The purge could get boring on large maps, no question. Especially when the AI parked some tiny fleet at a star and you had ship speed set to slow. So I am not saying AI surrender should be disabled for everyone and every game. But I think it's really important to have this as a selectable option.

What I think is happening is that there's a point past which the AI can't really play effectively, and it will quit rather than force you to finish a game you can't lose. This makes sense, but why not just have the option there for people who really want to see it through?

I haven't played the new expansion yet, so maybe that has some potential. The problem with this in Trinity though was that after victory the AI doesn't play effectively or even ineffectively, it just shuts off.

I'd prefer that it worked in the same way as in Age of Empires 3.  The AI 'offers' a surrender, the player chooses to accept or decline, and the game proceeds accordingly (with the AI continuing as normal or abandoning the game).

I agree that the AI is a little too quick to bail in many cases and yes, it would be nice to have a choice in the matter.

YES YES!

Q:  Should the AI make further attempts at surrender if the first is declined?

A:  Yes.  I assume there's some kind of trigger that prompts the AI to surrender.  If the player declines, simply check that trigger again at some set interval to see if it's still true. 

Q:  How long is the interval?

A:  15 minutes?  30 minutes?  Doesn't really matter at the moment.  Easy enough to tweak.

Q:  Should it surrender to all players or one?

A:  Again, using the AOE3 example, the option was offered to all human players in the game and as I recall, the choice was made by whoever clicked it first.  If you're playing a game with AI's, the assumption was that the game was probably either a friendly match with the AI providing a 'random' factor or a comp stomp.  In either case, it's probably not that difficult for the human players to reach a consensus.

Q:  Should the AI's surrender to each other?

A:  No.  If beaten down, the AI would still offer surrender to the human players as normal.

It's been done before and it worked well enough.  I don't see why it'd have to be any more complex here.  That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a simple pre-game on/off toggle either.  I only prefer the AOE3 version because you're still able to get your end-game combat while the AI gets another chance to quit during the inevitable tedious mop-up phase.

AOE3-style is the better option, definitely. But I'm hoping to make this request so simple and easy to implement that the devs have no way to escape it

THIS SO MUCH. Please turn off AI surrender, or at least make an option to disable it. Its frustrating. I want to see my fleets in action.

you have an option to just keep playing?!... isint that the same thing? or you want the ai to struggle and feed ships to your end game fleet?

Yes, the idea is that the AI will fight its doomed little fight and feed ships into the maw. The point of space games, after all, is to blow stuff up in space.

And I think I've finally cracked the code on this one. The AI looks at both your economic and military assets when deciding how powerful you are. So if you have a huge economic advantage going into your end-game push, the AI will just fold as soon as it sees your fleet and the "Victory" screen will come up. But if the AI is on even terms it will fight.

If I'm right, then it should be possible to prevent surrender by adjusting the AI's resource rate. Probably what is happening is the AI is building a large a fleet too early in some scenarios, which starves its economy. Then it sees your comparable fleet in the late-game and quits. This would explain why some people think the AI surrenders too soon and others think it never does. I'll test this by gifting resources to the AI before every big battle and see how long I can prolong the game.

bump

To give an update on this, I've made a mod that splits all races into Human and AI variants, with the AI's maintenance cost reduced from 0-75% to 0-20%. I haven't seen any premature AI surrenders since making this change.