It is also particularly interesting the fact that, as the game works right now (more specifically the war support mechanic), is actually better to simply ransack administrative centers and outposts and rebuilding them if you are going to win a war. There are some reasons for this:

1. Any ransacked outpost or administrative center will stop being part of their country and it will give them more war support towards this war, meaning you can stay in it for longer.

2. You actually get gold for ransacking, which is good, obviously.

3. When rebuilding the outpost yourself, you'll take control of any resources they were exploiting there automatically, no need to rebuild everything. You can also exploit it from the getgo and get the resources without waiting for the war to end.

4. Last, but not least, you will keep every ransacked and rebuild outpost when the war ends, so it's actually yours and you don't have to ask for it nor will it return to your opponent after the war.

So... as it is right now, the best conquest if you want to avoid being forced to strange peaces, it's simply to ransack every single outpost you can, rebuild there and simply keep pushing. Just conquer their cities when you have ransacked - rebuilt every outpost of your interest.

This is also weird... in my opinion when you ask for a city you should automatically get all the administrative centers attached to it unless you actually decide not to. So in the peace treaty screen, when picking a city, all its outposts should be automatically picked, leaving you with the possibility to uncheck them if you don't want to integrate those. It's logical from my point of view, since you get all that terrain when sieging the city and makes sense.

I would also add the possibility to ask for a partial peace which is not a white peace. I find it quite weird not being able to ask something like "hey, we've been fighting for like... 30 turns and I have one of your cities. I take that city and just stop the war here, what do you think?" nope, instead of that, you have to actually wait until their war support lowers to 0 and then force a full surrender.

As I said, I am having lots of fun, but it's clear to me that they need to tweak the peace options a little bit and they will make more sense.

EDIT: Just after writting this, I find myself in a game where I just won a war where I could get one city and had not enough score to get its administrative centers, so basically I accepted peace, returned all the outposts and now I'm destroying those outposts one by one to build them myself and manually attach them to the city. 

And just to point it out, I was lucky during the war because one of the cities I had conquered was conquered some turns later by independents, which seems like a bad thing but it turned out to be perfect because I didn't have enough score to keep it... but since independents got the city, I just conquered it from them after the war and voila.

War support basically forces me to turn every war I fight into a genocide. it is however very profitable and really helps you speedrun your empire to contemporary, and im convinced genocide is a requirement for winning at the higher difficulties. Ransacking is amazing, because you just prolong the war until when the surrender is forced, you take their last city and just eliminate them completely. 

They really should add some narrative events or consequences for acting like an actual Hitler. 

Maybe if the AI didn't act like an unlikeable asshole 90% of the time, I wouldn't be holding vendettas from being mistreated 100 turns ago, and maybe I wouldn't have to burn your entire land and destroy ALL of your cities if you hadn't randomly attacked my scouts in my own outpost territory god im having an aneurysm

This is definitely a bug, see Humankind Encyclopedia (EDIT: Link to encyclopedia here)

Surrender Proposal

Either side involved in a War can propose a set of Surrender Terms -- a list of reparations that they offer to make in exchange for a return to Peace. When drafting their surrender proposal, the surrendering Empire must include the application of previous Demands and, once there are no Demands left to add, additional “bonus” compensations to fully consume the winner’s leftover War Score. If they have nothing else to offer, a default monetary compensation will be calculated automatically.

Upon acceptance of the proposal from the other Empire, all surrender terms will be fulfilled immediately, and peace will be restored. The receiving Empire is free to refuse a legitimate surrender proposition if they find it lacking, but doing so will hurt their War Support and bolster their opponent's.

Forced Surrender

If one side in a War runs out of War Support, their opponent can force their surrender, choosing exactly which Surrender Terms their opponent will have to agree to.

The Victor is bound by the same rules for drafting a forced surrender: outstanding Demands must be selected first, then spend their War Score selecting additional territorial or political reparations, and finally a default monetary compensation if nothing else can be selected.

Forced Surrenders are unilateral and cannot be refused by the losing side. Once submitted, all surrender terms will be fulfilled immediately, and peace will be restored.

The encyclopedia describes a mechanic that is nothing like the existing mechanic in the game that the OP describes, where the losing side is able to force a unilateral agreement upon the winning side when they reach 0 War Support.  I'm sure the developers will fix it before long.

