Vassal trap

[snoopy369]

You should be able to hit F4 at that point... is that not the case?

[patcon]

Originally posted by Hauptman
If you AND others are at war with someone, and you (or anyone else) demands capilutation, everyone (who is not at war with you) gets peace, as the nation is officially beat, so the war ends.

There is a problem with this logic that has been mentioned a while ago.
If (1) multiple civs are allied together to fight an enemy and (2) the enemy capitulates to one of the allies, then it makes sense that all of the allies would be at peace with the vanquished foe.

However, and this has often happened to me, if (1) I (on my own) am at war with an enemy and a third civ decides to get in on the fun (without being asked by me) and (2) my enemy capitulates to the third civ, then it doesn't make sense for me to immediately cease hostilities with my enemy.
Even worse, I'm on the way to annihilating my foe by myself, with no other civs involved, when the coward becomes the vassal of a second-rate civ (with whom I am currently at peace, but easily crush like a fly if I wanted) and peace is instantly declared and my units are removed from the coward's city gates and teleported outside the borders, merely delaying the inevitable.

What I would like to see happen in these latter cases (enemy vassalage to a non-ally) is that you get a message and a choice. "X has become the vassal of Y. Continuing the war against X will cause Y to declare war on you. Do you wish to (A) declare a cease fire with X and Y, (B) sign a peace treaty with X and Y, or (C) continue the war with X and have Y declare war on you?"

Better yet would be to be given those choices before the vassal agreement is finalized to allow the master to reconsider it decision to accept the vassal if it means conflict with you or to consider a counter-offer from you. "X has offered to become the vassal of Y. Y is considering this offer, but wishes to know your intentions before accepting. Do you wish to (A) declare a cease fire with X and Y if the vassalage is accepted, (B) sign a peace treaty with X and Y if the vassalage is accepted, (C) continue the war with X and have Y declare war on you, or (D) make Y an offer to decline X's vassalage?"

(A) would be diplomatically neutral
(B) would be a small diplomatic plus for you with Y, and a bigger diplomatic plus for Y with others, as you have given them status as a peace-broker
(C) would be a diplomatic minus for you with Y and the usual 'you declared war' minus for Y with others
(D) would be a small diplomatic plus for you with Y and a bigger diplomatic minus for you with X and a 'you sold us out' minus for Y with X slightly bigger than the usual 'you refused to help us'

Implicit in those choices is that the civ taking on your enemy as a vassal will be considered as declaring war on you and not vice versa, as they allied with a civ at war against you and brought the conflict upon themselves. When the US took on the UK as a vassal during WWII (American poster ducks flying objects thrown by British readers), it was the US declaring war on Germany and not vice versa.

[Willem]

Originally posted by HaplessHorde
Unfortunately, there's no way to check on war status at the point somebody's offering to become your vassal. Since wars you're not involved in aren't shown, it's easy to forget who's fighting who. For all that Civ does, it's a shame to be reduced to making transient paper notes!

Then you obviously aren't paying enough attention. Text declarations are always seen when a war is declared between two civs, and it's clearly shown as a red line in the Diplomacy screen. You're supposed to be staying on top of the global situation, not be directed by it. There's nothing wrong with the way the game handles things, you just need to put more effort into keeping yourself aware of the various relationships. I have a tendency to slack off when it comes to that as well, which means I'll sometimes get several civs jumping in when I declare war on one of their buddies. But that's my fault, not the games.

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by Ming
Also... didn't someone else once report that an AI civ won't copitulate if it gives you a victory for the game?

Not true; I just won a Conquest victory, by making everyone being my vassal.

All my vassal and myself were at war vs 1 AI player, and I succeed to make him capitulate! So I won a COnquest Victory, by having every A.I. player being my vassal!

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Willem


Then you obviously aren't paying enough attention. Text declarations are always seen when a war is declared between two civs, and it's clearly shown as a red line in the Diplomacy screen. You're supposed to be staying on top of the global situation, not be directed by it. There's nothing wrong with the way the game handles things, you just need to put more effort into keeping yourself aware of the various relationships. I have a tendency to slack off when it comes to that as well, which means I'll sometimes get several civs jumping in when I declare war on one of their buddies. But that's my fault, not the games.

I disagree. Part of a good game designer's job is to avoid wasting players' time on details that do not contribute anything of value to the game experience. In a turn-based strategy game, there is no good reason why players should have to waste time and mental energy keeping track of information that is not relevant to their current decisions. If a game forces players to make a decision they were not considering previously, it should provide an easily identifiable mechanism for players to check into the kinds of information that are likely to be relevant to the decision before they have to make the decision.

