i agree that not all wars should be fought to the death, but some should. its not morally unacceptable to destroy a realm in a game where that possibility exists, and as i mentioned there are cases where i strongly believe realms MUST die for the ongoing health of the game.
i would contend however that most wars fought to the death occur because the losing side refuses terms of surrender.
every war ive participated in that came to the point that one side or the other stated an intent to fight to the death was because the losing or perceived losing side refused terms. ive been on both sides of the coin.
there are times when i feel refusing to surrender or accept terms is justified, like in cases where you believe the health of the continent is at stake or the terms require something completely morally unacceptable in ic terms.
an example of both is when dustole's superalliance on fei was trying to gangbang cathay into joining "the new empire" and serving in its army to gangbang ohnar and Coralynth into submission, forming another continent-spanning empire. we refused and we won, well as much as a war interrupted by the destruction of a continent can be said to be won.
an example of purely the latter was in caelum when spearhold demanded caelum worship the daemons and join them. it wouldnt have hurt the continent but no caelish were going to join the daemons. caelum was destroyed. we all accepted the consequence of not surrendering and moved on. not a single whiny forum post about it.
but in too many cases it just comes down to player ego. case in point, westfold vs swordfell. when swordfell was swamped with monsters we offered them to surrender four relatively poor rurals, two of which we already had TOed, and return shomrak in exchange for peace. their ruler refused and as a result they have now lost twice as many regions as we wanted to take from them. westfold's objective in this war was never to destroy swordfell, but swordfell took it to the "one of us will be destroyed" level all on their own. we will see if they develop some common sense with a new ruler or if they will still be stuck in ego land.
what i do consider to be out of line is if a winning side offers terms, those terms are rejected, and then they say "that was your last chance" and refuse peace even if the losing side comes back to the table. this is what happened with the cathay-kabrinski diplomacy minus the attempt to come back to the table, since we started winning hardcore once everyone realized our backs were against the wall. im sure it has happened at some point though.
but again, if a war's expressed purpose is the destruction of a realm i dont see that as inherently bad and immoral. some realms are just bad for the game.
