Really noobish question but...

i agree its irritating sometimes. i was playing a large single star map, the AI had fortified a single GW chokepoint that would hae very effectively blunted just about any attack i could have made... in the end he surrendered to an enemy AI who had been sending single ships to die in that GW for about 2 hours or so...

i dont believe you can turn surrendering off, but the new expansion is about diplomacy etc, so maybe the devs will include something about surrendering...

alternatively, Original Recepie Sins AI dont surrender all that easily

alot of people have said that instead of surrendering, maybe the AI should get a damage/resource boost so it can make one final push (or make the last battle interesting) before kicking the bucket... id go for that... alternatively, if the AI surrenders, make that a way to enable random events, i.e. splinter factions in the enemy empire will attack your fleet or planets randomly... or the surrendered empire wants your help quelling an uprising at one of his planets etc etc

If you've played single player so much, surely you know the fustration of trying to completely wipe out an enemy on large match. On some maps it takes over an hour after the last fleet battle to fully finish a game, which is basically just boring baby sitting. I'm glad the AI now surrenders, though admittingly its far from perfect, and it should still get some attention in following expansions and/or patches.

We don't consider it babysitting though. Thats why I think there should be an option to turn it on or off.

yeah, except that the AI who just threw an tantrum and left has a few planets important to me, either thoroughfares, optimum trade routes, good chokepoint GW's or Artifacts... i mean, if you are playing against alot of AI, and one decides to give up, okay cool, but i want his planets for resources.... and i want him to get out of my way so i can attack the enemy behind him on a weaker flank...

it makes sense that AI surrender, but, if they are going to surrender to you, maybe they should have to swear alleigence or something so they will stay out of your way, rather than you having to wipe them up with a tar covered mop...

No - you are stuck with the AI surrendering AFAIK

They changed it so that you didn't have to spend hours finishing off a game you had clearly won...

So why don't you just take the planets that are now defenseless? Its not like the AI surrendering made your job harder...

Wait the AI quits if its starts to lose!

I've always had to elimenate the whole thing, and now alearn that they just give up.

I don't know what i'm more mad about. The fact I didn't now that, or the fact that when the going gets tough the computer says "screw it"

It doesn't always do it, I've had it fight to the last planet before even after the surrender update, and the exact critiria for the AI surrendering has pretty much everyone confused, so no reason to get mad.

defensless? when the AI surrenders their ships and structures dont go poof...

on a seperate topic... ive noticed games where ive wiped out an AI, as in destroyed all his ships, structures, planets, you name it..... and he still stays in the game...

i went to watch the replay afterwards and i couldnt see anything of his fleets or planets...

the only thing i could think of was that maybe he had sent a fleet to another planet using sub-light engines only, which is why i couldnt see it or destroy it... but i didnt think that bug applied to the AI

Well I meant that he can't rebuild his defenses or new ships, and his ships will all just auto attack, which is not a particularly challanging fight. I guess if he had some good starbases things could be difficult but all of his planets will be easier to take vs. if he did not surrender.

I've noticed these inconsistencies. I played a 3 player map (1 person, 2 AI) recently.  The first AI surrendered relatively early in the game; about the time I jumped to the star at its home system (it didn't even try to defend themselves).  The second AI I had to scrub off the map.  Even after I defeated its last planet (ie I owned 100% everything), the diplomative picture still hadn't cracked.

Go figure.

There is another thread discussing ideas to improve diplomacy.  Someone there suggested conditional surrendering for the AI, where you would have the choice to accept their defeat (and maybe get something could out of it like like a slave-race), or force them to defend themselves down to the last remote resource-starved asteroid.  I like that idea.

When you only play against AI...expect an easy-win game against a feeble opponent.  If you guys are ready for a real challenge, if you're ready for more intense, more suspenseful, more meaningful, and more fulfilling games, then I suggest playing it against real human opponents in online multiplayer.

OMG! Now the AI is a rage quitter too!

How easily the AI gets discouraged and quits depends a lot on what version you are playing.  When Entrenchment came out originally (around v. 1.15 of Sins, I think), the developers changed the surrender behavior of the AI so that it surrendered earlier.  There was a lot of criticism, so in the latest version 1.16 and Entrenchment 1.02, it was changed so that the AI would surrender far less easily.  From what I have seen, the problem of the AI surrendering too early has been pretty well fixed.

I would be happy to have an option that the AI would not surrender -- or an option that the AI in single player cannot surrender unless the human player accepts it.  

There are a lot of problems with playing against an AI that has surrendered. Two of the main ones are that a surrendered AI does not fight back normally and second that my fleet no longer sees the surrendered AI as an enemy so I have to tell it almost ship by ship and structure by structure to attack the surrendered AI and its planet.  But for the most part, I have not had a problem since the latest version was released.