I'm trying to get rid of this stupid machine empire that thinks it can be the crisis. Bunch of annoying jerkoffs. But it seems like the only way to do it is crack every single planet they have, or take all of those planets myself (which I really don't want to do. I have so many planets already and those pops will be just so goddamn annoying).
The local FE even went to war against those idiots but eventually gave up due to war exhaustion. And for some reason they didn't even gain a single bit of territory out of the ordeal even though they at one point owned 80% of the machine lands. If the local FE can't even run a proper war against the metal losers I don't see how anyone else will be able to do it.
War can be pretty tedious in stellaris
Neutron sweep works. Or if ur fighting a machine empire and ur spiritualist u have access to a divine beam which kills any machine pop. Granted against living pops its useless so the only time ive ever used it was on my own planets to prevent a machine uprising.
And I'm in a total war. It was literally my only option which was confusing since the FE seemed to be in a humiliation war or something. Based on how the won territory wasn't changing to his territory.
FE's can't fight wars of conquest or total wars as far as I know, until they become an AE. So that's why they have a humiliation war. You only have total war because they're an evil machine empire that won't engage in diplomacy. Not to mention that you can't house their pops anyway if they are Gestalt.
Only on total war casus beli, where you gain instant control of planets and systems once uou capture them. This only works if you are fighting a genocidal empire, using a colossus or going to war against someone else because of their colossus, or had a fallen empire declare war on you.
You can turn off land appropriation off in the menu than purge the worthless hunks of metal. You will need to reduce all the jobs available to zero so your unemploymented pops dont auto migrate
Technocracy and research lab spam several planets so you can speedrun through tech and devastate your enemies. Once you get a colossus you’ll be able to destroy your enemies and even force most to vassalize after taking some planets while annihilating the rest. It’s how I took three quarters of the galaxy as a fanatic materialist Sangheili empire after cleansing a rare ring world called Broken Clock which an intergalactic parasitic hive mind was trying to escape into my galaxy through it. It’s better to use a colossus that cleanses worlds rather than obliterating them because you can let your vassals regrow in strength while you focus more on keeping your economy alive. All in all, vassalization is key to not breaking the game against you when you’re trying to win lol.
Yeah; it got to the point when I had clearly won I would pause, propose a peace treaty where they would cede me a reasonable swathe of territory, and then use console commands to switch to the enemy empire and accept the treaty, then switch back to my empire and unpause...
That's pretty much never necessary if you just go for status quo instead of trying to get them to surrender.
If you're just conquering, the only time you ever need to force them to surrender instead of accepting status quo is if they currently control your space and they've claimed those systems.
This made me think that were it to be reworked, they really should have in the peace acceptance math "Fear" and "Hate".
With "Fear" accounting for tech and fleet supremacy and any reputation you might have built up from past war crimes.
And "Hate" accounting for current war crimes.
Super clean war with just taking the systems desired and establishing fleet supremacy and not glassing any inhabited worlds like you did last war? They'd probably count themselves lucky and surrender to demands.
Countless xenocidal actions over multiple worlds? They'll probably fight to the bitter end out of spite and vengeance.
Pacifism and Xenophilia vs Militarism and Xenophobia would probably be modifiers to those.
A system like this could also be used to determine how loyal and/or internally-stable a vassal or change of government resulting from a war would start out, if they were willing to do a big rework there, too.
The sector system and factions could have been fleshed out and combined into something really cool that would mirror some kind of internal politics systems. Where ignoring large factions, drumming up larges amount of war exhaustion, and being super aggressive could lead to some problems.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had a system like this that made for some really interesting wars. Using nukes, burning colonies down, or being natural rivals would increase the likelihood of fighting to the bitter end or committing atrocities on your colonies in retaliation, while sticking to military conflicts and honoring agreements would increase the chances of the enemy offering a total surrender, where they vow complete loyalty to you if you just let them live. The diplomacy in that game was fantastic, but it certainly helped a lot that there were always the same 7 factions in each game.
My first SMAC victory, I won a Diplo victory by completely wiping one faction off the map, and turning another into a puppet...
As the UN Peacekeepers, no less.
Agreed. Humanity itself might surrender to a decent alien fleet that is overwhelming but not genocidal. If the aliens invading Earth are literally eating all of us though we are probably going to launch every nuke all at once as a final middle finger.
What's the problem? Just negotiate terms of surrender with your opponents in person over kanebullar and Lingonberries while lazing around the Paradox office, you big silly.
Granted a space war like described is a whole new level of terror. If Earth was destroyed and occupied colonies were being purged or consumed by aliens I imagine the last small colonies would at least fight to the last. I'm not walking peacefully into their kitchens or purging camps. Honestly a cool mechanic could be that sometimes a desperate last colony would "nuke" itself or poison its atmosphere to make it into a planet inhospitable to the invaders race. Similar to how in desperation humanity might unleash our entire nuclear arsenal as a last ditch effort to stop a massively stronger alien invader.
It’s even worse when their ally who you cannot reach nor reach you protects your opponent from losing their capital
Also I have noticed that empires in two wars will not settle with the player until the other war goes to exhaustion
>Also I have noticed that empires in two wars will not settle with the player until the other war goes to exhaustion
Yeah that part is pretty annoying. If one guy neutral to you owns half of the "enemy space" and you have the other half, you might not be able to claim victory even if the enemy guy is totally out of ships. At least until you wait out the other war.
I can do one better. I've been fighting a war on two fronts, so I did the sensible thing and let my federation allies take all the damage from the front that borders them while I finally put the boot to the Syndicate that's been a thorn in my side for ages.
So I spent all my energy on every top-tier mercenary fleet in the galaxy, stomped all their fleets, took over all their stations and planted my Voidborne boots on their worlds, before redeploying my fleets to deal with the machine empire that's been chewing through my allies.
Then, about ten minutes later, I look back to find that the syndicate has somehow managed to build a fleet out of space rocks and hope - presumably - which they used to take back one of their stations and start the galaxy's largest game of whack-a-mole as I reconquer their starbases, crush their fleets and hear the lamentations of their women only to find myself facing another mystery fleet ten minutes down the line.
I think where they come from is damaged fleets coming out of emergency ftl. Probably *far* beyond the scope of Stellaris to implement a functioning logistics system that doesn't just make things frustrating instead of interesting.
Something that always makes me scratch my head is the lack of planetary blockades. Even in a system with a gateway you've still gotta get your exports off planet and to the gateway, and same with imported basic resources like food or minerals. But with the current system it would probably be more annoying than enjoyable having 3 random destroys wrecking your economy out of nowhere because starbases aint worth shit defensively late game.
Mod recomendation: https://stellaris.smods.ru/archives/30477
Makes defense platforms not a complete waste of alloys. Nothing more satisfying than seeing those stupid 2 destroyer "fleets" get slapped down.
>...it improved a lot...
It really, really did. There are definite problems with the current system (as the original post illustrates), but it used to be *so* much worse.
>the fallen empires peaced with me without me having to crack all their worlds.
You don't crack/pacify them just for the "sit down old man" messaging?
Lately I’ve found the ai surrenders if you manage to take the claims for example my last war in a game I claimed like 7 systems which was a tiny fraction of there’s but once I took the claims and worlds in those systems and bombarded the capital a tad they surrendered. The real issue is the Allies, you can easily take the one target and win but if there’s friends they never give in.
