But how do you deal with an end-game crisis? Because TW is essentially the same.
A humble petition for endgame warscore rebalance in Utopia
- Thread starter Juboboman
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I doubt that the ability to paint the map faster will increase the enjoyment of the game. So you have conqured all the galax then what? Half the fun is how you get there and if you cut that down you cut everything else down.
This does not cut down the 'getting there' part, but the 'win the game after achieving compplete dominance' part.
If you think fighting year-long galaxy-wide wars for 3 planets is 'enjoyable', then you probably didn't play a game of Stellaris to the end. OR like grinding.
First it should be pointed out that the techs that increase border range actually also decrease warscore costs for planets (galactic ambitions and manifest destiny) as does being militarist/fan militarist. Second in my current game (either 400 or 600 stars, 150% habitable planets) I actually saw two different empries owning about a quarter of the galaxy each by 2300 (excluding me, I teched hard instead and only had about an 8th) and I was able to take 10 planets in the first war from one of the empires, and once it shrank and thus warscore per planet went up in the second war I took 7 and a humiliate.
So, once an empire gets big you can take a satisfying number of worlds, it's just a matter of encouraging empires to get big. I strongly suspect that part of it is the AI's unwillingness to colonise such that it has non-contiguous territory (hence my mention of 150% habitable worlds) and inability to strategically place frontier outposts to fix this/beeline some method of colonising worlds types not available to it's starting species. Utopia may do much to fix this due to orbital habitats, but improving the AI in this area would almost certainly help.
The other suggestion I'd have is that if you mouseover warscore (once you've selected a cede planet wargoal) you can see that "planets in empire" reduces warscore cost of taking planets, which is why you want to fight big empires, if instead it was "planets in alliance", ie fighting a big alliance was for warscore costs the same as fighting a big empire, we wouldn't need the AI to be successful to be able to grow at a non-glacial pace in the late game as a conquering empire.
So, once an empire gets big you can take a satisfying number of worlds, it's just a matter of encouraging empires to get big. I strongly suspect that part of it is the AI's unwillingness to colonise such that it has non-contiguous territory (hence my mention of 150% habitable worlds) and inability to strategically place frontier outposts to fix this/beeline some method of colonising worlds types not available to it's starting species. Utopia may do much to fix this due to orbital habitats, but improving the AI in this area would almost certainly help.
The other suggestion I'd have is that if you mouseover warscore (once you've selected a cede planet wargoal) you can see that "planets in empire" reduces warscore cost of taking planets, which is why you want to fight big empires, if instead it was "planets in alliance", ie fighting a big alliance was for warscore costs the same as fighting a big empire, we wouldn't need the AI to be successful to be able to grow at a non-glacial pace in the late game as a conquering empire.
Source for that? Because especially the latter part appears baseless.
If that is truly the case, then it means the point at which 'warscore cost reduction' takes place is way beyond what is normally achieved. I've not yet had a game where I could, EVER, take more then 5 planets. And usually 3-4.
If it takes an increased number of colonizeable worlds, and intentionally letting empires grow to reach immense sizes, just to notice there is actually a mechanism that cuts down warscore cost at some point, those mechanism's values need to be tweaked.
I think this may be related to the way colonizeable planets were cut down in 1.3/1.4 (can't remember which patch changed it to 9 instead of 7 types). If someone's QA completely forgot to check the effects of less avaible planets to warscore cost, that might explain this phenomenon.
Go to the declare war screen, drag a cede planet wargoal over to your side and them mouse over the warscore cost for that wargoal, it'll break down why the warscore is that cost. The two techs are 5% each, militarist is 10%, not sure what fan militarist is as I don't have a fan militarist game open infront of me right now.
I don't have access to the game right now, but I'm certain such a stat would have been mentioned somewhere (i.e. the description of the techs or ethics), like literally ever stat in the game. Even the wiki holds nothing about this.
Are you, by chance, running any mods?
Otherwise I'll verify this in a couple hours, would be a quite intriguing hidden feature.
