Demilitarization wargoal

[scaper12123]

Pacifists often have to forcefully liberate opposing empires into chunks in order to reduce the likelihood of war. I feel it would be more efficient if there was a way to reduce the power of war other empires could manage. After all, that's what a pacifist is hoping to do with the galaxy.

That being the case, there should be a war goal focused around demilitarizing a country. This war goal would be available to any nation (except maybe militarists due to their war buffs), but should be cheaper for pacifists to take. It should also be an option for pacifists even if they have defensive war policy (since demilitarizing a nation could largely be considered a defensive operation). When taken against a defeated empire, said demilitarized empire would experience a heavily reduced fleet capacity (maybe 25%), reduced weapon attack strength, firing speed, and army damage (like by 15%), and reduced army and navy build time (by maybe 20%).

The reason why I suggest so many effects is because any of these effects on their own would do little to reduce an empire's military capabilities and so they must be put together to make this war goal useful. This would obviously have to be expensive due to the extent of the effects. I would even go so far as to consider the idea of making the defeated nation a subject empire similar to a tributary (only swapping resource contribution for reduced military ability). As a consequence of their demilitarization, the victorious nation would be irrevocably forced to guarantee the independence of the demilitarized nation for at least 10 years, or permanently if we are to consider demilitarized nations as subjects.

The benefits to this are obvious: preventing nations from making war is something that makes a pacifist happy, especially when the wars aren't against themselves. But there are other benefits too: demilitarization will create grounds for pacifism in the galaxy and will likely cause the demilitarized nations to drift towards pacifism as well.

 

[Hail Blorg]

I'd say not make armies/ships weaker but the other stuff about ship capacity decreased sounds good. The one thing I don't like about this is that some empire might add this wargoal alongside a cede planet thing, so that when the treaty is over, they cannot build ships in time to resist the next invasion.

 

[DukeLeto42]

I'd say not make armies/ships weaker but the other stuff about ship capacity decreased sounds good. The one thing I don't like about this is that some empire might add this wargoal alongside a cede planet thing, so that when the treaty is over, they cannot build ships in time to resist the next invasion.

Perhaps demilitarization should create a different form of enforced truce, where you cannot attack a nation that you have a demilitarization condition with. The demilitarization would be permanent for the normal truce length, then becomes an agreement that can be canceled like any other, giving a relations hit and a short truce.

Alternatively, you could build that into a system of war economy, with tech level (much like ck2's tech limits to crown authority) enabling you to boost fleet capacity, reduce build time, and reduce upkeep costs, perhaps at a small unrest cost for each level, so a fully militarized society would have unrest issues they would need that military capacity to prevent from becoming rebellions (by stationing armies on all worlds, for instance). That way, instead of making the wargoal something that establishes an external status effect, it simply impacts one of the political sliders within the empire. Assuming the slider has, say, 5 notches, knocking it down two would keep a militarist from continuing a military buildup that you managed to forestall, and forcing them to wait to steadily remilitarize, but would not keep them from continuing to be competitive, as the disarmament would positively impact other aspects of their empire.