I don't know if it's just me who's stupid, but:

I have reduced my opponent in a war down to his last city. His war support has fallen to 0, so now I get the chance to force surrender.
But now I have a problem: Apparently the warscore isn't high enough for me to force the surrender I want. I can only get like....1-2 cities.

So the AI has basically made sure that I can't defeat it fully, because I can't refuse to force surrender (unless there's something I'm missing), and I can't force the unconditional surrender I need to win.

AM I missing something, or is this just the way the game works?

I think its just the way the game works, and its INCREDIBLY frustrating imo.

I get not wanting to wipe out a civ instantly in one war - try drag it out a bit. Fine.

But its still incredibly frustrating imo when I've taken the time to wipe their armies and capture all their cities and I'm just like "Oh yeah sure here have this city back but I'll keep these two...oh you also want those outposts? Yeah sure no problem buddy!"

Tbh the entire diplomacy side needs to be looked at anyway. 10 gold until the last era for my resources whereas I'm paying like 300-500+? :D 

There are a lot of people who seem very confused by this.  I guess Civ really poisoned what people expect from a game when it comes to war.  Anyone who has played Paradox games understands this system.  You're not meant to be able to wipe out an enemy in a single war.

I'll accept that there are flaws with the system, but the underlying idea (each war you can only achieve a certain number of goals if you win) is more accurate and interesting, IMHO.

Bridger wrote:

...but the underlying idea (each war you can only achieve a certain number of goals if you win) is more accurate and interesting, IMHO.

But.....

It's NOT.

I agree it's really weird, and for the moment I was never able to get them as vassals since it requires 200 but i only have 100 warscore... I don't get it

Bridger wrote:

There are a lot of people who seem very confused by this.  I guess Civ really poisoned what people expect from a game when it comes to war.  Anyone who has played Paradox games understands this system.  You're not meant to be able to wipe out an enemy in a single war.

I'll accept that there are flaws with the system, but the underlying idea (each war you can only achieve a certain number of goals if you win) is more accurate and interesting, IMHO.

How is it more accurate, though? There are plenty of situations throughout history where one civilization has thoroughly conquered and destroyed the other. Rome's conquest of Carthage comes to mind.
In my case, I can only get ONE of the enemy's three citiies and outposts, meaning that they're going to get off incredibly easy from being completely crushed.

Tell me how that makes sense?

It's worth noting that civilizations throughout history who have been systematically eradicated were either singular city-states (Punic Wars, I think) or smaller nations governing larger empires as vassals or provinces that pissed someone off enough to warrant such a response.  (Rome v Carthage, Rome v Egypt, Rome doing basically anything outside Italy.  Persian empire conquering tiny neighbors, etc.). Genghis Khan is a good exception to this general rule, he took out a few sizable empires on his way west.  

Thus, the mechanic of only being able to take a chunk out if your enemy per war is fairly accurate.  

One thing people forget is that there is no cool down for war.  If you properly balance your grievances and you have the advantage, you can wardec over and over again with a minimal gap in the middle.  Weirdly enough, overly aggressive empires (like a militant AI who picks the Huns and starts harassing everyone before properly blobbing) can be quickly exploited with this, as they generate lots of grievances that a careful player can use to literally gobble them up in less than ten turns.

Which, in a strange twist, is (somewhat) parallel to how the byzantine empire fell apart over the course of many years.

That aside, only modern wars are really fought to the 'death', so to speak.  Nukes and modern transportation capabilities  really make it difficult to not compel total surrender, tho this has yet to truly be tested against a large land nation such as China, Russia, Mexico, USA, etc.  Most of it is little countries being tossed around like a salad (re: the Balkans).

I wholly support this idea of limiting wars, especially in multiplayer, where elimination of an opponent often means the deletion of someone from a discord call.  

Then there's the idea that your people would support wholly conquering other nations and integrating them wholesale.  Not even the British did that in the old days, and the sun never set on that Empire.

I do agree with the sentiment that the process is rather confusing as the tooltips are not clear about the situation, the notification doesn't even say you've won the war, etc.  That should have been fixed before release because it is clearly confusing people

HumanEmperor wrote:

Bridger wrote:

There are a lot of people who seem very confused by this.  I guess Civ really poisoned what people expect from a game when it comes to war.  Anyone who has played Paradox games understands this system.  You're not meant to be able to wipe out an enemy in a single war.

I'll accept that there are flaws with the system, but the underlying idea (each war you can only achieve a certain number of goals if you win) is more accurate and interesting, IMHO.

How is it more accurate, though? There are plenty of situations throughout history where one civilization has thoroughly conquered and destroyed the other. Rome's conquest of Carthage comes to mind.
In my case, I can only get ONE of the enemy's three citiies and outposts, meaning that they're going to get off incredibly easy from being completely crushed.

Tell me how that makes sense?

Rome conquered Carthage you say?  When did they do that, in the third punic war?  This is a perfect example of why this system better models history. It took 3 wars between these empires before one was utterly destroyed. You can do the same thing in HK.

If you can take 1/3 of the enemy's territory, I wouldn't say they got off 'easy'.  That's a death sentence in a 4X game.

DragonGaming wrote:

Bridger wrote:

HumanEmperor wrote:

Bridger wrote:

There are a lot of people who seem very confused by this.  I guess Civ really poisoned what people expect from a game when it comes to war.  Anyone who has played Paradox games understands this system.  You're not meant to be able to wipe out an enemy in a single war.

I'll accept that there are flaws with the system, but the underlying idea (each war you can only achieve a certain number of goals if you win) is more accurate and interesting, IMHO.

How is it more accurate, though? There are plenty of situations throughout history where one civilization has thoroughly conquered and destroyed the other. Rome's conquest of Carthage comes to mind.
In my case, I can only get ONE of the enemy's three citiies and outposts, meaning that they're going to get off incredibly easy from being completely crushed.

Tell me how that makes sense?

Rome conquered Carthage you say?  When did they do that, in the third punic war?  This is a perfect example of why this system better models history. It took 3 wars between these empires before one was utterly destroyed. You can do the same thing in HK.

If you can take 1/3 of the enemy's territory, I wouldn't say they got off 'easy'.  That's a death sentence in a 4X game.

Thats the thing, Rome CHOSE to annex Carthage piece by piece throughout those 3 wars. The op seems to want to annex the whole ai nation, and thats what i think everyone is missing about this topic. choice, do you want to safely but slowly annex a nation bit by bit, or take the whole entire nation quickly and suffer the consequences and penalty's. This mechanic essentially removes the players ability to choose between those 2 options.

This has been my whole point all along in these threads. The player CHOICE has been eliminated. Sure, hit me with massive stability, influence and diplomacy modifiers if I take the lot. But at least give me the CHOICE of it.

Isn't this what a strategy game is? A series of interesting CHOICES? As it is now, we're forced down this pre-conceived designer notion that we do not find comp-stomping fun. Quite the contrary, I find the current method as unfun as fishing a toilet roll out of a clogged toilet.