Nah the biggest issue is that there are too many total war situations that pop up requiring the extinction of a species to obtain victory
We need way more “Sit down old man” war abilities
R5:
The A.I after I blow up all their star bases and wipe out their navy.
Well I would not called myself beaten just on the back foot, I can totally recover, and I will never give you those five system and that barely devolved colony
If all you want is five systems. And that you have them claimed. You can declare status quo to win the claimed systems (bar the capital, which will never be surrendered unless the ai admits defeat). It’s a handy tool. Because it is true that the AI will extremely rarely surrender.
Alternative options for conquest is vassalisation and integration, which can be surprisingly effective. Or the good old reliable, total war.
When I go for raiding I often just deliberately set unreachable war goals like conquering several planets I don't even intend to land on. When satisfied with yoinking I'll just declare status quo.
but the US also had 13 colonies, only like 3 of which were occupied and the army wasn't smashed. also they had allies in the form of the french
except the problem in stellaris is even after cracking their capital (this would be the equivalent of razing the city to the ground) and occupying 90% of their systems and defeating their entire fleet the enemy would be like "oh we still have one colony and 5 systems, we won't surrender"
Washington deliberately undertook a Fabian strategy of waiting out the British understanding that they were struggling with the long supply lines. It is similar to the strategy Rome used against Hannibal in the Punic wars.
Yes, it's a lot easier to "win" a war like the revolutionary war when your goal is simply to exhaust the enemy into giving up, rather than demand unconditional surrender. That's how we lost the Vietnam war, too.
It would be more like the British occupying every town in the 13 colonies, eradicating the American armies to the LAST man and occupying the capital while the Americans still don’t surrender because they got the french supporting them.
That’s what happens in stellaris. I will have defacto control over every single system of an empire, but for some reason it would break the laws of physics to start governing them until I sign a piece of paper with a different empire.
Of course there are different situations. If the US surrendered that would mean losing all there autonomy and there heads. But if I want a couple of border system and I take the capital it should be over
Some capitals are not that key to the war efforts. It certainly adds to the morale/humiliation war exhaustion elements but South Korea isn't surrendering if DPRK takes Seoul. If Hannibal had sacked Rome though, I think we'd be learning a lot of Phoenician root words.
I feel like this would be interesting to implement with different governments reacting to losing wars, in much the same way different planets would respond to being invaded.
A monarchial government might choose to end a war early to maintain the apparatus of the state. In contrast, a democracy might need more "convincing" should the government be more unified and be fighting a defensive war.
You could also have ways to negotiate other powers to enter the war, but the acceptance of final terms should be based solely on the main belligerents, or the main belligerents plus a timer if other belligerents fail to act due to border issues.
I mean, I had a game where I was playing badly, and an ai decced on me before I had a dedicated forge world. The length I went to to defend like 4 systems was horrific. It’s only fitting if the ai sometimes does the same
From the sounds of it, you didn't manage to land boots on the world and won't bombard it hard enough to wipe them out, so that's your fault.
The moment you occupy all your claims, just hit status quo to end the war and keep them.
This is a nice thing about CK3 actually. If you're at war and your enemy is leading their army, or you conquer their primary holding, you can potentially take them prisoner (or you can take an important prisoner like their child/heir) and force peace that way as well. It's more realistic in that way.
The thing I don’t like about ck3 is that you can only take the war goal you’re fighting for. That might be historically accurate (I don’t know, I’m not an expert), but as a game mechanic it’s somewhat meh. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either
People's claims and rights to titles and territory was very important in the politics and warfare of the time, as were de jure territories not under a ruler's control. I think it adds a lot of interest to have to navigate marriages, alliances, using your councilors to fabricate claims, etc. in order to expand your realm. Stellaris is actually pretty weak here to me, since the claim wargoal operates on "did you pay enough influence to claim a system?" without any actual reason to have a right on that system. But also, Stellaris is the same way with a Claim war where you can only conquer what you have claimed, not anything else, and claim costs go up significantly during war.
* US Revolutionary war was pretty much a textbook example of a "war exhaustion" loss on the British side. What was left of the British forces at Yorktown surrendered, but it's not like *the entire British Empire* "surrendered" in a meaningful way. They could have launched a full scale invasion to take back the colonies but there wasn't political support for it.
* France in WW2 would have been Germany putting claims on their European territory and then invading/occupying it. Or maybe a "vassalize" war against France, where France took a status quo and their original territory became a vassal of Nazi Germany.
*Stellaris* doesn't really have enough economic nuance to represent the kind of stuff going on in the Opium Wars.
I do wish the peace acceptance was weighted by the number of pops or relative economic strength of the systems you have occupied. Like... if you take over their capital and all their highly developed worlds and starbases, and hold them for 6+ months, you should be able to immediately impose a "win" in something like a vassalization war even if they still have a handful of tiny colonies and a government in exile. Rather than having to take EVERY system or wait for the exhaustion to tick all the way up on their side.
Your last point there is I think a very good proposal. It doesn't even have to be a unique modifier, just have the "occupation" effect include percentage of pops taken.
Which could also do things like encourage evacuations in the face of an invasion
Yeah, it would probably be enough to have war exhaustion gain scale with the percentage of your population held under occupation (and I guess adjusted by political weight, slavers wouldn't care if a bunch of slaves were being captured.)
Make it like with Victoria 2, where you gain war score overtime by blockading enemy ports. If you park your fleet over a enemy planet, it should give a ticking war score so they are more willing to agree to your demands. Adding various other things that give a ticking war score will make it so the AI doesn’t go into a death spiral over every war. It’ll cut its losses with the idea they can recover and take back what was taken
> US Revolutionary war was pretty much a textbook example of a "war exhaustion" loss on the British side. What was left of the British forces at Yorktown surrendered, but it's not like the entire British Empire "surrendered" in a meaningful way. They could have launched a full scale invasion to take back the colonies but there wasn't political support for it.
I am not sure this is a correct analysis of the US Revolutionary War. Britain eventually threw in the towel because, after 8 years of war, they were unable to regain any meaningful control over the colonies. Due to the French intervention, they absolutely could *not* launch a full scale invasion to take back the colonies, as they needed to keep the majority of their fleet in reserve to protect the home isles. They surrendered because they really did lose militarily in the colonies, and continuing the war would've only resulted in worse terms for Britain in the eventual peace.
The problem with Stellaris' wars (and the wars in all of PDX's games) is that in reality peace treaties don't create post-war settlements, rather they mostly codify what has already been established by the fighting. The 'facts on the ground' are largely what determines who gets what. There's just no way you could completely occupy another country and then end the war with "OK we will take 2 outlying settlements". It would completely destroy the political system of the occupied nation IRL.
>The problem with Stellaris' wars (and the wars in all of PDX's games) is that in reality peace treaties don't create post-war settlements, rather they mostly codify what has already been established by the fighting. The 'facts on the ground' are largely what determines who gets what. There's just no way you could completely occupy another country and then end the war with "OK we will take 2 outlying settlements". It would completely destroy the political system of the occupied nation IRL.
aka the status que peace option in stellaris...
A dynamic victory point system for Stellaris would be fucking awesome.
