I'm very confused with crisis declaration mechanics

[sarenium]

I've got several weird interactions in my game.

A War in Heaven started, with everyone in the galaxy being in the galactic community, and i'm the custodian. I didn't become a subject of an awakened empire and stayed out of league of non-aligned powers, hoping to declare on awakened empires one at a time. Everyone else either became a subject or joined the league. I declared on the first awakened empire.

Then, one of the league members reached final crisis level, exiting the league and automatically enabling crisis resolution in the community. But the league didn't enter the war with them, despite everyone being in the community. Only me and awakened empire subjects were in the crisis war. Instead, a final level crisis empire immediately got a federation association status with the league of non-aligned powers.

I decided to end the War in Heaven and see how it goes. Well, after both awakened empires were down their subjects exited the crisis war. A crisis declaration was active in the community, but i was the only member in the war.

I repealed crisis declaration, ending the war. Then established galactic imperium to disband league of non-aligned powers, and pushed crisis declaration back again.

But in the meantime, one of imperium members got a defensive pact(!) with the crisis empire. And in the crisis war they joined against the imperium, while being a part of it. When the crisis empire was destroyed, crisis war continued against the imperium member. Except at that point it's impossible to repeal the resolution, since target empire no longer exists.

I'm attaching a save file with a crisis war against an imperium member. I really hope that some of these interactions are not intended.

 

[Ryika]

That's par for the course for those special lategame wars to be honest. They're a mess of special rules and exceptions that are stacked on top of each other, and produce all kinds of weird interactions.

 

[GloatingSwine]

IIRC if someone is declared the crisis by the galactic community anyone who doesn't go to war with them is in breach of galactic law and will suffer whatever sanctions are applied.

 

[DraLion]

IMHO I dont really like the crisis declaration by the counsel.
My last DE run I was completely peaceful while expanding, then I declare my first big war (did invade 2 or 3 pre-space races for their planet prior to this) and am greated with a message that the galactic counsel declared me a crisis and must be terminated, had no "become the crisis" ascention perk and at this time I still only had Corvettes and Destroyers and cruiser tech barely on the way.
While I held out for a while having only 2 choke points... The arrival of a sky dragon from the new Origine was what killed me in the end.

Not salty, losing is fun... but it made me wonder why I was declared a crisis so soon? Mostly so I can avoid it longer.

 

[Anarcomu]

why I was declared a crisis so soon

I'm not entirely sure of this, but I believe that if you manage to wipe out someone, most likely using a TW CB, you get to immediately be declared a crisis.
It actually killed me in one of my game, being forcefully brought into a war against a neighbouring FP whilst playing a mostly pacifist game... (it were declared crisis the exact same time it destroyed another nation AKAIK).

 

[GloatingSwine]

Anyone suitably mean and unpopular can be declared a crisis, they don't have to be taking the crisis ascension perk.

Though unless they're an outright genocider the support for doing it is usually really weak.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

It's probably worth posting this to the bug report section: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/stellaris-bug-reports.941/

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

I REALLY love the Crisis Declaration resolution. The Galactic Community felt toothless before it was added, now it finally feels like the "Space UN" it should be. Oh, and it also makes Espionage powerful via the Extort Favors operation.

It definitely causes some weird interactions though. This is a problem with the war system in general, the way everything has to be split into distinct wars containing multiple empires each, instead of a simple peer-to-peer web of individual war/peace interactions like how Civilization games do it.