Too much alliances / defensive pacts (Insane diff)

[Asuzu]

Spaceports buff in early game has already made quite a dent in early rush strategies.
But right now, trying to play as fanatical purifiers, or anything aggressive to that end seems completely futile.

Just a few years in, everyone around me is already in a bunch of non-aggression agreements.
Slavers and Pacifists have no problem whatsoever to kiss cheeks.
2 Militarists next to each other have no issues whatsoever to spiral into alliance orgasm fiesta, even though in theory they should be itching for a fight...
And so on and on.

It feels like If you are unlucky to get at least ONE federation builder neighbor, you are done for - in 20-30 years the whole map around you is in alliance.

I just feel like it is too easy to woo your neighbors early and spiral it into alliance and eventual federation.
Especially this hits hard if you rely on waging wars to expand, but any given neighbor next to you has 3 (THREE) defensive pacts minimum, even with empires on the other end of the universe - they don't care, just pact it.

Whats your take on this?

 

[marvin the martian]

Basically I think, the AI reacting with defensive pacts among each others against an aggressor is a good method of keeping things in balance. The main problem with this concept on the other hand seems to be, that a one-time threat leads to a cascade of love and hugs among the other empires; even if their personality, ethos or other circumstances should dictate that they drift apart, the trust and opinion bonus leads to a very static situation.

I think some modifiers based on ethos and/or AI-personality would be a good solution. Maybe faster deterioration of threat for militaristic empires or a negative modifier indicatiing growing concern of pacifistic egalitarians to slaver empires etc.? To sum things up, defensive pacts and the like as effect of an one-time threat should have a tendency to be one time themselves.

Apart from that, is a federation considered a threat by non-members (I honestly don't know)? If not, this should also be implemented, as a federation in Stellaris can be quite aggressive.

 

[urogard]

It feels like If you are unlucky to get at least ONE federation builder neighbor, you are done for - in 20-30 years the whole map around you is in alliance.

I found a neat little trick when dealing with alliances:
#1 Declare war on one federation member and cede/liberate all their planets so that particular member ceases to exist upon conclusion of the war (plus any other planets the warscore limit allows you to cede/liberate)
#2 Fight war and reach 100% warscore
#3 Conclude war forcing opponent to accept all your demands
#4 Notice how you don't have a truce with any of the remaining members of said federation
#5 Repeat step #1 Ad Infinitum

 

[Thovargh]

The problem is that things spiral out of control way too fast in early game now.
The moment you get a little bit border disputy with anyone in early game, you instantly get rivalled, which leads to you being trapped in a defensive cordon of several empires, unable to break out.

In every game I played in the last months, I was completely unable to conduct war until midgame, since I needed to outgrow two or three empires combined, since they all had defensive pacts with each other. These was not a fanatic purifier run or anything like it, just normal xenophobes. I didn't even get the chance to act agressively before I was pacted in.

Defensive pacts should be based around the threat neighbouring empires pose to you, not just a general dislike, which seems to be the current case

 

[FabiusBile]

I found a neat little trick when dealing with alliances:
#1 Declare war on one federation member and cede/liberate all their planets so that particular member ceases to exist upon conclusion of the war (plus any other planets the warscore limit allows you to cede/liberate)
#2 Fight war and reach 100% warscore
#3 Conclude war forcing opponent to accept all your demands
#4 Notice how you don't have a truce with any of the remaining members of said federation
#5 Repeat step #1 Ad Infinitum

This does not really work on Insane, since you'll get absolutely trounced if you declare war on anyone in a defensive pact early on. I.e. if you cannot separate empires before you strike you're usually a sitting duck afterwards. This also completely hampers your options to snowball later on.

 

[urogard]

if you cannot separate empires before you strike you're usually a sitting duck afterwards.

Since alliances will usually not have their fleets together, you don't need to beat their combined fleets.
So all you really need is a fleet more powerful than any of their individual fleets. For extra giggles, you wait until the federation fleet belongs to weakest member.

A federation of 4 empires with a fleet of 15k each, if you have one fleet with 25k then you already won.
Beat one fleet, conquer their empire, beat next fleet, conquer a few more planets, hit 100 warscore, war over.

This also completely hampers your options to snowball later on.

If anything, this glitch allows you to snowball like crazy, since all you need to do is beat the alliance only once and you pretty much sealed their doom within the next few years or decades depending on how many members it has.

 

[FabiusBile]

Since alliances will usually not have their fleets together, you don't need to beat their combined fleets.
So all you really need is a fleet more powerful than any of their individual fleets. For extra giggles, you wait until the federation fleet belongs to weakest member.

