Shattered Kingdoms

I also think that coded qualifications for 'defeat' are unnecessary and prone to abuse.

However, if the leaders of a faction want to admit defeat, there should be a way to do so gracefully with some imm intervention, which should allow for an automatic return of the relic, so that the faction can recruit new players and recuperate.
Of course, they should also be under close observation as to not go and attack anyone, while they are 'defeated'.

Really I don't think it should be so much a mechanic, more of a set of rules that are part of the TOS. If someone accepts their defeat, they should be allowed to safely hide within their cave and lick their wounds, while the victor enjoys some benefits. Its just that I don't feel that these benefits should necessarily come at the price of the defeated losing interest in their characters and/or the game entirely. Maybe some unique, limited use items like pots and staves and scrolls from the imms. I dunno.

One quirk for me...

Say there's 10 MC members, and 1 Talon. The Talon is obviously screwed if war gets declared, but...Is that really IC? ICly I would expect the Zhensh war effort shouldn't be on that one guy's shoulders. Should Zhenshi really 'lose' a war because one guy gets killed a few times?

It's truely disgusting that (some of) your hard work goes unappreciated. (This recent updat excluded. It's review seemed to be good)
But despite the way people might take the change, consider something similar to this. I think 'achievement-based' influence is something that could improve sk. But it would take a lot of work and I understand your concern.

@orplayer:
The 50 npc's was to influence city raids. That way you're not just mimic ganking the trib/cabal members.
On the 'losing leadership' aspect, I think it might be alright as long as in the penalty time the previous leader could try to regain the favor of their higher powers. (Emperor, CoN, etc)

It would be tough to kill that guy 20+ times in specific amount of time. I'm guessing they would surrender before being defeated. But maybe the talon would be eralenax or I. (Lulz)

Don't you already have this just by negotiating a truce? I thought the guardian would drop any relic you are not at war with and then it returns to it's owner. If it isn't working this way already, it's probably just a minor script bug that needs fixing.

I don't think it's automatic. When the harlies finalized the truce it wasn't returned. She had to log back on to give it to me.

I think at the least we could/should have some 'war stats.' A new cabal/trib command. "Cabal warscore faction."

A visible 'pk score' is the last thing SK needs.

The real issue is winning factions don't always want to accept a surrender, and/or ask for anti-goldenrule terms, such as removal of a player from the cabal. So far I've witnessed two times in my character's life that this was the case. In both cases an imm mediated to see to it that the winning faction accepted the surrender and terms instead of just continuing to hold the relic. My suggestion was that this becomes the rule, instead of it being sort of a last resort to go to when some or most of the losing factions' players have already quit.

As someone who doesn't like to surrender, I would be more inclined to do so if it was something ordered from the higher powers. If I got an order from the emperor to surrender, I would have to follow through with it. Perhaps a warscore could be something imms could use to determine if a faction truely was defeated. If it didn't arrise from pm complaints and Imm bias, it would flow much better.
What is the underlying issue? Leaders not wanting to surrender? If I'm working some rp to get my allies to help me fight and then get told that I need to surrender, all of that work I put in goes out the window. Perhaps imms should be more active as the higher powers and should check in with leaders to get a better understanding of how the war is playing out.