[Bug?]Laughably easy Gilden surrender

Sovereigns surrender if their faction power is a lot less than yours.

I made a post before about sky rocketing faction power through city spamming earlier with Master Scouts and using it to force people to surrender. You can actually declare war and demand surrender immediately after in the same conversation.

I beat Expert in less than 50 turns using this, so yeah it probably does need to be fixed.

I do hope they don't outright remove the functionality, though.

I really like that once you have well and truly broken their backs, you can finish and turn your attention to more important matters.

I'd like to see demand surrender only become an option once the AI has only 1 city left, or something like that.  You should at least be forced to fight a few battles before watching the guy keel over.

Yeah, that's almost exactly what happened in this game - I didn't have Master Scouts (playing as Yithril) but got a really strong starting position in some riverlands with four decent city sites and relatively weak monsters, so I soon had a strong economy and lots of troops (who didn't cost too much maintenance thanks to Verga's Warlord ability). Only I've been trying not to abuse surrender so instead I just bullied them for tribute for a long time while exploring the tech trees and building up my cities, until Tarth picked a fight with me and my relations with all the kingdoms took a hit.

Oh absolutely, I love it, but just think that it should be subject to the same rules as peace treaties, only more so, so that the AI has to be truly beaten before considering surrender.

At the point I declared war, Markin himself was leading two armies right through my territory towards Magnar, and his military power was about 100 less than mine but still the second best in the game, so he was hardly a spent force.

Yes, that sounds about right. I've made it a self-imposed rule that I have to take the enemy capital before forcing a surrender, just so that it doesn't feel like abuse.

Seems to me like there should be some factions which surrender easily and those which wont until the last moment, if even at that.

It could be coded to where you say, "oh man, these guys wont surrender until i surround their last capital" and another where you're attacking, thinking "these guys will fall after this second battle"

Considering how steeped in lore this game is, I bet the factions fill in the blanks pretty quick.

I kind of like this, but I wouldn't want any to surrender too quickly, and the last thing I want to see is mass-surrender outbreaks like the ones that come up in GalCiv II if there's a big power imbalance (I've seen two or more players in that game surrender on the same turn with no immediate threat). Come to think of it, has anyone seen the AI in this game surrender to another AI? That would be cool, and frightening.

But I do kind of like the idea that some factions - Tarth spring to mind - would be particularly resistant to surrendering, and others might be better than usual at persuading others to join them. Looking back to GalCiv again & its ethics system, it would also make sense that AI players would be more willing to surrender to "nice" powers than "nasty" ones - a hero like Relias or a diplomat like Karavox might make a convincing offer, but I'm not sure anyone would be in a rush to become vassal to Verga or Magnar, who would have to conquer by force instead.

Then again, my ultimate wishlist would include the cities of a surrendering power having a chance of surrendering, rebelling and joining another faction closer to their ideology, or going it alone as minor powers, rather than just being erased, but I expect that there are practical constraints on that sort of thing. Likewise for a "Brotherhood Without Banners" faction to pop up, based on the number of troops left behind by defeated powers & fighting against the remaining kingdoms and empires. But the minimum I would ask is simply that the existing mechanic is fixed so that it isn't too easily exploited by the player - it's just too tempting to skip the war entirely, even when I know I'll enjoy the game more if I don't!

This is a thing I miss from "Master of Orion 2". sometimes if you were "winning" over an AI, the AI would surrender To Another Player  giving you sincere trouble going onwards in your war, since that would provoke a new war with a bigger faction.
Although this could become frustrating sometimes and make you lose a game, (well war IS war :D) making the AI surrender to your other enemies might be a good idea.
I mean, if I can side with the one killing my people, or the ones fighting the first mentioned, I would take the road of revenge.

Just a thought anyways.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Perhaps the Demand Surrender option could only come available if you have 4 or 5 times the power rating as the enemy.  It could even be harder for some combinations.  Like Verga probably wouldn't surrender to anybody make his 10 times the power rating for any opposing enemy.  But perhaps Karavox would be more willing to surrender to Magnar (x4), but not Pariden (x5).  Not sure how that would work, but it could add something to the surrender.

I played one game where I was Yithril, and I was at war with Altar, Resoln, and the Tarth.  Those three kept switching alliances, but needless to say the expansion part of the game took a pretty much stopped as the four of us duked it out.  My main battles were with Altar and Tarth since they were both on my borders.  All four of us had a power rating from 200 to 500 or so.  With mine in second behind Ceresa.  I finally got the edge on Altar, and destroyed Athica.  Low and behold on the other side of Athica was Pariden.  I had completely forgotten that Pariden was part of the game.  They had been isolated by a land bridge and a pretty powerful Altar Kingdom.  Pariden had a power rating of 20 something.  I would have rather just demanded her surrender than wonder over the land bridge just to waste 5 turns walking over there and back.

But then there must be "penalty" for the party, other than the attacker, whom accepts the surrender. That penalty being a) starting with a war with the attacker and merging cities being first an unproductive burden (= requiring massive growd control).... not that anyone gets the cities at the moment, so it really wouldn't make a difference. 

I hate surrendering if that means they cease to exist.  A Surrender that causes them to be capitulated/vassalized, makes sense, but one where they lose all their culture and identity is silly.  If they are going to be annihilated either way, they should fight to the death.

Yes.

And a cease to exist surrender is also gameplay wise really annoying as suddenly there is a race to start new cities while your army-building machine is still crunching out armies to rape, pillage and kill. It totally kills the "flow" of the endgame gameplay when your armies annihilate an enemy just for you to realize there's another 100 turns before you can attack this new guy who had 50+ pioneers waiting stand-by. 

I do agree with this.  The surrender is just a time saver.  You lose all the their cities and you get a vassal with the limitation "broken spirit" or what ever it is, making them next to worthless.

I like the surrender function as a time saver, just means I do not want to see it on the first faction I go to war with, but if I allready conquered 4 factions and the 5th and last is a tiny little faction with a 10th of my power, its ok if he just throws in the towel so I dont have go through too big of a "Cleanup Fase" which happens in most 4x games, where you practically won the game, but the victory conditions cant be arsed before you take tons of time cleaning up every last little city on the map.

I would love to see a vassallized surrender, one where I can still play as a vassal. but still the faction that "beat" me will have tremendous amount of my resources, (Half my iron, crystal, horse, and warg resources, and some rigid gildar per turn dependant on how big my cities is, thats just an idea starter).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej