Conquest vs Integration - Why conquer anything?

[bingbangbong]

Curious what people's thoughts are regarding the benefits of subjugation & integration vs outright conquest?

It feels odd to me that if I want to directly conquer an empire (outside of using ravenous swarms, determined exterminators, etc) I need to claim each system individually for a quite substantial influence cost, which increases for each additional jump away from my existing borders.

With influence maxed out at the start and claiming systems throughout the war, 20 systems conquered would be a pretty decent return by the time peace was agreed.

Alternatively I can demand they become a vassal/protectorate or conform to my governing ethics (then vassalise after) for 0 influence.

Once they're a vassal, there's an influence cost to integrate them, but unlike claims, integration isn't an upfront cost either... but is deducted at 5 influence per month and is substantially less than the total influence cost of claiming each system individually.

Even if I agree to a white peace during a vassalisation war, then I still get to take all of my holdings as a vassal for no influence cost - which begs the question of why I would ever want to use regular claims to conquer a system/empire, when the influence cost is higher, requires payment in advance and typically results in planets with lower stability than when opting for the much less costly path of subjugation & integration.

Does anybody have any thoughts on why conquest would ever be the better/more desirable option?

 

[Sledjer]

You get to immediately have control of the systems, as opposed to making you wait. This means sooner access to pops producing alloys and technology. This lets you snowball, and you can conquer the next empire before you would have integrated the first if you chose to vassalize. Also, you rarely need to conquer 20 systems. Only claim systems that have settled planets, systems that border other empires, and maybe systems where the cost of claiming is less than the cost of building a starbase. If you win, then you'll take those and the rest will go to empty space to be developed at your leisure.

 

[Mordgier]

The real question now is - "Why would you conquer anything at all?" take nihilistic acquisition and use your enemies as population breeding grounds and you'll do far better than integrating them into your empire and having even more undeveloped worlds and even slower pop growth.

Instead you just steal their people over and over and over.

 

[sillyrobot]

It provides access to the spoils decades earlier; one need not worry about something happening and preventing the eventual takeover. Claims cost is usually less than integration cost unless one has purchased the ascension perk especially since you can pick and choose which systems to claim. Wars can be fought piecemeal and end in a status quo with claims being seized. Claims cost can be waived entirely if one can acquire a total war casus belli.

 

[sillyrobot]

The real question now is - "Why would you conquer anything at all?" take nihilistic acquisition and use your enemies as population breeding grounds and you'll do far better than integrating them into your empire and having even more undeveloped worlds and even slower pop growth.

Instead you just steal their people over and over and over.

Best to split the enemy into a bunch of 1 system empires first. Gotta maximize their pop growth!

 

[bingbangbong]

Pfft pop growth... I just buy slaves

 

[sillyrobot]

Pfft pop growth... I just buy slaves

[humor] Pay to win! Stellaris has gone pay to win! [/humor]

 

[bingbangbong]

@sillyrobot I actually forgot I'd purchased the half price perk after I found the first integration painfully slow!

Suppose that makes the immediacy argument make a bit more sense - although i always tended to find conquests harm rather than help my economy, so having a bit of time to prepare and replenish supplies was never bad.

Never been a fan of patchwork claims though. It runs the risk of the ai building within your borders while you're distracted elsewhere!

And Stellaris has always been pay to win haha... All about stacking & spending those energy credits!

 

[Arithmetician]

@sillyrobot

Can't you only make vassals on the sector level, rather than the system level?

Although I believe they compensated for lag too far in the direction of making the midgame frustrating, the current pop system, paired with Shared Destiny being majorly improved on its own merits, means that there is actually a reason (though I'd say an overly strong reason) to use the "Create Vassal" feature, whereas I had seen no reason to Create Vassals since the removal of Core Systems and the addition of Bureaucrats.

If nothing else, managing a feudal-style empire with a network of vassals would make for a different play style than most matches I've played before (and hence potentially interesting). I'd say go Hegemony (since subjects can be members of and benefit from the Hegemony), Diplomatic Corps (to better retain control of the Hegemony on higher difficulties and for the general utility of diplomats, which has been increased by the addition of the Espionage system). If you have a lot of subjects, and want them to do the work of expanding for you, Feudal Society. But of more immediate utility could be Corvee System. It would help you get your new colonies onto the S-curve faster (starting from 10 pops with the upgraded capital), and then relocate conquered pops to more productive core worlds without spending influence, or otherwise build up planets to where they can benefit from increased logistic growth.

Your own growth would eventually stall out, barring mods that reduce or remove the empire-wide penalty, but you could have steadied and measured conquests, breaking down conquered nations into their sectors, and then integrated as needed for infusions of pops.

Still cheesy though, and the system is highly detrimental to genocidals, who can't integrate pops.

 

[sillyrobot]

@sillyrobot I actually forgot I'd purchased the half price perk after I found the first integration painfully slow!

Suppose that makes the immediacy argument make a bit more sense - although i always tended to find conquests harm rather than help my economy, so having a bit of time to prepare and replenish supplies was never bad.

Never been a fan of patchwork claims though. It runs the risk of the ai building within your borders while you're distracted elsewhere!

And Stellaris has always been pay to win haha... All about stacking & spending those energy credits!

2.2+ game, my first set of conquests destroyed my economy because I didn't fully realize how terribad the AI was at constructing colonies and that it survived by virtue of the AI bonus income. I learned small bites relative to my empire size are necessary.

I meant the slave market -- it's in a DLC which I don't own.

 

[Ryika]

Aside from getting what you conquer immediately, claim wars are usually a lot quicker in general.

