Hi,

I think that this is mostly very positive. I found it v tedious controlling the whole of my territory with sensor ships once I had field sensors so I like the lack of fow in my own territory though I can quite see why others don't. And the correction to the Heartstone  artifact was essential.

But I'm much less keen on the new surrender rules. I understand that having a lot of planets late game can be a pain but surely the way to correct this was by reintroducing a rolling project - a rolling economic one would be quite enough. It would also, as has been said many times,  be nice to have a global option to prevent resource guzzling auto improvement (rather than having to turn it off planet by planet). If you're a couple of moves away from finishing off an enemy then it's annoying if they surrender to another faction but you can always declare war on them too if you're strong and diplomacy doesn't suggest otherwise. A number of juicy planets which were just about to be within your grasp committing hara kiri en masse is definitely not enjoyable - or I certainly don't find it so.

Cheers,

Jon

Re: The Cosmic Surrender Death

It just occurred to me that contrary to the justification of "ameliorating late game micromanagement", enemies don't surrender to invaders if their empires are largely intact.  They surrender (or should) when they have few colonies left. 

I don't like this mechanic.  I do like making it less likely that a civ will surrender to it's nearest ideological peer at the drop of a hat.  But I don't see how this mechanic changes that.

Huge fan of the game, but the destruction of all of a surrendering factions worlds is a gigantic bummer. Some of those worlds were (in my current game) Class 16+ powerhouse planets which I was preparing to conquer or assimilate. Now there is just a huge area of worthless real estate.

Why not - 

a. Provide a path to restoration of a planet's former greatness through a dedicated starbase or something, or

b. Set the planets back to neutral, creating a mid-game colonization rush as factions fight over the remains of the former empire, or

c. The remaining worlds, minus the homeworld which was given away, reform into their own, possibly the same, civilization with a specified term of peace which allows them to rebuild similar to the pragmatic ideology 50-turn peace plan, or

d. Something else that doesn't create vast wastelands

I have a game running as a test in which I disabled surrendering - the result is that as one faction gets successive wins they become so much larger/better/stronger than any other faction that nobody can stand up to them. Under the old system, as a faction gained strength the losers would often surrender to the winner's enemies giving the game as a whole a shot at balancing out for the short term.

Overall - the old way of playing the surrender events was much better than it is now. Yes, when somebody surrendered 50+ mediocre planets to me it was tedious trying to re-organize their mess, but it was at least tediously fun. Under the new way I only get a single homeworld which has been fairly useless. Especially the one that was literally on the other side of the galaxy and got invaded before I could even think about sending any ships through a few enemy territories to defend it. Building a shipyard and building a fleet wasn't fast enough either, especially without any other shipyard sponsors.

Maybe when a faction surrenders its homeworld, the remaining planets can (either individually or by solar system) "vote" to join one of the other remaining player, minor or major factions, who then must pay a per-planet "acquisition tax" or refuse the planet. Any planets that are refused by everybody could then go dead or whatever. A bit like a bankrupt Monopoly player, I guess...

I really really hate this new surrender mechanic. I'd rather go back to the AI randomly surrendering to another faction than deal with a few hundred dead worlds. That is a lot of food, artifacts, and potential precursor worlds I can't claim. Not to mention that in my current game there is a giant hole in the galaxy now.

If micromanagement is an issue use the ai governor or create a commonwealth. I play 4X games for the irritating time consuming micro. That is why they are true strategy games. A good 4X will offer ways around micro, but killing off an entire factions empire upon surrender should NEVER be how its done. That's not a feature, that is a bug.

Regarding the fog of war inside your own territory, I vote to bring it back. A faction declares war on me, so I need to plan. What size fleet(s) will they send? At what point will they cross my border? If they have to cross other factions' territory to get to me will they encounter friends or trigger another fight? Do I deploy my ships around key planets and bases or do I send them to patrol my border? The key to all these plans is the extent of my sensor ability. The suspense builds, the game is exciting.

If I know I'll see them the moment they cross my border then there is no real strategy needed, nor is there any excitement or suspense. No patrolling is required. Same goes for the aliens and robots that appear when events occur. They strike, then disappear into the fog of war. Where will they go next? How many are actually out there? Most of the fun of the game is having to deal with these unexpected, annoying random occurrences. The peacekeeper robots are too strong, by the way - but not by much. Maybe keep the weapon strength but reduce the range by 25%. It's okay for them to be a formidable foe, I'm not asking for a cakewalk, but at least let my ships get in a lick or two before they're fried.

Turn FOW and surrender behavior into options, please, at the very least.

Here's an idea you could just make the surrendered planets uncolonized planets. This would make a new planet grab. You could require the game to add a ruin resource on each planet; also, these planets would have special new colonization events specifically for these specific type of planets. Colonizeable planets is better than dead planets.

So I guess I'm not sure how the old method (they surrender and you get all the planets) is more balanced than the no surrender mode (they don't surrender and now you have conquer all their planets). If you had it configured that they would surrender to someone they aren't at war with, that would help balance it a bit.

If I had my druthers, I suspect that I'd prefer variable behavior per game, and possibly per civ for the looming end.

Some might surrender en mass, others might self destruct, others might fragment, with the planets going independent or reforming secondary civs.  Some might devolve into pirates.

Just having them all self-destruct, if they are allowed to "surrender," seems limiting.

That is excellent to hear.

First, the player doesn't always get all of the planets.  Many times the surrendering faction surrenders to another player-including players they are not at war with.  In fact that often happens.  Races tend to surrender to someone with which they share ideology.  Sometimes that actually makes an AI more competitive late game.  Second, this isn't necessarily a balance issue.  One may not be more balanced than the other, but the previous system was still preferable.  The previous system sped things up because the troop levels on planets will often drop at the time of surrender making them more easy to conquer even if the other player doesn't surrender to you.  So there are often times I will go ahead and declare war on tte faction that just gained those planets.  Either way, the planets and their resources remain available to be used, which is not the case with the new surrender mechanic.  I already play on rare everything so losing a number of planets like that can really cut into the number available and often destroys key resources that are not available elsewhere.  This new mechanic does nothing to address the problem it was stated it was designed to address and that was to reduce micromanagement at end game.  There are multiple ways to reduce micromanagemnt end game, including destroying the colony manually if the player is really intent on that choice.  A governor or commonwealth can also be activated. 

So this new mechanic doesn't really solve anything that wasn't already "solved" and at the same time it removes player choice.  That's a bad system in my book.

Lol, Publius. Enter key get stuck?

As to your post... I haven't got to any surrenders in 3.9, yet, but in my last game, an ally surrendered and awarded me about a dozen planets. Some were very nice. It would be a shame to lose them. (I think I was playing on Normal difficulty.)

I'm not sure if 3.9 also changed the point at which factions surrender, and if not, then I could see a large number of planets being lost. And I do play with stars on rare and planets/habitable planets on uncommon (extreme planets on common), so even on the larger maps, habitable planets are generally about 20 to a faction, give or take.

And so while I'm not a fan of the change because I'd like to see something more nuanced, I cannot yet say what effect it would have on a game in terms of planets lost--so your point is a fair one, as far as I'm concerned.

I've had it happen, although "large" is relative since I play on maps with rare everything,  It's not just the raw number of planets that surrender.  When one plays with the map settings I do, losing just a few can cause key resources found nowhere else to be lost.  The first time this happened to me was right after the switch and it resulted in the loss of the only Precursor Archive in the galaxy as well as the only source of precursor nanites.   Several other planets (less than ten) went down with that planet.