Surrendering a bit overpowered?

[Colonâ„¢]

I was busy playing the Drengin at normal level, and I had declared war on the Torians. It was my intention to destroy a mining starbase of theirs and place on of my own instead, and conquer one planet that was near my territory. So barely a few turns had gone by, after indeed conquering that planet and achieving half my goals, or they already surrendered. Ok, my military was utterly superior to theirs, but come on, would at least allow me to have some fun? Would you at least let me come near your home world before you go all French like that? I wasn't even willing to go through the hassle of having to govern all of their planets and all that jazz.

In my first game as the Terrans (in which I was completeley superior to any other race, and going for a diplomatic victory), the Yor declared on one of my allies. I sent over a fleet of 2 of mine, to beat them a bloody nose and to teach them not to mess with my allies. Barely I had entered their influence zone and wham! I got all of it. "Hey, come on guys, I only wanted to scare you a bit!"

I guess this surrendering is a good way to prevent boring, drawn-out mopping ups, but this assumes the player in fact wants to conquer it all. Usually I don't. Cherry picking and feeling good in my superiority suffices for me.

[Gufnork]

They don't always surrender to the one they're afraid of, sometimes they do it to spite someone. So, it's possible someone else had battered them before you swooped in and they gave up because of that. Or they simply were very weak to begin with.

Having more planets is always better in this game, so there's no reason to decline a surrender if you play to win, I guess that's why there's no accept/decline. I'd prefer it if there was an accept/decline option and that accepting would incur a diplomatic penalty towards anyone at war with the surrendering civilization.

[tetley]

I don't know that Surrender is overpowered, but it is a bit premature. I bribed the Drengin to attack the Terran for a whopping 110bc, and the Drengin took 2 of their 11 planets. The Terrans surrendered (!?!???). They still had ships and starbases left, and the other 9 planets were far away from the Drengin. Cost me 3 trade routes.

[serenya]

I haven't found it overpowered, but odd. In my current game, the Terrans are the warmongers. Both of the two smallest civs surrendered to ME when about to be destroyed. What was odd is, when the Torians surrendered, the Terrans had control of both their planets, and when the Anceans surrendered, I received control. The only difference was that the Anceans were my allies, which had of course sucked me into the war. (I'm a terrible warmonger, this is only my third game and I was trying for either an alliance or technical win as I've not figured out warring yet).

[Solver]

The problem is the Normal difficulty level. Forget it, Normal on GalCiv2 is ridicilously easy. You can outdo all AIs in all respects without having any experience. Play on at least Challenging, or better yet Tough to get the real experience.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Solver
The problem is the Normal difficulty level. Forget it, Normal on GalCiv2 is ridicilously easy. You can outdo all AIs in all respects without having any experience. Play on at least Challenging, or better yet Tough to get the real experience.

"Challenging" and "Tough" are game-wide difficulty levels, not AI intelligence levels. They take into consideration number of civilizations, so a "Challenging" game with 3 AIs is going to have a lot smarter AI than a "Challenging" game with 9 AIs.

I just did an experiment, I set up a game on "Challenging" with 9 AIs, and 4 of the races were Sub-Normal intelligence, 4 were "Normal", and 1 was "Bright". Did one with same difficulty and 3 civilizations, and all three were Bright...but in further experiments, it was different - one other game I started as "Challenging" with 9 AIs had them all at Normal intelligence. The game difficulty levels seem inconsistent, and I think the AI levels assigned to the various civs depends on whether you set the number of AIs first or the difficulty level. When I play I set the intelligence manually for each of the civilizations, and it will tell you what the difficulty level is for your combination of number and intelligence of AIs. It is definitely possible to play a "Challenging" game with AIs with severe handicaps.

[Solver]

They do? I didn't notice the number of AI relation. As far as I noticed, it went:

Normal - AIs at sub-normal intelligence
Challenging - AIs at normal intelligence
Tough - AIs at Bright, which is where they use all their algorithms

There might thus be some inconsistencies in the interface, as you say, but playing the game with the AIs on any intelligence level lower than Bright is just spoiling the entire game for yourself.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru

I just did an experiment, I set up a game on "Challenging" with 9 AIs, and 4 of the races were Sub-Normal intelligence, 4 were "Normal", and 1 was "Bright".

If this is true, I think it's just a bug. I'm pretty sure that Challenging is supposed to set all of the AIs to Bright.