You make your claims, swoop in, take all the planets and systems connecting them, and once you're done gathering up everything that you claimed, the war's over and the opponent gone. This tends to leave ugly holes in the empire, but if you only care about efficiency, there's hardly a way to finish wars faster - and claims can get very cheap if you stack modifiers. Of course in 3.0 you need the have explored their territory for this to work, but if you have the vision to make claims, it's very efficient.

During a subjugation war on the other hand, you usually have to collect just about every system they have, because the opponent generally won't admit defeat until you've collected every backwarter outpost they have. Yes, this is slightly exaggerated, but still.

 

[sillyrobot]

@sillyrobot

Can't you only make vassals on the sector level, rather than the system level?

Although I believe they compensated for lag too far in the direction of making the midgame frustrating, the current pop system, paired with Shared Destiny being majorly improved on its own merits, means that there is actually a reason (though I'd say an overly strong reason) to use the "Create Vassal" feature, whereas I had seen no reason to Create Vassals since the removal of Core Systems and the addition of Bureaucrats.

If nothing else, managing a feudal-style empire with a network of vassals would make for a different play style than most matches I've played before (and hence potentially interesting). I'd say go Hegemony (since subjects can be members of and benefit from the Hegemony), Diplomatic Corps (to better retain control of the Hegemony on higher difficulties and for the general utility of diplomats, which has been increased by the addition of the Espionage system). If you have a lot of subjects, and want them to do the work of expanding for you, Feudal Society. But of more immediate utility could be Corvee System. It would help you get your new colonies onto the S-curve faster (starting from 10 pops with the upgraded capital), and then relocate conquered pops to more productive core worlds without spending influence, or otherwise build up planets to where they can benefit from increased logistic growth.

Your own growth would eventually stall out, barring mods that reduce or remove the empire-wide penalty, but you could have steadied and measured conquests, breaking down conquered nations into their sectors, and then integrated as needed for infusions of pops.

Still cheesy though, and the system is highly detrimental to genocidals, who can't integrate pops.

You are almost certainly correct. I rarely (never?) make vassals. Integrate a ripe vassal, strip a sector of infrastructure so its pops migrate (or use corvee to manually move them) and release it so it can ripen on the vine.

 

[sillyrobot]

Aside from getting what you conquer immediately, claim wars are usually a lot quicker in general.

You make your claims, swoop in, take all the planets and systems connecting them, and once you're done gathering up everything that you claimed, the war's over and the opponent gone. This tends to leave ugly holes in the empire, but if you only care about efficiency, there's hardly a way to finish wars faster - and claims can get very cheap if you stack modifiers. Of course in 3.0 you need the have explored their territory for this to work, but if you have the vision to make claims, it's very efficient.

During a subjugation war on the other hand, you usually have to collect just about every system they have, because the opponent generally won't admit defeat until you've collected every backwarter outpost they have. Yes, this is slightly exaggerated, but still.

And if they're in defensive treaty or worse federation, it can take forever.

 

[bingbangbong]

@Ryika I found that even in claims wars against big factions late game, if you claim 10 systems out of 100, you'll need to conquer the full 100 to get your 10 once your various allies have staked their claims to random planets that they refuse to send armies to conquer!

Better to just take it all and take everything you captured rather than ceding territory you already took and having to retake it 10 years down the line after it's returned to them.

I only play on grand admiral though, which may be a contributing factor.

@sillyrobot I didn't even realise it was paid dlc! Definitely a p2w feature in that case. I can literally buy 100 pops at a time if there are enough on the market, then resettle them and any other pops wherever I want them to be, which is why pop growth is normally a bit of a non issue for me, except for playing as a hive mind or something like that.

 

[bingbangbong]

@Arithmetician You can have a 1 system sector though I think. Can definitely have a 1 planet sector.

 

[Ryika]

@Ryika I found that even in claims wars against big factions late game, if you claim 10 systems out of 100, you'll need to conquer the full 100 to get your 10 once your various allies have staked their claims to random planets that they refuse to send armies to conquer!

Sounds like those various allies of yours are the problem here. I usually play "solo" when I can, so once I have my claims I can end the war immediately. In a faction war, these things are a lot more complicated of course, and "take it all" may very well be the better options since the war will take a while either way.

 

[bingbangbong]

@Ryika I tend to find that early game it pays to have a federation to prevent the AI coming along and crushing you before you're properly established and to give you a hand with your first few conquests. Then they tend to form a useful buffer in the late game and come with a pretty hefty diplomatic penalty for leaving the federation along with some helpful buffs if the federation level is decent and you stay, so I usually stick around.

Solo early game if you get into a tough first war, or get piled on to it can be pretty impossible to recover, which can be a pain if you're already a few years into the campaign.

 

[Arithmetician]

@bingbangbong

Good point... now that I think of it, you can remove planets from sectors, can't you?

And by chance, in my first attempted 3.0 game, I did have a sector that naturally had only one planet in four jumps.

As for the Slave Market... it is powerful... but in my 3.0 game, it eventually ran dry of pops, likely due to the growth penalties suffered by the AI making it harder for them to produce slaves (or otherwise they hadn't had significant conquests for some time and thus new influxes of slaves... not exactly sure which).

 

[bingbangbong]

@bingbangbong

Good point... now that I think of it, you can remove planets from sectors, can't you?

And by chance, in my first attempted 3.0 game, I did have a sector that naturally had only one planet in four jumps.

I've got about 3x natural 1 planet sectors in my current playthrough, which is why I mentioned it.

I know in the past you could add/remove inhabited/uninhabited systems from sectors via the galaxy map - but not sure if that's still a thing in the current version.

 

[Arithmetician]

True... it's been a long time since I had to think about sectors and vassals so much, so I could likely be wrong about that.