Warscore seems to have gotten a lot worse

[Ad Victoriam]

Now that all the small pleb nations spam out tons of defensive pacts its extremely annoying to expand in a galaxy with a lot of races.

I picked 35 races in the 1k star galaxy and pretty much every pleb has 3 or more other plebs going to war for them 60 years in.

This would not be an issue if the Warscore was not calculated in such an absurdly stupid way. When I declare war, I can only claim some 3-4 planets in my war goals at 100 warscore, however when fighting some coalition of xeno scum i have to take all the planets of 2 out of the 4 empires i fight against just to claim the 3-4 planets and give the others back, while defending against 3-4k fleets constantly sniping my stations (the station buff seems to have done very little to prevent this).

Basically at this point im bogged down in 30+ year wars just to take a couple of planets, which is absurd. Warscore should either be gained a lot more quickly or I should be able to claim some 2-3 extra planets for each empire in the opposition.

I'd say that it's really not viable to play an expansionist empire in a galaxy with more than 20-25 empires right now, since you get surrounded very quickly and pushing out through warfare is INSANELY slow thanks to everyone being in defensive pacts with each other.

 

[Shoobs]

I would agree that there just is not much planets changing hands at this time.

 

[deLioncourt]

Wiz will probably make a "Warscore Discussion Thread", considering how many people find it to be terrible at the moment, myself included.

 

[Jarhead1833]

The other day, I declared war against a neighboring empire that consisted of 3 planets. This empire was under the protection or had guaranteed independence from another empire across the map. I quickly and easily occupied the 3 planets, but my warscore was so low (even though I had destroyed their entire navy, all of their stations, and had armies on every planet) that I could not get them to cede even 1 planet. The empire that was guaranteeing their independence was "pathetic" and could not have beaten me. However, they were so far across the map that I couldn't get to them (lots of closed borders between us). I eventually had to just give white peace without taking anything, which was frustrating.

This made me think that there could be a much better mechanic to taking planets. Maybe instead of warscore settling everything outright, why not set up a new classification for planets? Something along the lines of "owned" "occupied" and "contested." I imagine it would work something like this:

Owned planets work like all planets do currently, these are yours through colonization or successful conquest. No change from current format.

Occupied planets are planets that you do not own, but that you have successfully taken with invading armies. You would have some ownership benefits of these planets. You would be able to obtain the resources produced by the planet with a penalty depending on the ethics of the planet's population ethics compared to your own and you would have to deal with factions from the native pops, resistance, etc (it won't be a great planet to own in this state). You would be able to build spaceports and military stations. If your ethics permit, you could even purge the native pops. You could also migrate your pops to any open tiles. You would gain full ownership of the planet by either spending influence over time (just like with integration, it would not be quick or cheap) or if the other empire willingly cedes the planet. Until owned by you, the planet is considered "contested" by the original owner and their allies.

Contested planets are planets that were owned by you but are now occupied by another empire. You no longer gain the resources produced by the planet but you still have rights to it. You can of course actively try to defeat the occupying armies, which would instantly return the planet to owned status. You can also spend influence of your own to actively support the resistance. This resistance could give penalties to the occupying armies, could do damage to the occupying spaceport or military stations, or could increase the amount of influence the occupier would need to spend to claim the planet outright.

Not sure if this would work or not. I do think it would give us options when dealing with situations like the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post. I don't think that changing a planet from occupied to owned should be able to happen quickly or at low cost. Anyway, just my random thoughts....

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

This made me think that there could be a much better mechanic to taking planets. Maybe instead of warscore settling everything outright, why not set up a new classification for planets? Something along the lines of "owned" "occupied" and "contested." I imagine it would work something like this:

Sorry, but as I see it, that proposition is horrible. It will be possible to eliminate every another empire with 1 war and - moreover - building spaceports on occupied planets in this shape you describe will allow to snowball game with giant fleet capacities just becouse of persistent ocupation of the planets. The purpose of warscore was from the start preventing snowballing. In games when going wide is more powerfull than going high (Galactic Civilisations 2 or Stellaris f.e.) one major win from a start will guarantee win in all game. If we want replace current system, we need viable alternative to that, and your system is not fitting IMO. And I know what you say "yeah, but the planetary resistance will make it not an option". Really? For now issues like lower income is not a big problem at all. Take the big ammoint of planets and you have enouth of money anyway. The more starports will balance that loses with a giant fleets capacities that will alow you to get stronger with every taken planet.

Planets beeing cheaper in WS is a partial sollution, but it must be balance carefully. The problem? Cheaper the planet, less warscore you will get for taking it, so the wars with big empires will be longer.

 

[EvilTom]

I'm half and half with this.

I think it's not realistic as in real life you could just steamroll across certain countries, but it's a reasonable game mechanic to prevent snowballing and more importantly to prevent the player abusing a poor AI.

