Fight players, not mechanics! (vassalization and more)

[YertyL]

What I want to be fighting in a game:

• the AIs fleets and armies

What I am usually actually fighting:

• that first early war that's actually interesting/dangerous
• my unwillingness to micromanage 50+ planets and resulting wish to vassalize/federate
• "Invite to Federation: Acceptance: -11"
  
• "They must be at peace" (to demand vassalization)
  
• "Warscore: Demanding surrender: -100. Vassalize Wargoal: -100. Won every single battle with 0 losses and occupied all inhabitable planets: +75. Would you like a status quo that magically frees the capital?"
• "You must wait until (...) to declare war"
• Boredom

I believe the combination of a very inept AI and its protection from you by magical space lawyers makes for a fundamentally frustrating game, since it limits the player's ability to make decisions and take an active role in the game with little intuitive reason, and draws out conflicts even when they are extremely one-sided from the start. I do however believe this could be remedied with a few relatively simple changes:

• Further increase AI bonuses. Everything being decided in the first war is a bad mechanic, but with scaling difficulty, even grand admiral becomes far too easy later.
• Increase the influence of opinion and relative power in the AIs willingness to join a federation. Having every possible agreement with an inferior AI for 40 years, finishing diplomacy traditions, and then giving them twice the ressources they could ever want gives a modifier of... +29. (+15 for trust, +10 for the ressources, +4 for relative power). Being a decadent hierarchy alone gives -30. If the player is in a position where they can heavily invest in diplomacy, that should be a viable peaceful alternative to conquering. This would IMO be far better than the mostly luck-based mechanic we have now, i.e. better hope your neighbours have the right ethics.
  
• Occupying inhabitable planets, especially the capital, should count more for the warscore, ticking and otherwise. Occupying the capital for more than a year, or more than 2/3 of all inhabitable planets, should be sufficient for vassalization. In my last game I occupied literally every single system and the AI still did not surrender, it's currently quite ridiculous. At the very least "status quo" for vassalization should not magically return the capital -- and please let me vassalize a player at war.

 

[Jazzbanana]

I feel your bitterness friend. The whole opinion and acceptance weight modifiers seems to be a tool against players instead of one that helps them. Like you said, even with every system conquered and every fleet vanquished, AI acceptance sits at -N and cannot possibly go up. What fuckery is this? At that point of the war, it is I who decide what will happen of your empire, not you.
And yes, let me scumbag my way to the top if I wanna play as an opportunist. Remove war limitations. Let me liberate/ideologic war with Unrestricted War policy. Let me attack my allies, and let me try to vassallize someone mid-war. And then punish me with diplomatic modifiers and galaxy hostility for being an asshole, instead of physically removing the options.
Besides, balance this, balance that and I see the reason of the white truce. But it should be tied to a better system of afterwar negotiations, possibly varying in time and arrangements. And purifiers, devourers and all forms of exterminators should not be affected by truces. I'm no dev, I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it is my opinion that a game balance based on this kind of restrictions is artificial and frustrating.

 

[The Boz]

Magical omnipotent space lawyers FTW.