Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Seravy]

The surrender mechanic isn't intentionally screwing over the player. If anything, I think the elimination mechanic screws the player. You look at that tough garrison and feel you can't take it, then the AI comes in and takes it with a trash army because they have access to a different ruleset?

That's what I'm saying. They are the same thing. Except in case of surrender, they need a trash army of zero units while in case of elimination the army needs to be at least as strong as 1/3 of the defending forces.

Even if the result is the same, the perception is different.

If you consider AI wizards and their diplomacy actions a game mechanic then it's the same perception.
If you consider it the AI's free decision, then it's different... but the game doesn't give the AI any freedom on their diplomacy decisions. True, not everyone knows that, only veteran players.

The towns and garrisons are the same, and you'd have to fight the new owner at some point regardless of the surrender.

The towns and garrisons are the same yes. The combat spells which matter the most in this game are completely different. You prepared a lot of regenerating units that have low resistance against that Chaos wizard? Too bad, the city now belongs to a Death wizard, your army gets wiped out by Black Sleep before turn 2.
Also, WHEN to fight WHICH player is one most critical strategic decision in the game. More often than not, you won't be able to fight that other player at that time. They might even be your ally, in fact if I wanted to make this feature to be of the most benefit to the overall chances of AIs winning then the AI should surrender the city to the player who is the most powerful among the human player's allies. In fact that pretty much is how it works in real life, you can only surrender to the nations who were your enemies in the war and obviously, the strongest one among them will have the final say on the surrender conditions.

Anyway, we are jumping the gun again.
We should run tests with and without the elimination mechanic to see if it's still necessary, and which parts.
The feature currently consists of two parts :
-The diplomacy part which forces AIs into war with the elimination target
-And the combat modifier.

If the test result shows the first is enough the we can remove the second without having to do anything else.
Unlikely, but there have been so many changes and bug fixes since the last tests that it's not entirely impossible.
If the test results show the second one is necessary, THEN we can think about how to make it either less relevant to the player (in general, it's not a problem unless it happens to a city the player wanted to conquer for themselves)  or how to replace it entirely.

[Seravy]

Few more possible ideas as a replacement mechanic :

-The wizard decides to retire or flee. City turns neutral.
-The wizard's city rebels and turns neutral.
-A powerful monster stack bound to target that city spawns and destroys the city.
-A new "random" event that can destroy cities removes the wizard from play. (We already have a comet event, what if it destroyed the city entirely? Or the opposite of the Atlantis event, Submerge - the area around the city turns to ocean.)
-The wizard accidentally fails to pay maintenance on some troops - they are generally summons anyway and having no mana makes perfect sense if you have no cities other than your fortress. (ok, not really if you do the math but who would bother to try calculating that?)

One more problem with the surrender mechanic btw is geography. A random other AI wizard suddenly gains a city on the other half of the world. That not only enables a lot of additional war declarations by creating adjacency but also automatically makes that city a "frontier city" so the AI will summon most of their creatures there and on top of that, the city will be in the "overwhelmed by enemies" status being the only one city they own on the continent, so it would start spamming troops like there is no tomorrow. These are pretty severe, long lasting consequences of something that should generally be a minor feature people don't even notice.

Anyway, I'll finish my ongoing game and then run some tests on the elimination mechanic to see if it's still necessary.

[Intaka]

Of all the options you just listed, city turns neutral is my preferrred choice.

Deathstack of summoned creatures from nowhere or comet of destruction is just so random and feels as forced as the elimination AI fight mechanic. Whereas, your observations about surrender to another AI demonstrate why that is unworkable.

[massone]

I also think the Wizard fleeing and the city becoming neutral is pretty good.

[Anskiy]

I also like the suggestion of the capital rebelling if the wizard is too weak and under great stress. It fits thematically, people would be upset with an incompetent ruler who has lost many wars and put them in danger.

[Slingers]

Aha. If the elimination mechanic doesn’t work “naturally”, a bunch of random events could do the trick. It might be possible to use some existing negative events (Rebellion, Diplomatic Marriage, Meteor, Earthquake, Piracy, Plague) with an adjustment to target the elimination target with a higher probability. This could add some variety to the inevitable. More ideas for specifically designed events: 

• The megalomaniac loser-wizard sends out his unbeatable garrison stack to conquer the world and leaves his fortress worse defended.
  
• The loser-wizard goes insane and tries to find a shortcut to the Spell of Mastery. That didn’t work that well. The only thing left of his capital is a tower to the other plane.
  
• The loser-wizard could say goodbye with a failed experiment in his primary realm. Sorcery: Wasn’t seen again after making himself invisible., Nature: Fell into a Crack., Chaos: Blew up the house. Death: Disintegrated after being hit by a sunbeam. Life: Went to heaven and stayed there.
  

[Intaka]

I'm just not sure why an eccentric plot device is needed. Having an irrelevant wizard go neutral would be sufficient and thematic. Maybe you could even add the threshold for WHEN a wizard goes neutral to the setup options. From fairly easily to never. Gives more choice, and doesn't require a forced series of events.

[dashley]

I also think the Wizard fleeing and the city becoming neutral is pretty good.

I'd do the same thing in this situation (concede). I like it from a game mechanism perspective.

For the RP side.. "(Wizard) has fled from the material plane"? I don't think its a stretch for a wizard to flee in the face of inevitable defeat.

[prokolyo]

Oh you mean the AI I'm beating should surrender to someone else I can't even attack because we're not at war instead of me, who has beaten them?

That's not fair either.

Why isn't it fair? If you want the cities that badly, just attack anyways and declare war on the new owner. As I said, it's realistic for a nearly defeated power to seek vassalage or protection from a stronger faction. The whole point of surrendering to somebody else is that it's supposed to screw over the conqueror. They'd rather be annexed by somebody they like than to surrender to the one conquering them. It's just an extension of the idea that weaker factions should band together, where if a weak faction is about to die, they choose who kills them (but actually, the rulers don't really die, they probably get to live their lives comfortably with good positions in the new faction). Moreover, if they were allied to begin with as a condition, then this isn't a problem at all. You should be at war with both of them anyways, and if you're not, this isn't any different from the ally committing to joining the war, except the two factions have agreed to diplomatically unite as one entity.

For the new owner, it's fair to get dragged into the war (if they have a choice to accept the surrender or not). You promised to protect the new territories, after all. If you don't want to get in a war, don 't accept the surrender. Of course, for AI, it doesn't matter, they should just always accept. And besides, I do think requiring alliance is a good condition.

My two cents on the topic, although I haven't played COMII yet. I would of course support whatever is best in making the AI a worthy opponent, and therefore the game a better experience (and I think Seravy has proven himself over and over again in this respect), but for the sake of the narrative, I fully support massone. In MOO2 this is a feature, a weakling AI surrendering either to another AI or to the human player, and it's a great feature IMO. It's completely realistic. A weakling AI becoming neutral is a good option too. A weakling AI should have 3 options - surrender to another AI, surrender to the human player, or become neutral, depending on their alliances and whatnot.

[jhsidi]

I'd also cast my vote for the abdication / joining another power mechanic.

If they could join the wizard they have highest relations with, that would add a bit of challenge for the player, since that wizard is likely to also be hostile to the player.