Surrendering needs an overhaul

from GalCiv2 Forums
Surrender in this game is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. If I am pushing into an enemy’s territory and have them on the ropes they just up and surrender to another race? Has this ever happened in the history of war? It would be like Japan surrendering to Brazil instead of the US in WW2. It makes no damn sense what so ever. Plus the whole instant 1 week switch of the government on all planets over to the other race is stupid too.

The Surrender option should only be available to enemies you are at War with. Plus the surrender should then open up a negotiation with your enemy; so that terms of the surrender can be agreed upon. Not an instant handover of all planets to the other race. There should be lots of options available for surrender terms.

Edit: Oh and here’s another thought, if you do surrender planets to another race, there should be an approval penalty based upon your current government style and alignment vs. the other race’s government and alignment, the more extreme the larger the penalty. If it’s bad enough the citizens should go into some form of civil revolt and possibly break away from the new government and possibly become independents or something like that. This should also be possible on hostile take over as well, with people rebelling against the invading force. How you deal with it could be an alignment issue. It’s much too neat and clean in the current game.


38,542 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You have to make sure you pretty much overpower them to get them to surrender to you, or they will surrender to the race that has been friendlist to them. This works both ways. I have had many races before that surrender to me even though im not at war with them.

If your at war just make sure you take them quick. If not you risk them surrendering to another.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
you can also make peace with them for a couple turns while you get your transports over to there last planets. well i guess only if your evil and don't mind breaking your work .
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While there are workarounds (as stated above), I definitely agree that surrendering can use a major overhaul. It's not realistic as it is--it also shouldn't be an "Okay, I'm dead now" situation but rather a "Well, you won't make peace, so take this... and this... and this... and stop bothering me!"
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't say I'm keen on the idea of rebellions of conquered systems. In my experience it's just annoying. Realistic, maybe, but annoying. Like in Rome: Total War, I was recapturing a province every turn against constant rebellions. Ridiculous in my opinion. Although, that said, some tweaks to surrendering might be a good idea.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, it is a bit frustrating when your target surrenders to another race. I agree that "terms of surrender" would be a cool addition.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Germany lets see who gets the country, well since we are all here everyone should have a peice of Germany.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And I don't know whether the Halls of Empathy actually work, but it'd be nice if they worked better if they do. Three races have surrendered in my current game, and none have surrendered to me, despite that I grabbed the Torians' Halls of Empathy when I took over one of their worlds.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are lots of factors involved in surrender, it's not "real life" at all. I just think of it as creative license on the designer's part. But, you can work the game so things go in your favor. A race may not surrender to you when you beat them in war, but you can get a race to surrender to you when they lose to another race. It's pretty cool really and I like working the diplomacy to my advantage. The Hall of Empathy does seem to work. Once I obtain that achievment, I form alliances with races just before they're about to lose a war and I get their spoils. Seems to work pretty reliably and I think it's a neat trick. Get a couple races to surrender to you and you've pretty much won the game. If you've done well in the initial planet grab, the others just can't touch your massive economy and production base after that.

Not sure about this, but I think only "pure good" can get the Hall of Empahty when you get the Temple of Righteousness tech. And I think you need to have all the cutural domination techs for it to work reliably. Maybe someone else can confirm that. Anyway, they're relatively cheap so I always go for those yellow techs early in the game.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But if you form alliances then suddenly, you're at war, too!
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As for the rebelling of conquered systems....why? You wiped out all of their people. Everyone on the planet is either your citizen\soldier or a convert if you used information warfare.

Who is there to rebel against you?
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
To throw in my two cents: when races surrender to the computer players, they often talk about who made the best offer. But, it's not a diplomatic option, so that's meaningless. I've always thought that surrender should be a negotiating option.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Everyone has good points, I think that if they surrender to you, they should give up all the technology that they have to you, since you did conquer them.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I kind of like the surrendering the way it works now. Sure, it is not the kind of thing you see much in our history, but here on earth we are dealing with continguous portions of land. In the "universe" of GalCiv, these are separate planets, usually in different solar systems light-years of distance away from one another. I can see how they might go over to a third party. Speaking of real history, it's not the exactly the same thing (since we were all at war with Germany), but at the end of WWII Germans made every effort to surrender themselves to the British or Americans, rather than the Soviets. Why couldn't that happen on a grander scale in our sci-fi setting?

The Empathy project seems to work fine for me, but since is is still not a "sure thing" I always go for the largest PQ planets first. That way, if some planets *do* surrender to a third party, they will be smaller, weaker planets in the middle of "my" territory that will flip over to me pretty quickly anyway. All in all, I like the dimension this adds to the strategy of the game.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's why I always do a Blitzkreg on the enemy. I position my ships and transports all around the enemy within 3 turns. That way, I can completely take them over in one turn. It works wonders.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How exactly does one make an offering system when surrendering you takes you out of the game.

I can't imagine a system that works better than the current one, unless they just adopted a fight to the last man system.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
yes germany tried to surrender to the us or england instead of russia but we were at war with them and allied with russia
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So what happened with Germany? I thought the USA and Russia split it.