AI Surrendering

It wouldn't make much sense for the surrendering AI to go to a civ your already at war with since it wouldn't stop invasions and their mandatory genocides. To spite you often the AI will surrender to a powerful civ your not yet at war with meaning that you will either have to stop taking their former planets or declare war on a new civ.

At first I found the surrendering a little frustrating, but I've grown to like it since it can totally change the dynamics of a match instantly.

The other civ should have a choice to reject the surrender though.

"Yeah great but..er...we can't afford to take you in right now...bye!"

I'm kinda undecided on it currently.

In the game I'm playing now, I got a pretty good start, colonized about a half dozen worlds, and shortly found myself top of the heap, playing with the max allowable civs. I controlled a sizable chunk of space, and was doing about 40% of the research. Once I'd built up a bit of a fleet, I began taking out my neighbors, beginning with the godless Yor, of course.

Upon taking a couple of their worlds, they surrendered their remaining ones to the Terrans. Fine, I thought, I'm buddies with the humans, no prob. Next civ on my list was the Torians, who only had a couple of planets. Well, as soon as the cowardly wusses saw my fleet parked outside their capital, they also surrendered, again, to the hairless apes. Bah, I'm thinking, time to set up a few influence SBs, and scarf those planets.

I carry on with my conquests, quickly crushing the Iconian fleets, who, you guessed it, surrender their remaining worlds to those smug bastards, the Terrans.

I'm getting a bit ticked by now, and decide to stop the warring, build up a bit more, and then go after the Drath and Drengin, who border my realm. They're at war with the Arceans, who are my buddies, but on the far side of the galaxy.

Of course, yep, you guessed it, they both surrender to the slimy buttkissers, the bloody Terrans, who now have an empire comparable to my own. Before I can send my ships to take out another civ, the remainder, excepting the Arceans, now my allies, all surrender their empires to the evil, despicable humans.

Now, I was positive this game was in the bag earlier on, but now find myself in 2nd place, behind the poxridden Terrans, who are now sending me nasty messages about my SBs.

What a game.

"It wouldn't make much sense for the surrendering AI to go to a civ your already at war with since it wouldn't stop invasions and their mandatory genocides."
-If that's really their agenda then the best way to insure I don't invade the planet is to surrender to *me*.

"To spite you often the AI will surrender to a powerful civ your not yet at war with meaning that you will either have to stop taking their former planets or declare war on a new civ. "
-But they'll also surrender to non-powerful civs! And shouldn't the civ they surrender to have something to say in the matter? The surrendering civ may want to spite me but does the civ they surrender to want to as well, especially considering my fleets are already in position to strike at the undefended planets ensuring that in the space of only a couple weeks they'll have gained nothing but a war against a superior power?

@gandalftheredskin
In your game it sounds like it added to your experience. In my game though, I attacked the civ that accepted the surrender so no one else benefited from my war and so it didn't lead to a creation of a second super-power and instead just led to a cycle of me smashing weak civs one after another as they kept surrendering to each other. If I'm evil, and I have an attack fleet sitting around a planet then I'm going to use it unless they surrender to me or to a power that I can't afford to go to war with. I like the surrendering feature, I just think it needs a little more AI to it.

Well I've never had the AI surrender to a weak civ, and even a moderate civ can be dangerous if your already at war with others. Anyways if you are the most powerful civ and your attacking them the AI will surrender to you most of the time (at least in my games they did).

It might be nice to have the option of whether or not to accept a surrender but I can't see myself ever turning down a surrender so why would the AI, I mean free planets.....even if you take them its still free tax money and research points for the time I have them.

Sounds like they got the AI working well enough to mimic what a real player would do. If I know I am about to go down and there is zero hope of winning most of us would do the same thing. Why not flip the finger at your enemy one last time by doing this. What does the loser have to lose?
Generally I have seen the AI turn thier last planet over to someone nearly on par with me so that, yes, I could take the last planet easily but do I want to get into a prolonged war with someone stronger than the last?
Look at the end of World War two with all the people trying to surender to ,UK, US, French forces rather than have Russia take them over.

According with secret documents intercepted by our IGA (galactic version of CIA) they AI decided that they didn't like you so they decided to surrender to someone else, anywho.....

Good advice, always check the military strenght of the AI receiving the remaining planets, usually you can take over all the remaining planets because they don't have any kind of defense if you do it right away, if you decide to wait couple of turns the AI receiving the planets will bring its ships in there.

I believe that they should make it so:
1) A player/AI has the option to refuse taking a surrendering nation's planet. There are some situations where you don't want some random empire's planets in the middle of space, completely surrounded by influence. (though you can gift the planets away)
2) The AI will consider refusal based on their standings with the victorious empire. If they are buddy buddy with you, they could refuse so they won't upset relations with your empire. If they are neutral, they could refuse if your military is stronger than theirs and they don't want to provoke a war.