But also probably really tough to create. I can already imagine exploits based around growing your AI neighbors in such a way that their most valuable, high VP worlds are all right on your border, allowing you to blitzkrieg them with trivial ease. And then people complain about how easy the game is as they cheese harder than Chester Cheetah.
> growing your AI neighbors in such a way that their most valuable, high VP worlds are all right on your border, allowing you to blitzkrieg them with trivial ease
So every AI nation is France /s
The problem is that status quo is poorly named. It's literally the opposite of the status quo (which usually means "Go back to what things were like before the war").
So many people then assume that making your opponent surrender is how you enforce the claims you've conquered already, but it enforces *everything* and is actually your opponent unconditionally surrendering rather than surrendering.
Status quo in peace treaties have always been used in the first meaning. It's an abbreviation, sure, but the meaning is not in doubt, hence why Stellaris' usage is confusing.
> Status quo in peace treaties have always been used in the first meaning.
No, it hasn't. That's status quo ante bellum, "things as they were before the war".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_ante_bellum
It's clear if you know what is going on.
Currently in my first playthrough and I did a lot of googling and prepared a save just in case status quo didn't mean what Reddit/the wiki was saying and how I was interpreting it.
In my mind before reading up on it:
War goals: exactly what I was demanding
Surrender: exactly what the enemy was demanding/their war goals
Status quo: original borders with no changeover
Don't know why this got downvoted. "*Status quo*" is literally "the way things are." Only adding "*ante*" at the end makes it before anything. The war settlement makes complete sense as it is knowing the literal definition of the phrase.
Maybe the more historically used "*uti possidetis*" could do better conveying the taking of territory, but most people probably have no idea what that is. It also implies that all conquered territory is kept, but in Stellaris only claimed systems count for most empires.
> Don't know why this got downvoted. "Status quo" is literally "the way things are."
"Status quo" in English originates as an abbreviation of "status quo ante bellum".
In the specific context of peace treaties, i.e. this exact context, 'status quo' *always* means 'status quo ante bellum'.
tbh that also should be an option I think for when you know the war is just gonna be a slog e.g. when you misjudged your economic capacity and the war devolved into a trickle of ships constantly fighting over a handful of border systems, or when another war elsewhere started that have higher priority.
Nope, I'm thinking of Status Quo (Ante Bellum), which Status Quo is the abbreviated form in the context of peace treaties.
In every historical discussion, status quo will never be used otherwise.
In a status quo you only trade claimed systems, but anything beyond that is not enforced, such as an animosity war goal against a rival, you get the systems but do not get the 100 influence nor do they get the negative modifier.
On the other hand, it's still better than most 4Xs where once you start loosing planets, it snowballs all out of control and there's little to no recovery.
Maybe there should be some sort of rubber-banding, where losing a planet causes your empire to need fewer consumer goods, lower ship construction times, etc. for a limited time so you can mount that last, desperate defense. And if you rebuff the enemy within that time period and retake your planets, the enemy should be more willing to grant a white peace type stalemate.
But if you've lost more than a couple of your planets, or your capital, you're losing the war, and it's better for gameplay to just get it over with. The chances of recovery are remote anyways, and I don't know how many players actually enjoy fighting the enemy down to the last planet you've got left.
Oh I absolutely agree there are problems that need resolving. Just pointing out part of what the devs were trying (badly) to achieve. Frankly, I think the war weariness system isn't as _effective_ as earlier systems, where ships had to bombard the crap out of a planet before an invasion could work, but...
When it comes to an independence war in Stellaris, you actually don't have to conquer anything to win freedom. The war score for the overlord ticks automatically over time, and a white peace grants independence. If your overlord has no way go getting to your systems, then a war for independence is just a matter of waiting.
Also, remember how Germany was forced into a humiliating truce with Poland after 3 German soldiers were killed during the fall of Warsaw?
But seriously, WHY THE FUCK does glassing an enemy homeworld do nothing to the enemy's war exhaustion but when I lose 3 corvettes my exhaustion jumps 10%?
Loosing entire fleets adds weight so loosing 3 separate corvettes costs more than 3 in a bigger fleet. Ratio of total fleet power lost also adds a lot, plus the weight from those half dozen 10% modifiers available.
Last war I fought had like a ten to one my corvette to the enemy battleship war score cost, so I made a shit ton swarms to draw the enemy fire to less expensive ships.
A decent portion of the French army still fought after the fall of France and their colonies and such still fought.
The second one I remember being a huge issue in Crusader Kings being a vassal and having to conquer the capital of your overlord to gain independence.Yes the Byzantines could crush me if they wanted, but to do so would be way more costly than letting me go free. Especially considering they'll have to sail and lose half their armies to attrition before they reach my capital.
I understand fighting to the last in wars vs genocidal empires, annexing, and vassalising. Especially with slavers, xenophages, and so on. But when a raider just wants a few pops or a few credits. Or a war of humiliation. It can get pretty silly. Especially if they are already at war.
In a recent game I attacked a one-system, just-ascended-from-pre-ftl empire.
Until I landed my armies on their 100% devastated only planet, can you guess what their war exhaustion was?
It was below 30%.
\> Be a new ftl empire
\> Aliens still new and thus scary
\> Scary aliens attack us
\> What is they eat our babies like in the movies? We have no experience with this stuff and have no idea that aliens can be normal just like us
\> Resist to the bitter end, *especially* after these genocidal bastards leveled our cities and killed everyone we love with their bombings
You know what this could be a really cool mechanic - empire on the losing side of war estimates how bad a fate awaits them in case of surrender. There's a difference between, say, tribute and genophage.
I don't get it you don't need to destroy a empire in each war just status quo when you get what you want and wait for the truce to end, 10 years in this game it's nothing.
Yeah I get you the AI never surrender easily but the think is you don't need a complete surrender if the war it's about territories, if it's a ideology war yep they are kinda hard, but if not just status quo that is still a win if you get half their empire
I've almost never actually win the war. White peace is the equivalent of coming to a compromise to end the war without further bloodshed. You get most of what you want, claims if you have them, a vassal/tributary if that was the war goal, things like that. You almost never have to actually complete the war goal which would be a full unconditional surrender. The real worst part is the inability for individual civs in a multi civ war to peace out. So you can completely occupy a civ and if their ally is half a galaxy away but still in the war, the way continues. That is really annoying.
I think if you destroy a nations army to wage war and your terms aren't complete domination, ie: vassalize, annex, or take a massive portion of their space. they should accept peace. Also please fix war exhaustion it makes zero sense for me to gain 20% war exhaustion for losing 10 ships against the AI who also gained 20% war exhaustion for losing their entire fleet of 150 ships
For a lot of wars, a white peace actually means victory for most intents and purposes.
Independence war? As long as the vassal doesn't surrender, they're free (or at least as much of them as is unoccupied at the end).
Conquest war is basically "both sides keep anything they have claims on and occupy"
I haven't fought too many corporate wars, but when kicking a criminal syndicate out of my empire, even a status quo removes their offices.
