Stellaris Dev Diary #108 - 2.0 Post-Release Support (part 1)

[Kenshi]

yes. and it's great.
after all you wage wars to totally destroy\humiliate\etc your enemy(at least I do). and as a side effect maybe gain something too.
and if he doesnt' want you to wreck chaos on "his" systems - he can always surrender

that's probably the reason I like colossus in 2.0.2beta patch. every war will end in one go. no artificial truce.

And maybe moral penalties for the loser are not that realistic. Think about the great comeback of the sowjetunion in WW2.

(Omg now the history ppl come and kill me)

 

[GloatingSwine]

Pressing surrender loses the game instantly... Doesn't make sense to add more penalties to someone that is already losing...

Surrender only surrenders current claims whether they're occupied or not. (Or changes government or vassalises).

In most wars it shouldn't be game over at all.

 

[ParasiteX]

but if there are no penalties why would you ever press this button?

Because... you... are... already... losing.. How is that so hard for you to figure out? You don't need more penalties to incentivize you to surrender or accept a status quo.. if you are already losing...

 

[Slynx]

Well, that's the thing - if the "pathetic" enemy have managed to drive you up to 100% War Exhaustion, one of two things happened: they managed to make you pay a far higher price than you should have paid, or you wasted so many men and ships in the process your own people have had enough of your war. That's what leads to being forced into status quo (not a surrender, which is pointless anyway if your approach is total destruction).

it usually happens when I declare a war. destroy everything and then leave some ships to eternally bombard his planets. then I just go and my own stuff without ending the war. and the only reason it reaches 100% is because there are ticks of WE (9% iirc per some time)

 

[Lordban]

The no-diplomacy empire types should only truce out due to losses in combat or losses of territory, not attrition. The entire culture is geared towards war, a state of 'being at war' isn't a big deal for them - especially the Devouring Swarms and Determined Exterminators. Those two don't even suffer unrest or happyness issues.

That I can agree with.

 

[Lordban]

it usually happens when I declare a war. destroy everything and then leave some ships to eternally bombard his planets. then I just go and my own stuff without ending the war. and the only reason it reaches 100% is because there are ticks of WE (9% iirc per some time)

If you're getting 9% ticks of WE, something's really gone south...

 

[Slynx]

Because... you... are... already... losing.. How is that so hard for you to figure out? You don't need more penalties to incentivize you to surrender or accept a status quo.. if you are already losing...

true. I can't figure it out. and I also can't see any reasons for me to press the status quo or surrender button, unless the situation will drastically change (AE, crisis spawn, another war and i'll need my ships elsewhere, etc)

and there is a huge difference between "I've claimed all your systems"\"declared total war" and "I wanna force ideology"\"beat you to be my vassal"\"claimed only your capitol and few surrounding systems, but you still have planets left". the later cases will not lead to a game over

 

[Warper]

BUG: When declaring a war against Driven Assimilators with "End threat" CB, their Defensive Pact ally (another machines, but not DA) will lose their systems without requirement of any claims just like Driven Assimilators.

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

Well, that's the thing - if the "pathetic" enemy have managed to drive you up to 100% War Exhaustion, one of two things happened - or a combination of both: the "pathetic" enemy was better than you at war and managed to make you pay a far higher price than you should have paid, or you wasted so many men and ships in the process your own people have had enough of your war. That's what leads to being forced into status quo (not a surrender, which is pointless anyway if your approach is total destruction).

That actually brings up an interesting idea. Say you declare war against a "pathetic" enemy. You win, but not handily. Since your Empire thought "this is going to be easy" the attackers WE goes up proportionally to the metric used to determined estimates of strength?

 

[Slynx]

If you're getting 9% ticks of WE, something's really gone south...

huh, they've changed the value? I thought passive gain through Attrition was something like 9%. maybe it's a different number, but my point is still the same: I usually reach 100% only due to passive attrition.

 

[TheTam]

the more I think about it, the more I fall in love with the idea of "global" WE for your Empire with tied in penalties to your empire at high values (again depending on government) with possibilities of sectors declaring independence and government shifts/takeovers by factions with forced white peace

the current system is just a time limit and very superficial. I am becoming a bit disappointed regarding this being the "war update" to Stellaris. There is much more untapped potential in the war exhaustion mechanic and status quo

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Can we taking planets while fighting subjugation/liberation wars? Just because one of my vassals thinks the enemy empire belongs to him doesn't mean I agree.

As in if the planet is part of the 'original' empire, the enemy empire has a 10X claim if the war succeeds and keeps the system (reclaiming systems the war target took from allied empires could still be taken back).

