Is the Demand to Surrender Broken?

[EasyCo506]

I started a kingdom and went to war with the Sarranids. At the moment, I have taken all their lands except for one town. I have around 12 of their lords held captive, and the 2 villages surrounding the town are looted. At the moment, their last town is under siege by 8 lord parties, each with over 100 soldiers.

I didn't want to completely wipe out the Sarranids, so I asked Sultan Hakim to surrender. He declined to surrender, saying it wasn't in his best interests. I have already asked about five times already, and he still won't give up. I even tried sending one of my companions to ask for a truce, but he still refused.

Is the surrender option broken or something? It hasn't worked once so far, and it doesn't make sense that it's not working.

 

[Yvain]

Tough situation.. In my long experience of playing M&B and now Warband, the diplomacy features never seem to work very well.  The A.I. seems to create peace with each other, but I haven't been able to get a faction to agree to peace, even if I'm completely thrashing them as you are in your game. 

So the short answer is the surrender/diplomacy features aren't necesarily broken; they just don't work as they logically should.

 

[morphwan]

in my experience, if you have nearly destroyed a faction, they are highly unlikely to accept a truce from you, but if they get into a war with 2 or more of the other factions as well as you, they may offer one

 

[TheMageLord]

Yes, it's broken. The war damage done by a player isn't applied properly, so they never actually see you doing damage to them - they sometimes even think they are winning even while being decimated at every turn. All you need to be considered for peace is 200 war damage, which racks up pretty quick (10 for killing a party, I think it was 20 for capturing a center, 5 for looting a village, plus 1 every day the war has gone on). But the player's action's aren't counted, so even if you wiped out 100 lord parties they still don't think you're winning.

Theres also a rather stupid requirement where they need to have done at least 100 war damage to your faction "for the sake of honor." If this is the case you either need to let them wipe out a few of your armies, loot some of your villages, or just wait for it to add up on its own. You're not likely to ever get here though, unless your lords have been doing war damage of their own (looting enemy villages and wiping out their armies by themselves without your help).

IMO the "sake of honor" thing needs to be toned down to about 50. That's still enough to make the war pretty long, but not enough to completely doom a faction because you happen to be beating them at every turn.

 

[Cro]

I had the Sarranids offer me peace many times when they were on the brink of destruction.  So, it's just not consistent.  I think that when the AI is burning your villages it thinks it's "winning" even if they are losing all their land.

 

[UnfortunateCrow]

I believe your war damage inflicted needs to reach 200 *above* what they have inflicted on you.

 

[Qumil]

My guess is having one of your vassals as a war marshal makes a big difference.  I just wiped out 2 kingdoms a few days ago and near the end of each one they would spam peace requests 2x a day.

 

[Handel]

Do you get any negative hits when looting a village during wartime (besides the usual suspects from the companions which don't like it)?

 

[ragingbull78]

Do you get any negative hits when looting a village during wartime (besides the usual suspects from the companions which don't like it)?

i believe you get neg relations with the faction that owns the village and I'm pretty sure the actual lord who governs it too.  and obviously you take a big hit with the village itself. 

and to the original post im not sure about the surrender being broken but i know that its pretty common to get peace with a faction when they are war with multiple factions.   

 

[nijis]

"Yes, it's broken. The war damage done by a player isn't applied properly, so they never actually see you doing damage to them - they sometimes even think they are winning even while being decimated at every turn."

I'll add that to the bug list.

I'll have a look at the honor requirement. You may think it's stupid, but the outcome of removing it would be ahistorical, and make the AI too easy to bully. Medieval rulers who simply surrendered to a stronger foe without even making a pretense of resistance would have quickly lost their thrones. The same principle holds true in some modern conflicts: Sadat was not comfortable going to Camp David until after the Egyptian military had made a credilble showing in '73. There is also a rational advantage in being irrational: if you behave like a cornered boar, you deter future attack.

 

[Bones]

On a character that had almost destroyed the Vaegirs, leaving them only with Reyvadin, I was gathering more men for that final assualt and the Vagirs ultimate destruction when I visited a guild master in one of my towns and out of curiosity asked how the war was going. The guild master told me that my kingdom had suffered badly in the conflict and was likely to ask for a truce. I suppose my lords who kept stumbling into war parties and getting captured was being taken into account.

He also said I was intimidated by all the other kings and was eager to maintain the peace. Which I also suppose was accurate at the moment.

 

[TheGnome]

Medieval rulers who simply surrendered to a stronger foe without even making a pretense of resistance would have quickly lost their thrones.

Perhaps the ability to lose the throne, the same as losing the title of Marshal wouldn't be that bad of an idea.  Probably hard as hell to implement into the game at this point though.

 

[Nafod]

I had it work once.

Garrison of 6 vs my 100 man force. 

 

[TheMageLord]

"Yes, it's broken. The war damage done by a player isn't applied properly, so they never actually see you doing damage to them - they sometimes even think they are winning even while being decimated at every turn."

I'll add that to the bug list.

I'll have a look at the honor requirement. You may think it's stupid, but the outcome of removing it would be ahistorical, and make the AI too easy to bully. Medieval rulers who simply surrendered to a stronger foe without even making a pretense of resistance would have quickly lost their thrones. The same principle holds true in some modern conflicts: Sadat was not comfortable going to Camp David until after the Egyptian military had made a credilble showing in '73. There is also a rational advantage in being irrational: if you behave like a cornered boar, you deter future attack.

I reported it in more detail here: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,113391.0.html

 

[nijis]

Hey -- that's great! Thanks for the solution.

 

[mrdang]

hey, this just worked for me. i accidentally clicked 'speak with castle commander' and they didn't put up a fight.

didn't prep ladders or starve them a day or anything. should note though that they had offered peace not too long ago because they had the upper hand in the fighting. that and my army is 180 vs. the garrison's 20

this saved me setting up two siege towers so far haha

 

[chaos effect]

From what I've seen a Lord will never surrender, but if you do enough damage to a site held only by a garrison they'll talk surrender, either in the form of what the previous poster screen capped or by saying they'll just pack up and leave and give you the castle (to which you can either agree or refuse, claiming you want prisoners).

 

[Boyar]

well I think this AI war strategy should be quite different.

Right now I took the enemy main city and the next thing they did was to offer a truce.

A faction should consider mostly the number of factions they are at war with. It doesn't have a point having an upper hand in fighting against one faction, if some other faction is meanwhile wiping you out. They should consider a war with 0 or 1 factions as optimal, and a war with 2 factions as alarming.

It's how factions got eliminated in the games i played. They never minded having multiple wars at the same time. The result is catastrophic.