Surrender Accepted!?

[Slaists]

I am blown away by this development. Since ETW was released, I have not heard of a single settlement actually surrendering- it seems every time, no matter how small the garrison is, they always fight to the death.

And yet, here it is, captured not 10 minutes ago.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Austrian campaign, M/M. I attacked Sofia, Bulgaria, held by the Ottomans, with a force of around 13-14 units. The enemy force amounted to about 9 units, half of which were armed civilians.

Now the question is, why would the AI surrender where the forces are of at least comparable size, yet not when they are defending against a full stack with two units of armed civilians?

EDIT: I'm not sure what's wrong with the pic, but as long as it's visible, I don't care much.

It seems quite random with low chance of success (surrender), but it does happen from time to time. I have yet to see the city populace (cities with no garrison) surrender. However, I have seen several town surrenders when there is some regular army inside the province.

[Barkhorn1x]

Congratulations on getting a surrender. It has never happened to me.

This weekend I was playing as Prussia on M/H and marched my army of 1,200 experienced troops (no second class stuff like pikes or militia) up to a Polish city defended by only 4 units of firelock citizens and demanded their surrender. They told me to shove it! Yes, that’s right, a force of amateurs surrounded by a professional army over 5 times their size decided they liked their odds. Ridiculous, makes NO sense.

I immediately attacked and slaughtered them, losing about 62 soldiers in the process. “Heroic” victory indeed. What kind of AI is that? To, a.) generate such a pathetic garrison in the first place and, b.) to not accept the honors of war? Pathetic.

[Barkhorn1x]

It seems quite random with low chance of success (surrender), but it does happen from time to time. I have yet to see the city populace (cities with no garrison) surrender. However, I have seen several town surrenders when there is some regular army inside the province.

And that is doubly nuts. What, the burghers are more gung-ho than the regulars? Where’s the modicum of realism we should expect here?

[resonantblue]

I actually ask for surrenders a lot and I get them every now and again.

I mainly use them if my field army (1x horse artillery only, normally) is besieging because siege attack battles without some heavy artillery are just painful.

So I just siege and request surrender every turn and sometimes I get them. Saves me some time to capture a settlement and I can then destroy the garrison in the field.

[White_eyes:D]

Wow....I never get a positive result asking for a surrender...

I mostly go to the diplomatic table and threaten them into being my vassal

[Slaists]

Wow....I never get a positive result asking for a surrender...

I mostly go to the diplomatic table and threaten them into being my vassal:clown:

Does it work now? Pre 1.3, I never got any results threatening anybody

[hoof]

Actually, there is a bit of logic to the anecdotes in this thread. AFAIK, when a unit surrenders, *only* the non-citizenry get to leave. In other words, surrendering doesn't give you all those town watch units to now march across the countrysides. If this assumption is true, it's pointless to surrender unless you have some non-watch units in the town, as you'd simply surrender the town w/o a fight for no gain. If you actually have some units you can keep (i.e. units you paid money to train), then it might make sense to surrender (at least you get to keep your trained units), but with just town watch, there's no point (you lose them anyway, might as well take a few of the enemy down with them).

The problem is that there are really only two common siege scenarios (at least from my observation):

1) no trained units (thus no surrender since it gains you nothing)
2) a large stack of trained units (thus you have a "reasonable" chance in a fight, so why surrender?)

Surrender should be only likely if there are a few trained units in the town facing a huge attacking army, at least if I were writing the surrender-AI logic! And that's rather rare in the game I notice, as the AI rarely goes piecemeal when it attempts to defend a city (it seems to either leave it undefended, or parks a huge stack in the city)

[White_eyes:D]

Does it work now? Pre 1.3, I never got any results threatening anybody

If you reduce them to one settlement like I did....Yeah

Prussian(N/N) on World domination....I reduced Poland to Finland, Russia to the Black Sea and Austria to Romania (Couldn't waste my time fighting them when I had bigger fish to fry) I also notice that One province minors, are quite suicidal...)

(They just won't give up unless I inflict a HUGE loss, I did it with Crimea and THEY came to the table offering to be my vassal...I was a little upset about losing one province as I needed 40...but I had bigger fish to fry) Turns out it all worked out in the end....Russia attacked the next turn and I declared war on them for attacking my Vassal...who was wiped out but at least I toke it back right away