forced peace? aargh!

[patcon]

Peace is declared between me and an opponent just because a vassalage is formed with someone I'm currently at peace with? Huh? Don't I get a say in this? This has happened twice in my current game and it's really frustrating.

There was a major world war going on with Wang Kon (with his vassals Monty and Shaka), Frederick and my minions (Ghandi with vassal Peter) independently beating up on Isabella. While this war was going on, Fred and I got into a tussle as well and Wang (seeing an opening) joined in on my side. In an attempt to avoid anhililation, Izzy became a vassal of Fred. The war continued with Wang & Co. and Ghandi's Gang kicking major Spermanish butt. After losing much territory their vassalage was dissolved. Fred ran to Wang with his tail between his legs and became his vassal, leaving Izzy on her own. Izzy promptly made peace with Wang. But now, without asking me, peace is declared between Ghandi and Fred and Izzy and my forces are removed from their territories. OK, Wang and I are on good terms and I would have made peace with his vassal, but I would have preferred to keep fighting Izzy. As it is, I immediately declared war on Izzy and brought my forces back into play, but her eventual anhiliation has been delayed by this temporary (and undesired) peace.
To make matters worse (or at least seem so) after peace was foisted on me I received notification that German forces had attacked me and destroyed some of my farms. I'm guessing these attacks actually happened before peace was declared and the notification was delayed, since we're still at peace.

Earlier in the game, Wang and I were attacking Monty when he became a vassal of Wang and peace was "declared" between Monty and I. I probably would have agreed to peace, but might have risked continuing the fight with Monty with my forces still in place since Wang wasn't that powerful at that time and our relations were just good.

What do I want? I want the option. "The hated Germans have become a vassal of the Koreans. Do you want to continue your war with the Germans and start a war with the Koreans?" And no declared peace with third parties like Izzy.

[rah]

I agree that this should be addressed. It's happened to me a few times and is really annoying. You should have the option when this occurs.

[Krill]

All I can say is good luck getting it changed.

[Brutus66]

I know how you feel.
I was playing Julius and was kicking butt.
The only civ that really rivalled my power was Gandhi, and he asked me for an alliance.
About a turn or so later, Toku, who is dead last on the power scale, declares war on us (what a psycho).
We launch into him and start devouring his cities.
I'm approaching his capital and nothing can stop me- a nice big juicy city.
Just when I get my troops and siege weapons into place, I get notified that I have declared peace with him.
What?!
Seems he became Gandhi's vassal.
The good news is that we made an unbeatable power block and won a domination soon after.

[Diadem]

Huh?

So when you are at war with civ X and at peace with civ Y and X becomes a vassal of Y, then you automaticly get peace with X?

In my experience, that means I automaticly get war with Y as well. Not peace with both, war with both.

[Jaybe]

patcon, have you patched your game to Warlords 2.08?

[Krill]

Depends on what the state of war is between X and Y. If X+Y are at war and X becomes a vassal, then you get kicked out of Xs' land. It is a really ****ty game mechanic, and needless to say I think it makes Stock warlords an awful game in SP, which is why I play with Vassals removed from the game. At least the devs give players options...

[zeace]

The difference is whether X chooses to become a vassal of Y or capitulates to Y. In the first case he's bringing Y in as a war ally so war gets declared on you. In the second case he's surrendering so the war ends.

I agree though that it is very annoying to have sudden peace in the second case. I think that the sudden war in the first place should be avoidable too. The AI really doesn't seem to consider how accepting a vassal will cause wars. Time and time again my best friend will accept vassalage from my target and we'll have a 10 turn war before I can talk to them and ask for peace.

I like the prompt idea. In the first case the quote would be : "Civ X has become a vassal of Civ Y. Leader Y has promised to come to the defense of Leader X unless you immediately end this war. War/Peace" If you war, civ Y gets the penalty for declaring war.

The second prompt would be: "Leader X has capitulated to Leader Y, ending their war. If you wish to continue fighting Civ X you will have to declare war on Civ Y. War/Peace" If you war, you get the penalty for declaring war.

[patcon]

Yes, I have patched Warlords to 2.08.
Zeace, that is exactly what I want. I wasn't aware of the voluntary/forced vassalage distinction. But if you accept a vassal who is already at war with someone else and they chose to continue the war, dragging you into it, then you should take the diplo hit for starting the war.

related question:
If Fred is Wang's vassal and I want to fight Fred without dragging Wang into it, can I force the cancellation of the vassalage by gifting cities to Fred to have Fred reach the level of territory/population where the vassalage is dissolved? This could be a major exploit. Remove your troops and then give away cities (which would be then initially undefended, IIRC they don't automatically get a garrison) to cancel the vassalage, then retake the cities you just gave away.

[Peter Triggs]

I just called this up with some more or less random parameters for the teams involved:

[Rancidlunchmeat]

I'm must be missing something here, because I don't understand the problem.

You had an alliance. You both were attacking an opponent. That opponent became a vassal of the partner in your alliance.

Therefore, you can no longer continue attacking the opponent. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

As Peter's screenshot shows, if you don't have an alliance, and a Civ becomes the vassal of another it will give you the option to declare war on the other Civ or just end the confrontation.

Seems to me like everything is working the way it should.

Shame on you for not pressing Toko to become your vassal before he became Ghandi's.

[RGBVideo]

You had an alliance. You both were attacking an opponent. That opponent became a vassal of the partner in your alliance.

no

Peace is declared between me and an opponent just because a vassalage is formed with someone I'm currently at peace with?

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Did you even read the thread?

If you did, you'd see I was specifically addressing Brutus' situation.

As far as Patcon's scenario goes, he wasn't nearly as concise as Brutus was in terms of what exactly was going on, which is why I didn't respond to his situation.

However, by reading his description there's about twenty ways that could have happened if he missed one little note about something while he was playing.

Again, I don't see how there's an issue. These vassal problems have been fixed with the 2.08 patch, as Peter's screenshot demonstrates.

[Peter Triggs]

Sorry, Rancidlunchmeat, I was a bit economical with the explanations.

The popup illustrated in the screenshot that I posted is not in the 2.08 patch. I wrote the code for it and its callbacks. I'm working on debugging it at the moment.

[Diadem]

Ah so you made a mod to the game to fix this problem? Lol, I thought that was from the genuine game as well

Hmm. It's a good mod. The game should ask you such questions instead of assuming.

Let's hope Firaxis reads this thread