Stupid peace deal

[robert.steven.marshall]

I'm stuck in eternal war to the point I keep forgetting it is still going on. I had started a war against Inca and Kongo saw the opportunity to take advantage while my forces were elsewhere. However they caused me no damage and I sunk all their ships using city centres and encampments. I finished the war with Inca taking 4 cities.

If I want to make peace with Kongo I have to pay them 60 gold per turn! (Deity Marathon Huge settings Turn 492)

According to the UI my military is stronger, Kongo hasn't sent any units in about 30 turns and is at war with 2 other Civs. At the very least the peace deal should be equal if not that Kongo should pay me. I'm not going to attack Kongo's cities because I would have to take my units across the sea and even if I took any cities I would probably have to raze them because of loyalty. It just isn't worth it. Any ideas why the deal is so biased towards the AI this time?/What I can do to resolve it?

[Lemurian1972]

Just find some of his units somewhere and kill them. No need to resort to taking cities, just send some troops pillage some land, kill some troops, and go home. The AI starts most peace calculations in it's own favor, and you just need to do enough damage to tip the balance.

It's part of the changes they made so the AI wouldn't be so willing to hand over undamaged cities in a peace deal and lose half their empire.

[Gentlest Giant]

Originally posted by robert.steven.marshall:

I'm not going to attack Kongo's cities because I would have to take my units across the sea and even if I took any cities I would probably have to raze them because of loyalty. It just isn't worth it.

Sounds like it is precisely as it should be. You do not stand to benefit from this war and want to end it and present no threat to the other party- thus YOU are the part that has to pay to end it.
Either wait for Kongo to accumulate war weariness to the point they want to call it quits or present an argument to them that implies they would benefit from peace. An army pillaging their districts, for instance.

[derpygalaxy]

Originally posted by Gentle Giant:

Originally posted by robert.steven.marshall:

I'm not going to attack Kongo's cities because I would have to take my units across the sea and even if I took any cities I would probably have to raze them because of loyalty. It just isn't worth it.

Sounds like it is precisely as it should be. You do not stand to benefit from this war and want to end it and present no threat to the other party- thus YOU are the part that has to pay to end it.
Either wait for Kongo to accumulate war weariness to the point they want to call it quits or present an argument to them that implies they would benefit from peace. An army pillaging their districts, for instance.

this

[robert.steven.marshall]

But I already destroyed its navy and some of its cavalry units. They pose 0 threat to me. I could try to land some units by them, pillage a little bit and result in some my units being destroyed and maybe me taking one or two cities but I don't see why they wouldn't want to peace out when they are at war with two other Civs and have already suffered losses.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

The AI places more significance on recent losses or damage than it does on such things that happened a while ago. You destroyed their navy and some cavalry, and at that time it probably would have given you better peace terms. Then time passed, and you did no additional damage. The AI's formula is essentially interpreting this as you being unable to continue to maintain the war. It doesn't know why; maybe your units are tied up fighting elsewhere, or maybe your units were wiped out, or maybe your economy crashed and you had to disband your units. All the AI cares about is that you stopped hurting it, and that signals that maybe you actually can't hurt it any more - which would mean that it is at an advantage when it comes to bargaining for peace.

Unless you are suffering war weariness, you should realize the same thing that the AI realizes - there's actually no need to make peace. A war without conflict can continue indefinitely with no negative consequences (from the war itself; some other bonuses require peace and you might be missing out on those). So there's no reason to agree to the AI's terms, and no reason to stress about this war. Do what you need to do to progress toward victory, and if later you happen to have some ships around Kongo's coast then maybe you can do some damage and maybe that will change their mind about continuing the war.

If you are suffering from war weariness, or there is some advantage to being at peace due to some other bonus you'd get, then definitely don't land troops that you expect to lose in an effort to do some pillaging. The AI will value the units you lose more than it will value the damage they do, and so the peace terms could actually get worse. Rather, build Privateers and raid his coast. They will be able to pillage tiles from relative safety, and will be able to withdraw easily if threatened. In this way you should be able to inflict damage without suffering any losses, which should shift the AI's peace terms into your favor.

[robert.steven.marshall]

Sorry to contradict you but immediately after destroying their navy and cavalry the peace offer was that I would pay them 40 something gold per turn (OK it is better than the later offer but still doesn't make sense to me). Your other comments make sense. I play on Marathon so building units takes 25/30 turns depending on era etc. I don't think I had the ability to build privateers at this point. As it turned out I just waited (which I was doing anyway) and they attacked me again and I destroyed their units and I got a better deal (they offered me gold but I decided to get them to give me a "writing" in exchange for 20 odd gold per turn).

Maybe I am on my own in thinking that when another Civ has attacked you, lost all of its navy and some of its land units that a fair peace deal is that the human player pays between 40 and 70 gold per turn?

Bearing in mind that the other Civs give me resources that give me (Robert the Bruce) amenities for 2 turn per turn I don't fully understand that position. I really don't understand Gentle Giant's opinion that, as the defender in a war, I had to present an argument(?) as to why they should end the war. Surely the onus is on the attacker to press their argument and if they fail to do so they should pay?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by robert.steven.marshall:

Sorry to contradict you but immediately after destroying their navy and cavalry the peace offer was that I would pay them 40 something gold per turn (OK it is better than the later offer but still doesn't make sense to me).

