Obstinate AI doesn't like my tribute demands, but offers even more generous terms

[GC13]

Hey all. I picked up EU3 Chronicles from Gamefly's promotion. It's been a long time since I played EU3 Complete, but I feel like my time with Crusader Kings 2 has helped my enjoyment a lot. (Though it still feels like tech is going nowhere, a feeling I remember well from when I played Complete.)

Still, one aspect of the game bothers me the most: the AI is a huge dunderhead when it comes to surrenders. Sometimes, it makes sense that they wouldn't want to do something so simple as Concede Defeat: their armies are almost a match for my armies. Still, my ally's armies are also almost a match for mine, and my War Exhaustion is hovering right around zero while theirs is in the red. Then there are the times where the AI has no army I can see, and all of its provinces are either occupied or under siege. That bothers me, because the AI won't even do so much as accept a demand for a 25-ducat tribute when any human player would be scrambling to end the war.

BUT, that's not all. After that 25 ducat demand shows as "There's no way they'll accept this offer", I receive an offer of 67 ducats. I turn that down, and eventually they offer to release a vassal. I only accepted that one because I was afraid they'd make peace with the guy who started the war and give me nothing.

Is the estimation of whether or not they'll accept the terms fairly accurate? It doesn't make much sense to me that they'd turn down a demand that they simply admit defeat, then the very next week offer to release a vassal. Or say "no, we won't give you 25 ducats; will you accept 67 instead?"

 

[Red John]

I believe a lot of it is based of War Capacity, although I'm not too sure about that. But I agree, the AI is sometimes really odd when it offers peace

 

[Lynx190]

I only accepted that one because I was afraid they'd make peace with the guy who started the war and give me nothing.

This seems to explain a large part of your problem; in my experience the AI frequently doesn't like to surrender to countries that aren't the war leader unless they have enough warscore to reach the "offer better than what they would expect" threshold, and instead holds out for peace with the leader. This makes sense even from the point of view of a human player, because peacing out with the junior allies would just allow any newly liberated provinces to get re-occupied and then be forced to give up even more (Although in 5.2 beta apparently there is/was a problem where they would do exactly that, even with countries that had 0 warscore). Instead they try to white peace with all the lesser opponents they can, and surrender only to the war leader, who eventually has to make a peace deal or get the automatic white peace (which does happen at times because the AI on the winning side is too stubborn to accept anything less than full annexation)

And yes, the AI always tends to be willing to offer more if it initiates the offer rather than responding to yours.

 

[GC13]

Not wanting to have to give up stuff to the lesser partners in a war doesn't explain why they won't so much as concede defeat... How big of a Prestige hit is that for the AI?

 

[Viperswhip]

Well, way, way back, one of the ways you used to deal with France was to get them to like 25% war score and give them a very generous peace offer (like 4%) and they would take a stab hit for not accepting, and thus you could get them to -3, tons of rebellions and so on, but it was probably patched out.

Somehow last night when I declared war on Anam, all the countries guaranteeing them jumped in. Now, that included the Ottomans, fine, but Oman was the war leader. I checked by exiting to the menu map, they are one province, way out of the way, I can't get to. Now, I was capturing the Asian continent, but had lost Thrace and Janina, so they had 9% or something, even though I had captured all of the Asian Ottoman provinces, so I went to Oman and offered them all of Candar and one province in Kadaman (like 40%, and some money, and concession of defeat, they wouldn't take any deal. They didn't suffer any stab hits.

So they take a prestige hit for not taking a decent offer?

 

[GC13]

No, I'm talking about the Concede Defeat demand. It's all I really want out of them...

 

[Viperswhip]

Yes, but it still is a %, it's a low one, like 5% or something, so if you have a good warscore, they should be taking a hit for refusing it.

 

[Red John]

I believe at 40% or more WS, the AI/Player begins to take stability hits for refusing offers considered "generous" by the people. Say you have 93% WS, and you want the AI to concede defeat but it wont, the AI will eventually reach -3 stab if you keep offering the same low peace deal and they wont accept. This should basically force the AI to make peace.

 

[unmerged(463662)]

I think that the people in this thread seem to think that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence.

It doesn't, it stands for Automated Integers.

 

[GC13]

How much does the Stability of your enemy affect the AI's decision making process for surrenders? I was in it with Castille, and managed to completely obliterate their navy. I had them under 100% blockade, and Sweden and I were going after their holdings in North Africa. The war score was at, I think, about 30% (I think I determined that the stab-hit percentage was anything 25 less than your war score) and they let me stab-hit them all the way from +3 to -3, just me asking them to release their core on my continental holding and nothing else.

