Warscore seems to have gotten a lot worse

[Diezy]

The Wargoal doesn't work at all. It should be ticking warscore when all objectives are held by one side or the other, which it currently doesn't do.

Also if two empires have separate declarations of war over the same claim, they should be hostile towards each other while in contested territory. Or if they got non-agression, to work together and both get ticking warscore so long both occupied at least something and it's all occupied.

(stalemate protection, so that we're not stuck with both Empires having partial control from separate declarations of war)

 

[Gyrvendal]

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

I am pretty sure target planets are already weighed . If they are not then it is a bug. The simple solution is to adopt the systems from CK2 and EU4 where you have ticking warscore that increases over time. In EU4 also if you take over the entire territory of your primary target, you always get 100% garanteed warscore after a few years, regardless of their allies.
Porting these simple solutions over to Stellaris is the answer IMO.

 

[Northernwwater]

What bothers me is that you get these big RED Xs with no tool tip telling you in a meaningful way why there is a big RED X.

 

[Almond_Brown]

What bothers me is that you get these big RED Xs with no tool tip telling you in a meaningful way why there is a big RED X.

Closed Borders every time. That is all. Check the Empire screen for the race your clicking on to get the X.

 

[Northernwwater]

Closed Borders every time. That is all. Check the Empire screen for the race your clicking on to get the X.

There is more to it. My federation members will not join a war (Big red X) and I know for a fact there are full open borders from them to the target.

 

[GuildenSpur]

Yesterday, I've been a bit frustrated by the warscore. First of all during a war, when I nearly got the needed score, I get the message that a vassal has entered the war, decreasing my warscore. Great, more tedium to deal with as if the juggling with troop transport to avoid being destroyed isn't enough.
What always annoyed me from the start is this. It's formally set in stone for each empire to set targets for the upcoming war.
For instance, if i can't choose more than 4 planets, why must I conquer more than double the amount of planets?
That really doesn't make any sense and only prolongs the battle with no added fun. Why set targets if they aren't respected?
It's like changing the rules of a game whilst playing the game to avoid losing.
For me, it would be a lot more logical if the targets were respected: x planets = x planets
Is there any way to mod this behavior or any mods doing just that?

 

[Milten]

I think wargoals in general need a rework. If I want to munch entire empire in one bite - let me. I'm Militaristic Xenophobe for Blorg's sake, why would I care what other empires think? Punish me all you want, raise my infamy, awake a few FEs, make Galactic UN to send me a note of protest if you are that hardcore, but don't tie my appendages behind my back.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

This is a very concise and very accurate assessment of the state of war in the game right now. Thank you for putting it in clearer English than I can manage at the moment!

Indeed. Stellaris either needs to at bare minimum, pick whether it wants many little wars (ala CK2) or few big wars (ala EUIV), instead of the terrible combination of the worst of both. If it wants the former, it needs to make the wars much faster (and/or blitzable) like CK2, where once you;ve occupied the "duchy" (i.e. the 2-3 worlds you're allowed to swipe), you get your 90-100%, bang done. If it wants to do the big wars, it needs to be like EUIV with flexible war goals and adjusting the warscore so you can gobble up whole small-to-mid sized nations or do all sorts of fun stuff.

I think part of the problem seems to be PDX are implementing all the anti-blobbing features they've been steadily adding to CK2 and EUIV, except at the moment, Stellaris doesn't have anything LIKE the depth of those games granted by the numerous expansions to leven that.