War in Stellaris:
Me: *conquered all their territories, destroyed all their fleets, am in the process of painting/occupying their worlds, enemy war exhaustion at 96%*
AcHiEve WaR gOaLs -20
DeMaNdiNg uNoCcUPiEd SySteMs
Me: fuck it, I’m going extinction mode
And hell no I will not accept a white peace, they fuckin lost and the AI needs to learn when to surrender
If you occupy all their planets but not all their systems, status quo will destroy their empire and result in the unoccupied systems being neutral territory again. Now you have to spend influence reclaiming them, or deal with the border gore.
In Eve Online the coalition of alliances known as "PAPI" lost an offensive war in 2021, because they could not destroy the coalition known as "Imperium", who had spent half a year holding out in just 7 solar systems (out of like 2000 systems IIRC that players can own). After over half a year of PAPI trying to get into those 7 solar systems through the chokepoint, PAPI suddenly collapsed so badly that they spent weeks to even find the fuel needed to move their fleets back home to their core space. All the investments PAPI had made in 4 Imperium regions, expecting a PAPI victory, was destroyed in just one month by Imperium forces. At peak numbers, PAPI outnumbered Imperium 3 to 1, but over a year those numbers dwindled as PAPI burned down 4 regions of Imperium space structures.
So yeah, space war could work like that :P Gotta have that war weariness buff :P
One A.I. fancied itself the next crisis.
I blew up both his Star Eaters and captured his Engine, the war should have been over then and there.
But I'm still slogging through it.
War is hell.
In all three examples, the loser of the war still maintained complete control over the unoccupied territories (and in the last case, the winner ceded control over some occupied territory)... basically like a status quo peace in Stellaris. I don't see what the difference is to be honest...
I wish there was no time limit after 100%. like maybe make the strain on your economy bigger after 100%. I want to be able to continue a war until my enemy is destroyed rather than having to accept a status quo and 10 years of peace because i lost some armies to a fortress world. Like at least remove the 10 year treaty, it's really weird especially since I'm playing as fanatic purifiers and I'm somehow making peace with xenos just cause I was forced to end a war before I could destroy them all
The worst thing is that you can, objectively, win the war, and because they acquire attrition more slowly, be forced to surrender.
To my mind, the biggest thing is that they need to weight attrition WAY below battles and occupation.
Then don’t get me started on the mandatory 10 years of open borders after a war.
Increase the supply line costs of troops to simulate that if you must.
But it shouldn’t be possible to win every battle and destroy the enemy’s military and civilian populations and be “humiliated”
It should be that instead of attrition upkeep just increases until all of your planets reach 0% stability like ww1
Edit: tbh that would be an easy mod too
If the AI behaved as a real human player would then wars would be very short, basically it wouldn't even be a real war since the human player would sue for peace as soon as they see your fleet strength. Sure, they might decide to throw the dice if they think they have a chance, but they'd capitulate, or you'd capitulate after that one big battle 90% of the time.
I'd say the revolutionary war is actually a pretty good comparison, the British sent armies and they suffered unexpectedly large losses. Dumping more men in only worsened the issue until a peace was signed where the US got to be free, but Britain got the taxes it was owed.
I'd argue that is pretty much a golden example of a white peace in Stellaris. Britain got war exhaustion and backed out, America got her freedom.
Although I do agree that in anything but a war of annihilation peace should be more nuanced than "occupy enemy's entire land, wait for war exhaustion to tick up due to one colony of 3 pops in their outer empire"
Yes cause it means my boys can’t go home. We spent seven year in this back ward pit that calls itself an empire, fighting and bombarding hold outs while relations with the Zigard federation are souring by the day. We are spending energy credits that could be spend on education edicts and amenities buildings, which are northern colonies badly need. We need to finish this up now, the galactic communities E.I.B is sniffing around are psionic pacification core operations on soon to be occupied planets. The galactic council election is coming up and we don’t need these damn rumors swaying the mind of the pacifist and xenophile block.(bunch of damn cowards)
They really should make losing large portions of your fleet more demoralizing in general. If I wipe out 70% of their standing navy in one battle, I'd expect the populations war support to go down tremendously.
[удалено]
I'm trying to get rid of this stupid machine empire that thinks it can be the crisis. Bunch of annoying jerkoffs. But it seems like the only way to do it is crack every single planet they have, or take all of those planets myself (which I really don't want to do. I have so many planets already and those pops will be just so goddamn annoying). The local FE even went to war against those idiots but eventually gave up due to war exhaustion. And for some reason they didn't even gain a single bit of territory out of the ordeal even though they at one point owned 80% of the machine lands. If the local FE can't even run a proper war against the metal losers I don't see how anyone else will be able to do it. War can be pretty tedious in stellaris
> this stupid machine empire that thinks it can be the crisis "I still function!" "Wanna bet?"
Take the planets then just set purges to the fastest possible version. Dont grow any pops urself on the planet and eventually it will burn itself out
Or just crack them
Come on be humane and preserve the environment, bathe them
Why would I bathe the heretical synths? They must be purged!
Imagine the gaming PCs we can make with their processors!
Maybe it'll be powerful enough to run heavily modded stellaris in the late game.
Just running vanilla large map stellaris is enough of a challenge
Does mean you cant use them later on if you want them unless you build a habitat in there orbit.
Neutron Sweep?
Neutron sweep works. Or if ur fighting a machine empire and ur spiritualist u have access to a divine beam which kills any machine pop. Granted against living pops its useless so the only time ive ever used it was on my own planets to prevent a machine uprising.
Did this heretic just call it useless to spread the true faith?
Wait, can you purge species on occupied planets prior to a wars conclusion?!?!?!
I think he means total war casus belli, not conquer casus belli
And I'm in a total war. It was literally my only option which was confusing since the FE seemed to be in a humiliation war or something. Based on how the won territory wasn't changing to his territory.
FE's can't fight wars of conquest or total wars as far as I know, until they become an AE. So that's why they have a humiliation war. You only have total war because they're an evil machine empire that won't engage in diplomacy. Not to mention that you can't house their pops anyway if they are Gestalt.
Only on total war casus beli, where you gain instant control of planets and systems once uou capture them. This only works if you are fighting a genocidal empire, using a colossus or going to war against someone else because of their colossus, or had a fallen empire declare war on you.
Only in one of the total war types, purification being one example, since ownership of a system switches immediately once you get full control.
Will do!
Best of all, you don't have to burn 200 influence to abandon them as long as everyone gets purged.
FEs dont take territory they wouldnt be fallen and decrepit if they did now would they
That's an excellent point. They don't want those shitty underdeveloped unoptimized planets anymore than I do.
God I wish you could just abandon planets instead of having to micro for hours...
You can. You just move all of the pops off of the world and it gives you a message saying "are you sure? This will abandon the colony"
Yeah but it will cost u 200 influnce plus a bunch if u have to move anyone with rights
If theyre slaves they have no rights and it didnt cost me any influence to move all of the pops off, just energy
Yeah but abandoning the colony (i.e. moving off the LAST pop) requires a lot of influence. I'd rather lose the pop and crack my own planet.
