities, and force the capitulation immediately after. Unfortunately, how many cities you need to capture is based on a lot of ridiculous factors as TMIT mentioned. If you attack in waves of 2-3 city captures in the same turn, it will increase your chances of nabbing the vassal. This requires more preparation (draft rifles, whip cannons if necessary) for a larger army, but it works all the way through Deity.
*-*As a sidenote, make sure those cities won't be culturally suffocated. Cities close to their capital will end up flipped or necessary to liberate. Don't worry about securing resources, just demand them later.

-PIG mod will notify immediately at the beginning of the turn if any AI is willing to Capitulate (and other novel information, it's a great mod!).

 

[UncleJJ]

AFAIK, they didn't peacevassal to hammurabi, since that would make Hammy declare on you. So they must have capitulated to him, wich means that he was at war with them. In that case, the only thing I can suggest is to bribe Hammy out of war, wich is pretty hard when you're less advanced.

This is true. If you're at war with a civ the only way they can capitulate to another civ is either,
a) if that civ is also at war with them, in which case you will be forced into peace
b) if they can persuade that other civ to declare war on you, in which case you are now fighting the master and the vassal.

If case a) occured then as Ichabod suggests bribe Hammy out of the war.

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Overwhelming small civs and forcing them to become vassals is an art form and I can usually manage to do it in 2 turns and before they have a chance to vassalise to another civ. The secret is to hit them hard with overwhelming force and to have the capitulation conditions already met (twice the size and twice the pop etc.) except War Success.

Say I have 15 cities and they have 8, I have cannons / rifles/ galleons and they have longbows and muskets. Instead of attacking them as soon as I can and slowly conquering cities I will build up an overwhelming force that can take 2 cities in one turn. Ten galleons with rifles and cannons drop 20 next the capital and 10 next to another city should be enough. Next turn take both cities and kill enough defenders to meet the War Success requirement (need 40 and capturing a city = 10, 1 kill = 4 and each loss = -3), so I need to kill 6 more of his troops than I lose. He should then Capitulate immediately, before the end of turn and before any other AI could intervene.