New option Idea for SE4 - Surrendering

[mottlee]

How about in a fight having the "Enmy" if beaten give up! rather than distroy the whole fleet

[Repo Man]

While not really addressing the topic directly on point, the concept of surrendering could be greatly expanded in SEIV. It might take some serious recoding, but I can wish.

The best gaming model for a surrender that I have ever seen is from Empires in Arms. It’s a non computer game for the most part, unless Aide De Campe is being used as a supplement.

A surrendering power would offer a surrender.

The winning power would then counter offer with either a conditional or unconditional surrender. A conditional surrender had to be accepted by the loser, while an unconditional surrender could be rejected.

For the terms of a surrender, there were two tables, one more severe than the other. An conditional surrender allowed two choices from the lesser table, while an unconditional surrender allowed three choices from either table.

Following a surrender, there was a mandatory peace imposed.

The in game effect was to allow for multiple wars, wars of revenge, and carefully designed peace treaties which added a lot of flavor to the game. Such a feature could help eliminate the 1000 years wars between brotherly empires, a part of SEIV which makes me pull my hair out.

[RiTz21]

Thanks for the comments people !!

-> geoschmo: I think the mechanism to calculate who did the most damage to you is already implemented in SE4 - Think about it: how is the SCORE calculated ?? Anyone doing something to your empire that lowers it's score could be recorded. Then if you surrender, the code just has to lookup who did the most damage and that would be the receiving empire. Here I would add another Idea: An option to set the Minimum percentage of 'Score points' to loose before you are allowed to surrender. For instance, you could set this % to 25%: This would mean that you CANNOT surrender unless you lost 25% of your Current total score -> and then you would be able to surrender to the empire that did the most of this damage. This has the added benefit of making it harder to surrender to friends...

-> Baron Munchausen: your said "The AI in Master of Orion would surrender to one of your rivals just to spite you. That was one of the most realistic features of the original MOO AI. I liked it"

Woa !! Relistic ? Do you mean realistic as what happends in real life ? I don't think France surrendered to the British when the Germans invaded it in world war II ... Could you explain what You mean exactly ?

-> Baron Munchausen: "I'm not in favor of any hard coded game restrictions" - I agree completely with you. That is why my original message says "Option" ... Magic word here

-> DavidG: That's a nice idea ! (limiting what you can to in Diplomacy) - But it should be optionnal (magic word again

-> geoschmo: "We had a long drawn out discussion on this forum a while back about whether surrendering to an ally or not is realistic. Basically it depends on your point of view"

Hmmm I would be curious to know how the proponents of surrendering to an Ally while you are invaded justified their point of view !!!

-> ZeroAdunn: "Surrending to an ally is realistic" - See my comment to the Baron

cheers !
RiTz21

[Baron Munchausen]

Realistic meaning it was like what a human player would do. Sure, a 'real' country doesn't usually surrender to another just to spite a conqueror, though I don't think it's unknown in history. But a real human player does do this in a strategy game. That's good AI programming.

[Repo Man]

I confess that I have not had as much time to play as I want, in fact, SEIV is not on my HD right now (not to worry, as soon as I have time to play, its going back).

Maybe I missed it in game play, but an empire can surrender to another empire it is not at war with?

If this is how it is, seems to me surrender should be limited to those empires currently at war with the surrenderor.

Surrendering to a friend is kind of silly IMHO.

[geoschmo]

Well Ritz, we can go through it all again if you'd like. Everyone here knows I enjoy these discussions.

First of all what France did in WWII does not corelate directly to a surrender in SEIV terms. It's actually closer to weaker empire agreeing to a subjugation treaty. France did not at any time cease to exsist. Germany did not annex French territory the way that they did most of Austria for example. They occupied it. The Vichey government took it's orders from Berlin of course, but they retained, at least on paper, autonomous control over their own affairs.

And once they were liberated they wasted no time in throwing off the shackles of German occupation and assisting in the war on the side of the Allies.

In SEIV a surrendering empire simply ceases to exsist and all it's planets, population, ships, units, and technology become lock stock and barrel part of the empire receiving the surrender. This is simply not realistic, even by moderm day standards. So much less so to think it wouldn't happen in a future war between star systems and different races.

When faced with a choice between subjugation and annialation as a race at the hands of an invading enemy, and cooperation and protection under the wings of a third party ally, it is ludicrious to think an empire wouldn't choose the latter.

Not to mention the fact that no race of beings made up of tens of billions of individuals spread out on dozens of planets in several star systems with dozens of ships would simply change flags because one person, their former leader told them too. The planets and ships in direct threat of destruction probably would, but those not in immenant danger would likely choose to fight on independantly, or seek the protection of a nearby friendly empire.

Now, if the game code were somehow modified to reflect this, maybe we could talk. Say for example the home system planets would fall to the enemy recieving the surrender, but planets that are in systems with or near an ally would go over to their flag. That might have some realism to it. But I am afraid that would be hopelessly complicated to design, much less program.

I would like to see some changes to allow individual planets or fleets to rebel and switch sides when faced with imminant destruction. That would add a new factor to the game and give more of an incentive to blockading planets.

