For those of us who have played Paradox games other than Stellaris, how do we feel about the wargoals system vs. the casus belli systems of other games?
As a former CK2 player, I found the Casus Belli system to be a bit clumsy. For all the tyrannical things you could do starting wars of aggression and conquest just because you can wasn't one of them, and conquest was slow. I would have preferred a hybrid casus belli/wargoal system where you could wage war for no reason but suffer an opinion or diplomacy penalty. But I digress, what we have is what we have, and I prefer wargoals.
1. They seem to prevent border gore. I don't know about your Stellaris sessions, but empires seem contiguous. Players and AI empires alike will intuitively conquer adjacent planets and systems, rather than going for a county in the middle of an empire hundreds of miles away just because they had a CB on it.
2. You can wage wars without a justification.
3. Because wargoals have varying costs, you can choose how easy and short a war will be in exchange for fewer spoils. If you just want to win a single battle and mount a couple blockades to win then you can just choose to get a single planet. On the other hand you can vassalize a whole empire in one go, but you're essentially going to have to destroy their entire military and conquer all their planets.
While a CB system can include non-conquest CBs, that's not how it really worked in CK2 wheras Stellaris implements wargoals enables you to do other things than just conquer. Cleansing planets is a great way to weaken enemy empires without having to administer their planets and deal with angry pops and growing Factions, whereas Liberate enables you to create new empires with your ethos. Vassalize allows you to create a permanent military ally but creating a tributary enables you to earn more income. Humiliate in particular is a useful wargoal. Influence is hard to come by, and getting a lump sum of it for taking a planet or two is always nice.
I also like how the peace offer acceptance is affected by the length of the war as well as relative naval size. The relative naval size bonus is a favorite of mine, since winning battles and inflicting casualties not only makes you "win" a war, but makes it more likely for you to win future battles. It's nice that Stellaris acknowledges that people can surrender because they will lose in the foreseeable future and not necessarily because they're losing right at this moment.
As a former CK2 player, I found the Casus Belli system to be a bit clumsy. For all the tyrannical things you could do starting wars of aggression and conquest just because you can wasn't one of them, and conquest was slow. I would have preferred a hybrid casus belli/wargoal system where you could wage war for no reason but suffer an opinion or diplomacy penalty. But I digress, what we have is what we have, and I prefer wargoals.
1. They seem to prevent border gore. I don't know about your Stellaris sessions, but empires seem contiguous. Players and AI empires alike will intuitively conquer adjacent planets and systems, rather than going for a county in the middle of an empire hundreds of miles away just because they had a CB on it.
2. You can wage wars without a justification.
3. Because wargoals have varying costs, you can choose how easy and short a war will be in exchange for fewer spoils. If you just want to win a single battle and mount a couple blockades to win then you can just choose to get a single planet. On the other hand you can vassalize a whole empire in one go, but you're essentially going to have to destroy their entire military and conquer all their planets.
While a CB system can include non-conquest CBs, that's not how it really worked in CK2 wheras Stellaris implements wargoals enables you to do other things than just conquer. Cleansing planets is a great way to weaken enemy empires without having to administer their planets and deal with angry pops and growing Factions, whereas Liberate enables you to create new empires with your ethos. Vassalize allows you to create a permanent military ally but creating a tributary enables you to earn more income. Humiliate in particular is a useful wargoal. Influence is hard to come by, and getting a lump sum of it for taking a planet or two is always nice.
I also like how the peace offer acceptance is affected by the length of the war as well as relative naval size. The relative naval size bonus is a favorite of mine, since winning battles and inflicting casualties not only makes you "win" a war, but makes it more likely for you to win future battles. It's nice that Stellaris acknowledges that people can surrender because they will lose in the foreseeable future and not necessarily because they're losing right at this moment.