No mods, it's base game stuff, been there since the start (I happened to notice the mouseover thing quite early on and checked it often when stellaris first came out while I tried to work out why warscores were what they were, I tend to powergame)
More impressed toy manges to wasted years on 3 planet wars. And if you already technically have won the game why keep playing? Probably should re evaluate your strategic choices.
Side note, one of the most fun games i had recently was a f xenophobe run. Plan was to do a purge run ended with me getting my first federation win
Lots of fun diplomatic twists and turns that one was. Probably could have grind my way to a solo win but as you said whats the fun in that. So i decided to just have fun and still got myself a nice little arbitrary win pop up.
I think the best solution would be to couple it with a tradition and/or make it dependent of the size of the empire you took the planet from.
When you lose a war and have to pay reparations, that is usually made dependant on your GDP - the enemy wants it to hurt, but also has to keep in mind that you do need to be able to pay it eventually. Otherwise every war would end with the winner demanding 999 quadrillion tons of gold or the currency equivalent.
So I'd expect smaller nations to only lose one or two planets, as that would already represent a sizeable chunk of their empire. If your empire is consisting of 50 systems and 70 planets, losing one or two isn't really a punishment. You're likely able to colonise several times that or build habitats to make it irrelevant in the same year you lost the war, so the enemy should be able to take 10.
The whole idea of the wargoal system was to make players able to come back from losing one war, but as it stands that isn't really possible in lategame anyways. A lost fleet represents so much mineral income that you'd be hard pressed to replace it in time for round two anyways. (Based on my empire, battleships costing 2 k minerals multiplied up to a navy cap of 200+ while I only produce a surplus of 500, I'd have to nothing but invest in ships and sell credits for minerals to even hope to rebuild my fleet if I lost it in the war, and this is not factoring in lost planets and star ports, building upgrades that need attention and any mining/research stations or new colony ships that also need funding).
Maybe make it a toggle for multiplayer - keep the current system for multiplayer so one player can't wipe another out in one war, but give us the option to make the war score cost dependent on size to allow us to take 3 to 4 planets or 1/10th of the enemies planets (whatever is bigger) when toggled on.
When you lose a war and have to pay reparations, that is usually made dependant on your GDP - the enemy wants it to hurt, but also has to keep in mind that you do need to be able to pay it eventually. Otherwise every war would end with the winner demanding 999 quadrillion tons of gold or the currency equivalent.
So I'd expect smaller nations to only lose one or two planets, as that would already represent a sizeable chunk of their empire. If your empire is consisting of 50 systems and 70 planets, losing one or two isn't really a punishment. You're likely able to colonise several times that or build habitats to make it irrelevant in the same year you lost the war, so the enemy should be able to take 10.
The whole idea of the wargoal system was to make players able to come back from losing one war, but as it stands that isn't really possible in lategame anyways. A lost fleet represents so much mineral income that you'd be hard pressed to replace it in time for round two anyways. (Based on my empire, battleships costing 2 k minerals multiplied up to a navy cap of 200+ while I only produce a surplus of 500, I'd have to nothing but invest in ships and sell credits for minerals to even hope to rebuild my fleet if I lost it in the war, and this is not factoring in lost planets and star ports, building upgrades that need attention and any mining/research stations or new colony ships that also need funding).
Maybe make it a toggle for multiplayer - keep the current system for multiplayer so one player can't wipe another out in one war, but give us the option to make the war score cost dependent on size to allow us to take 3 to 4 planets or 1/10th of the enemies planets (whatever is bigger) when toggled on.
Because achievement to purge all other species (or alternatively, winning the game with the win conditions Paradox set).
And if you go on those conquering sprees, you WILL end up fighting a defensive pact / federation of +-ALL other races in every war.
Which leads to the fact you can still only take 3 planets (because your target is a small empire and thus each planet costs 30+ warscore), but have to occupy half the galaxy to gain the warscore actually necessary to do so. And even with with more fleets then all the enemies combined and 3 squads of space marines that takes it's time.
It's probably the only game I will ever complete in Stellaris, until they fix the issues you and me pointed out, because it's a rather boring and pointless grind, because by all considerations you DO have already won at that point. But Warscore mechanics say no.
