Quote Originally Posted by Danest
It's usually well known here that the AI sometimes gets like a bulldog in war, bites down and won't let go. Often it fights to the last man, without surrendering even against inevitable odds. But I've been looking over many historical wars (the many punic wars). It seems that Carthage lost several wars, and only on the last one were they burned to the ground and wiped out... unlike the AI, where there will be only one Punic war, to the death. At first I used to assume this was a fault in hard-coded diplomacy. But then I got to thinking, isn't that how modern wars are often fought? Iraq, and Japan and Germany in WWII. They fought ferociously all the way back to the homeland, and didn't give up when a few islands were taken by superior forces. Has war, then, changed from the Punic days? Do countries fight to the bitter end more often than they used to? I can't imagine someone invading Puerto Rico with an overwhelming army, and the US saying "Ah, looks like we lost the war, since they got the islands. Let's sign a treaty, and not fight to the bitter end", but isn't that pretty much what happened in the early stage of the Punic struggles? Or maybe all this analysis is silly, and it's just a messed up diplomatic system no matter how you look at it. ;)
The main difference in warfare diplomatically between then and now is due to the political structures of the nations that were fighting. Back then most nations were monarchies of some fashion or other, in which a single ruler owned the government and the country as his own personnal property. If they went to war it was because they thought there was some profit to be made from it. If a king was losing they would realize that the cost of continuing an unwinnable war would be much higher than accepting the enemies demands, generally speaking. Finnally, civilian populations were typically left alone, unless a conquering monarch wanted to A) Send a message to other would be opponents as to the price of resistence, or B) if plunder was the only reason to attack the city. Otherwise cities and populations were spared because doing so would preserve their value in tax income and whatever else the region produced that the ruler might value.

Total War came about only in the Twentieth century with the rise of government forms based on politicle power from the masses and public ownership of the government (i.e. the rulers dont own the government nor can their offspring inherit it, the ruler just controls the governments operations) in the form of Democracy, and its evil brothers of Fascism and Communism. Since the government is supposedly publicly owned, it becomes every citizens job to defend it. These nation therfore employ conscription en mass as well as the entire nations economy into the war effort. The war becomes not just a conflict of interests between two really powerfull land owners, but a war of annihilation with aspects of a religious crusade (with slogans such as "to make the world safe for democracy") between two entire populations, where victory can only be acheived by destroying the other sides power base, its people and production capabilities. This is why it is called "Total War."

This is illustrated rather well in the first world war. On the Western between the German monarchy and the Europian democracies front, no mercy was shown, no quarter given, as the British starved the German people with its hunger blockade, the Germans sanks civilian ships indescriminantly, and both sides regulary employed chemical weapons. On the Eastern front bewtween Russia and Germany, two monarchies, things were utterly different, with the "chivilrous" rules of warfare being strictly followed by both sides. It was not uncommon for troops of one side having just occupied a building to find that the defenders had left a list of items they had broken during their stay as well as payment for the damages. Needless to say, the second eastern front of WWII was the most brutal conflict in history, being fought between two totalitarian governments fighting literally a war of extermination, from Hitler's point of view anyway.

So, yes, the diplomacy of Rome Total War is acting on the Total War principle more often than not, with peace being nigh impossible to obtain, which is not very realistic.