 

[RoverStorm]

So let me get this straight. If Empire A hits 100% WE, then after 2 years Empire B can force a status quo, correct?

Does this mean that in multiplayer games we can choose to honorably fight other players to the death to finish a grand campaign and determine an absolute winner once and for all?

(as opposed to "who can hurry before war exhaustion hits 100%" or "slow death over 200 years from a hundred tiny wars")

 

[Pointyearedgit]

huh, they've changed the value? I thought passive gain through Attrition was something like 9%. maybe it's a different number, but my point is still the same: I usually reach 100% only due to passive attrition.

Is this before or after you've bombarded all the armies? Or are you trying to tomb world them all?

 

[Hyomoto]

It feels pointless to comment too heavily without playing first, but I'll say that while I understand going back to status quo, I feel like that wasn't really the problem. It's that it solves the issue by avoiding what made it possible. I've long said the attacker should at a disadvantage, they have to invade, take territory and deal with potential political fallout. It's the lack of modelling that makes wars happen as they do.

But I do believe in developer vision so I'll just say I like this better, I see the benefits and I hope it will be looked at again when diplomacy is overhauled.

 

[Heretic Saint]

And maybe moral penalties for the loser are not that realistic. Think about the great comeback of the sowjetunion in WW2.

(Omg now the history ppl come and kill me)

Now here's food for thought:

Refusing to offer surrender at 100% War Exhaustion gives Pacifist Ethos attraction and -1 monthly Influence (permanently in effect, but disappears for a year once a peace offer is made).

Refusing to *accept* an offer of surrender (denying or ignoring) gives Threat, and additionally grants the losing side Militarist Ethos attraction as well as a "Last Stand" empire modifier for a flat +5% increase in Mineral/EC production, +10% ship production speed and +10% bonus health for Armies.

 

[Matt516]

Have to agree with many of the other posters here; (actually meaningful!) War Exhaustion penalties would be a much better option compared to a magically Forced Peace that "just kinda happens".

Again, penalties for 100% WE (as in the current Beta) just hurt the losing side the vast majority of the time. The only way adding WE penalties won't be a net negative for balance and gameplay is if these penalties only take effect when an empire refuses a Status Quo offer.

As many comments here show this up - the 100% war exhaustion on defenders side should not and can not stop the attacking side just as it is.

What are you talking about? That isn't how it works. 100% WE only causes a forced peace if the other empire decides to force it. The war doesn't just magically end when one side hits 100% WE, the other side has to force them into a peace.

 

[Nox Eterna]

The problem with penalties is that empires could exploit the 100% war exhaustion penalties to cripple their opponent by refusing to peace out.

Well, nobody said that penalties should be completely crippling. -10-20% happiness is good enough, if we take also add forced peace after 2 years into the equation. Also, imho, the aggressor should have bigger 100% WE penalties than the defender.

 

[NemoRow]

I think we are thinking the same thing but choosing different words. We want to have:
* A model, which would limit aggressive empires ability to wage an endless war
* Keep the war mechanics adopted to empire ethos for both attackers and defenders
* Robustness and flexibility of our model, so it manages to survive critics in corner cases

We all look back into history, mainly to ongoing/recent wars, WW1 or WW2, classical and other eras wars and base our intuition on them. So we can imagine Colossus impact on other empires when we think about Japan in WW2. And so on and so forth.

I think that wars make sides rethink who their allies are, and often there was 'invite defenders' option too - which would actually give defending side much more than penalties on the attacking side. Also long lasting wars made fighting sides too vulnerable to other external threats.
I see enforcing peace only as an option for the winning side, and winning has nothing to do with the exhaustion itself. So I do not understand why those concepts get mixed up. Actually its not that the winning side can enforce the peace - its not it either, its more like the loosing side is choosing to surrender as the best/only possible way out. We already have the 'Surrender' button, so 'Enforce peace' is a duplicate in a way. With different mechanics and rules.

Instead of thinking how to force the aggressive side to peace, in my opinion its better to create a model where at some point they will want to have this peace themselves. So its a matter of loses and gains not rules. And this is in heart of this matter I think.

 

[Slynx]

Is this before or after you've bombarded all the armies? Or are you trying to tomb world them all?

I usually use armies only if I want to gain the particular world....or to shut down planetary FTL inhibitor fast (but it'll backfire with huge unrest after the war, cuz i'll want to purge them afterwards).
for the other planets - yes. I try to bombard them just for the sake of bombarding (tombing is a term that belongs to genocidal empires, and I rarely play them cuz I love my only friends in the whole galaxy: enclaves)

potential political fallout

what about Hive Minds\Gestalts\Purifiers? doubt there can be any "political fallout" for them