An easy solution for late-game would be to add a repeatable society tech that reduces warscore cost. The reduction is done by a percentage based on the score after any other warscore cost reductions have been accounted for. Non-additive percentage reduction because we want there to always be some cost so we want the warscore cost reduction to have diminishing reductions.
For end-game the doomsday weapons mod is amazing, just bombard enemy planets with nanite disassemblers and colonize them. The game turns into a more fast-paced 4x rather than grand strategy which is exactly what you want when things have gotten slow and stale in the galaxy in the very late game. When the promised doomsday weapons DLC arrives something like this will be vanilla I expect.
For end-game the doomsday weapons mod is amazing, just bombard enemy planets with nanite disassemblers and colonize them. The game turns into a more fast-paced 4x rather than grand strategy which is exactly what you want when things have gotten slow and stale in the galaxy in the very late game. When the promised doomsday weapons DLC arrives something like this will be vanilla I expect.
Here is the problem with that analogy.
In WW2 the counter wargoals were:
1-"humiliate" (which in Stellaris results in the death of your leader, at least in my game that's what happened).
2 Western Empires-"liberate western Germany" (which changed its ethics to those who won.
2 Eastern Empires- "Vassalize Eastern Germany"
So the Stellaris warscore system still represents it. Just change the planets to western and eastern Germany.
Amazing, there's indeed a tooltip to the warscore with the modifiers you mentioned, albeit ill-formatted, implying it may be a debug print or something that was forgotten even by the devs.
The very fact the warscore cost modifier is mentioned nowhere in the tech or ethos description makes me thing something went wrong in the developement there
I do think you should be able to demand stuff out of other people who join the war, though. So like, if faction c joins faction b against you, you should have a chance to demand stuff from faction c.
I think a modified version of the EU4 system would be nice. Warscore should be easily researched/reduced so it only matters if you don't achieve a decisive victory. So it would be possible to take over huge swathes of territory after a 100% victory, after all that's the equivalent of unconditional surrender (maybe tweaking that score a bit so wars last longer and are bloodier).
But afterwards, holding the gains would be a real pain, the occupation draining your economy and your political power, while fueling unrest everywhere (rebels in the occupated territories, separatists in other sectors, isolationists and disgruntled former soldiers in your core territories etc.). If you bit off more than you can chew, your whole empire could fracture. And while you're integrating new territories, it would be unwise to attack again, creating a more dynamic and realistic "truce" than the current system. Breaking a truce should be possible if you have the economic power and if you can take the diplomatic fallout.
The severity of the penalities should be directly tied to the empire's ethos and most importantly its own population compared to the population now being incorporated. That way, an OPM struggles with one planet, while a sprawling empire easily takes over smaller opponents and large blocs can reshape the whole galaxy in one war.
A system like that would better show the problems that come with annexing great numbers of foreigners in your empire, while on the same time scaling with your power. Also, it would allow much more dynamic developments then currently, where big blobs rarely fracture. Finally, it would allow more strategies against the big blobs. Wait till they are engulfed in annexation-efforts and then help the rebels while invading etc.
But afterwards, holding the gains would be a real pain, the occupation draining your economy and your political power, while fueling unrest everywhere (rebels in the occupated territories, separatists in other sectors, isolationists and disgruntled former soldiers in your core territories etc.). If you bit off more than you can chew, your whole empire could fracture. And while you're integrating new territories, it would be unwise to attack again, creating a more dynamic and realistic "truce" than the current system. Breaking a truce should be possible if you have the economic power and if you can take the diplomatic fallout.
The severity of the penalities should be directly tied to the empire's ethos and most importantly its own population compared to the population now being incorporated. That way, an OPM struggles with one planet, while a sprawling empire easily takes over smaller opponents and large blocs can reshape the whole galaxy in one war.
A system like that would better show the problems that come with annexing great numbers of foreigners in your empire, while on the same time scaling with your power. Also, it would allow much more dynamic developments then currently, where big blobs rarely fracture. Finally, it would allow more strategies against the big blobs. Wait till they are engulfed in annexation-efforts and then help the rebels while invading etc.