At the moment, it's an absolute archeyptal 4X, not a grand strat and it needs, as Mezmorki says, to pick which one it wants to be. If it want to be a 4X, it needs to admit it and seriously polish up the combat, because it needs to be able to compete with the gold standard that is SotS (and it ain't there yet). If it wants to be a grand strat, it needs to pick which grand start style, make diplomacy MUCH more engaging* and, for a kick-off, totally change the starting boundary conditions from practically-but-not-quite archetypical 4X to something closer to a randomly generated "New World" EU style. It's part-way there, but not part-way enough and needs to be so give us a decent Space Politics, especially since it doesn't (like Ck2 or EUIV) have an "end-point." (Come to that victory conditions would need to be SERIOUSLY changed, maybe even adding "beat end-game crisis" as one of them. I know I just gave up after that on my last game, since conquering the rest of the galaxy (and the 90-odd worlds I needed to do) was just going to be tens of hours of tedium of taking 3-4 worlds at a time, with the outcome never in doubt.)



If it wants to do both, which is a much harder job, it needs to pick which one it wants to do first, because it also is very unlikely to be able to work both ends satisfactorally at once.



*Seriously, I find the current diplomacy system utterly indistingiushable from any other 4X or Civ diplomacy.

 

[Azhcristokos]

*Seriously, I find the current diplomacy system utterly indistingiushable from any other 4X or Civ diplomacy.

Well said. I would argue that diplomacy in Stellaris is worse than other 4Xs, actually. The biggest problem, as many have pointed out, is that the paths open to the player in terms of diplomatic relations with his or her neighbors are set from the beginning of the game. Rarely can you make enemies into your friends; you can either solidify relations with empires that have similar ethics or are fanatic xenophiles, or you can worsen relations with anyone through conquest, closed borders, and insults. In my current game as a Fanatic Spiritualist/Collectivist empire, the nearby federation builders liked me simply because of their AI personality and the neighboring materialist empires hated me from the get-go. Once I lifted five systems off a weak empire, everyone turned against me and will remain so forever. Ironically, the empires that are most likely to go from hatred to positive relations are fallen empires that make demands or requests that you listen to. Despite being an empire built on slavery, the bordering xenophile FE loves me because I have done everything they ask.

Even Sins did a far better job of this because, through missions and envoys, you could change other factions' opinions of you and reaped huge rewards through coordinated attacks and pacts. Galactic Civilizations allowed you to manipulate other empires with trade and gifts of technology and money. In Civ, listening to AI requests, trade, and spreading your religion could make neutral or unfriendly empires change their minds about you so you could use their votes in the UN to enforce your will. In addition, each of these games offered ways to boost your diplomatic power and appeal. Stellaris lacks the means to conduct effective diplomacy and frankly does not offer many incentives to bother with it in the first place.

It is indeed a bit of a disappointment because, despite my seeming praise of these well-known 4Xs, their diplomacy systems are very weak in comparison to what we have seen in other Paradox titles, especially Victoria 2 and EU IV. It's unfortunate that the team seemed to take most of its cues from traditional 4Xs rather than PDX grand strategy games; it is even more unfortunate that they did not succeed in doing a good job of emulating the 4Xs from which they drew inspiration.

Still, in my current game, I am not sure I would have ever had a use for diplomacy. I am determined to stomp these AI nations into the ground, assimilate their people, and build the mightiest fleet ever so I can wipe these fallen empires out before they go crazy. Only the Fanatical Befrienders shall be spared...

Edit: The AI personalities, I think, are a good step because there is a lot of them. Now the key is making each one play in a more distinct, noticeable way so that they don't all seem so...similar.

 

[Wizzington]

I honestly agree with the general critique of the warscore system. I intend to rework it to scale wargoals to alliance size and take a long, hard look at war in general in the long term.

 

[ashbery76]

Want we don't want a quick snowball dominations like what happens in all space 4x games.We needed casus belli back.

 

[Bholder]

Now that the AI actually accepts sub 100% victories, wars (at least federation wars you didn't start) became more bearable.

 

[GuildenSpur]

i understand people wanting a solution for doomstacks etc. but a bigger industry usually means a bigger army and most of the time bigger beats smaller.
I'm not bother by that. If you want to play small, make sure you have good friends. If you don't, make sure you can handle the problems yourself.

