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I didn't find any post on this subject, so I gave it a try myself:

Ofen players sees surrendering as failure and a step to loosing the game. In EiANW that is not the case - or at least it doesn't has to.
Surrendering is a procedure in the game just as making an alliance or making economic manipulation is.

When (and it happens to all players and nations) you have a war on your hands you can loose but can't win, it is time to take a good look into the future of the game - or at least try to.
Where will my nation be, in 18 month, if I ...

a) persuade him to an informal peace
b) surrender conditionally
c) surrender unconditionally.
d) do not make peace, but fights on

Assuming no other nations interfere, my crystal ball of typical scenarios shows this:

a) Most likely status quo, but with more forces. Maybe you can fill all your corps. Same goes for opponnent. Unless you have found another war or one of you have improved his position and reopenend your war, which is very likely.

b) You have rebuild your army to what is was before the war or better. Your political status is in position 24 or 25 or close. You have got totally 5-6VP less than you would in a) in the last 5 economic phases.

c) Your political status is in position 22 to 23 or close. You have got totally 7-8VP less than you would in a) the last 5 economic phases. Your trip into instability have cost you some of your conqured minors. Maybe you have got one back. You have one severe strategic diadvantage compared to now. This one depends on, what victory conditions was chosen.

d) The war went on for 6-9 month before you were forced to surender - unconditionally. Your army is half the size it is now or less.
If your army and leaders are better than your opponents, maybe you won some battles. In that case your political status is in position 22 to 23 or close. You may have a couple of VP's more than in a). You have not got any minors lost in instability back
If you lost the battles you are in position 10-12 and just left fiasco zone. You have no minors. One or more of you home provinces belongs to the victor. You have 10+ VP less than in a).
In any case, he will quite likely declare another war on you before the end of the 36 months of enforced peace, you have on him.

All this is assuming your opponent really tries to rip you off with the victory conditions. But quite frequently he does not. Maybe there is just one particullar condition he wants, maybe he doesn't want you too weak or maybe he hopes going easy on you will get him an easier bargain comes the day he is made to surrender himself.

Finally the periods of 18, 24 or 36 months of enforced peace is probably the most important part of any surrender, and they are crucial to France, who is fighting a lot of neighbours. Use them to rebuild. Use them to protect a weak nation. Use them to contain a strong one. Use them wisely !

All in all. Surrendering is not the end of the game for any nation, but very much a part of it. Surrendering is not giving up. Surrendering right is an important part of winning the game!

P.S. In this version of the game, v.1.01, a nation is forced to surrender when enemies have forces in the capital for a full month !
P.P.S Other nations are affected by your surrender, and they know it. They will want to control the peaceconditions. Maybe even enter the war to do it. That of course alters the scenario lineouts, I've described above.

Eske,

Very well put together...totally agree that surrender is a tool...really a part of diplomacy. I find that newbies in EiA take surrender negatively..ie...the game is over for them. I've seen people quit the game when that happens and its probably more of a problem when playing computer EiA? I think what you wrote needed to be said to the many playing EiA for the first time or so...

I have to add that probably the most important element in EiA is TIME...surrender is part of that, but even more important is learning how to delay your enemy(s) when you are in a poor diplomatic position...things can change fast in EiA, and yesterdays enemies can often become today's friends in short order. Easier to do as Russia, and Turkey. and GB(depending on the fleet situation and any earlier surrenders). Prussia is probably the toughest on this issue. I do not like the computer EiA element that a nation must surrender due to the occupation of its capitol. That reduces the impact of time and limits diplomacy.
C

It depends on what nation you are playing.

If you are playing Prussia, you can afford to surrender conditionally a few times during the game, provided you don't get into the 36/18 month rotation cycle with Austria (France makes you surrender unconditionally, takes a 36 month peace, in the intervening time he beats up Austria and does the same, ad nauseum). If you and Austria surrender at the same time and both are limited to 24 month peace or maybe only 18, it's not too bad. Provided you have at least the cadre of your army to rebuild. The good thing about being Prussia is that ability to hoard manpower -- so you lost your army in a long and brutal war, but you have 100 manpower in reserve? A nice cash injection from Britain and you're back on your feet again. Try not to lose all of your cavalry and guards, though.

The same can be said of Austria, but the other way around of course. You rebuild faster than Prussia does, but you can't save manpower like the Prussians can.

If you are France and you are forced into unconditional surrender at some stage in the game, especially early in the game, you are hosed. You cannot win from there. The same goes for Britain in some respects. If you look like losing then you must aim to get out with a conditional at worst -- the problem is that if you are France and you are on the ropes then your enemies will probably want to take you to the cleaners (and probably surround you). Try to bargain your way out of it, but it's difficult.

If you are playing Spain you can be forced into unconditional surrender even a couple of times and come out fine. You have to pick your battles -- one player in the eia yahoo group advises sacking all of your corps commanders and putting your entire army into garrison. Let the French come through Spain and siege all of those cities, one at a time, and make you unconditionally surrender. It's a long hard road, the French gain no PPs for fighting all of those siege battles, and by and large most players of France won't bother -- his gain is 5 PPs in a war which could take 12 months or even longer. Meanwhile the Austrians and Prussians are building an army in his rear, and no doubt Russia and Britain will find an opportune time to join in, so it's just not worth France's bother fighting you.

Russia should almost never have to surrender unconditionally. It's a long cold hard road to Moscow from Paris, and Cossacks just love burning those supply lines. If things look bad put your army into garrisons again and make your enemies reduce each one in turn, once they've had enough of that for a while offer the conditional surrender which they will probably accept with gratitude.

Turkey -- the main thing is not to lose your regular army because they are expensive for you to rebuild. Fight until your Feudals are dead and then offer a conditional surrender, most players will accept that. If you have multiple players going for you at once (Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia or Britain) and they are doing well enough to siege Constantinople and occupy your Feudal provinces so the Feudals can't be rebuilt, then you're in trouble.

Unfortunately some of the tactical advice here is not valid in version 1 of the computer game, since they dont have to take all the red cities, only the capital. 

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

Unfortunately some of the tactical advice here is not valid in version 1 of the computer game, since they dont have to take all the red cities, only the capital. 

Yah; but that only gets them a CONDITIONAL (the program forces the player to
SUE for peace & he can then refuse an UNconditonal).... In fact there is currently
a bug which WONT LET players surrender unconditionally if the national capitol
is occupied (the forced "sue for peace" doesn't recognize that the UNCONDITONAL
option is ALSO a sue & locks the player into loop - I had this happen as France.
I occupied Berlin. Set my options for UNCONDITIONAL peace from the Prussian
player. When he tried to surrender it wouldn't let him. I had to un-occupy Berlin
& THEN he could surrender unconditonally - See the "CleverDevils2 AAR" for details.

MARSHALL - do you have this surrender bug on the list??

It is in 1.02

I don't know if it made the 1.02 cutoff or not - We found & reported it a couple of weeks ago.
(It turned up on the June 1805 dp turn of the game & we are now just finishing July land)
 
Marshall did mention that he is CHANGING the requirements for forced surrender to that of
the EIA "easy" civil disorder (collect no home nation mp = forced to accept an unconditonal
from all).  Fixing the problem where it doesn't recognize an unconditonal as a surrender is
a pretty easy programming change (just requires setting a flag variable the same way as
is done on the conditional branch).