Maybe the Korath makes better milkshakes.

I always turn surrendering off... makes for a more interesting game.

surrendering to a neutral power should really hurt relations in that case. the neutral race is effectively entering the war on the loser's side.

i think its mostly kind of dumb. at the very least it shouldnt be random.

The AIs like to spite their enemies.

IMO, the surrender mechanic is one place where having the AIs immitate bratty players might not be the best approach.

A more tolerable approach would be that if an AI cheeses out and decides to surrender, that it takes 10 weeks (or some number of weeks) before the transfer comletes.

So instead of seeing:

The XX have surrendered to the YY, who now insta-magically control all their planets, resources, and ships.

You'd instead see:

The XX have wussed out and surrendered to the YY, all assets of the XX will belong to the YY in 10 weeks.

And you'd have 10 turns whip up on and exterminate the cowards before the cheesewhiz hardened.

Instead of surrendering, think of more along the lines of transferring territory. The Kuwaiti's did something similar in the 90's with their tankers. They reflagged them to U.S. Also, in WWII, after being invaded by the Nazi's, Denmark transfered possesion of greenland and iceland to the u.s. The U.S was neutral at this time in the war, and germany knew if they invaded either province it would draw us into the war. So, they didn't. I think that's something along the lines that the dev's had in mind when programming.

Personally I would like to add the ability to not accept surrenders, as well as attaching an ethnical alignment your decision.

For example, the Evil choice would be to simply disallow the surrender. Make it clear that there is no escape from your wrath regardless of what flag is waving over their planets. The Neutral choice would be to accept the surrender (Whatever it may be.) The Good choice would be to spare the civilization and simply begin peace talks in the [special] diplomacy window. Maybe even give the option of returning captured territory because you're just that nice. Or if that's too hard to code, just say "No, that's OK, we'll back off."

Speaking of which--what's the deal with that "Surrender" option in the Diplomacy screen? That's kinda stupid.

In Europa Universalis, they have a few surrenderish mechanics that make a bit more sense here... You can have people declare themselves vassals, in which case, they share tax money, can't attack you and rely on you for military support when attacked. Countries will do this either for stronger nations with which they have very friendly relations and a lot in common, or for countries with whom they were losing a war. There's another type of surrender in which during a war, a country annexes the other...

The Gal civ mechanic seems similar to the latter...I guess it could make things more interesting to add other diplomatic options like vassalage. but I don't see a big problem with the way it is now.

The one problem I do have is when this happens in the middle of a cultural victory. If your dominant culture is impressing the opponents populace so much that they're all just thronging to join it, it doesn't make sense that the government would be able to transfer control to a different race without some serious problems.

Maybe that would be a good fix in general - have populations stay the same but make them very unhappy after transferring control to another race -regardless of which race. give something like -75% morale due to "cultural differences" which will go away over time (depending on the difference between the old and new culture's level of influence). Thus one group surrendering to another would be a mixed blessing...creating social unrest in all new planets, and requiring a change in policies to create a smooth transition.

Along those lines it would be cool if when conquering a planet, the previous population was not completely exterminated or at least give an option: good - integrate the old population with the new government 40%of original population preserved -40% morale which improves over time, Neutral-offer ships to take refugees to a new home -200 bc, evil - enslave the old population +10% production bonus -10% morale. That could make alignments a bit more fun and meaningful...it could also help to highlight the differences between the good races and evil races - as it is it just appears like all of them wind up exterminating the populations of every planet they conquer.

Anyway those are a couple of changes that would be fairly major and difficult to implement in a patch...more like expansion/sequel ideas.

I have similar issues ...

This past game the Korx were at war with the Terran Alliance and the Drath Legion, and they were at "close" with me. I had avoided an alliance, because I wasn't ready to fight the Drath and the Terrans. Yet, when they surrendered, rather than surrender to me, they surrendered to the Terran Alliance, which makes no sense, because I have never had an AI surrender to me if I am attacking it, and they were all but allied with me.