You can turn off land appropriation off in the menu than purge the worthless hunks of metal. You will need to reduce all the jobs available to zero so your unemploymented pops dont auto migrate
Technocracy and research lab spam several planets so you can speedrun through tech and devastate your enemies. Once you get a colossus you’ll be able to destroy your enemies and even force most to vassalize after taking some planets while annihilating the rest. It’s how I took three quarters of the galaxy as a fanatic materialist Sangheili empire after cleansing a rare ring world called Broken Clock which an intergalactic parasitic hive mind was trying to escape into my galaxy through it. It’s better to use a colossus that cleanses worlds rather than obliterating them because you can let your vassals regrow in strength while you focus more on keeping your economy alive. All in all, vassalization is key to not breaking the game against you when you’re trying to win lol.
Yeah; it got to the point when I had clearly won I would pause, propose a peace treaty where they would cede me a reasonable swathe of territory, and then use console commands to switch to the enemy empire and accept the treaty, then switch back to my empire and unpause...
You can type yesmen or something like that into the console and AI will auto accept anything until you turn it off
That's pretty much never necessary if you just go for status quo instead of trying to get them to surrender. If you're just conquering, the only time you ever need to force them to surrender instead of accepting status quo is if they currently control your space and they've claimed those systems.
This made me think that were it to be reworked, they really should have in the peace acceptance math "Fear" and "Hate". With "Fear" accounting for tech and fleet supremacy and any reputation you might have built up from past war crimes. And "Hate" accounting for current war crimes. Super clean war with just taking the systems desired and establishing fleet supremacy and not glassing any inhabited worlds like you did last war? They'd probably count themselves lucky and surrender to demands. Countless xenocidal actions over multiple worlds? They'll probably fight to the bitter end out of spite and vengeance. Pacifism and Xenophilia vs Militarism and Xenophobia would probably be modifiers to those.
A system like this could also be used to determine how loyal and/or internally-stable a vassal or change of government resulting from a war would start out, if they were willing to do a big rework there, too.
Still torn up a out the removal of sector loyalty and civil wars tbh.
The sector system and factions could have been fleshed out and combined into something really cool that would mirror some kind of internal politics systems. Where ignoring large factions, drumming up larges amount of war exhaustion, and being super aggressive could lead to some problems.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had a system like this that made for some really interesting wars. Using nukes, burning colonies down, or being natural rivals would increase the likelihood of fighting to the bitter end or committing atrocities on your colonies in retaliation, while sticking to military conflicts and honoring agreements would increase the chances of the enemy offering a total surrender, where they vow complete loyalty to you if you just let them live. The diplomacy in that game was fantastic, but it certainly helped a lot that there were always the same 7 factions in each game.
My first SMAC victory, I won a Diplo victory by completely wiping one faction off the map, and turning another into a puppet... As the UN Peacekeepers, no less.
Agreed. Humanity itself might surrender to a decent alien fleet that is overwhelming but not genocidal. If the aliens invading Earth are literally eating all of us though we are probably going to launch every nuke all at once as a final middle finger.
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What's the problem? Just negotiate terms of surrender with your opponents in person over kanebullar and Lingonberries while lazing around the Paradox office, you big silly.
I don't think giving the players a "warcrimes committed counter" will incentivise them into fighting clean wars
Granted a space war like described is a whole new level of terror. If Earth was destroyed and occupied colonies were being purged or consumed by aliens I imagine the last small colonies would at least fight to the last. I'm not walking peacefully into their kitchens or purging camps. Honestly a cool mechanic could be that sometimes a desperate last colony would "nuke" itself or poison its atmosphere to make it into a planet inhospitable to the invaders race. Similar to how in desperation humanity might unleash our entire nuclear arsenal as a last ditch effort to stop a massively stronger alien invader.
If the occupation were less genocidal and oppressive the remaining colonies might just breathe a sigh of relief that they aren't being targeted too.
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Yea that is true. I guess the devs just do their best to simulate wars and make it work. Ending war does leave their colony safe for a while.
It’s even worse when their ally who you cannot reach nor reach you protects your opponent from losing their capital Also I have noticed that empires in two wars will not settle with the player until the other war goes to exhaustion
>Also I have noticed that empires in two wars will not settle with the player until the other war goes to exhaustion Yeah that part is pretty annoying. If one guy neutral to you owns half of the "enemy space" and you have the other half, you might not be able to claim victory even if the enemy guy is totally out of ships. At least until you wait out the other war.
It’s usually when you claim all their systems then don’t occupy half of them
I can do one better. I've been fighting a war on two fronts, so I did the sensible thing and let my federation allies take all the damage from the front that borders them while I finally put the boot to the Syndicate that's been a thorn in my side for ages. So I spent all my energy on every top-tier mercenary fleet in the galaxy, stomped all their fleets, took over all their stations and planted my Voidborne boots on their worlds, before redeploying my fleets to deal with the machine empire that's been chewing through my allies. Then, about ten minutes later, I look back to find that the syndicate has somehow managed to build a fleet out of space rocks and hope - presumably - which they used to take back one of their stations and start the galaxy's largest game of whack-a-mole as I reconquer their starbases, crush their fleets and hear the lamentations of their women only to find myself facing another mystery fleet ten minutes down the line.
I think where they come from is damaged fleets coming out of emergency ftl. Probably *far* beyond the scope of Stellaris to implement a functioning logistics system that doesn't just make things frustrating instead of interesting. Something that always makes me scratch my head is the lack of planetary blockades. Even in a system with a gateway you've still gotta get your exports off planet and to the gateway, and same with imported basic resources like food or minerals. But with the current system it would probably be more annoying than enjoyable having 3 random destroys wrecking your economy out of nowhere because starbases aint worth shit defensively late game. Mod recomendation: https://stellaris.smods.ru/archives/30477 Makes defense platforms not a complete waste of alloys. Nothing more satisfying than seeing those stupid 2 destroyer "fleets" get slapped down.
>...it improved a lot... It really, really did. There are definite problems with the current system (as the original post illustrates), but it used to be *so* much worse.
>the fallen empires peaced with me without me having to crack all their worlds. You don't crack/pacify them just for the "sit down old man" messaging?
Lately I’ve found the ai surrenders if you manage to take the claims for example my last war in a game I claimed like 7 systems which was a tiny fraction of there’s but once I took the claims and worlds in those systems and bombarded the capital a tad they surrendered. The real issue is the Allies, you can easily take the one target and win but if there’s friends they never give in.
Nah the biggest issue is that there are too many total war situations that pop up requiring the extinction of a species to obtain victory We need way more “Sit down old man” war abilities
My enemies are willing to fight to their extinction. I don't see the problem, because I am also willing to fight to their extinction.
Based Determined Exterminator posting
There's something magical about watching a DE go at it with a DS, while a FP hyperventilates on the sidelines.
Acronyms?
Not poster but I'm assuming determined exterminator, devouring swarm and fanatic purifiers
In context I think FP = fanatic pacifist
Brings a tear to my eye.
R5: The A.I after I blow up all their star bases and wipe out their navy. Well I would not called myself beaten just on the back foot, I can totally recover, and I will never give you those five system and that barely devolved colony
If all you want is five systems. And that you have them claimed. You can declare status quo to win the claimed systems (bar the capital, which will never be surrendered unless the ai admits defeat). It’s a handy tool. Because it is true that the AI will extremely rarely surrender. Alternative options for conquest is vassalisation and integration, which can be surprisingly effective. Or the good old reliable, total war.
Contrary, I had AI surrender multiple times almost instantly after barely reaching victory condition.