"It might be nice to have the option of whether or not to accept a surrender but I can't see myself ever turning down a surrender so why would the AI, I mean free planets.....even if you take them its still free tax money and research points for the time I have them. "
-Sure, but lets say you're a weak civ and you take the planets thereby pissing off a strong civ who then comes and kills you. Up 3 planets for 2 turns and then down your entire civilization, that's not a good deal!

" Sounds like they got the AI working well enough to mimic what a real player would do. If I know I am about to go down and there is zero hope of winning most of us would do the same thing. Why not flip the finger at your enemy one last time by doing this. What does the loser have to lose?"
-You have nothing to lose, and it's something you should try and a real player would try too. However, why should the civ you're throwing the planets at have to accept? If you want to put this in a "what would real players do" scenario than a real player would know that taking the planets from the victor would piss the victor off and wouldn't take them unless he thought he could benefit from it.

"Look at the end of World War two with all the people trying to surender to ,UK, US, French forces rather than have Russia take them over. "
-That's not quite the right scenario since you're talking about people and not nations and also not about territorial conquest/transfer. Instead consider the beginning of WWII when Germany invaded France. If operating under GalCiv2 AI then Germany invades France and France surrenders to the US. The US doesn't get any option in the matter and while they were trying to stay neutral are now at war Germany.

That's not quite the right scenario since you're talking about people and not nations and also not about territorial conquest/transfer. Instead consider the beginning of WWII when Germany invaded France. If operating under GalCiv2 AI then Germany invades France and France surrenders to the US. The US doesn't get any option in the matter and while they were trying to stay neutral are now at war Germany

Actually they had an option we do not have in the game of becoming a government in exile so surendering to the US doesnt make sense. Germany could not exile so they had to choose who to surender too. HOWEVER.... you are right in that the allies did get to refuse some surenders hence Russia taking Berlin.

I would like to have the option of asking a civ to surrender to me. It seems silly to be unable to.

I had one game where my biggest threats were the Arcans (large fleet) and the Altariens (large tech). They were on oppoisite sides of my empire.

After I destroyred the Krox home world, they surrended to the....Arcanans. Who now had 2 planets next to he Alterianes. BOOM. Instant cold war between the 2 former friends and it was very easy to convince the Arcanans to attack the Atlerians, thus weakening both empires and making it oh so easy to win.


AFAIK, if you want someone to surrender to YOU be nice to them first, friendly etc, and they wont feel bad about it afterwards.

I like this mechanic in sandbox mode..... but it's a real pain in the campaigns.... I think it should have been removed from them. A recent game of Apocalypse on intelligent.... in literally 10 turns, my allied forces (Terrans, Altarians, Arceans, Torians) went from being stronger than the Dreadlords to suddenly surrendering all their planets to me, whereupon I was in a much much weaker position. I didn't have ships to defend the new acquisitions and I ended up greatly overextending myself to try to cover the new area. Further to that, I lost all my trade routes which put me in the red by about 300 per turn. Basically, from that moment, I had lost and all I could do was make the Dreadlords pay for every inch they took. Failure statistics showed that I had killed 4k+ ships and lost nearly 10k!!!

to be honest, i'm at a lost often times as to why civilizations with any type of territory would surrender to an enemy civilization at all. imagine you're the governor of a planet of a civilization that is getting beat on by an ideologically different race. wouldn’t you rather surrender your sovereignty to a civilization that was fairly strong and embodied your ideals rather than the one that has crushed your country? Further more, if you and an ally were at war with an enemy and the enemy got the upper hand over you, wouldn’t you rather surrender to your ally so that maybe your country would be re-established later?

I never understood politics.

There aren't many games where you will find half a dozen people discuss in depth the ethical and moral decision the A.I. make. Good work people

It's done this way for "challenge" and I like it. It keeps the game interesting and can sometimes lead to the human players demise if the influence figures are in favor of the recieving AI class that gets the surrendered planets. Good for the AI, keep the human player hopping and crush him/her when they think they have won. (Though I doubt there are many that will admit the AI beat them, they'll just start over or load an old save and toss it aside as if nothing ever happened).

This is not true, the race that have been surrendered to does not enter war with you, at least not always. In my game the Yor surrendered to the terrans, who was the most powerful empire and we remained at peace for ten years.

then the terrans decleared war and took me out....

It makes sense to me and usually the AI only surrenders to races they have good relations with. Sometimes I've even had friendly races surrender to me out of the blue when a war goes sour for them. Honestly, if you were getting crushed wouldn't you try to surrender to a friend rather then wait around for your enemy to invade?