Can this be an option to turn off? ... I've asked that some weeks ago. So far it's not possible. Would be be a good feature to be able to turn off surrenders to other ai (my opinion).

These surrenders are not really useful (in my case) to anyone:
- due to the disbanding of all ships it's even easier to take planets. i really don't care who's the new owner if it's a lvl15-planet with high bonus fields next to my lvl5 ...
- it's very likely that i'm not the only one interested in these planets => 1 surrender might leads to total chaos because the new owner might be attacked by several others. also questions sense of diplomacy system
- initially weakens the new owner because the ai tends to send fleets to his new colonies. the farer away from the homelands, the worse. (had it happen that the new owner moved his engineless fleets across the map while others were taking his planets)

Nope, there is no option to turn surrender off. It'd be a nice feature, but I wouldn't use it. As for being irritated by it, it usually means your not properly preparing your wars. You usually give the enemy enough time to try and counter, but when it figures out it's a deadend, it surrenders. These can usually be evaded by either preparing your fleet much better, or asking a peace treaty when the race is at its last 2 planets or so.

As for Shock and Awe, I was able to utterly destroy the Iconians in one turn. But it took a lot of timing, 10 or so transports holding 3000 each and speeds or 25 persec, and a lot of generic ships. I can't really call it a success as I used all by transports and had to use mass drivers on the last planet (15->10) to ensure the Iconians didn't have time to respond.. Great game... Great game...

Another point to remember is that your enemy may well surrender to somebody more powerful than yourself. You are then forced to pursue the war on them, if you want to 'cherry pick' their new planets.

I think it would be better if the AI only surrendered to civs that they shared a border with... I'm sure distance is already considered, but it needs to be made more important.

It seems that the Civ would surrender to the civ closely related to it through culture, or actually negotiated a sovereign planet under the protection of a civ, whilst paying tribute.

#3 by SephIock Monday, May 15, 2006 5:13 AM Trolling Insightful Shock and awe has yet to produce any (positive) results in the here and now, so you could argue that that aspect of the game is quite realistic .

Iraq fell like a House of Cards and will be a text book example of how to win an Invasion for years to come. The fact that we allowed most of the Iraqi Army to surrender rather than kill them (mercy...) and the surrounding nations are funneling in their terrorists by the thousands holds little interest for peopel who have been blathering Naysayers since before the USS Cole was attacked and the 1st Sanction was placed against Iraq.

Maybe we do agree, however.... Shock and Awe when combined with Mercy and Half measures do NOT work.

Shock and Awe should not result in the invaded Empire surrendering their assets INSTANTLY to another Empire that they had no prior Alliance with. If the neighboring Empire wishes to come to the assistance of the doomed Empire, let them send Ships and/or ask for a Resolution in the UN (I mean Federation). This part of the game is just plain annoying. It is the AI cheating IMHO.

If you want to make it difficult then have the Neighbor Empire Declare War or threaten War if your Fleet doesn't withdraw but please get rid of this tactic.


At the end of the Iraq war, many Iraq Pilots and Planes flew to Iran (those that weren't burried under the sand for later use). Iraq also sent other items to other nearby "Empires" (Does WMD ring a bell?). They did not and could not suddenly cause their Empire to become part of Russia or France and thus stop an invasion in its tracks. Assets could and should be stripped and sent to other Empires. Last minute Alliances could and should be formed. Desperate tactics should be employed but a cheating AI tactic should not be used.

I dont know about the surrender being a bad thing. It seems to me that they surrender to the lesser of two evils. I know I was part of a three way alliance my tow allies were aggressively attacking another race while I stayed behind them going for the tech victory. When things got ugly the losing faction surrendered to me. Reminded me of the Germans who tried to surrender to the Allies rather than the Russians. I mean I had excelent diplomacy and was respected by all and was a "good" race. Perhaps it makes sense for them to surrender to me? Or maybe it was chance and I am giving the AI to much credit?

I don't understand why don't those other civs refuse that if they are your friends, since they know that it would lead to future blodshead.

Surrender to someone else only makes sesne, if that other civ is either powerful, but neutral with you, or if not so powerful, but wary or hostile towards you.

Your friends should not accept surrender from your enemies.

And IMHO, it seems like they always pick the one that I would prefer at that time, not to attack. While annoying, I can understand it, as it could be deemed a last ditch effort to spite me lol.

Hmmmm. Kinda like a REAL player, eh?

Cheers,
Reaver

The AI surrenders are hard to figure.

In a weekend game, the Drath and the Iconians surrendered to civs that were kicking their ass while the Korx surrendered to the goodie two shoes Iconians while I was kicking Korx's ass.

It was all going to boil down to the two strongest, the Drengi and me and I had a small power lead. It would have been logical for the 2 neutral civs to merge with me and the Korx to merge with the Drengi. This would have created a fairly balanced game.

Some people complained about the AI caving in too early and so the game was changed and now it seems that no one surrenders to the human player. The law of unintended consequence strikes again. The surrenders should have to do with similar ethics and diplomacy or who is winning the war, not "anybody but the human player".

As usual the war monger gamers are starting to dominate this game and I suppose that is to be expected since they are the majority.

I have played my last big map. I just don't have the patience to take out every single planet. I like some war mixed into my games but in the end, when the issue is no longer in doubt, I want an influence victory or a quick surrender.

In the aforementioned game I had 5 fully loaded (nerfed) influence mines, (3 of which I took by conquest and not rush) and I had no chance of a reasonably quick influence victory without spamming the galaxy with shopping malls.

I don't really like diplomatic victories but the evil Drengi were close to neutral me so I allied just to end it out of total bordom.

Yeah, the 'buy all their stuff, then invade' tactic is pure cheese taking advantage of an obvious AI flaw. This should be addressed asap by making sure the AIs don't sell off all their warships (I mean, what PLAYER would do that), just like they won't sell weapons tech to you now if you are already way ahead of them.

I would only sell outdated stuff that I have already surpassed in building, like ships I didn't upgrade due to cost. So why would an AI?

I wouldn't sell off all my fleets, reducing my Military Might to 0, while increasing someone elses to Their MM + My MM. So why would an AI?

I have seen the AI do some smart things at the lower levels and some dumb things as well, but certain things should'nt happen at all on the higher levels of difficulty.

Cheers,
Reaver

Amazing!! They will sell all their ships but they won't sell a resource mine for 100,000bc and a half dozen high pq planets. Go figure.

I think that unless the code is set to zero (mining starbases) the AI puts too much value on cash since they seem to rush buy almost everything. The price for rush buying anything but basic improvements should be raised and there should be some bonuses to decrease the cost of upgrading ships.

I'm really getting into this change thing

you can wipe out any lesser civilization in a single turn

Yes you can but cheese aside let's say you are playing on a huge/gigantic map and the AI has 30+ planets. You need to build 40-50 transports that will deplete your population by 50mil (okay so far). This will probably take at least 5-6 turns (okay so far). Then you need to calculate how long it will take to get the transports into position. This will take maybe 3-4 turns. That's not a problem but it will take me how long to plan that maneuver? It would probably take me an hour of planning. Maybe I am slow but this is just too tedious for me. If you don't do the cheese part you must spend weeks (20-30 minimum) clearing out the defenses and that's assuming that you can afford to send irrisistable force to all planets simultaneously.

I am sure that some are fine with that style of play and many would not waste their time playing my impatient style but somewhat plodding style. I am not saying my way is right but the current build works against my long term enjoyment of the game.