Moar Food: Uncapitulation

I think we all learned a valuable lesson last night about vassalage and capitulation when it comes to human players. Against the AI, I don't think most players have much experience submitting to vassalage, but in multiplayer, at least with this group, it's come up more than once.

At any rate, I was getting beat on pretty seriously by my evil Wonderland neighbors to the north, who decided on an opportunistic attack after Mikelandia pounced on some of my undefended coastal cities. The Wonderlandians took three of my cities, including my capital, then held out capitulation in exchange for giving my capital back. After exploring my options, I became resigned to this fate -- the alternative was pretty much guaranteed obliteration.

After about 10 turns, though, I wanted to see what the conditions were for breaking my vassal status. Turns out, I could break free if my population and land mass was at least 50% of my master's. Given that I had my old capital back, and I had planted a city or two in some newly denuded area, this was no sweat.

I was just as surprised as anyone that I could just choose to declare freedom -- again, because this is the first time I've ever agreed to become a vassal, so I was pretty unfamiliar with the terms.

Immediately after declaring my independence, I signed up defensive pacts with Wonderland's more powerful rivals. I'm still dead last in tech, score, and military power, but I'm at least back on my feet again. I'm nearly certain to spend the rest of the game acting as little more than a sideshow spoiler for the real competitors.

The moral of the story: if you're going to offer capitulation to a human foe, you had better be sure he's significantly smaller than you from the start, and has little chance to regain territory in any reasonable time frame. Otherwise, it's not that much better than a peace treaty.