making peace in 1.03 (VH campaign setting)

[Slaists]

Slaists, I play VH and in 1.3 have not ever managed to get a peace deal without GIVING the AI something (large).

Well, as I mentioned, the AI accepting a peace deal does not work ALWAYS for me. However, I have seen it work quite a few times in my latest VH campaign as the Brits. I am in year 1770 now, BTW.

1. Spain accepted peace with me several times after having been beaten to pulp in several battles on the same turn. Also, there were a couple cases when Spain DID NOT accept a deal under similar circumstances.

2. France accepted peace with me several times under similar conditions.

3. Maratha accepted peace on several occasions as described in OP.

4. Russia has not accepted peace since they declared war on my ally - Austria. Then again: I have never fought a battle with them (yet).

5. Prussia is stubbornly not accepting peace despite me having defeated their fleets on several occasions. Then again: it was never more than one victory per turn.

So, it seems, accepting peace cannot be taken for granted, but it does happen. At least for me, that's alright.

One side note, I think, in OP I forgot to mention that besides defeating the AI in the battlefield and on the seas, I made a point of blockading their ports (most of them) in all the cases when the AI did sign the peace deal. Now that I think of it, that might have been a significant factor tilting the AI towards accepting peace.

It's great that you managed to get peace from the AI, but the situation you encountered is still a rubbish way for the AI to behave/reason. They declared war on you the first time, you beat the carp out of them, they accepted peace, thus saving their skin, only to declare war on you again two turns later? The AI needs to compare its forces to yours before making declarations of war, otherwise it's just suicide. Since I can easily see how my country stacks up against another on the diplomacy screen, the AI should be able to do the same and instead of committing suicide it shouldn't mess with countries that have ten times the armies they do. It also should know when it's beaten and not just declare war on you again 2 turns later when you, the player, are forced to crush them rather than go through the same peace/war declaration cycle for the whole game until you lose your mind.

Well, to be fair to the AI, in my game Maratha was the world's number one ranking power when we had these "skirmish" wars. I had one "professional" army in India (the rest being sepoy garrisons in bordering provinces) while Marathas had numerous elite infantry stacks everywhere. My fleets were smaller than theirs. My Britain was at war with 5 large factions, while Maratha was skirmishing only with Persians. Marathas out-teched me in every department (sometimes several levels). So, if Maratha AI was "looking" just at the numbers: they should have beaten me with their hands tied behind their backs. It just so happened that I prevailed on the battlefield (dumb battle AI was not the least significant contributing factor).

So, in this particular case, Maratha accepting peace after battle-defeat to reorganize and then declaring war again in 2 turns made total sense to me.