As the current implementation stands, I avoid war at all cost. Not because I don't like the general idea behind this system, more because of 

a) you can abuse it as described before with ransacking/pillaging and rebuilding 

b) in my opinion the generated scores make no sense to me. 

For example: Early rush, you take the AIs only city, or in another scenario both only cities of the AI, no lost battles, maybe even won one or two. The result is always the same. I generated like 73 war score and need 80 for at least one city. Sorry but just no. As other said, the foundation for this game is very good but i have the feeling that most numbers / scaling factors, like war score, later tech, later culture boni, etc. aren't balanced at all.

Now I'm able to win Humankind difficulty games without any real war. Just early skirmishes. If any AI decides to declare war, I instantly surrender and pay a measily sum of gold (like 2-3k) and I'm safe the next 30-40 turns...

This is simply because, you are playing as the (immortal?) ruler of the empire, not the people of the empire itself. It might sound crazy, but there are such things as rules for rulers.

But yes you should be able to reject the surrender terms. It should not be forced upon the winner of the war. This is probably a bug and will be fixed soon.

Pleas don't touch War. Casual players again crying, because they don't understan how it is works. 

Endlesss space 2 had same war mechanic in first version, but.. yea "o my god, i want endless total anihilation war, but i can't? WHY? IT IS BUG? WHY? BUG?"  

Siptah wrote:

pineappaul wrote:

If you are running into this bug in your game, please add a screenshot and its effect on your game experience to this bug to increase visibility:  https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/humankind/forums/215-bug-reports/threads/43624-bug-forced-surrender-can-be-initiated-by-player-with-no-war-support-can-t-be-canceled-by-opponent?page=1

I think you're wrong there, it's working as currently intended. The encyclopedia is phrased a bit awkward, I give you that. But it still describes the system as it currently is.

I mean, it's possible it's working as intended, but the encyclopedia does not describe the system as is.  As is... If one side in a War runs out of War Support, their opponent can MUST IMMEDIATELY force their surrender.  Also, Forced Surrenders are unilateral and cannot be refused by the losing ANY side. 

Additionally, there is a handy "Cancel" button that, as is, will always grayed out, with a tooltip, so at a minimum, the bug is to remove the false impression that there is ever a moment when one can cancel a forced surrender as the winner.

Given the illogicality of requiring a civilization with 100/100 War Support from their population to end war immediately and return potentially everything that they have occupied because the other side is tired of the war, I would be shocked if this was "working as currently intended."

Boy that would be nice IRL though, could solve a whole lot of conflicts by just making your own country so tired of the war that the other countries have to give up their offenses.

I mean there is a simple solution... program the AI to Offer Surrender terms when they hit zero War Support instead of allowing them to initiate an action that should only be available to the winning side (Force Surrender).  Then the winning side runs the risk of their people getting tired of the war themselves if they decline, since declining an offer of surrender costs you significant War Support.  You won't be able to get better terms later if your own group hits zero!

Bug Report for this

dbemont wrote:

Just want to chime in to say that the current system where the winning side HAS to stop because the losing side has zero war score is just a terrible mistake.  It's so ahistorical as to be ludicrous.

I mean, continue a war when the other side has already surrendered is not something that never happened, but usually you would expect that the war is over when one side gives up. So, I think it has some sense to it that the loser can stop the war. 

Now, of course, whether the game should force you to accept the surrender is another question outright. It could give you a chance to continue (for example for -x war support per turn and a grievances with all other players or something similar). That would make it an interesting choice to continue fighting if you haven't conquered everything you have a demand on yet, as excess war score is just money. 

It's also not too uncommon in history that a surrender leads to the winner getting exactly what they wanted to get out of the war afterwards, in contrast to total annihilation of one side (although that happened, as we all know, as well). Maybe elimination is a bit too difficult right now, but that's mostly because it's hard to produce so many demands: taking an empire that has only one or two cities in a single war isn't a problem at all, but larger ones aren't really possible right now - and I'm unsure if it is needed. Maybe there is a need for an ideological causes belli that allows this against empires that are far away ideologically, and which comes a bit later in the game.