Surrender?

kailhun · March 28, 2002, 06:11

One aspect I liked about Master of Orion and Imperialism is that small nations/peoples could join you. You didn't have to conquer them. Just by sucking up and being nice, they would join your empire. It's an aspect I miss in Civ III.
Especially in war. If a nation is down to 4 cities and you have 20-30 and a war machine bearing down on them, why not give them the option to surrender?

An option the player should have too, if the war is going seriously pearshaped. The player could then take over playing the resulting civ, instead of having to start over. It's the year 1000 your empire is being trounced; your army is about destroyed; you have a fraction of your empire left. Surrender and play on. Why not. See your people flourish as part of a larger land.

Just a thought.

Robert

steelehc · March 28, 2002, 06:15

Good idea, but it could lead to many complications... who controls the new empire, how does scoring work, and many other things...

Steele

LordBashHeart · March 28, 2002, 06:44

The bit about surrendering to another country kind of removes the incentive to keep going at all costs for me.

It kinda reminds me of when games have that 'legit' option to cheat. I can't remeber the name of the game (Was it Alpha Centauri?), but the ones that have the drop down menu "Cheat" that once you activate it you loose heaps of points and then you can look at the map, nuke whoever you want etc. Anyway the temptation to click on that button, have a look at the world map and then revert to your old save game was always way too tempting.

Nah I like it when you have no option but kill or be killed, no mucking about, no surrender, no working the game to cheat.

Of course I have no problem with other lands surrendering to me. Infact I insist upon it.

-LordBashHeart

Harovan · March 28, 2002, 07:19

Quote:

Originally posted by kailhun
One aspect I liked about Master of Orion and Imperialism is that small nations/peoples could join you. You didn't have to conquer them. Just by sucking up and being nice, they would join your empire. It's an aspect I miss in Civ III.

I don't miss it, because it's in the game. It's called culture flipping and many players hate it. Ok, ok, it's only cities and not empires that join you (or defect from you...), but generally the feature is in the game.

kailhun · March 28, 2002, 08:41

Quote:

Originally posted by Sir Ralph

I don't miss it, because it's in the game. It's called culture flipping and many players hate it. Ok, ok, it's only cities and not empires that join you (or defect from you...), but generally the feature is in the game.

A random flipping of a city can hardly be compared to the solid and decisive beating to a pulp of an entire civilization. There is no seed number or other random factor there: If civ=pulp then Surrender!
Allright, it might be slightly more involved than that. But flipping and surrender are hardly the same.

LordBashHeart: Wasn't that civ2? Besides if you don't want to have the option of surrendering civs, toggle 'surrender' off at the start of the game.

Steelehc: The player would control the new empire which would be the victorious civ. As to scoring, there are two options:
a) continue, adding the points gained by your new empire from that point on.
b) Start from zero. A civ that had surrendered would have this reflected in the score.

To be honest the scoring is the least interesting part of the game for me. I like the playing. Whether or not the game rewards my playing style with points is of no interest to me.

Surrender is part of the game in the sense that after the player has been beaten he leaves the game and starts again. In my scenario the civ would surrender, but the games goes on. Don't you ever wonder what would have happened 500 or so years after you quit?

Surrendering by the ai-civ just seems an improvement on having to take every bloody city even though the war is quite obviously over, not to mention on having to chase down that last settler.

The tricky thing is deciding when the surrender option would appear. After 10% of the number of cities from the start of the war, are left? From the maximum total the civ has ever had?
And what it would mean: all the units become yours? Fighting units are disbanded? Settlers/workers? Would faraway cities become yours, remain independent or go to the nearest other AI-civ? Would the war end or would there be a government in exile?
This would require some testing. Prob. civ4 time.

Robert

Immortal Wombat · March 28, 2002, 09:04

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=39844

TinCow · March 28, 2002, 11:54

The SMAC Pact of Loyalty/Servitude would be the perfect way to go... the civ (faction) maintains its own control over itself, but it ALWAYS complies with all diplomatic, economic, and political demands you make on it. In SMAC, having an enemy surrender could be very useful. The best I found was conquering the University, having them swear a Servitude Pact to me, then I would give them back all their cities and reap the rewards of tons of free tech.

Regardless, I think there kind of IS a surrender system in the game right now. During a long war in which you are making big gains, you will eventually reach a point at which your enemy will agree to give you everything it has to make peace. This includes all its cities except its capital. I've gotten upwards of 5-6 cities this way in a single deal. Then of course I surround the capital and sneak attack it into oblivion to complete the 'surrender'.

Not exactly a good or honorable system, but it still works. Very useful when you're trying to gain control of your entire continent. Getting the cities via gift rather than conquest has many benefits.

Jethro83 · March 29, 2002, 07:44

Quote:

Originally posted by TinCow
Not exactly a good or honorable system, but it still works. Very useful when you're trying to gain control of your entire continent. Getting the cities via gift rather than conquest has many benefits.

When the cities you pilfer off them are in good locations, it is an excellent idea to milk them off the enemy. However, if their cities are in crappy spots, you're best to burn their cities to the ground, send your settlers in and build in the RIGHT spot (don't bother if there is no right spot).

But I do love the concept of surrender. Like you said, it can help you in SMAC. In playing as the Believers and hammering the Uni into submission, you get tons of free techs from them, while you can continue your regime with the punishment spheres and genejack factories without worrying about the HUGE backward bound in your own technology. Just build up your bases with spheres & genejacks and let the University 'vassal' state do all the reasearch for you. You can then sell these techs to other factions if you have no intent on conquering them.

It also helps when you are after a diplomatic victory. You can go one of two ways with this. You can either war with everyone who won't willingly sign a pact and beat all of them into submission (pact with everyone makes diplomatic victory), or beat enough factions into submission to earn you the majority of votes that you need for the Supreme Leader election.

This can quite easily link in with Civ III as well. I would really love to see a system where the other civ is 'officially' a vassal state, rather than you unofficially calling them vassals and simply overpowering them and leaving them as an independent state which must pay you tribute. Firaxis might gain from adding a system where the enemy civ officially recognises you as their master and will swear a "Pact of Vassalage" to serve you. Then when that happens, all of their new technologies, world maps as well as a per-turn tribute of gold (which continues throughout the whole of their servitude) will actually go to you. You can then opt to increase the amount of tribute they must pay, or lower it. Increasing it too much may cause them to rebel, but apart from that, their defeat is absolute. You should also be able to surrender to them in this way. Then, if you can, you could then fight back (if the master state is too opressive with their per-turn tribute, you may get other civs eager to use you to get at your master then. Then maybe, they'll want to try and vassalise you themselves)

Then, when you 'build' the UN, you could count on their vote to get you one vote closer to being the Secretary-General. Continue beating the other civs into being vassal states and elicit their vote for you. Or vassalise every civ and they should have no choice but to abdicate and declare you winner.

Inverse Icarus · March 29, 2002, 11:03

i don't see why this should be implimented in civ. sure it might be a little more realistic, but i think it would take some fun out of the game.

and knowing how moronic the AI is on diety, they may all lump into one empire.

kailhun · April 2, 2002, 07:43

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
and knowing how moronic the AI is on diety, they may all lump into one empire.

Now that is a very good point.

Forget agressive tech trading. They actually are one empire now.

Robert

Raion · April 2, 2002, 16:37

Yes, the computer player (you) should retire in the game, earlier than trying to 'win'.