Well, I took two or three more North African provinces from them, and they sat at -3 for a month or two, and all of a sudden I get a surrender offer from them. I don't take it, because I typically don't accept provinces that the AI can take right back from me, but I finally exact my demands: release all of Morocco, give up the dang core on my province, and pay me a lot of money (like 345 I think was all they had).

They should have accepted the white peace when I gave them the chance. :glare:

 

[Kaazmodan]

The most important thing to demand peace, seems to be to simply occupy his provinces. As far as I can see, you can always get a peace worth the warscore, if you outnumber the enemy and have occupied at least one of their home provinces.
All other times, the AI seems to act a bit weird with peace offers. And it doesn't see a difference between a province under siege, or once that is completely fine with no enemies in sight. That's why you easily can get them to demand 2k gold from you, while you have destroyed their entire army and you soldiers are sieging every single enemy province.

 

[Lynx190]

Once the enemy is at -3 stab they are required to accept any peace offer "better than what they would expect", regardless of their war capacity. Of course if they're at -3 stab and have WE then they probably have revolt risk killing their war capacity as well.

The thing that really has me completely confused lately is when sieging/occupying the enemy capital causes their war capacity to skyrocket instead of going down, and thus they stop being willing to make peace. This happened in my Inca game when I tried to raid Brandeburg's capital in an attempt to make them cede their Central American provinces. And yesterday it happened in my Qara Koyunlu game when I was trying to make the Mamluks pay tribute after I farmed 40 warscore. They had been at 34% war capacity and then next thing I knew they were at 100% and wouldn't accept peace. It turned out all I had to do was cancel my siege of Cairo and it plummeted back to 34%. If I kept sieging/unsieging, while keeping the game paused, their war capacity just kept bouncing between 34% and 100%, it makes absolutely no sense.

 

[grommile]

In the QK case, I would assume that because sieging Cairo makes the Syrian provinces count as Distant Overseas for the Mamluks, you look less threatening than you actually are (because you only border their DO provinces, not their home provinces).

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Well, way, way back, one of the ways you used to deal with France was to get them to like 25% war score and give them a very generous peace offer (like 4%) and they would take a stab hit for not accepting, and thus you could get them to -3, tons of rebellions and so on, but it was probably patched out.

This is still doable. I do it at least once every other game when the AI is being stubborn.

 

[Slym]

I think they designed it that way so you can't blitz the AI and give them a peace offer that the AI thinks is reasonable but really isn't. The problem is that while it succeeds in preventing this, it also keeps the AI from accepting anything other than a crushing defeat that leaves them in shambles for years.

 

[cywang86]

The easiest way for them to accept any demand is to occupy their capital. At that point, the AI will think the war is un-winnable and take any demand 10% higher than current warscore. (tops off at 100% ofc)

 

[Viperswhip]

The Hordes will generally accept concede defeat if you beat a large part of their army, or take a province (I mean, you concede defeat to them). You can probably try that with the other nations as well, but I never have.

The system basically demands that you occupy their whole country, which is hard to do with the Hordes. Meanwhile the AI uses all their diplomats sending you the absolute dumbest peace offers.

The biggest problem is that some missions will not fire while you are at war. So, let's look at Byz, if you are not at war you can get the destroy Venice mission, well, okay, but Venice has tons of allies, and one of them is probably the war leader. So if you annex Venice, you are still at war you will get some weird generic mission instead of Take Southern Italy, because that won't fire while you are at war (unless you edit the missions like I do).

 

[GC13]

The system basically demands that you occupy their whole country, which is hard to do with the Hordes. Meanwhile the AI uses all their diplomats sending you the absolute dumbest peace offers.

Yeah, that's so irritating. Minor partners in the war who are landlocked, and so have no hope of ever coming into contact with my troops, will send me demands at 0% war score and me at 100% war capacity and 0 war exhaustion for, like, a thousand ducats, and yet I can't get the AI to Concede Defeat, or even white peace, at 20% war score with 18 war exhaustion and a 100% blockade. After I've destroyed all of his transports so he can never reach my mainland.

Ridiculous. Maybe it works for continental powers, but playing as England it's just inane. There's no way I can fight Castille on the mainland, but you'd think they'd realize that there's no way they can even get to my mainland so they might as well offer white peace. No, they wait until I get sick of them and start attacking their holdings to offer white peace.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

The AI has a total war mindset in that every conflict turns into a war until the end instead of conceding territories after being blockaded and some border/colony skirmishes. Every war is a Franco-Prussian War instead of a Seven Years' War, for instance.