Was their navy one trireme and their cavalry one horseman? How much did you lose in the process? If their peace offer involved them asking you to pay gold-per-turn for peace then they were still calculating somehow that they had the upper hand.

Originally posted by robert.steven.marshall:

Maybe I am on my own in thinking that when another Civ has attacked you, lost all of its navy and some of its land units that a fair peace deal is that the human player pays between 40 and 70 gold per turn?

From your description of what happened, it doesn't make sense that they would be demanding so much for peace - which suggests that there is more to the situation that has been left out of your description. Alternatively, it might just be a glitch in how the AI is calculating the war standing. In other words, maybe you have the upper hand but when the AI tries to sense that its flawed algorithm tells it that it has the advantage. For all their sophistication, modern computers are still quite a bit behind the human brain in many ways. This could be a case where you are able to see what it cannot. It may be frustrating at times, but if you want a good peace deal then you've got to explain to the computer in terms that it can perceive that it is losing the war.

Originally posted by robert.steven.marshall:

I really don't understand Gentle Giant's opinion that, as the defender in a war, I had to present an argument(?) as to why they should end the war. Surely the onus is on the attacker to press their argument and if they fail to do so they should pay?

The onus is not on the attacker or the defender, the onus is on whoever wants the war to end. That's what he was trying to say. Since you want the war to end, you have to agree to whatever terms your opponent will give you, or you have to militarily adjust your opponent's opinion of the war until they will give you better terms. If you didn't care when the war ended, then if the AI wanted the war to end it would have to offer you peace terms, and if you didn't like those terms then you could simply refuse.

[sdgabai]

In our co-op game, as France [me] and Scotland [my husband], we had at times various wars going. The most notable was against the Khmer/Inca team. The Khmer were between us and doing fairly well in one sense. I realized the only thing I could do was pillage a zillion tiles of theirs and minimize my loses, while fending off a zillion barbarians inside my lands. Khmer eventually got bored of offering peace deals and everyone just slugged it out for a while in a no-win scenario. The war ended with an exchange of captured spies like a cliche Cold War movie, and some other trinkets that Khmer was overloaded with from all the apostles I had killed of his. I think he threw in some other minor stuff too. I had basically burned his entire border down with guerrilla tactics and taken very little loses. His border was burning long long after the war ended. It was a 4500 year grudge that erupted into a bitter war. It was followed by a massive Cold-War spying ring that lasted hundreds of years across the world. We are nearly at end-game. It may result in some one-sided nukes. I have the only uranium on the planet so far. A LOT!!!

take -away: pillaging w/ hit-and-run is awesome!!!!

spying using optimization techniques to minimize deaths / captures helps too
minimize time of operations too
sometimes it's better to choose missions that have the highest success rate, simply to rack up promotions, more promotions give access to the cooler missions that you ACTUALLY want to do later on, instead of spending your time dead & captured

[sdgabai]

i know that it is a little more information than you wanted.... but, it's how we prosecuted a very very long war

[sdgabai]

FWIW, i renegotiated the final peace deal and tweaked it and put in and took out items, and then kept asking what would balance the deal out. i had refused peace deals for a long time [thinking he would cede cities if i could make enough progress, which i never did]

[robert.steven.marshall]

I think their navy was 3 privateers and a quadrireme and I killed a couple of horsey type units (coursers?). I lost precisely 0 units, I think they pillaged 1 tile, possibly 2. I'm now wondering if the fact that the city they attacked was formerly part of the Inca could affect it (and previously a City State). I'm not sure what else I could describe, not a lot happened.

It does seem like everyone else pillages a lot more than me. I tend to take cities in attacking wars and retreat and destroy opposition units in defensive wars. Maybe the unit types I tend to build affect that. But in this war there wasn't a land border between us. Imagine a U shape with me on the left, the Inca at the bottom, Kongo on the right and the sea in the middle, except that to the North and West is other land with other Civs.

Anyway lets see if I can win my first Deity game/game as Scotland/Science victory since the new DLC.

[Mattakushi]

GG

[Martin]

Put your army on their borders. Send in a scout and let the ai kill it, they'll usually then offer you peace and resources.

[robert.steven.marshall]

Martin can you explain why you believe that works? (Also don't have a physical border as said before)

[sdgabai]

good luck, robert.steven.marshall! Admittedly, I've learned much from the internet [including gaming skills, etc.] but, I've learned a far greater lesson in life, that I have much to learn and am no competition for those on the internet. lol

You have indeed an interesting puzzle ahead of you in your game.

I know that you're not interested in seriously investing more units there at this time.

You could let the war persist in a bored state for a long time.

Build up your infrastructure [civics, tech, faith, production, income, suzerains, diplomatic favor, win some World Congress Resolutions, get some Golden Ages [and pick tier 3 or 4's if possible], win some World Games [first place helps the most], build some wonders if you can, i know that sounds hard [because I don't play deity, i only place prince and with mods]

yes, we got into wars, but, i tended to play more guerilla [hit and run] while my husband was more aggressive. I tended to assist his infrastructure micromanaging here and there [He is new to the game and I'm teaching him by throwing him into the deep end lol] This is our second successful co-op game in the civilization series. [there were always technical glitches] His aggressive techniques are interesting to watch compared to my guerilla techniques. He loses a lot of units [much like you described in your posts] but, slowly slowly slowly with the right infrastructure in place he is kicking butt. As my husband and I always say, we are a team.

Take away - with the right infrastructure, an aggressive strategy kicks butt.