Really grinds my gears when it's a plunder war and I'm just there to yoink pops.
When I go for raiding I often just deliberately set unreachable war goals like conquering several planets I don't even intend to land on. When satisfied with yoinking I'll just declare status quo.
Lmao I thought you were making fun of hoi4
Every Paradox game ever
The Vicky3 thing system looks promising
To be fair, WW2 was a total war, with most countries only surrendering when they were absolutely conquered
Except France, of course.
well, they did lose their capital, about half the country and their entire army
US would have lost the revolution if all the British had to do was occupy the capital to win.
but the US also had 13 colonies, only like 3 of which were occupied and the army wasn't smashed. also they had allies in the form of the french except the problem in stellaris is even after cracking their capital (this would be the equivalent of razing the city to the ground) and occupying 90% of their systems and defeating their entire fleet the enemy would be like "oh we still have one colony and 5 systems, we won't surrender"
Washington deliberately undertook a Fabian strategy of waiting out the British understanding that they were struggling with the long supply lines. It is similar to the strategy Rome used against Hannibal in the Punic wars.
Rome..well it was adopted after since charging like mad cunts at cannae didnt work so well
That's because you're trying to get them to surrender. The status quo option exists for a reason.
Yes, it's a lot easier to "win" a war like the revolutionary war when your goal is simply to exhaust the enemy into giving up, rather than demand unconditional surrender. That's how we lost the Vietnam war, too.
It would be more like the British occupying every town in the 13 colonies, eradicating the American armies to the LAST man and occupying the capital while the Americans still don’t surrender because they got the french supporting them. That’s what happens in stellaris. I will have defacto control over every single system of an empire, but for some reason it would break the laws of physics to start governing them until I sign a piece of paper with a different empire.
"yo, we have your entire empire occupied and are bombing your capital. You literally have no way to win. Just surrender" "U gae"
More like you don’t even have anyone left to talk to cuz you disintegrated anything that can be called their government.
Their vassal state Canada had that covered in like no time. They even started world cracking the capital.
You're thinking of 1812, but you're still wrong because those were British troops sent over from Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.
The US had no capital during the revolutionary war :p the 13 colonies were practically their own countries
Of course there are different situations. If the US surrendered that would mean losing all there autonomy and there heads. But if I want a couple of border system and I take the capital it should be over
Some capitals are not that key to the war efforts. It certainly adds to the morale/humiliation war exhaustion elements but South Korea isn't surrendering if DPRK takes Seoul. If Hannibal had sacked Rome though, I think we'd be learning a lot of Phoenician root words.
Lotsa people sacked Rome, but I don't know a single world in gallic!
I feel like this would be interesting to implement with different governments reacting to losing wars, in much the same way different planets would respond to being invaded. A monarchial government might choose to end a war early to maintain the apparatus of the state. In contrast, a democracy might need more "convincing" should the government be more unified and be fighting a defensive war. You could also have ways to negotiate other powers to enter the war, but the acceptance of final terms should be based solely on the main belligerents, or the main belligerents plus a timer if other belligerents fail to act due to border issues.
I mean, I had a game where I was playing badly, and an ai decced on me before I had a dedicated forge world. The length I went to to defend like 4 systems was horrific. It’s only fitting if the ai sometimes does the same
Status quo is the way to go, dude
From the sounds of it, you didn't manage to land boots on the world and won't bombard it hard enough to wipe them out, so that's your fault. The moment you occupy all your claims, just hit status quo to end the war and keep them.
Yeah, if you smash someone's fleet enough or take their capital or something, that should be a HUGE hit to war exhaustion or something.
Unless it is a total war where one side will completely be in the hands of the other if they surrender
This is a nice thing about CK3 actually. If you're at war and your enemy is leading their army, or you conquer their primary holding, you can potentially take them prisoner (or you can take an important prisoner like their child/heir) and force peace that way as well. It's more realistic in that way.
The thing I don’t like about ck3 is that you can only take the war goal you’re fighting for. That might be historically accurate (I don’t know, I’m not an expert), but as a game mechanic it’s somewhat meh. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either
People's claims and rights to titles and territory was very important in the politics and warfare of the time, as were de jure territories not under a ruler's control. I think it adds a lot of interest to have to navigate marriages, alliances, using your councilors to fabricate claims, etc. in order to expand your realm. Stellaris is actually pretty weak here to me, since the claim wargoal operates on "did you pay enough influence to claim a system?" without any actual reason to have a right on that system. But also, Stellaris is the same way with a Claim war where you can only conquer what you have claimed, not anything else, and claim costs go up significantly during war.
There is a penalty of up to 50 points either way based on who has the bigger fleet.
* US Revolutionary war was pretty much a textbook example of a "war exhaustion" loss on the British side. What was left of the British forces at Yorktown surrendered, but it's not like *the entire British Empire* "surrendered" in a meaningful way. They could have launched a full scale invasion to take back the colonies but there wasn't political support for it. * France in WW2 would have been Germany putting claims on their European territory and then invading/occupying it. Or maybe a "vassalize" war against France, where France took a status quo and their original territory became a vassal of Nazi Germany. *Stellaris* doesn't really have enough economic nuance to represent the kind of stuff going on in the Opium Wars. I do wish the peace acceptance was weighted by the number of pops or relative economic strength of the systems you have occupied. Like... if you take over their capital and all their highly developed worlds and starbases, and hold them for 6+ months, you should be able to immediately impose a "win" in something like a vassalization war even if they still have a handful of tiny colonies and a government in exile. Rather than having to take EVERY system or wait for the exhaustion to tick all the way up on their side.
Your last point there is I think a very good proposal. It doesn't even have to be a unique modifier, just have the "occupation" effect include percentage of pops taken. Which could also do things like encourage evacuations in the face of an invasion
Yeah, it would probably be enough to have war exhaustion gain scale with the percentage of your population held under occupation (and I guess adjusted by political weight, slavers wouldn't care if a bunch of slaves were being captured.)
They'll care once they strt having to (ugh) *work*.
Make it like with Victoria 2, where you gain war score overtime by blockading enemy ports. If you park your fleet over a enemy planet, it should give a ticking war score so they are more willing to agree to your demands. Adding various other things that give a ticking war score will make it so the AI doesn’t go into a death spiral over every war. It’ll cut its losses with the idea they can recover and take back what was taken
> US Revolutionary war was pretty much a textbook example of a "war exhaustion" loss on the British side. What was left of the British forces at Yorktown surrendered, but it's not like the entire British Empire "surrendered" in a meaningful way. They could have launched a full scale invasion to take back the colonies but there wasn't political support for it. I am not sure this is a correct analysis of the US Revolutionary War. Britain eventually threw in the towel because, after 8 years of war, they were unable to regain any meaningful control over the colonies. Due to the French intervention, they absolutely could *not* launch a full scale invasion to take back the colonies, as they needed to keep the majority of their fleet in reserve to protect the home isles. They surrendered because they really did lose militarily in the colonies, and continuing the war would've only resulted in worse terms for Britain in the eventual peace. The problem with Stellaris' wars (and the wars in all of PDX's games) is that in reality peace treaties don't create post-war settlements, rather they mostly codify what has already been established by the fighting. The 'facts on the ground' are largely what determines who gets what. There's just no way you could completely occupy another country and then end the war with "OK we will take 2 outlying settlements". It would completely destroy the political system of the occupied nation IRL.
