HELP! Merging Empires?

[Laywn]

To all and anyone that knows - 

Well the thread subject really sums it up.  How do I merge 2 empires together.

[Deantwo]

HELP!  Merging Empires?

To all and anyone that knows - 

Well the thread subject really sums it up.  How do I merge to of the empires together.

In short, you cannot merge empires.

You can however transfer the ownership of all cities and spacecraft to one of the two empires.

• First you need the two empires to make diplomatic contact, this is a little tricky if they are far from each other, but it can be done with an alt avatar in one of the empires changing to the other empire.
  
• Then you need to surrender all cities from one empire to the other and accept the surrender on the receiving empire. Alternatively you can simply declare war on the other empire and capture the worlds.
  
• Changing ownership of spacecraft is a little more tricky, since you either need to go request captains both on them one at a time to make them change ownership or capture each spacecraft. Thankfully spacecraft are somewhat expendable, so making new spacecraft is probably easier unless you have some really huge spacecraft.
  
• Avatars can be invited to the other empire via the Comm, simply right-click a message from them and select the "invite X to my empire" option.
  
• There is sadly no way to transfer/share/copy starmap information. Any solar systems that have been explored or surveyed by the empire you are leaving will have to be explored and surveyed again with your other empire.
  
• Patents should be transferred over along with the city I believe, assuming they are in active use. Alternatively you can just download all the empire's patents onto a media storage device.
  

[QuakeIV]

You might want to keep an alt in the empire thats getting absorbed to manually transfer any valuable patents that may not have made it over automatically.