quote:
Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
Yeh, but in real life people don't want to die, they don't want to see their friends & relatives die, they don't even want to see their houses get blown up. So, they only fight like that if they figure the other side is going to exterminate them anyway. People weigh the odds and if they figure they have a better chance of surviving reasonably intact by surrendering then by going down fighting, up goes the white flag. If their glorious leader sees it different, sometimes he gets fragged and sometimes he wakes up to find all the troops just left (like Richard Burton's Marc Anthony in "Cleopatra"). There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general trend.
But they might well surrender to someone ELSE who (in their judgement) would let them preserve their identity more completely than the current enemy trying to conquer them. I agree that this is a very interesting feature of MOO that really ought to be included in SE's AI behavior. Some sort of assessment of "compatibility" should be included in the AIs thinking process so it has a chance of surrendering to another race when you demand their surrender and they realize they cannot win. They also ought to make "counter offers" of subjugation or protectorate when the ratio of their strength to yours is less than a certain level. The cost of conquering even a smaller empire by force can be high, and if you've got other enemies on your border who are in a bad mood the AI has a decent chance to squeak by that it never seems to even consider.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 23 January 2001).]
Re: Surrender Changes
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