 

[Darustet]

i understand people wanting a solution for doomstacks etc. but a bigger industry usually means a bigger army and most of the time bigger beats smaller.
I'm not bother by that. If you want to play small, make sure you have good friends. If you don't, make sure you can handle the problems yourself.

A big bad empire beating the weaker one isn't really a problem but the lack of rich trade nations that could buy armies of mercenaries when needed, does make conflicts a bit repetitive. Imagine paying a third party for warships and fleet capasity or lending those to your ally. This is not medieval Europe, but space pirates and other renegade groups already in the game have to come from somewhere, and are relatively powerful even on their own.
Wouldn't solve the doomstack issue but besides making proxy wars a valid option, would give a well prepared player a way to come back from the now crippling first loss.

 

[GuildenSpur]

True, good remarks. The "getting help" from your allies part could be implemented stronger.

 

[Barbariccia]

I honestly agree with the general critique of the warscore system. I intend to rework it to scale wargoals to alliance size and take a long, hard look at war in general in the long term.

Would it be possible to get more scopes available in the warscore_cost section? I tried to add that kind of scaling value to my ticking warscore mod, but there's no way to tell if the target empire or planet is the main defender in the war or someone who is pulled in from a defensive pact or guarantee.

 

[bjhendricks]

Another not-unrelated issue I've noticed in my plays is that wiping out bordering enemy frontier outposts can give you instant territory gains regardless of warscore. It's especially heavy-handed when you get a colonizible world or two by doing so...

 

[UberWaffe]

Well said. I would argue that diplomacy in Stellaris is worse than other 4Xs, actually. The biggest problem, as many have pointed out, is that the paths open to the player in terms of diplomatic relations with his or her neighbors are set from the beginning of the game.

Shameless plug to suggestion regarding diplomacy and culture (i.e. tie diplomacy into pop happiness).
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/culture-and-diplomatic-consequences.987273/

Partly because an issue I've had with a lot of diplomacy in a lot of similar games is that it gives some sort of opinion modifier that only impacts AIs at all.
A human player doesn't give a hoot about a green +50 or red -27.
Also I like the idea of pops actually being involved in politics in some fashion, and your own empire rebelling because you suddenly decide to backstab a long standing ally. (Without running proper propaganda campaigns beforehand.)

 

[Darustet]

Another not-unrelated issue I've noticed in my plays is that wiping out bordering enemy frontier outposts can give you instant territory gains regardless of warscore. It's especially heavy-handed when you get a colonizible world or two by doing so...

I like it myself. Outposts are a powerful tool when securing resources and planets in the early game. I've often used them to denide neighbouring empires from colonizing planets useful for them, even if the said planets are worthless to me. I've waged wars just to replace an enemy's outpost with mine and played empire builds centered around using outposts, which is especially important when playing tall.

 

[Insane Commander]

The warscore system could definitely use some improvement. I'm playing my first game and I just defeated an awakened Fallen Empire without fighting any of their big fleets.

I had 270k in total and they had almost 700k. So I divided my fleet in 16 groups and attacked several systems at the same time. I wanted to occupy some planets to get some score, regroup my fleet and try to fight theirs one at a time. By even before my troops transports arrived, the warscore was already 76%, because each blockaded planet gave me 7.5. The war was over in less than 4 months and I got 17 planets, including their "core" and the ones they took from another fe (the preserve).

I suppose that they surrendered because I threatened to kill everyone there, but those planets were all in systems that the AI had conquered and they are xenophobes while I am xenophile. Maybe if it was the opposite, it'd make sense, a xenophile empire losing to prevent mass murder.



One thing I find immersion breaking is that I can gather all of my ships and send them to the other side of the galaxy and nobody will take advantage of that. I suggest having pirates attacking, revolts or even hostile neighbors declaring war when a player gathers most of their fleets and it's sufficiently far from part of their empires, even if it's still inside. Unless you leave some ships there.

Anyway, I'm loving the game despite anything that needs improvement.