Forced Surrender are terrible

[SupMellow?]

So this guy lost the war. I pushed him out of my continent. Also, every city in the region follows my culture and my religion. But, apparently since I didn't declare war the "right" way in the medieval era, this guy is able to force me to surrender two of my biggest cities because he has 10 more war support than me...

Who the heck thought of this system? Is he secretly a Blizzard employee?

No troops on my land. I won the war. He can't force me to give him a city he has never ever owned. What is going on?

[The Former]

Here we go again... Heavy sigh. Inhale. Commence with fruitless explanation.

War support is an abstraction of each nation's popular support for their war effort. If it reaches zero, that leader is forced to surrender because at that point, his war machine is done being a machine while the other side's isn't. Essentially it prevents a long-drawn out scenario that will just end like the Gulf War.

You need legitimate grievances to prosecute a legitimate war. If you don't have them, your cause isn't just and your people have no issue giving the land you took back to its original owner when their war support fades. Think if the US took over Ontario on a whim, and how the American people on the whole would feel about handing it back when the troops got tired of holding it.

[archmag]

Originally posted by Scarfox:

So this guy lost the war. I pushed him out of my continent. Also, every city in the region follows my culture and my religion. But, apparently since I didn't declare war the "right" way in the medieval era, this guy is able to force me to surrender two of my biggest cities because he has 10 more war support than me...

Who the heck thought of this system? Is he secretly a Blizzard employee?

No troops on my land. I won the war. He can't force me to give him a city he has never ever owned. What is going on?

If you win a war, you get to choose the cities. The war ends when one side reaches zero war support and that side loses, there is no other measure of winning. If he had 10 more war support than you at the end then you didn't win a war, he did.

[Duke Flapjack]

That is utterly stupid, though. In real life, just because one side wants to continue a war and the other doesn't DOES NOT MEAN they win. What ever happened to ownership is 9/10 of the law?
EDIT: in addition, it sounds like the AI demanded cities THAT WEREN'T EVEN ORIGINALLY THEIRS. This would be like the aformentioned invasion of Ontario....and then Canada takes New York from the US instead. It's madness.

[Razorblade]

I feel like this could be pretty easily balanced by requiring cities to be occupied in order to annex them.

[Snake]

Originally posted by Razorblade:

I feel like this could be pretty easily balanced by requiring cities to be occupied in order to annex them.

That's how it worked in my game last night. Outposts, however, can be freely transferred if they're adjacent.

That's actually what some people's gripe is, that the enemy's war support goes to zero before they are able to capture their city and they're forced to surrender before it's an option in the war resolution screen.

[A Balanced Diet]

I dont like this Mechanic either, I know some people will and thats fine, but maybe an option to turn it off

[archmag]

Originally posted by Abylon:

I dont like this Mechanic either, I know some people will and thats fine, but maybe an option to turn it off

Right. And ignore that it affects a lot of other thing? Diplomacy, religion, culture, etc. Or rebalance the who game just for a tick for people who are too lazy to learn how it works? Just learn how it works and it will make sense and you will be able to use it instead of suffering from it.

[Damedius]

It's like most of the systems in the game. Good ideas that were poorly implemented.

The game probably needed more testing, feedback and refinement before it was released.

[Duke Flapjack]

Originally posted by archmag:

Originally posted by Abylon:

I dont like this Mechanic either, I know some people will and thats fine, but maybe an option to turn it off

Right. And ignore that it affects a lot of other thing? Diplomacy, religion, culture, etc. Or rebalance the who game just for a tick for people who are too lazy to learn how it works? Just learn how it works and it will make sense and you will be able to use it instead of suffering from it.

It doesn't change the fact that while as an idea it's pretty good in practice it's really stupid and counterintuative. If a function doesn't work the way you expect it to then there is a problem with the function.

[SupMellow?]

Originally posted by Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd:

Here we go again... Heavy sigh. Inhale. Commence with fruitless explanation.

War support is an abstraction of each nation's popular support for their war effort. If it reaches zero, that leader is forced to surrender because at that point, his war machine is done being a machine while the other side's isn't. Essentially it prevents a long-drawn out scenario that will just end like the Gulf War.

