A commentary on surrendering nations in general

[Prime minister Johns]

I have been paging through the Surrenders thread and I have noticed a trend, The overwhelming majority of surrenders posted there are from nations with 20 posts or less on these forums.

This leads me to conclude that surrender terms are mostly effective on new or politically inactive nations, and that as a nation becomes more active in whatever alliance that they are affiliated with the odds of them surrendering as an individual significantly drops.

This would further lead me to doubt the effectiveness of individual surrender terms for limiting the damage caused to the alliance that offers them by the new or disinterested nations that accept them. Since so few people accept them compared to the overall number of people involved in the war and that those who accept them are mostly new nations who's capacity to cause harm is limited at best and easily rebuilt.

[Moridin]

[quote name='Prime minister Johns' date='08 February 2010 - 04:00 AM' timestamp='1265630407' post='2168579']
I have been paging through the Surrenders thread and I have noticed a trend, The overwhelming majority of surrenders posted there are from nations with 20 posts or less on these forums.

This leads me to conclude that surrender terms are mostly effective on new or politically inactive nations, and that as a nation becomes more active in whatever alliance that they are affiliated with the odds of them surrendering as an individual significantly drops.

This would further lead me to doubt the effectiveness of individual surrender terms for limiting the damage caused to the alliance that offers them by the new or disinterested nations that accept them. Since so few people accept them compared to the overall number of people involved in the war and that those who accept them are mostly new nations who's capacity to cause harm is limited at best and easily rebuilt.
[/quote]

You may be mixing up cause and effect here. If someone wanted to do harm through exploiting individual surrender terms (i.e. escaping to peace mode and re-entering the war), relatively light surrender terms make that more appealing while harsh surrender terms discourage that. The nations that surrender to harsh individual terms will be surrendering regardless, while the active nations you mentioned by and large do not surrender - so, harsh terms simply prevent dishonest people from using surrender terms as a temporary ceasefire to get out of anarchy and re-declare.

[Alfred von Tirpitz]

That is actually a good point Moridin.

[supercoolyellow]

Largely I think you're right, but every nation an alliance loses, is that much more growth they don't get at the end of the war.

I've seen a 36K nations surrender to MCXA so far, so I know that there are some alliances that catch some pretty big fish.

[Adrian LaCroix]

That makes sense; those kinds of people aren't particularly invested in their alliance, and thus have no reason to stay. IMO, individual surrender terms are for clearing out your target lists and focusing on the people who are actually willing to fight.

[Ogaden]

[quote name='Prime minister Johns' date='08 February 2010 - 04:00 AM' timestamp='1265630407' post='2168579']
I have been paging through the Surrenders thread and I have noticed a trend, The overwhelming majority of surrenders posted there are from nations with 20 posts or less on these forums.

This leads me to conclude that surrender terms are mostly effective on new or politically inactive nations, and that as a nation becomes more active in whatever alliance that they are affiliated with the odds of them surrendering as an individual significantly drops.

This would further lead me to doubt the effectiveness of individual surrender terms for limiting the damage caused to the alliance that offers them by the new or disinterested nations that accept them. Since so few people accept them compared to the overall number of people involved in the war and that those who accept them are mostly new nations who's capacity to cause harm is limited at best and easily rebuilt.
[/quote]

This is true of early surrenders, but as the war drags on things change.

[bigwoody]

Even just getting inactives to surrender helps, as you can then focus on larger threats.

[Comrade Craig]

[quote]I have been paging through the Surrenders thread and I have noticed a trend, The overwhelming majority of surrenders posted there are from nations with 20 posts or less on these forums.[/quote]

The vast majority of players -- even ones with large nations -- are not active on these forums. Activity here does not necessarily correlate to the value of the nation. I'd even go so far as to commit the ultimate blasphemy and claim that the inverse is true: a high post count can be a great indicator of who you don't want in your alliance

-Craig

[Lucas Perry]

When in-actives leave an alliance then it does tend to help the alliance post-war, in terms of getting everyone back on their feet because the people still around are willing to do anything to help the community out.

[PhysicsJunky]

[quote name='Prime minister Johns' date='08 February 2010 - 07:00 AM' timestamp='1265630407' post='2168579']This leads me to conclude that surrender terms are mostly effective on new or politically inactive nations, and that as a nation becomes more active in whatever alliance that they are affiliated with the odds of them surrendering as an individual significantly drops. [/quote]
While political activity correlates to alliance cohesion I think it's also worth pointing out that those inactive politically is a group that contains the pool of players in this game that don't have as much time to afford to it. You'd expect them to be less organized in a war, less able to be up at odd hours a week in a row, and much less likely to have a significant war chest. In other words more likely to end up on their heels and unable to retaliate or stay out of bill lock.

That is to say you'd naturally expect a majority of those surrendering early to be politically inactive, though not necessarily a majority of those politically inactive to surrender. It's probably a mix of both apathy toward their own alliance an inability to compete but it's impossible to isolate the former unless you plan to start polling. All this talk is really proving is that the theory of apathy doesn't conflict with natural activity trends.

[theArrowheadian]

Took you this long to realize this? It's always been that way since individual surrender terms have been dished out

[Facade]

Quite personally, I don't understand the point of surrender. If you have beaten a nation to the point of exhaustion, why offer them surrender?

If you continue to destroy their nation or, more feasibly, move on to another nation to destroy, the player seeing their nations hard-earned infrastructure and technology vanish before their eyes should make them ask their leaders to get peace some how. Or at least that's how I see it.

Once a nation has surrendered, they can begin rebuilding and don't have to worry anymore. They are, in all practical purposes, safe. While they are still at war however, they do not have a safe zone, until their nation-strength is too low for anyone in the winning alliance to declare on. These people will either demand for their leadership to get peace, or leave the alliance altogether.

Of course, this is assuming that the two alliances fighting are fighting over a legitimate reason in which Alliance A wishes to punish Alliance B for X Action that Alliance B has made; not the MDP-web nightmare wars that plague Planet Bob.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Moridin]

[quote name='Facade' date='09 February 2010 - 04:19 PM' timestamp='1265761150' post='2171488']
Quite personally, I don't understand the point of surrender. If you have beaten a nation to the point of exhaustion, why offer them surrender?

If you continue to destroy their nation or, more feasibly, move on to another nation to destroy, the player seeing their nations hard-earned infrastructure and technology vanish before their eyes should make them ask their leaders to get peace some how. Or at least that's how I see it.

Once a nation has surrendered, they can begin rebuilding and don't have to worry anymore. They are, in all practical purposes, safe. While they are still at war however, they do not have a safe zone, until their nation-strength is too low for anyone in the winning alliance to declare on. These people will either demand for their leadership to get peace, or leave the alliance altogether.

Of course, this is assuming that the two alliances fighting are fighting over a legitimate reason in which Alliance A wishes to punish Alliance B for X Action that Alliance B has made; not the MDP-web nightmare wars that plague Planet Bob.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
[/quote]

Nations don't necessarily surrender only once they are 'exhausted' or bill locked. A number of nations will surrender at the first chance given, allowing the attacking alliance to focus firepower on the nations that are more long-term threats. And the ultimate goal of the war is not necessarily to have the other alliance surrender as quickly as possible; if you deem that the alliance is a threat, you may want to try to damage it heavily before even offering alliance-wide peace terms, and letting individuals surrender can deal a blow to the alliance as a whole.