Interesting Occurences in my first Civ 3 game

I never had it happen twice in one game 

I had sent 4 diplomats to each of those factions earlier in the game and never refused a trade.  They actually were gifting me 175 credits through most of the game.  Was hard keeping factions liking me when there were wars, but judicious use of gifts and diplomats did the trick.

I find it really annoying when I spend so much time/effort crushing them with either military or culture and they just give up their stuff to someone else. 

It's war.  It's their job to NOT have your interests at heart. 

it is easy to turn off surrenders :-/

Let me put it this way, there is no other game where a warring party surrenders to some randoms instead of the person they're at war with. It literally makes no sense to have an enemy besieged and on the back footing and suddenly he decides hey, let's give all my shit to some random faction.

Didn't Civ4 actually borrow this feature from Galciv2, and make civilizations you were at war with vassals of somebody else?

I realize this behavior is being viewed across the backdrop of a host of other Galciv3 issues, but it has not always been that way. 

I like the surrenders. A dying AI gets their last F U by joining someone they hate less. This will sound super nerdy, but remember when the Cardassians did that in DS9 and became a vassal of the Founders? Suck it Klingons! We surrendered to them, so now you don't win! Pretty much the same in Galciv, just with different race names.

The thing I hate about surrenders is having to deal with dozens of small and tiny ships turned over to me.  Takes forever to either park or decommission them

Trade them to another civ for cash!

yup, i do that too but its still a pain