I'd prefer to get rid of most diplomatic status. You should be able to violate treaties, borders etc if you want to.
If I'm evil enough I should be able to have a policy which says "ignore close borders". Then I can send science ships into unfriendly territories and those unfriendly people can freely destroy it. This will of course have bad effects on already terrible relations.
This will lead to some very interesting areas such as first contact wars (which are non existent really), cold wars and states of constant war/conflict. I think endless space did these kind of diplomacies well, including a race that was always at war.

 

[Jarhead1833]

Sorry, but as I see it, that proposition is horrible. It will be possible to eliminate every another empire with 1 war and - moreover - building spaceports on occupied planets in this shape you describe will allow to snowball game with giant fleet capacities just becouse of persistent ocupation of the planets. The purpose of warscore was from the start preventing snowballing. In games when going wide is more powerfull than going high (Galactic Civilisations 2 or Stellaris f.e.) one major win from a start will guarantee win in all game. If we want replace current system, we need viable alternative to that, and your system is not fitting IMO. And I know what you say "yeah, but the planetary resistance will make it not an option". Really? For now issues like lower income is not a big problem at all. Take the big ammoint of planets and you have enouth of money anyway. The more starports will balance that loses with a giant fleets capacities that will alow you to get stronger with every taken planet.

Planets beeing cheaper in WS is a partial sollution, but it must be balance carefully. The problem? Cheaper the planet, less warscore you will get for taking it, so the wars with big empires will be longer.

I don't think my suggestion would replace warscore by any means, I was just offering up a possible solution to times when you can't get a planets due to funky warscore mechanics. I don't think that you could use my mentioned solution to steamroll entire empires. First, the occupied planets would count toward your core systems. Secondly, you would not be able to put them in sectors. Third, and what I thought I made clear, is that integrating the planets would take time and influence, just like integrating a vassal. You're talking like several hundred points of influence over 3+ years, taking as much as 5 influence a month. This would make it impossible to abuse, but would give you more options in how to take planets....

 

[EvilTom]

I don't think my suggestion would replace warscore by any means, I was just offering up a possible solution to times when you can't get a planets due to funky warscore mechanics. I don't think that you could use my mentioned solution to steamroll entire empires. First, the occupied planets would count toward your core systems. Secondly, you would not be able to put them in sectors. Third, and what I thought I made clear, is that integrating the planets would take time and influence, just like integrating a vassal. You're talking like several hundred points of influence over 3+ years, taking as much as 5 influence a month. This would make it impossible to abuse, but would give you more options in how to take planets....

There is also the opposite to this. I have seen really powerful empires have to capitulate because their vassals have all been taken over.

Perhaps the solution will be something like the planets that are targets are weighted toward warscore. So if you conquer a planet you get more warscore than vassal's planets

 

[Fallofthepurple]

I would agree that there just is not much planets changing hands at this time.

I've had many intergalactic cold war stalemates with 2-3 blocks just staying there screaming at each other and while that is actually a cool thing it just happens too often.

If anything we should have more empires ganging up on their neighbors (militarists/xenophobes on anyone that is a good target, the rest on the former growing too strong).

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I'd say boost warscore from taking wargoal planets, but build in a reluctance mechanic based on allies (partially from sum total of allied fleets?), and then - here's the critical part - have this reluctance go down over time, or after a period of time. That way, having powerful allies, or even just numerous allies, would initially make a smaller empire reluctant to surrender even if their opponent is able to quickly run up warscore, but if those powerful allies were unable to turn the tide of the war over a long period - say, 3-5 years minimum - the reluctance would go away, leading the small empire to surrender. You'd have to be able to beat the entire coalition for a period of time and couldn't just grab a few planets and peace out in less than a year, but wouldn't have to occupy all your enemies just to take a few planets off one of them.

Alternatively, allow separate peace with different empires in a war - once you white peace all the allies, the small occupied country is left alone, and you'd be at 100% warscore if you had all their planets occupied.

Really, the whole wargoal system needs a bit of a re-work - it's incredibly clumsy compared to EUIV and it makes declaring war a real pain - but a few simple tweaks could make war somewhat less of a grinding tedium, and avoid the "I can't reach their allies and their allies can't reach me" eternal stalemate.

 

[EvilTom]

What if you set out wargoals but could also annex other places you hadn't specified during the initial declaration? This would be really dishonourable and you'd essentially become a pariah state.

It'd be like "we aimed to take over your colony that was close to our borders, but after conquering your homeworld we've decided to keep it."

