Submissive voting

Flubber · January 28, 2002, 16:19

I am in a MP game (2 humans 5 AI) in which Lal is currently governor. I had been at an unfought vendetta for years when, on the turn when I went from 7 chaos choppers to 15 ( and killed one of his boats), he called me up and submitted. My rep was noble until I attacked the human player a couple of turns ago and I had ZERO units in his territory.

Well, I have the second most votes and what I am wondering is whether my new submissive LAL would be bound to vote for me or would he vote for himself if I triggered an election -- since if he votes for me, I win.( the other AIs are so small as to be irrelevant)

So will a submissive support their master or themselves

Vytae · January 28, 2002, 16:37

Are you sure it was a submissive pact and not just a pact? ive never ever heard of a faction submitting unless they had no army and a base or two and you have that base surronded =p

And submissives and even normal pactmates always vote for you unless your in direct contention with one (ie Lal could have the govenorship,hes going to vote for himself not you)

Adalbertus · January 28, 2002, 16:40

I once had a situation (also with Lal, SMAC V4), where the (in this case with second most votes, and no danger for me

) submissive pactmate was my opponent. He cast his vote for himself. You'll have to wait until someone overtakes him, or you get enough votes for yourself.

Flubber · January 28, 2002, 18:30

I agree that they usually submit when they are almost dead. . . BUT of course I am sure-- I got 4 techs and about 250 ec when he humbly submitted. Frankly it shocked the heck out of me.

Adalbertus
I appreciate the suggestion but the other human will always vote against me and the current situation is

ME 119
LAL 142
other human 99
all other AIs combined 60 (one is a 4 vote submissive of mine)

I have to do a fair bit of growing or conquering to get a superior vote total since even if the non-involved AIs all voted for me I would still be about 60 votes short

vitamin j · January 28, 2002, 19:09

Just wanted to say I had Miriam surrender one time when I barely had an advantage. She had like 20 bases, we had been at peace, and I threatened her in a negotiation. I could not believe it. Nothing similar has happened since.

Hydro · January 28, 2002, 19:32

I've had a couple of instances of Santiago submitting to me when I had no military to speak of, had captured none of her bases, and had only destroyed a few pathetic troops she disgorged from a foil. One critical item is if the AI has no allies - they are much more likely to submit then fight to the bitter end. There does seem to be a significant random element though.

As to Lal, I have had submissives vote for themselves if they are No 2 or No. 1. You may have to demand a few bases from him to even up the score. If he has that much of a lead over the other AIs it will be hard, though, to get him to No. 3. You may want to cement your election by pop booming a huge lead, and maybe bribing a few critical votes your way.

Hydro

Adalbertus · January 28, 2002, 19:58

Quote:

Just wanted to say I had Miriam surrender one time when I barely had an advantage.

IMHO, Miriam loves to surrender

... and to sneak attack later

Tau Ceti · January 28, 2002, 20:24

The only time I have been in the situation you describe, Deirdre, being the current governor and still a candidate, voted for me. So apparently their behaviour is not entirely predictable.

Fitz · January 28, 2002, 20:53

How about you call up Lal, and ask him to vote for you? If you get the "I'm afraid I cannot change my stance on that" type message, you know he's going to vote for himself. Otherwise you may be able to buy the vote (possibly quite cheaply). Makes sense to me.

Flubber · January 29, 2002, 00:54

thanks fitz

I plan to do so but I wondered if there was any set rule for submissives on the issue and it appears there is not

johndmuller · January 29, 2002, 03:21

Perhaps you can demand a few bases (I don't think demanding bases is a violation of the no-base-trading-with-AIs rule, but maybe it is or should be) from Lal and then leave them or some of your own bases lying around barely defended (so as not to be totally transparent

) so the other human will take them and perhaps elevate himself to #1 or #2 and drop Lal down to #3.

If I were your opponent, I think I would get very busy with the probes and try to frame you for something

.

Kassiopeia · January 29, 2002, 03:47

This talk of Diplomatic victory and submissive Lal (Oh, the memories) bring in mind a game where I was some ten twenty votes short of Diplo victory. Now, Lal gets two votes for every pop point, while I as Yang gained only one.

