Stellaris wars could learn a bit from EU4

[methegrate]

The two systems measure different things: how well the war is going and how tired the nation is of war.

You can be having a late surge with new tech and a reserve fleet, be half way to the enemy capital and then have the masses pull the plug on your war because they were exhausted 2 years ago.

N.b They don’t measure particularly accurately.

I guess my point is, I don't see the point of the first measure.

How well the war is going should be part of how tired the nation is of war, absolutely, and different empire types should experience it differently. But if that late surge doesn't convince the public to keep fighting, then that's that. Or if it's enough to renew their spirits and get them back in the fight, great. Either way, though, I don't see what adding war score as an separate number adds other than confusion.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

The WWII Russian Front
Vietnam.
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan again.

Tbh, most guerrilla wars ever waged. You just described the literal definition of asymmetric warfare and historically it has proven very effective.

You also described one of the reasons why I don't think war score should be a separate thing. Certainly war exhaustion should account for whether an empire is losing the war on paper, but it's much more than that. It's about morale, losses, what you're fighting for, etc. An empire intervening in a foreign war will have a much lower threshold for war exhaustion than one fighting against vassalization, and there should be no such thing when fighting against extermination.

When one empire has entirely lost its will to fight, that should be the end of it. The elements of war score should be part of what drives up war exhaustion, absolutely. But I just don't see what we gain by having two parallel systems, and it has always struck me as just kind of confusing.

I completely agree with this... war exhaustion also should matter AFTER a war and it also should be different if you are the aggressor or defender in a war. In general someone who defend its territory will have a much higher tolerance for war exhaustion than an aggressor does. At least until the once defending side goes on the offensive and start occupying the aggressors planets, especially if they are claimed. Loosing a claimed system should make you loose exhaustion allot less than loosing an unclaimed system for example.

An ally in a defensive war who start loosing systems to the aggressor should be more likely to withdraw from the fight than the one who have claims on them and gets occupied while their ally can still fight and make a stand. The occupied empires entire government will rule from within the allies territory until the war is settled. But if the Ally start loosing planets they should quickly cave and agree to peace.

There also should be a system for what happens after a war with war exhaustion and how it impacts an empire in general. I could see that war exhaustion did have some effect on planetary stability for example and it certainly should be very dangerous if there are some sort of rebellious tension within an empires borders. But now we are sliding in to more internal politic kind of territory which Stellaris really don't have much of... perhaps in the future.