Negociated Surrender Exploit

[jimwinsor]

OK, playing the latest beta 1.2.14, I stumbled across the following if not bug, then at least a very gamey, dubious tactic.

It involves using the treaty system to negociate a Surrender with a power you are at war with. Naturally, if you propose your AI enemy surrender to you, he will be "likely to reject," while vice-versa he will value quite highly and be "likely to accept."

So I wondered what would happen if I proposed both warring powers surrender to each other. Yeah I know, LOL!

Interesting result. The AI gets seems to go for this readily enough; a little additional coaxing such as 3 years Enforced Peace (which BTW is really only 18 months, as the AI doesn't factor in the 18 month natural enforced peace upon Surrender...another bug/exploit...Enorced Peace term combined with both degrees of Surrenders should be automatically programed by the game to *only* begin after the 9/18 month natural surrender periods are up, IMO) and he'll go for it.

Now the ORDER you worded your treaty is all important here. If you wrote your surrender clause first, the AI's second, then the AI's clause will appear above yours, and thus be "read" first. Then what seems to happen is, the AI will then fully surrender to you, and your surrender to him...gets ignored! Basically null and void, it seems, because the AI's surrender, a split second in time before your clause got executed, made it moot. At least thats what I'm guessing is happening here.

Like I said, if not a bug then certainly a very gamey tactic that really should be patched away.

BTW for those of you in our PBEM game, just to let you know...I am not (usually) this weasily in a real game. This sort of thing I do in single player only, to kick the tires on the beta; doing my darnedest to "break" the system so as to help improve the next patch! [:)]

[TexHorns]

jim, why not really test that theory and try it in the pbem game vs a human opponent. Just curious as to what would happen then.[:D] just kidding

[ericbabe]

Oh yeah, shouldn't be able to do that!

I'll make the AI reject any treaty that has more than one surrender proposal in it.