These suggestions could be done in a Role Play game format without any code changes. It owuld take some work and a lot of cooperation from the players, but it could be fun if done right.

But as far as SEIV is concerned, again I say realism is not the end all and be all of deciding factors. It's much mroe important to consider the impact of surrender on the game. Complete unconditional surrender and absorption of an empire as it happens in SEIV, whether or not you think it's realistic, is just too potentially unbalancing. That is why we requested an option to turn it off, and why I always disable it in my games.

Geoschmo

[ July 02, 2002, 03:01: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[DavidG]

Hmm interesting thoughts there. So in a nutshell when an empire surrenders it's home world would go to the empire surrendered to and all other worlds could have a random chance of say joining another empire are becoming independant. If you looking for an historical parrallel I think this could be applied to WW2 as some of the French forces overseas joined Vichy and some continued with the Allies. (I think that happend)

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, that might be better than what we currently have -- monolithic surrender is a bit odd. But yet another 'random event' engine/process is not the best way to go with this. There needs to be tracking of things like population attitudes towards other empires and races so that there can be a much more 'articulated' process for determining behavior when a surrender occurs. Various systems could have completely independent tracking of 'attitudes' for that matter. A system right next to a friendly empire might reasonably have a much stronger liking for this ally than a system on the other side of your empire.

If your population absolutely loathes the empire you are trying to surrender to then rebellion would be rife, and most of the planets/systems should go to another empire which your population has a favorable attitude towards OR should declare independence (and try you in absentia for treason... ) Systems with more affection for a nearer neighbor should logically join that neighbor. Core systems might be the ones to declare independence and try to continue without the treasonous imperial center.

[ July 02, 2002, 21:41: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Rich04]

My thoughts about surrendering in SE IV.

The inability to form a true partnership in SE IV. Several players can claim that they are the United Federation of Races but there is no clean way to apply the government. With each player taking a regional director position. Now an outside force attacks, usually very xenophobic with no regards to life, vaporizing billions. Now why would the Last surviving worlds ‘join’ the enemy that has destroyed most of their culture rather than becoming fully assimilated into the other region of the Federation which it has had open and free trade for generations and possibly even many of its race already living on many worlds within it.

Surrendering to a long-term ally even outside of a direct threat is reasonable. It is the only way to represent the assimilation of another culture by another. If my Empires Partner for 200 turns has over 100 planets and my Empire 20 planets. Would stand no chance in an outright war if one broke out between us. Why wouldn’t I as the leader of my race join my people to the allied race?

Players seem to be saying the only way to conquer an enemy is by crushing them with their military until they surrender. I say that is pretty bogus. There are many other ways to beat an enemy or have another empire submit to you.

Hell this even works both ways. In one PBW game, when faced with destruction, all my allies destroyed, I pleaded for my races existence to a vastly more powerful empire. I offered my empires loyalty and services for survival. The other empire agreed though he could have easily crushed me. Over the next 100 turns my empire factored strongly into his winning as his forces fought the other superpower and mine fought the other minor powers. In the end he declared my people equal rights to his and we settled in for galactic peace, game over. It was one of the best games I have played.

In another game I tried to create an UFP type collation. There was a charter with membership rights, support pacts, research treaties. SE IV’s mechanics made this extremely difficult. But the effort was very educational. I had a horrible but secure position in one corner of the galaxy. I had no interest in going to war with my larger allies and eventually dispersed my empire among them.

Of the handful of times I have surrendered. It has always been to a long-term ally. The benefits they gained were marginal, perhaps a single battle fleet. It has never made a difference tech wise since such an ally already has all the same tech as my empire through joint research efforts. How is this wrong?

Now if an opponent attacked me in an honorable fashion. Conquering my worlds with troops rather than vaporizing them. Thus showing some consideration to my empires people. I would be far more inclined to surrender to him than another. I have never seen another player do this yet on PBW. So until I do my empire will always become refugees to an allied empire.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have also seen games where someone quits after 50 turns for whatever reason and surrenders to a random empire. Suddenly that person is in first place. So I can see were some problems lie. All it did in those games was get everyone else to gang up on the player.

I have also seen spite surrender. In one game I negotiated with a player that had a hopeless position. I had his home system isolated. Cut off from any help, I tried to give his race an honorable surrender to my superior forces. He agreed that he had no chance and told my empire he would surrender to me. What did he do, he surrendered to another empire that one of his scouts had encountered earlier in the game. One he didn’t even have a treaty with. Totally screwed me over. I could have conquered his home system with my fleet and troops but it would have been messy affair. When I tried to make my case to the other player for the unjust surrender. The other player just laughed and said ‘all is fair in love and war and go take a hike’. I was livid.

I don't see any easy solutions to this issue.

[ July 02, 2002, 19:21: Message edited by: Rich04 ]

[dmm]

Hellooooo .... anybody home?
If you disable surrender to prevent "spite surrenders," then you'd better disable trades and gifts also. Because otherwise the "spiteful" player can just gift/trade everything to another player, and he has accomplished the same thing as surrender. (With the small difference that the receiver can decline.)