I donated Lal half of my bases and effectively added 30 percent to my total votes !

It worked, I was elected Supreme Leader.

Lal was the second candidate with almost as much votes as I, and submissive to me. Like Tau Ceti said, the AI behaviour is, like any self-respecting AI behaviour, unpredictable.

Shai-Hulud · January 29, 2002, 04:26

I've had AI players submissing even with 20+ bases. Although I had wiped out their offensive military units for the most part and they were all conquered later on. But it's rare.

GeneralTacticus · January 29, 2002, 04:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Vitae
ive never ever heard of a faction submitting unless they had no army and a base or two and you have that base surronded =p

They generally seem to surrender at or sometime after the point of military collapse - i.e. when their army has become so depleted that they can no longer defend themselves. If they're pathetic to begin with, sometimes they'll surrender without firing a shot - which can be kind of funny when they started the war. One some occasions it seems that they'll fight on until the second last man - on others they just meekly give in. I don't think it has much to do with allies - I've Yang fight on until he lost most of his faction (which consisted of about 12 bases, on the Isle of D-whatever) when I had the rest of the world submissive pacted to me, and another time he was around the freshwater sea with like 50 bases and gave in after losing 5.

EDIT: At this point Yang was allied with Domai and the two of them were the only un-pacted factions left. Domai then proceeded to surrender without a fight after I airdropped ONE infantry unit next to one of his bases.

Flubber · January 29, 2002, 13:18

Since I saw little to lose (it would probably take 20 years to make the AI third in votes given that it is LAL) I called the election. Lal voted for me in the initial pop-up. I called him up as I would have been willing to bribe him to seal the deal but he just told me he "was with me on this one". I only hope that the other human can't somehow bribe Lal to vote for LAL.

Otherwise the game is going ok. I am chop dropping the other human as best I can since if i can hurt, even eliminate the human player eventually, the AI will be no problem .

gwillybj · January 29, 2002, 23:27

Quote:

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
... If they're pathetic to begin with, sometimes they'll surrender without firing a shot - which can be kind of funny when they started the war...

The Mouse That Roared, by Leonard Patrick O'Connor Wibberly (1955). It was taken to film in 1959 by director Jack Arnold and starred Peter Sellers.
I wonder

, is it possible to surrender to a faction that is entirely inferior to yours? And then

quietly

work your way back up and turn the tables

?

Blake · January 30, 2002, 20:59

In one game I had a well developed Zak (about a dozen bases - atleast as many as me) surrender to me.

I had been isolated on an island, and i found Zak's island just a few tiles away from mine. His base with the HGP was coastal and just a turns boat ride from my island. Zak was friendly to me, but I decided to take the HGP base anyway, and did so in a one turn sneak attack, I also took another of his largest bases in the same turn. To my considerable suprise (and slight annoyance) Zak then offered to surrender, and altough I had been hoping to snatch a few more bases I accepted (because if I declined it would have become a fight to the death).

Because Zak was still largely intact and a usfull submissive under any situation I returned the non-HGP base to him and teched him up.
By surrendering early Zak greatly improved his lots, otherwise I would have crushed him to a few bases in one corner of his continent and left him to rot.

The AI's motive for surrending, I believe was:
I had a slightly better army, certaintely better weapons tech.
My attack was swift and irrestiable (and taking more than one base in a turn certaintely helps convince an AI to surrender - you spook the enemy, so to speak)
My Reputation was unblemished - other than the sneak attack.
And, possibly most important, Zak had no other contact, with no potential help from third parties, the AI determined surrender to be the only way out.

Shai-Hulud · January 31, 2002, 01:23

Reputation is very important if you want your opponents to surrender. If you have betrayed them, they never seem to surrender, not to even think of atrocities which seems to rule it out completely. My most powerful fast-attack against AI was me playing Believers in war against Drones. I took six of his 15+ bases in one turn and four bases next turn(without using Drop Pods). I was by far the most powerful military might and I had been in alliance with Drones. They never surrendered, nor did any other faction...probably because in the end I was using Nerve Gas and had double-crossed many of my former alliances.

Does anyone know any kind of formula AI uses to determine whether to surrender?