Again, by the time federations are possible, this is a moot point anyway - by that time you'll either be dead, boxed in or snowballing. While you'll of course never beat all fleets together the problem is that in the early game the enemy fleet is always larger than yours and you'll have to use spaceports to win battles, which does not work well if you're assaulted by multiple AIs.

A federation of 4 empires with a fleet of 15k each, if you have one fleet with 25k then you already won.
Beat one fleet, conquer their empire, beat next fleet, conquer a few more planets, hit 100 warscore, war over.

If anything, this glitch allows you to snowball like crazy, since all you need to do is beat the alliance only once and you pretty much sealed their doom within the next few years or decades depending on how many members it has.

Again you'll usually never have a bigger fleet on insanity in the early game, unless you manage to gobble someone up, in which case you do not care anymore. The best route is to get somebody into an alliance and let them do the heavy lifting or dogpile someone they are already at war with and snatch as many planets as possible. But the OP is right, there are many games where the neighbouring empires sign defensive pacts (despite having different ethics etc.) anyway which forces you to play passively most of the time.

 

[urogard]

Again you'll usually never have a bigger fleet on insanity in the early game

Exactly and because every early game on advanced starts and hard/insane you have to spend 2-3 decades catching up the advantage the AI starts with from day 0, it's irrelevant to discuss how to deal with this in the early game, since the answer is a simple "you don't".

So this thread is only a question of "can you deal with mass defensive pacts/federations after the first 30 years have passed and you're starting the mid-game and how?".
To which my answer is, wait another 1-10 years based on the size of the lowest entity you can swallow up, making sure you have 1-2 defensive pacts yourself to protect you from others declaring war on you while you swallow empires and snowball from there.

Also I believe short of the universe being divided solely between you and a federation that's 4 times your size (3 times on hard, 2 times on insane), you can always come out on top.

 

[DukeLeto42]

The problem is that things spiral out of control way too fast in early game now.
The moment you get a little bit border disputy with anyone in early game, you instantly get rivalled, which leads to you being trapped in a defensive cordon of several empires, unable to break out.

In every game I played in the last months, I was completely unable to conduct war until midgame, since I needed to outgrow two or three empires combined, since they all had defensive pacts with each other. These was not a fanatic purifier run or anything like it, just normal xenophobes. I didn't even get the chance to act agressively before I was pacted in.

Defensive pacts should be based around the thread neighbouring empires pose to you, not just a genreal dislike, which seems to be the current case

• Border disputes emerge when you settle too close to another empire. Get NAPs with other empires and you generally can accrue a little border dispute without problem, but that's often hard as a xenophobe.
• Defensive pacts are based on a number of factors, but "collective rival" is a major plus to defensive pacts. When you're xenophobic, you'll find a lot of rivals and thus a lot of defensive pacts forming.
• However, several defensive pacts will break later in the wake of wars and other empires gaining border disputes. You really just need to wait to attack an enemy who can draw in a manageable number of allies -- I recommend new empires from liberation wars.

 

[Snoipah]

I try to check the civs the civ I dont like has defensive pacts with and try to declare war on the weakest one with the fewest pacts(within reason). Sure the war demands are higher if I declare war on Lil' Timmy and attempt to cede his Big Brother Chad's planets, but it's better than declaring war on Chad and having to fight the entire football team, and Timmy.

However, this feels like a exploit.

 

[Almond_Brown]

I may have mis-read but the OP would like everyone in the "neighborhood" to just "ignore" their nearby "fanatical purifier" Civ and they won't cause any problems. They "promise!". LOL!

 

[DukeLeto42]

I try to check the civs the civ I dont like has defensive pacts with and try to declare war on the weakest one with the fewest pacts(within reason). Sure the war demands are higher if I declare war on Lil' Timmy and attempt to cede his Big Brother Chad's planets, but it's better than declaring war on Chad and having to fight the entire football team, and Timmy.

However, this feels like a exploit.

It's quite similar in EUIV, but the warscore and goal system there requires you to occupy demanded planets, so that makes things a little easier. Smart war declarations are good, but they are sometimes a little comical.

What's perhaps more ludicrous is how federations work. I love racking up little threat at first as an expansionist, then a massive amount of threat as rapidly as possible, so that the tangle of defensive pacts turns into a couple of strong, but manageable, federations and a couple of "Lil' Timmys" suddenly without their defensive pact protectors. Ironically, federations often make their members worse off from a defensive perspective....