You need legitimate grievances to prosecute a legitimate war. If you don't have them, your cause isn't just and your people have no issue giving the land you took back to its original owner when their war support fades. Think if the US took over Ontario on a whim, and how the American people on the whole would feel about handing it back when the troops got tired of holding it.

They showed up in my continent. Took a territory in the middle and quicky became an enclave. And apparently, during that time, they had managed to become friends with all the random city-state that I was in the process of capturing. And so this gave them a lot of grievances, even if those city-states had just barely spawned.

When I was forced to surrender, I had captured their only city on my continent. Even if they no longer had a single soldier left, they were able to force a surrender that involved their city and my biggest city, just because.

I know it's a game mechanic, but I think it's stupid. It's the medieval era. Nobody in the World can enforce this. It's an immersion breaker.

Hopefully it gets tweaked a little.

[The Former]

Originally posted by The Gray Fox:

Originally posted by Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd:

Here we go again... Heavy sigh. Inhale. Commence with fruitless explanation.

War support is an abstraction of each nation's popular support for their war effort. If it reaches zero, that leader is forced to surrender because at that point, his war machine is done being a machine while the other side's isn't. Essentially it prevents a long-drawn out scenario that will just end like the Gulf War.

You need legitimate grievances to prosecute a legitimate war. If you don't have them, your cause isn't just and your people have no issue giving the land you took back to its original owner when their war support fades. Think if the US took over Ontario on a whim, and how the American people on the whole would feel about handing it back when the troops got tired of holding it.

Oh look more terrible and simplistic historical analogies in an attempt to bend over backwards in defense of an obviously poorly implemented and balanced mechanic. 😉

Oh look, more deliberate ignorance of history in an attempt to bend over backwards in offense of some stranger on the internet who disagrees with your opinion. Come on, Fox, you're too keen of mind to not see the argument by now.

No one's saying it's exactly accurate to history. All people are saying is that it's a plausible mechanic rooted in the historical concept of "You can't fight a war without the populace." If you won't allow yourself to bend enough to admit at least that much, you're just being stubborn.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Damedius:

It's like most of the systems in the game. Good ideas that were poorly implemented.

The game probably needed more testing, feedback and refinement before it was released.

The game had... what, three OpenDev periods? In which anyone who wanted to play got to play and give their feedback, and was delayed twice because of this feedback.

[Spiffy]

I find the grievances and demands system pretty annoying to deal with too. Is there a way to reliable get a claim on their stuff? The game is quite poor to explain + I find it pretty ridiculous how you're supposed to navigate this in the early eras where it seems way ahead of the era you find yourself in with limited civics on top.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Alexander:

I find the grievances and demands system pretty annoying to deal with too. Is there a way to reliable get a claim on their stuff? The game is quite poor to explain + I find it pretty ridiculous how you're supposed to navigate this in the early eras where it seems way ahead of the era you find yourself in with limited civics on top.

If they settle on your border, if the city is your religion in majority but they haven't chosen your religion as their state faith, or if the city is of your majority culture, these will all create legitimate claims.

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by Damedius:

It's like most of the systems in the game. Good ideas that were poorly implemented.

The game probably needed more testing, feedback and refinement before it was released.

I think people are mostly naive to this fact, but today's market for game development has a final testing / balancing stage which you 'the customers' are the tester. It started around the time Paradox was working on HOI, although there were some instances of it before, but you can mainly thank Paradox. This method has been adopted by most development companies. The polite way this comes to us now is the label 'Early Access', which is just a way for them to legitimize you spending $ and signing up as a tester with awareness. Can you blame a business for trying to make more money at societies expense? The world we live in. I usually wait unit a game has been out (not EA) for 3-6 months before purchasing it, that way it's a much more mature product and less risk for me to have a bad experience.

But you can't really be upset with Amplitude as they have a roadmap to stick to and pushing back release dates for a product of this size is no small feat. I should know as I've been a developer, in a different industry, for decades. Just get use to the idea that if you buy these games on the release date or within a few weeks/months of it, you're signing up to be a tester. Like it or not. This of course doesn't preclude you won't have fun with your early purchase!