It would be unreasonable to expect a game to be perfect, because game designers are human beings bound by schedules and budgets, not gods with infinite time and resources. But forcing players to make decisions without giving them access to the information they need to make good decisions definitely qualifies as an imperfection.

[Ming]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I disagree. Part of a good game designer's job is to avoid wasting players' time on details that do not contribute anything of value to the game experience. In a turn-based strategy game, there is no good reason why players should have to waste time and mental energy keeping track of information that is not relevant to their current decisions. If a game forces players to make a decision they were not considering previously, it should provide an easily identifiable mechanism for players to check into the kinds of information that are likely to be relevant to the decision before they have to make the decision.

I have to agree. If they really expected people to keep track of the political situations solely on the messages being delivered, they would never have provided summary screens in the first place

When asked to make a decision, summary information should be available to help make the decision.

[HaplessHorde]

Originally posted by Willem


Then you obviously aren't paying enough attention. Text declarations are always seen when a war is declared between two civs, and it's clearly shown as a red line in the Diplomacy screen. You're supposed to be staying on top of the global situation, not be directed by it. There's nothing wrong with the way the game handles things, you just need to put more effort into keeping yourself aware of the various relationships. I have a tendency to slack off when it comes to that as well, which means I'll sometimes get several civs jumping in when I declare war on one of their buddies. But that's my fault, not the games.

Well, I disagree. Yes you get a notifier when a war starts, but then it's been going on for however many turns, how are you supposed to keep track of conflicts without checking the relations screen every few turns? My point is that the information that is available would be better displayed up front where it can be checked at a glance, especially since you can't page away from the leader dialogue box to check up on conditions. That's just a poor design decision.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Willem


I believe it's also programmed into their AI, from what I've read. Some civs are designed to capitulate easier than others apparently. I haven't looked at the code myself though, so I'm only going by hearsay. I was quite surprised actually to have Churchill capitulate to me after only losing two cities. With his "We will never surrender..." speech, I figured he'd hold out until the bitter end. Apparently not.

Same with Frederick. I remember i mentioned this before, but once (IIRC) he offered capitulation to me without even being attacked by me or anyone else (and i wasnt that superior really). This is the guy, who in reality fought the whole of europe for 7 years pretty much (and whose story became the hope for the Nazis in 44-45). Maybe both Churchill and Frederick should have been given a bit (or rather a lot) more tenancy when it comes to that...

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by patcon

When the US took on the UK as a vassal during WWII (American poster ducks flying objects thrown by British readers), it was the US declaring war on Germany and not vice versa.

Actually Germany declared war on the US on December 11th 1941, in accordance to her treaty with Japan and Italy (signed on sept. 27th 1940), that stupilated that if any of the three would get involved into a war with any nation that is not a belligrent already (in any way, defensive or offensive), the other two must join.

[patcon]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11


Actually Germany declared war on the US on December 11th 1941, in accordance to her treaty with Japan and Italy (signed on sept. 27th 1940), that stupilated that if any of the three would get involved into a war with any nation that is not a belligrent already (in any way, defensive or offensive), the other two must join.

Mea culpa. But I was trying to be funny/obnoxious, not historically accurate. The point was if you take on a vassal who is at war, it should be you who bears the onus of starting the conflict between your new vassal and their enemy.

[Unimatrix11]

(This is going to go a bit off-topic as many of my posts tend to - ignore at will)

The question as to who is starting a war isnt always easy to answer. I´ll give a fictional example, as to avoid historical debate and heated argument:

6 friends and I once played a massive board game based on WW2. I happened to play the US, my best buddy played Germany. At the beginning of the game, I announced that one of my policy-guide-lines would be the Monroe-doctrine (America to the americans basically). Germany managed to establish a defensive treaty with France, the UK and Italy. Now Italy send down a force to Brazil. I got my fleet ready to intervene. Heated argument ensued. If I was to attack the italians, who were getting ready to invade Brazil and thus get in conflict with my openly announced policy, fully knowing that it would lead to conflict with me, who would be the aggressor ? Would the defensive treaty of the european powers be triggered by my intervention ? My best buddy can be quite a cunning bastard, and it was obvious to me, that he persuaded the italians to expand into south america just in order to provoke me to technically start the war, so the rest of them would have to jump on me (even tho i had guranteed the independence of all of them, as an exchange for them accepting the monroe-doctrine)... In the end, i paid the italians to drop their plan (2 ´ressource points´ per turn). Of course, once the situation had changed, these payments became a lever for me to gain influence on the italian policy, as i could stop making them at any time.

Anyways, since the game took months to complete (1 session per week), my buddy and i argued over the matter for weeks. In retrospective, i must say, that his point of view on it, certainly had some validity as well...