I may have mis-read but the OP would like everyone in the "neighborhood" to just "ignore" their nearby "fanatical purifier" Civ and they won't cause any problems. They "promise!". LOL!

Not a fanatic purifier, just a militaristic, expanding xenophobic empire....

 

[grommile]

It's quite similar in EUIV, but the warscore and goal system there requires you to occupy demanded planets,

You haven't played EU4 recently, have you?

It now demands that you occupy one fort with a continuous land connection to the provinces you want or that all of your enemy's forts are occupied.

 

[The Founder]

Just a few years in, everyone around me is already in a bunch of non-aggression agreements.
Slavers and Pacifists have no problem whatsoever to kiss cheeks.
2 Militarists next to each other have no issues whatsoever to spiral into alliance orgasm fiesta, even though in theory they should be itching for a fight...
And so on and on.

The problem is you, oddly enough.

The main thing that forges Defenseve Pacts are Shared Threat and Shared Rivalries. Normally Rivaling is happening in reaction to poor relations (inlcuding you starting the Rivalry). But Fan Puries have poor relations with everyone by default, so shared rivalry is pretty much automatic.

Slavers and Pacifists are not exactly opposing ethics (as various slaving pacifist Prebuild Empires and AI personalities show). At Slavers and Democractic Crusaders, you could say the willingness to do alliances is wierd.

Both defensive pacts and Federation are soft-limited. The number of already existing Pacts acts as a penalty to accepting new ones. Acceptance, not relations (it is a lot harder to get acceptance and the AI fails at gaining it purposefully). You should try that way of playing under suboptimal conditions (not a Fanatic Xenophile+Charismatic).

It feels like If you are unlucky to get at least ONE federation builder neighbor, you are done for - in 20-30 years the whole map around you is in alliance.

Then the Federation Builder should be your primary target. I actually played like in a recent "Commonwealth of Man" palythrough. Exactly because of the danger of a large defensive alliance, the Federation builder was my first target. It kept the enemies nice and divided.
Another militarist is not nearly as scary as a bunch of pacifists (they can stonewall you with sheer industrial might) or a Federation builder.

Especially this hits hard if you rely on waging wars to expand, but any given neighbor next to you has 3 (THREE) defensive pacts minimum, even with empires on the other end of the universe - they don't care, just pact it.

You are a human. You should be fully able to predict if one part of a Defensive Net/Federation it blocked from the larger whole (due to other, local rivalries that your threat has not yet overcome). And if that is the case, they are easy prey.

If they ally with someone that can not reach, that means they do not ally with their neighbours (even if the shared threat and rivalry stacks) thanks to the penalty.
I have seen countless AI Empires fall, because they allied with someone that could not reach (even against other AI's that do not understand that).

 

[DukeLeto42]

You haven't played EU4 recently, have you?

It now demands that you occupy one fort with a continuous land connection to the provinces you want or that all of your enemy's forts are occupied.

Apologies, I wasn't being specific enough: claiming provinces from a junior partner in a war requires you to have occupied that province.

Then the Federation Builder should be your primary target. I actually played like in a recent "Commonwealth of Man" palythrough. Exactly because of the danger of a large defensive alliance, the Federation builder was my first target. It kept the enemies nice and divided.

Nah, as long as they aren't stronger than you, they'll just make themselves and another empire a target by forming a federation. Then you can feed off the federation until they're both dead or keep feeding if new empires join the federation.

 

[Asuzu]

The problem is that things spiral out of control way too fast in early game now.
The moment you get a little bit border disputy with anyone in early game, you instantly get rivalled, which leads to you being trapped in a defensive cordon of several empires, unable to break out.

In every game I played in the last months, I was completely unable to conduct war until midgame, since I needed to outgrow two or three empires combined, since they all had defensive pacts with each other. These was not a fanatic purifier run or anything like it, just normal xenophobes. I didn't even get the chance to act agressively before I was pacted in.

Defensive pacts should be based around the threat neighbouring empires pose to you, not just a general dislike, which seems to be the current case

Yes this is exactly the situation I find myself in so many games lately.
Early game wars? Gone. Impossible, because everyone around has 2-3 defensive pacts, so in turn you need to build up more fleet power and so on and on.

I found a neat little trick when dealing with alliances:
#1 Declare war on one federation member and cede/liberate all their planets so that particular member ceases to exist upon conclusion of the war (plus any other planets the warscore limit allows you to cede/liberate)
#2 Fight war and reach 100% warscore
#3 Conclude war forcing opponent to accept all your demands
#4 Notice how you don't have a truce with any of the remaining members of said federation
#5 Repeat step #1 Ad Infinitum

Unfortunately, this is not exactly the case on discussion. The problem is that early-midgame is gone.
To do what you are describing, we are already in mid-late game, defusing a huge federation.
The question is how to fix getting to this point?