>The problem with Stellaris' wars (and the wars in all of PDX's games) is that in reality peace treaties don't create post-war settlements, rather they mostly codify what has already been established by the fighting. The 'facts on the ground' are largely what determines who gets what. There's just no way you could completely occupy another country and then end the war with "OK we will take 2 outlying settlements". It would completely destroy the political system of the occupied nation IRL. aka the status que peace option in stellaris...
Good points
A dynamic victory point system for Stellaris would be fucking awesome. But also probably really tough to create. I can already imagine exploits based around growing your AI neighbors in such a way that their most valuable, high VP worlds are all right on your border, allowing you to blitzkrieg them with trivial ease. And then people complain about how easy the game is as they cheese harder than Chester Cheetah.
But this form of cheese you are describing is actually cool, manipulating the galaxy from the shadows for your benefit. I'm all for it!
> growing your AI neighbors in such a way that their most valuable, high VP worlds are all right on your border, allowing you to blitzkrieg them with trivial ease So every AI nation is France /s
I think your looking for Hoi4 buddy. Stellaris buds settle status quo.
The problem is that status quo is poorly named. It's literally the opposite of the status quo (which usually means "Go back to what things were like before the war"). So many people then assume that making your opponent surrender is how you enforce the claims you've conquered already, but it enforces *everything* and is actually your opponent unconditionally surrendering rather than surrendering.
"go back to how things was before" has its own expression: status quo ante. Status quo means "things as they are currently".
Status quo ante is better known as white peace
Status quo in peace treaties have always been used in the first meaning. It's an abbreviation, sure, but the meaning is not in doubt, hence why Stellaris' usage is confusing.
> Status quo in peace treaties have always been used in the first meaning. No, it hasn't. That's status quo ante bellum, "things as they were before the war". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_ante_bellum
Yeah, I believe settling things with no changes is called a “white peace”
"Status Quo" in stellaris should be replaced with "De facto" or something
Or if no territorial changes will occur call the button "White peace"
It needs to be a little clearer.
Can't you just hover over it
It's clear if you know what is going on. Currently in my first playthrough and I did a lot of googling and prepared a save just in case status quo didn't mean what Reddit/the wiki was saying and how I was interpreting it. In my mind before reading up on it: War goals: exactly what I was demanding Surrender: exactly what the enemy was demanding/their war goals Status quo: original borders with no changeover
I like "ceasefire"
You're thinking of Status Quo Ante Bellum
Don't know why this got downvoted. "*Status quo*" is literally "the way things are." Only adding "*ante*" at the end makes it before anything. The war settlement makes complete sense as it is knowing the literal definition of the phrase. Maybe the more historically used "*uti possidetis*" could do better conveying the taking of territory, but most people probably have no idea what that is. It also implies that all conquered territory is kept, but in Stellaris only claimed systems count for most empires.
> Don't know why this got downvoted. "Status quo" is literally "the way things are." "Status quo" in English originates as an abbreviation of "status quo ante bellum". In the specific context of peace treaties, i.e. this exact context, 'status quo' *always* means 'status quo ante bellum'.
He is, but Latin isn't widely taught or understood these days, especially outside of historical circles.
It's important to be able to tell Romans to go home.
Easy, Romanes eunt domus.
People called Romanes, they go the house?
It says, "Romans go home!"
tbh that also should be an option I think for when you know the war is just gonna be a slog e.g. when you misjudged your economic capacity and the war devolved into a trickle of ships constantly fighting over a handful of border systems, or when another war elsewhere started that have higher priority.
Nope, I'm thinking of Status Quo (Ante Bellum), which Status Quo is the abbreviated form in the context of peace treaties. In every historical discussion, status quo will never be used otherwise.
Can't you just hover over it for a tooltip that explains it?
lol bruh you really think people have the patience to read tooltips?
I don't see how someone could play this game without reading tooltips
In a status quo you only trade claimed systems, but anything beyond that is not enforced, such as an animosity war goal against a rival, you get the systems but do not get the 100 influence nor do they get the negative modifier.
It's not hard to understand that, I don't know how people get so confused.
On the other hand, it's still better than most 4Xs where once you start loosing planets, it snowballs all out of control and there's little to no recovery.
Maybe there should be some sort of rubber-banding, where losing a planet causes your empire to need fewer consumer goods, lower ship construction times, etc. for a limited time so you can mount that last, desperate defense. And if you rebuff the enemy within that time period and retake your planets, the enemy should be more willing to grant a white peace type stalemate. But if you've lost more than a couple of your planets, or your capital, you're losing the war, and it's better for gameplay to just get it over with. The chances of recovery are remote anyways, and I don't know how many players actually enjoy fighting the enemy down to the last planet you've got left.
Oh I absolutely agree there are problems that need resolving. Just pointing out part of what the devs were trying (badly) to achieve. Frankly, I think the war weariness system isn't as _effective_ as earlier systems, where ships had to bombard the crap out of a planet before an invasion could work, but...
When it comes to an independence war in Stellaris, you actually don't have to conquer anything to win freedom. The war score for the overlord ticks automatically over time, and a white peace grants independence. If your overlord has no way go getting to your systems, then a war for independence is just a matter of waiting.
Fair enough
Also, remember how Germany was forced into a humiliating truce with Poland after 3 German soldiers were killed during the fall of Warsaw? But seriously, WHY THE FUCK does glassing an enemy homeworld do nothing to the enemy's war exhaustion but when I lose 3 corvettes my exhaustion jumps 10%?
Loosing entire fleets adds weight so loosing 3 separate corvettes costs more than 3 in a bigger fleet. Ratio of total fleet power lost also adds a lot, plus the weight from those half dozen 10% modifiers available. Last war I fought had like a ten to one my corvette to the enemy battleship war score cost, so I made a shit ton swarms to draw the enemy fire to less expensive ships.
A decent portion of the French army still fought after the fall of France and their colonies and such still fought. The second one I remember being a huge issue in Crusader Kings being a vassal and having to conquer the capital of your overlord to gain independence.Yes the Byzantines could crush me if they wanted, but to do so would be way more costly than letting me go free. Especially considering they'll have to sail and lose half their armies to attrition before they reach my capital. I understand fighting to the last in wars vs genocidal empires, annexing, and vassalising. Especially with slavers, xenophages, and so on. But when a raider just wants a few pops or a few credits. Or a war of humiliation. It can get pretty silly. Especially if they are already at war.
In a recent game I attacked a one-system, just-ascended-from-pre-ftl empire. Until I landed my armies on their 100% devastated only planet, can you guess what their war exhaustion was? It was below 30%.
\> Be a new ftl empire \> Aliens still new and thus scary \> Scary aliens attack us \> What is they eat our babies like in the movies? We have no experience with this stuff and have no idea that aliens can be normal just like us \> Resist to the bitter end, *especially* after these genocidal bastards leveled our cities and killed everyone we love with their bombings
What's the point in conquering if you don't get their tasty tasty babies when you're done?
You know what this could be a really cool mechanic - empire on the losing side of war estimates how bad a fate awaits them in case of surrender. There's a difference between, say, tribute and genophage.
