The Gaming Den

So, I've been playing Skyrim quite a bit, and I've been dismayed by how much everyone wants to commit suicide by Dragonborn. Even enemies that run away in terror begging for their lives just come back to get killed. I'm wondering if there are any games out there where enemies aren't mindlessly suicidal and will actually disengage or surrender if the fight turns against them.

Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag

Most enemies are suicidally-aggressive, unless scripted to surrender or something during a cutscene, except those bastards lucky enough to encounter you while you are sailing. If you initiate a boarding action on an enemy vessel and kill a minimum number of grunts, officers and MacGuffins, the crew will surrender. At which point you can murder the whole crew and take their stuff, blackmail them into joining your fleet or let them go to drop your star count and not have army attack helicopters and tanks come after you.

I'm not saying this is exactly a good way games should have enemies surrender, just the best I've encountered.

Mount & Blade; unfortunately.

Most wargames only assume suicidal soldiers.

"I am Alive" had a peculiar combat system, where you pointed your (sometimes empty) gun at people and hoped that they'd surrender (because you didn't want to spend your bullets).
However the system was quite rigid: some NPC would always surrender, others would never do it, etc.

The SWAT series is partly about getting enemies to surrender.

And of course, many strategy games handle morale.

SD Gundam G Generation series. When you blow up an enemy's carrier ship the mobile suits surrender. Captured enemy mobile suits can be researched, built, and upgraded into new suits afterwards. There's also a "tension" gauge where the more confident you are the more damage you do but the more fearful you get the lower your attack power but your dodging increases.

Shin Megami Tensei games. You can talk most common demons out of a fight and every once in a while when you're winning a fight your enemies will beg for their lives (though it may also be a trick).

Koei's Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series. Enemy armies will flee when their morale is broken via slaughter and defeating enemy commanders. Total War games do something similar.

MGS series you can make enemies surrender by sneaking up on them.

Some arcade side scrollers have enemies surrender/flee, like Canon Dancer/Osman some enemies drop their guns and beg for their lives.

Interestingly enough in Final Fantasy I morale was a mechanic where being signifiantly higher level can cause enemies to flee.

The Close Combat series had a decent morale system, including surrender. Particularly annoying when it happens to your troops.

OgreBattle wrote: Koei's Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series. Enemy armies will flee when their morale is broken via slaughter and defeating enemy commanders. Total War games do something similar.

Total War is interesting in that you can develop a reputation. First you gotta capture enemies (fleeing units that get caught in melee automatically become prisioners), that you can then release, ransom, or execute on the spot.

Executing enemies (as well as genociding recently captured cities) gives you a dread reputation, which results in an aura of fear which may make enemy units break and run before you even inflict a single casuality! They just go "Oh shit ist's Bob the Butcher, he never takes any prisioners, run!" Max dread can result in your general being able to automatically rout whole armies by himself without actually shedding a single drop of blood.

On the other hand releasing prisioners for free allows you to build up an honorable reputation, which makes your units less likely to flee, and may make the AI spare your units if you get defeated. But that's only useful if you get defeated in the first place, which is for suckers. Both honor and dread help keep order in cities, but honor will also give a income growth bonus.

Huh, I'd think that offering surrender would make enemies more likely to surrender while slaughtering prisoners would make them more likely to fight to the death.

The Dawn of War Series has a Morale-System where units with low Morale will break ranks and flee untill they recovered.

The Fallout-Series had something similar. At least 1 and 2 had enemies that would simply flee from the fight/screen you were on if the circumstances were right/wrong.

I think i remember some Shooter having something of a surrender mechanic as well, might have been Deus Ex Human Revolution, but i am not sure.

And if you want to broaden the strokes a bit, the AI in Civ will do it too.

Dawn of War also has unit Morale; and it's strategically important to pull broken dudes off of a Strategic Point, Critical Locations and Relic they're keeping enemy squads off of (but have failed); because even if you lose the point; you can now harass it's capture back again in a few seconds while your guys recover.

Of course; the game also had "morale killing" weapons; flamers of some sort; artillery bombardment. Which is important because A) units are tougher than most RTS games due to being a "squad"; as well as the games HP:Dmg ratio that makes 1:1 fights drag on as long as they would in Kriegspiele; and B) if you break a squad, their combat ability is non-existent.

One of my preferred tactics when I only have infantry (and Dreads or Armour hasn't shown up yet) is to have dedicated "morale" weapon squads at the front of a position to break; but fail to kill; advancing enemies. With dedicated heavier weapon squads covering their position.

Mostly because mixed weapon type squads in DOW are less efficient at using any of their components than single weapon type squads. A flamer can be used while running; but a heavy bolter requires a "charge" bar to fill before it can begin being used.

Stahlseele wrote:The Dawn of War Series has a Morale-System where units with low Morale will break ranks and flee untill they recovered.

Eeerr, no it doesn't.

The first Dawn of War has a "morale HP", but if it runs out, your units simply take big combat penalties while gaining a movement speed, but otherwise don't run, so your "broken" units won't win any fights you throw them at, but on the other hand will make them actually be better at harassing isolated strategic locations since they can still move where you point them to, and now they move faster. Or heck, 10 broken dudes will still beat one non-broken dude.

Dawn of War 2 has a "retreat" button that makes your units turn into ninjas that run faster while dodging bullets and lasers, but only towards your base. It must still be activated manually.

Yeah, they discussed but explicitly rejected automatic routing for DoW. The combat penalties are pretty severe and withdrawing your troops is generally advisable but not mandatory. DoW2 has a suppression system where suppressed units slow to a crawl and take heavy offensive penalties but become somewhat more resistant to enemy fire.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada can have captains panic and attempt to warp to safety, at which point you can order their commissar to shoot them/their ship to eat them and their replacement gets the hint.

Huh, I'd think that offering surrender would make enemies more likely to surrender while slaughtering prisoners would make them more likely to fight to the death.

They don't surrender, they run for the hills. Think Vlad the Impaler for high dread generals.