Surrender weird

[red]

France as Marseille against Paris, I caused them to surrender by capturing all cities only to find the AI had apparently given all of their territory to Barcelona. I see how this may make sense from a rules standpoint, but given the exact situation, it was bizarre and frustrating. A region on the other side of the map swoops in at the last minute to take the reigns from a government which doesn't even have a single city left among many fragmented areas? The situation should be sheer chaos with the Paris government unable to do a thing. See this screenshot and how absurd the new borders are. Even worse now, my belli bar with Barcelona is nearly nothing, so I'm stuck with this swiss cheese arrangement.

[Phoenix_ryan]

i had the very same happen to me i was colorado and i captured Wyoming's capital as it was virtually on my northern border, it was easily done then i pushed out took a few industries etc. but in termsof land covered i barely took 1/8th of their total land area i was holded up waiting for supply and fresh units when low and behold Wyoming surrenders.....to Nebraska!!! WTF!! if they are going to surrender i would have thought it would have been to me not the nearest convinient country so as to make it hard for me.

This game is so brilliant yet so fundamentally flawed it is so frustrating

[Phoenix_ryan]

A suitable solution may have been

a) I have the capital so they surrender to me with very low loyalty and the chance of some land that borders nebraska changing alliegence....slowly if i didnt push on and assert my self

b) A message saying something like "After the loss of key cities and their seat of power the Wyoming goverment is in turmoil and has gone in to hiding/a secure place/run away leaving citizens to fend for them self etc etc" (it needs work but you get the idea) and then what was formely Wyoming becomes an area without ownership and surrounding nations can land grab without fear of reprisals. Military units left behind are either all scrapped, sold to WM, or are left in neutral squarees and first region to reach them gains their alligience

Surely a flat out surrender to one of you r rivals is just a fudge come on BG you can do better

[George Geczy]

Surely a flat out surrender to one of you r rivals is just a fudge come on BG you can do better

Well, this was actually done on purpose, though I can see plus/minus on both sides of the issue.

The idea is that if an AI region really doesn't like you very much, that they won't surrender to you - but they may hand over administrative control to another region that they are friendly with.

The screenshot from Red shows that this can sometimes have unusual results. Yeah, that is an strange situation.

There are three other situations that happen in different circumstances:

- No surrender to anyone, fight to the last city
- Elimination/surrender, surrounding players will 'land grab' depending upon their border influence
- Surrender to the attacker - must meet certain conditions of the relationships on the map

The "Surrender to another region" is just one of the four possibilities, though due to the settings in the France map it is more likely than it may be elsewhere.

-- George.

[red]

Here's another complaint. I cannot make those borders at all reasonable unless I go to war with Nevada. I have no belli against them, and would be kicked out of the WM with my present rating. This is very frustrating. At the least, the region which receives this land should need a minimum level of belli against me. Nevada is in effect saying "you must stop your attack"... with humans, this would be an ultimatum to war. But the AI gets a free ride, and I have no recourse.

[BattleGoat]

The AI seems to be acting like a human on this. Rather than surrender to the one invading, they're surrendering to another player to annoy you more. (That definitely sounds like a human response... )

Anyways... we're re-examining this and might change how it's done in time for the next update.

[Balthagor]

We do also get caught in trying to figure out how much to make the AI play like a human vs. how much to make the AI play like an AI. A human player would surrender in this fashion specifically to piss you off. Why should the AI surrender to you as opposed to someone else? I must say, you certainly sparked lots of discussion on this end

[red]

I don't disagree with the motive the AI has. But by itself it seems irrational, and when combined with other diplomatic aspects the whole setup feels like one big AI cheat to me. (Not that it was intended that way.)

To take the last screenshot, Oregon gave all of its land and remaining units to Nevada. So far as I know it had no special relationship with Nevada. No mutual defense. No alliance. In other words, no interest. Yet Oregon says "here Nevada, take everything I own!" Now maybe Oregon is a little annoyed I might capture its territory, but I think it's too irrational for an AI that won't even give you a treaty for an embassy that 'acknowledges sovereignty and aids communication' will give their region to someone else just to spite the player.

Now consider that every player but me is an AI, and the AI always declares war on me as a group. In fact, as I reached each new border I had a declaration of war from them like clockwork. Further complicating it, the AI apparently doesn't like peace.

All together then, what happens is this:
1. I invade a region (perhaps a counterinvasion, same effect).
2. Bordering regions then declare war on me.
3. Every region I conquer surrenders to a region further along, putting me back at #1.
4. Every region I don't conquer refuses peace, and just about invites me to go back to #1.

You see how the player is just stuck with this? It's frustrating.

[George Geczy]

Of course it's also frustrating when the humans you're playing with in an MP game use this tactic (which they often do in our dev test games ). But you're right, this isn't the best way to approach this, and as David mentioned we're currently discussing changes to the AI surrender system to improve the gameplay aspect of it.

-- George.

[Empier4552]

I point out SP and MP are vstly different and that although you are modelling this to be more realistic its not realistic in a true wrold sense. italy should have surrendered to germany if anyone or germany to japan during WW2 then. Just because players do it in MP doesnt automatically mean it should be so. This is precisely why some people like SP mroe than MP also because they do not always like how humans act in games the AI has a chance to be a bit more fair.

[Cauldyth]

Well, I think the primary flaw in reasoning is this:

Yes, if Player A is thrashing Player B, Player B would LIKE to hand his territory over to Player C out of spite.

No, Player C should NOT necessarily want to accept it. It should come with all sort of belli bar shifts for Player A towards Player C.

It's like saying that Germany, losing to the Allies in WW2, decided to surrender its remaining lands to Spain. Would Spain have accepted that? Of course not, because it knows the Allies would then turn to them and say "Excuse me? You think those are YOUR lands now?"

At the very least it should be an automatic high casus belli for Player A to attack Player C, if not qualify as an outright declaration of war by Player C on Player A. Either way, that consequence should be factored into Player C's consideration of whether or not they actually want to even accept the surrender. Don't leave the decision up to Player B, leave it up to Player C, who's the one that actually has something still to lose.


-Cauldyth

[George Geczy]

Excellent points, Empier and Cauldyth. We've made changes in this area a high priority for the next update.

-- George.

PS - we've always liked to say that since SR2010 in development has been playing multiplayer for almost three years, we've been able to better balance things; in this particular case, it might have worked in reverse by making the AI think too much like "Multiplayer human" and not enough like real world region...