In my personal opinion, the entire warfare system in Stellaris is terrible atm (for such ambitious game).
Once Utopia arrives and significantly upgrades peace gameplay, internal politics and endgame, I'd argue that warfare is in fact the worst part of the game.
1) The issue this thread is devoted to - incredibly painful and derails the entire mid-to-endgame warfare.
2) The inability of AI to rebuilt its fleet back to the combat potential after wipeout - I have no idea why does that happen, idk if it's coded to love slow long term development of fleets or what, but once an imperial fleet is wiped out then this empire turns into complete pushover more often than not.
3) A billion times discussed grand issue of doomstacks and very problematic lack of logistics.
4) Incredibly half baked land warfare; at the very least the concept of army attachments should be made easier to manage, but tbh I'd prefer entire land combat disappear (and planet be captured by fleets after bombardment) rather than be such PITA as it is currently. No emotions or fun or strategy, just microing transports and goddamn attachments.
So current warfare in Stellaris against big regular empires (not fallens, crises, neutrals etc) is basically
- get much tech and resources
- slap them on top of starships (starship designer is probably the only consistently cool part of modern Stellaris war)
- chase AI stack like crazy across half of galaxy
- finally wipe it out, gg challenge's gone
- micro transports and bombardment to slowly and painfully grab little planets from huge helpless empires, for years and decades, when your main source of challenge are enemy mosquito fleets striking at your random research stations
Geez, rest of this game is too great for that slog.
Once Utopia arrives and significantly upgrades peace gameplay, internal politics and endgame, I'd argue that warfare is in fact the worst part of the game.
1) The issue this thread is devoted to - incredibly painful and derails the entire mid-to-endgame warfare.
2) The inability of AI to rebuilt its fleet back to the combat potential after wipeout - I have no idea why does that happen, idk if it's coded to love slow long term development of fleets or what, but once an imperial fleet is wiped out then this empire turns into complete pushover more often than not.
3) A billion times discussed grand issue of doomstacks and very problematic lack of logistics.
4) Incredibly half baked land warfare; at the very least the concept of army attachments should be made easier to manage, but tbh I'd prefer entire land combat disappear (and planet be captured by fleets after bombardment) rather than be such PITA as it is currently. No emotions or fun or strategy, just microing transports and goddamn attachments.
So current warfare in Stellaris against big regular empires (not fallens, crises, neutrals etc) is basically
- get much tech and resources
- slap them on top of starships (starship designer is probably the only consistently cool part of modern Stellaris war)
- chase AI stack like crazy across half of galaxy
- finally wipe it out, gg challenge's gone
- micro transports and bombardment to slowly and painfully grab little planets from huge helpless empires, for years and decades, when your main source of challenge are enemy mosquito fleets striking at your random research stations
Geez, rest of this game is too great for that slog.
My problem is when I DoW nations with allies. In my current game, I want to set up a 2 vs 2 fight, my ally vs the 2 of them in a federation. I can barely get 3 planets, 2 if they are good (we have had them boxed in for years). If I am at war with a big empire, or multiple empires, the per planet warscore needs to be reduced so we do more than shave off 1 planet from each.
I have no problem with "can only annex 2 out of 4 planets" to give smaller empires breathing space, but not "only 2-3 out of several dozen." It will take me too many years of in game time for a minimal return - not worth it. And once all the space has been claimed, war becomes somewhat inevitable or the game stagnates.
Now if those damned Dathnak would stop asking for me to resettle them into hostile space controlled by a rival. Which reminds me, why don't we get a discount on taking planets from rivals? Or do we, and I missed that tooltip?
I have no problem with "can only annex 2 out of 4 planets" to give smaller empires breathing space, but not "only 2-3 out of several dozen." It will take me too many years of in game time for a minimal return - not worth it. And once all the space has been claimed, war becomes somewhat inevitable or the game stagnates.
Now if those damned Dathnak would stop asking for me to resettle them into hostile space controlled by a rival. Which reminds me, why don't we get a discount on taking planets from rivals? Or do we, and I missed that tooltip?