Can you make a race surrender?

yea, I wonder whats up with that too.

currently there's no option in the diplo screen BUT you can always kick their butts more and hope they dont surrender to the orther civs

Another way is to make sure you take their last 3-5 planets in a single turn.

Wait, am I to understand that the AI can surrender to races they aren't at war with?

Oh yes. I once had my allies, the good Iconians, surrender to the evil Drengin. They weren't at war with the Drengin, nor were they allies with the Drengin, and they (Iconians) had been my allies for many in-game years. The funny thing is, they (well, we) were totally winning our current war. I can't even figure out why they surrendered at all, much less to the Drengin.

But if you want them to surrender to you, you'll have to play Good and build the improvement for it. Otherwise, they'll surrender to someone else just to spite you (which, really, makes sense).

yes, they usually prefer to surrender to a third party rather than the attacker well, maybe not actually prefer, it could just be random i suppose. but i have noticed a distinct tendancy for them to all choose the same faction to surrender too. usually the most powerful at the time i think. you can ocasionally force them to surrender to you, the method is you ask for ALL of thier planets. there in no direct surrender option like the one you have. generally you need to kill all of thier combat ships and have them down to a very few planets while having a very large military rating to boot to get them to give up multiple planets tho. but good alligned races have a wonder that doubles the chances that you will be chosen to surrender to so...

There is something you build, (can't remember the name) but this item makes all the loosing races surrender to you instead of other races. (i just built one of these yesterday)


So if you see races surrendering to one race all the time the chances are they have this building buit.

I think the whole "spite surrender" thing doesn't make sense at all actually.

In my current game, I control about 2/3 of the map. The Terrans were stuck in the middle, surrounded by myself, the Korx on one side, and the Altarians on the other side. I declared war, took Earth (thereby immediatley wiping out all their influence and controling all of their former territory) and they promptly surrendered to the Korx.

Less than five turns later, their two remaining planets, now Korx controlled, culture-flipped to me. So what was the point of all of that?

Gamewise it was pointless. The idea is though that all those people got to survive. In Galciv when you conquer people you exterminate a large percentage of them, if I was a leader and I realized that I was about to get my ass kicked I would surrender to another country too, and not neccesarily my ally. I want to surrender to somebody who can protect me, and if I'm already losing the damn war why the hell would I surrender to somebody who couldn't protect me when the war started?

I think the may also be driven by whether you are good or evil. If I am evil the other race almost always surrenders to someone else. Last night I was playing as good and I had 3 races all surrender to me. The last one surrendered their last 5 planets.

I also agree that this is the most reasonable possibility.

I just had the Altarians surrendering to the Drengin while having the powerful Drath as allies. Go figure.