Does "Demand Surrender" ever work?

[Servius]

I just had it happen again. The Cherokee just surrendered the capital of the region just south-southwest of Michigan to me and their garrison retreated towards Michigan.

Tactically, this is a good thing, as it allows me to take a region without incurring any losses. Strategically, it might not be such a good idea. Since my victory was certain, while I would have sustained some casualties, I would have wiped out the enemy force. Now that force can merge with a larger one, which will make the odds of my next fight less good.

[Prussian to the Iron]

however, you can now set up a fort i na tactical position that allows no army to get past you. then if they try to counter-attack, they will either have to attack a well-defended position, or be attacked from a preferrably uphill position.

also, now if you incur losses you can easily retrain them in the surrendered city. remember: unlike previous games, any unit can be re-trained in any city with a working barracks/ town center.

[resonantblue]

I've had a city surrender to me after a random straggling army outside the city attacked me, which drew out the garrison, which I crushed.

The garrison left in the city was tiny compared to my besieging force and they surrendered. As someone pointed out, it was kind of a waste since they were expelled rather than destroyed and went on to raid towns/etc in the region.

The one place i can see this being useful is if you really don't want to have to manually assasult the fortress (even with a small garrison in it) but don't feel like losing 1/3rd of your stack on autoresolve, which seems to give yo uenormous casualties regardless of how small the garrison inside is AND you don't feel like waiting for the siege to force their surrender.