As a compliment to a Surrender Button I would like to implement a feature that replaces killed off empires being deleted. When empires are deleted, all their history is also deleted, as is their actions in the family history.
Forced Surrender by contrast, would kick the player out of the round (effectively killed off) but preserve their empire in the rankings with a negligible networth, along with their entire history. We could also track who exactly forced them out of the round.
For example, if Player A wins the final attack on Player B’s planet, then Player B’s empire page will show:
Player B was forced to surrender by Player A
This would also drive competition in HC rounds to force surrender as many competing empires as possible.