 

[Asuzu]

Again, by the time federations are possible, this is a moot point anyway - by that time you'll either be dead, boxed in or snowballing. While you'll of course never beat all fleets together the problem is that in the early game the enemy fleet is always larger than yours and you'll have to use spaceports to win battles, which does not work well if you're assaulted by multiple AIs.

Again you'll usually never have a bigger fleet on insanity in the early game, unless you manage to gobble someone up, in which case you do not care anymore. The best route is to get somebody into an alliance and let them do the heavy lifting or dogpile someone they are already at war with and snatch as many planets as possible. But the OP is right, there are many games where the neighbouring empires sign defensive pacts (despite having different ethics etc.) anyway which forces you to play passively most of the time.

Yes, that is my gripe exactly.
Early- and mid- game conquests are essentially dead right now, with all the hugs, kisses and.. obscene amount of defensive pacts going on.

I tried mixing advanced civs with normal ones, or just starting with no advanced civs at all - does not seem to matter.
10+ years in - each and every of my neighbors has minimum 1, usually 2-3 defensive pacts around, regardless of ethics differences with whom they make it.

 

[GC13]

Yeah, from what I'm seeing in 1.6 the player is basically always stuck breaking the hugboxes that form around them.

I don't believe that it's really a reaction to the player though, since I very rarely see any empires out on the dance floor without a partner even when I'm not playing a hostile empire. I'm not generating threat, I'm not starting rivalries, but I'm still seeing a lot of defensive pacts and federations forming.

I think it would be desirable if defensive pacts formed less often and wars in Stellaris were more limited; if planets cost more war score to take but gave a lot more when occupied then wars would be shorter, leaving an empire with more of its fleet when it was over since there's no real need to chase it down and kill it. Then, since empires aren't being annexed in single wars, it won't be a key element of their security to have allies to back them up; if they get into a war by themselves, they can absorb that loss then find allies later.

 

[4o1XOHBV6In4]

Yeah, from what I'm seeing in 1.6 the player is basically always stuck breaking the hugboxes that form around them.

I don't believe that it's really a reaction to the player though, since I very rarely see any empires out on the dance floor without a partner even when I'm not playing a hostile empire. I'm not generating threat, I'm not starting rivalries, but I'm still seeing a lot of defensive pacts and federations forming.

I think it would be desirable if defensive pacts formed less often and wars in Stellaris were more limited; if planets cost more war score to take but gave a lot more when occupied then wars would be shorter, leaving an empire with more of its fleet when it was over since there's no real need to chase it down and kill it. Then, since empires aren't being annexed in single wars, it won't be a key element of their security to have allies to back them up; if they get into a war by themselves, they can absorb that loss then find allies later.

I largely agree with your post. Two things however:

You say that when you can't annex an empire in one go the attacker doesn't need to kill the defenders entire fleet and the defender won't need to defend at all cost. But we already have wars like these in the late game (when empires are too big to be annexed in a single war) and I just usually kill their fleet all the same. For one I gain warscore, but it's also way more relaxed to go into repeated conquering mode when there's no threat to your planets / transports / reinforcements / conquered enemy worlds from a large enemy fleet.
So I guess the first question is: Do you spare the AI fleet in 1.6 wars that are just about a couple of planets? And do you expect this to be how the majority of people plays?

And then there's the lategame-chore to victory that I'm sure people will start complaining about again. Basically it goes like this: If you have already won the game but killing off the remaining empires takes forever then people will go to the forums and complain about it, because it's not fun and some people want to have that victory screen. It has happened before, they introduced techs that lower war demand costs and now it's not so much of a problem anymore. Do you agree that reintroducing multiple wars to conquer the average empire will bring up that problem again and do you think it's a problem?

 

[theStormWeaver]

I'm playing a Devouring Swarm right now on Normal in a Large (600 star) galaxy and am having no trouble being the big kid on the block. I have almost 1000 pops and a fleet equal to the rest of the galaxy combined (save the fallen empires). The only war I've lost so far was when I stupidly tried to annex a small empire that had it's independence guaranteed by an FE and had DPs with pretty much the entire galaxy. Even then I lasted 10 years before I peaced out (only lost two planets in the deal).

It is absolutely possible to win as a Devouring Swarm or Fanatic Purifier.