Surrender Changes

[General Hawkwing]

First let me state that I only ask a race to surrender when I've beaten them down to one planet and have that planet down to less than 100M population and a blockade in place. However, not everyone sets these limits on themself so I feel that the following changes should be made to the AI surrending.
At least half (I say all) facilities should be destroyed(this should also happen when you are gifted/tributed a planet). This would also help rationalize the lose of special tech as the research/construction centers would be lose along with workers.
This should also hold true for 1/4 - 1/2 of the ships.
If the enemy has planets in more than 1 system, than the system without(with the weakest) player presence should also form a new empire. If more than 1 systems is without a player presence than it should be the 1 furtherest from the player.
If the enemy as a partnership with a different empire it should gift away some ships/planets/technology/anything not nailed down. I've seen this happen in AOE2 with repect to resources.
The population should also decrease (1/4-1/3) due to those who would not quietly surrender having to be 'silenced'.

Harsh, yes but more realistic than the current system.

[dmm]

You're assuming that the populace is happy with their current government. Some of them might welcome the chance to throw off their cruel, incompetent, failing dictators who make them live in domed colonies under harsh conditions. They might be excited to join up with a large, thriving, well-run empire with numerous rich planets of just the right type for them to settle down and make a good life for themselves and their children/buds/seedlings/clones.

[rdouglass]

I like the ideas. I too don't try to abuse the AI when I'm beating them bad. I know the AI is not as easy to get tributes from now, but IMO the AI should NEVER give up its homeworld. I had an AI with 4 planets left in 2 systems. I asked for a tribute of Any Planet. The stupid AI gaveme its HOMEWORLD and the other planets had no SP's, RD's, or SY's at all!!! It soon got crushed by the maintenance costs of it's StarBase it left in orbit around the HomeWorld it gave me.

Again I say, the AI should NEVER give up its homeworld.

[Taqwus]

Not to mention that usually the attacker is the one who sets the surrender terms. And that the attacker may have such fun toys as plague bombs, tectonic bombs, and inverted quantum beams.

Have I obliterated systems yet just to teach rioters a lesson? Not yet. But I will if MM doesn't make it at least somewhat possible that a Bloodthirsty race can maintain happiness *and* expand simultaneously; right now, surrendered aliens typically riot inside of 10 turns (that's with Artisans culture, and, IIRC, a racial happiness bonus as well. Even *my* populations often turn Unhappy due to colonization -- most likely... even w/ UPC III's in every system). Until it's changed, surrendered populations do practically nothing for me except provide LOS and fill up my turn log.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Tenryu]

I wonder if you could get MM to include a few lines in Settings or the Race files for each race that allows you to set a War Resource Level and a War Fleet Level.

One line would be a comparision of resource generation at the beginning of a turn against resource generation at the beginning of the war. If the remaining generation level was below the choosen percentage this would cause the AI to ask for peace.

The other line could be for check against fleet value at start of war and would operate the same way.

Other comparision lines might be added to refine specific race victory and defeat levels. (Percentage of trade lost/gained, population, colonies, etc.) Other lines might let us set Demand, Ask, Beg, Bribe, Grovel, and Surrender points.

Well, just some half formed thoughts. Might be one way to get the AI to act a little more smart and give us more customization options.

[Drake]

I don't know that I'd say it's more realistic to suggest the empires not surrender until a large chunk of their empire is slaughtered. Realistically, if your opponent clearly will win out, resistance is indeed futile, unless you hate the opposition so much you really would rather see your worlds reduced to slag rather than support the conquerors.

Anyway, the problem isn't realism, the problem is that the AI is atrocious. I'd rather they just made it more of a challenge as opposed to making it taking a beating for a longer period of time before throwing in the towel...

[Nyx]

If the AI would accept war ending results other than genocide and total surrender, things like this wouldn't be an issue. Not too many wars end with the total obliteration of one side. The AI should be able to offer some kind of a tribue and a non-agression treaty if its losing badly, then it would rarely be placed in so bad a situation that it needed to surrender completely.

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[Nitram Draw]

Maybe MM could put in some surrender rules for the AI and player. Something along the line of what happened during the Napoleanic Era in Europe. Most nations surrendered when a loss became obvious and then rebelled when France was weak or occupied.
For example if the AI was getting creamed it could offer to be subjucated to you and you would have to accept unless you were xenophobic.
They also could have the possibility of a surrendered or subjucated race rebelling if certain circumstances exist.

[Tomgs]

One change you can make to this is to edit the AI_politics.txt file to make surrender and giving tribute harder. But I do think that most cultures would surrender if it was the only option other than complete destruction. There could however be exceptions extremely zenophobic races perhaps would never surrender and prefer to "fight to the Last man".

Taqwus I always play as a bloodthirsty race and I don't have a lot of problems maintaining happiness. You just have to build a lot of ships in most systems to boost your happiness. I also build Urban Pacification Centers in all my systems as soon as possible. The Last time I had a planet riot on me was before the first patch. Since then I rarely get planets even getting unhappy. The secret is to declare war early never make treaties with the AI and build ships on planets that are getting unhappy. If you do that you shouldn't see many riots.

[General Hawkwing]

While on earth surrendering is done before total elimination, why should this be true for war between 2 Groups that view each other as "alien"?