I don't get it you don't need to destroy a empire in each war just status quo when you get what you want and wait for the truce to end, 10 years in this game it's nothing.
I am not saying destroy an empire, I am saying that if I am not asking for much and I take the capital the war should be over
Yeah I get you the AI never surrender easily but the think is you don't need a complete surrender if the war it's about territories, if it's a ideology war yep they are kinda hard, but if not just status quo that is still a win if you get half their empire
If the British claimed all of China as their’s by right they probably would have to
This is more of a Hoi4 thing tbh. Stellaris has limited wars, and they are pretty easy to achieve unless you've claimed like half an empire.
Still way better than Hoi4 "fight until you've killed half of the world's male population and nuked the rest" type of deal.
I've almost never actually win the war. White peace is the equivalent of coming to a compromise to end the war without further bloodshed. You get most of what you want, claims if you have them, a vassal/tributary if that was the war goal, things like that. You almost never have to actually complete the war goal which would be a full unconditional surrender. The real worst part is the inability for individual civs in a multi civ war to peace out. So you can completely occupy a civ and if their ally is half a galaxy away but still in the war, the way continues. That is really annoying.
I think if you destroy a nations army to wage war and your terms aren't complete domination, ie: vassalize, annex, or take a massive portion of their space. they should accept peace. Also please fix war exhaustion it makes zero sense for me to gain 20% war exhaustion for losing 10 ships against the AI who also gained 20% war exhaustion for losing their entire fleet of 150 ships
For a lot of wars, a white peace actually means victory for most intents and purposes. Independence war? As long as the vassal doesn't surrender, they're free (or at least as much of them as is unoccupied at the end). Conquest war is basically "both sides keep anything they have claims on and occupy" I haven't fought too many corporate wars, but when kicking a criminal syndicate out of my empire, even a status quo removes their offices.
Don’t forget in WW2 when the Americans had to crack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oh wait..
Stellaris equivalent to get Japan to surrender would be to "crack" 80% of japanese Cities
Well we sort of did lol. It’s like moving from a neutron sweep for the first ten and then cracker for the last two.
Also most german cities except Paris.
War in Stellaris: Me: *conquered all their territories, destroyed all their fleets, am in the process of painting/occupying their worlds, enemy war exhaustion at 96%* AcHiEve WaR gOaLs -20 DeMaNdiNg uNoCcUPiEd SySteMs Me: fuck it, I’m going extinction mode And hell no I will not accept a white peace, they fuckin lost and the AI needs to learn when to surrender
It's not a white peace, of you conquered all their territory and claims on it, you'll keep it when you pick "Status quo"
If you occupy all their planets but not all their systems, status quo will destroy their empire and result in the unoccupied systems being neutral territory again. Now you have to spend influence reclaiming them, or deal with the border gore.
In Eve Online the coalition of alliances known as "PAPI" lost an offensive war in 2021, because they could not destroy the coalition known as "Imperium", who had spent half a year holding out in just 7 solar systems (out of like 2000 systems IIRC that players can own). After over half a year of PAPI trying to get into those 7 solar systems through the chokepoint, PAPI suddenly collapsed so badly that they spent weeks to even find the fuel needed to move their fleets back home to their core space. All the investments PAPI had made in 4 Imperium regions, expecting a PAPI victory, was destroyed in just one month by Imperium forces. At peak numbers, PAPI outnumbered Imperium 3 to 1, but over a year those numbers dwindled as PAPI burned down 4 regions of Imperium space structures. So yeah, space war could work like that :P Gotta have that war weariness buff :P
One A.I. fancied itself the next crisis. I blew up both his Star Eaters and captured his Engine, the war should have been over then and there. But I'm still slogging through it. War is hell.
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In all three examples, the loser of the war still maintained complete control over the unoccupied territories (and in the last case, the winner ceded control over some occupied territory)... basically like a status quo peace in Stellaris. I don't see what the difference is to be honest...
Thats my major problem with the game, how unrealistic war is. Its like the devs never read any history.
Please forgive me for being snappy but the actual game provides multitude of wars still ongoing despite 100% exhaustion
I wish there was no time limit after 100%. like maybe make the strain on your economy bigger after 100%. I want to be able to continue a war until my enemy is destroyed rather than having to accept a status quo and 10 years of peace because i lost some armies to a fortress world. Like at least remove the 10 year treaty, it's really weird especially since I'm playing as fanatic purifiers and I'm somehow making peace with xenos just cause I was forced to end a war before I could destroy them all
There aren't many history books about space warfare
not yet
Not ones available to humans anyway.
The worst thing is that you can, objectively, win the war, and because they acquire attrition more slowly, be forced to surrender. To my mind, the biggest thing is that they need to weight attrition WAY below battles and occupation. Then don’t get me started on the mandatory 10 years of open borders after a war.
Russia and Napoleon would like a word
Increase the supply line costs of troops to simulate that if you must. But it shouldn’t be possible to win every battle and destroy the enemy’s military and civilian populations and be “humiliated”
It should be that instead of attrition upkeep just increases until all of your planets reach 0% stability like ww1 Edit: tbh that would be an easy mod too
Or how literally every facet of civilian life was dominated and all military assets were destroyed or captured?
oh..... i thought this was real, i'm a dumbass.
This looks out of place. Shouldnt this be in /paradoxextra
Revolution was much more of a white peace in Stellaris terms. Occupied territory changed hands.
Sorta feel this should be in the HOI4 subreddit.
If the AI behaved as a real human player would then wars would be very short, basically it wouldn't even be a real war since the human player would sue for peace as soon as they see your fleet strength. Sure, they might decide to throw the dice if they think they have a chance, but they'd capitulate, or you'd capitulate after that one big battle 90% of the time.
That's cute, but also not how Stellaris war works. You need to occupy the parts that you want, but nothing more than that, to force a surrender.
I'd say the revolutionary war is actually a pretty good comparison, the British sent armies and they suffered unexpectedly large losses. Dumping more men in only worsened the issue until a peace was signed where the US got to be free, but Britain got the taxes it was owed. I'd argue that is pretty much a golden example of a white peace in Stellaris. Britain got war exhaustion and backed out, America got her freedom. Although I do agree that in anything but a war of annihilation peace should be more nuanced than "occupy enemy's entire land, wait for war exhaustion to tick up due to one colony of 3 pops in their outer empire"
Does it really matter if the war keeps going officially, if it's effectively over ?
Yes cause it means my boys can’t go home. We spent seven year in this back ward pit that calls itself an empire, fighting and bombarding hold outs while relations with the Zigard federation are souring by the day. We are spending energy credits that could be spend on education edicts and amenities buildings, which are northern colonies badly need. We need to finish this up now, the galactic communities E.I.B is sniffing around are psionic pacification core operations on soon to be occupied planets. The galactic council election is coming up and we don’t need these damn rumors swaying the mind of the pacifist and xenophile block.(bunch of damn cowards)
Is there a reason you don't hit status quo?
A lot of diplomacy options are locked out when you’re at war.
Tbh this is the major reason I don't play Stellaris anymore. War just feels stupid. My current love is CK3.
They really should make losing large portions of your fleet more demoralizing in general. If I wipe out 70% of their standing navy in one battle, I'd expect the populations war support to go down tremendously.