Most people would then see you as such a threat they would declare war on you or gang up against you.
Adding in ceasefires and the ability to break the terms of a truce would work ok too/

 

[B3ndolf]

some simple solutions:

add ticking warscore for occupying wargoals. add some timer like the 5 year rule in eu4 whereby if you full occupy someone for 5 years you get 100% warscore on them.
either or both of those will solve the problem of allies that cant actually participate in the war or in any way stop you from taking your wargoals stalemating a war.

for the other problem as the op said the price of wargoals should be reduced for every additional empire on the opposing side, its not the most realistic mechanic but the whole warscore mechanic is far more about game balance than realism to start with and at the moment the reward you get for fighting half a dozen enemies in a 20 year long war is no where near commensurate with the effort put in.

there should also be techs which make warscore prices cheaper, the point of the warscore mechanic as others have stated is to prevent snowballing so it should be strictest in the early game and it should relax later in the game as the empires that have grown to dominate the game mop up the galaxy and then square off against each other, by that stage you dont want to be stuck taking a handful of planets at a time, your pushing to the endgame and want to get on with it. this would also self balance to a degree since those that blob heavily early on would be the last to get to this tech since tech gets more expensive the more planets you have.

 

[Mezmorki]

Yeah, I really don't like the balance of warscore right now. It leads to a very stagnant feeling game overall.

Why can't the warscore be tied more directly to the wargoal? If I have a wargoal of ceding 3 planets, and I successfully occupy those planets and defeat most/all of my opponent's military - that should be enough to end the war right there. I've accomplished my goal, right? Why should I have to carry on for another however many years further wrecking havoc to the opposing empire when I've already accomplished what I set out to do and defeated my opponent's primary force.

I also think that the peace period should be more dynamic in length. The length of forced peace should be tied to the size of the war in some way. If I take over 20 planets .... sure, we can have a ten year peace (not that the warscore let's you take over 20 planets anyway). But if I force a peace at a 60% warscore goal or something, or just take over a couple of planets, then the peace period could be shorter.

As others mentioned, I'd also really like to see the diplomatic hard restrictions dropped. I'd like to be able to violate closed borders - but suffer diplomatic repercussions, or give my opponent a warscore bonus if we go to war over it, etc.. I'd like for alliances to be able to change during a war, instead of being locked for decades and resulting in s shitstorm of diplomatic changes when the war ends. I'd like for their to be a way to violate forced peace - but obviously at the cost of diplomacy or population happiness (depending on ethics) or strong anti-war factions quickly rebelling, etc. These sorts of organic counter-pressures are what's needed to make the game more interesting - not hard, arbitrary, restrictions.

 

[Pavane]

Basically at this point im bogged down in 30+ year wars just to take a couple of planets, which is absurd. Warscore should either be gained a lot more quickly or I should be able to claim some 2-3 extra planets for each empire in the opposition.

Funny that you should say that. After the Battle of White Mountain in the European Thirty Years' War the Palatinate was conquered by the Catholic imperial-Spanish troops, only being restored at the end of the war. Warscore simulates that when large alliances are at war the loss of a small portion, or even one of members, will not necessarily force capitulation because they have untouched resources to fall back on. Whether that makes for a fun game or not is moot, but it is realistic that a large alliance will not quit after a couple of setbacks.

 

[draxil]

I think the warscore system needs to be more EU4 and less CK2..
There should be individual warscore against nations and you should be able to pick demands from the full list when negotiating peace with each nation. Perhaps with an exclusion for federations members getting individual peace, but maybe with the possibility of driving people out of federations if you can make them desperate enough.

 

[Connll]

Maybe the Ethics of your government could help manage the war score somewhat. For example, xenophobes could have a reduction fo the cost to clean planets, Collectivists could have a reduction to conquest, Xenophiles a reduction to Stop Atrocity, Individualists to Liberate, and so on.

Also, maybe a repeatable tech that would reduce the costs of warcore by 1 each time it is researched (pretty much like the techs that increase fleet capacity)

 

[KopiG]

Maybe the Ethics of your government could help manage the war score somewhat. For example, xenophobes could have a reduction fo the cost to clean planets, Collectivists could have a reduction to conquest, Xenophiles a reduction to Stop Atrocity, Individualists to Liberate, and so on.

Also, maybe a repeatable tech that would reduce the costs of warcore by 1 each time it is researched (pretty much like the techs that increase fleet capacity)

Uhm, this is in the game already
Militarist and Fanatic Militarist nations have a 0.9 and 0.8 modifier to cede planets already.
Also in the meantime I made a mod which makes you able to cede around 10-15 planets. Its not perfect because it does not scale with the game/your empire but I think in the current form the game would be unplayable.

 

[Wenla]

add ticking warscore for occupying wargoals. add some timer like the 5 year rule in eu4 whereby if you full occupy someone for 5 years you get 100% warscore on them.
either or both of those will solve the problem of allies that cant actually participate in the war or in any way stop you from taking your wargoals stalemating a war.

I support this one.

 

[EvilTom]

Or why not allow us to purge whilst at war (for a high penalty). If we murder all the people then the planet will fall?

I once accidentally fully bombarded a primitive civilization into extinction when I forgot I was attacking them and waiting to invade them. They were cute extremely strong star fish people too.

I was sad as I wanted to enslave them to work in my mines and my main fighting force.

 

[Momento Mori]

Warscore should be based on something (size of military, empire, w/e) not just a flat random number