Hi all, Jamor here. I'm filling in for Wiz this week, as I want my Game Director to focus on post-launch support for Cherryh, our biggest update yet.

Today's dev diary is about 2.0.2_beta: the new build available as an optional beta for Steam users right now (note for Paradoxplaza Launcher users: we're using Steam as our beta testing platform at this time, if you want to try it out please use the Steam key that came with your Plaza purchase).

When we made 2.0, we knew that the scale of changes would be huge, and therefore I budgeted a larger than normal amount of dev time for post-launch support. The objective is to absorb and process player feedback, and perform bug fixes as well as balance tweaks and general improvements. There are almost as many unique play styles as there are Stellaris players out there, and our objective is to hit a good balance point for the maximum number, which you can then further tweak to your own preferences with the new game customization options.

2.0.2 is planned to be a "rolling beta", meaning we will continue to update it at intervals when we have new tweaks/fixes that we want to push to you. Your feedback on it will be crucial for determining the content of the final, official version, so please continue to play and tell us how it goes.

We especially want to make sure we get War Exhaustion/Status Quo Peace right, so that it produces believable and satisfying war results for the greatest number of people. As such, the initial changes in this patch are experimental and we'll continue to iterate on them throughout the test period. Please don't hesitate to give us your constructive feedback.

Spoiler: Click to view patchnotes

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.0.2 ###########################
#################################################################

###################
# Feature
###################
* You are no longer forced to make peace at 100% war exhaustion, instead your Influence and Unity monthly gains are reduced to 0 and a happiness penalty is applied to all Pops until you make peace
* Occupation no longer contributes to War Exhaustion, but instead is displayed as a separate factor in war overview, to make it clearer what you need to do in order to enforce demands
* War Overview no longer attempts to calculate a winner in battles, but simply displays war exhaustion gained by each side
* Marauder raiding fleets are now neutral to everyone except their intended target so they won't wreck everything in their path when they go a-viking
* Fixed Gestalt Consciousness empires using Trading Hub starbase module and Offworld Trading Company starbase building, they now use Resource Reprocessor and External Acquisitions Area (name/flavor difference only)
* It is now possible to test-fire a World Cracker on habitable (but uninhabited) planets in your space
* Added tier 5 Dark Matter thrusters that can only be gained by scavenging Fallen Empire ships
* Transcendent Learning ascension perk has been added to the game, and it increases leader level cap and empire leader cap
* Megastructure resources are now affected by country modifiers
* Ship sizes now have a default combat behavior and will prefer computers of that type if auto-generated (Picket for Destroyers, etc)
* Added some more logic for making sure ship auto-complete doesn't switch your desired combat role
* Space stations now use the country_mult modifier instead of the tile_mult modifier and no longer get the tile_add modifier
* When a new ruler is elected, the previous ruler that was voted out of office (if alive) will now attempt to take over the job that was opened up by the newly elected ruler, assuming the leader class matches. Back to the mines, Mr. Ex-President.

###################
# Balance
###################
* Reduced War Exhaustion per ship and army killed
* Militarist ethics now gain -10%/-20% war exhaustion gain instead of army damage bonus
* Technologies that reduce claim cost now also decrease war exhaustion gain
* You now get war exhaustion a bit slower while fighting a Liberation War
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance
* Base unity income increased from 1 to 2
* Base tradition cost increased from 56 to 100 (does not affect the cost increase from number of traditions)
* Tradition unity cost per system reduced from 2% to 1%
* Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship build speed techs now also reduce build cost of that ship type by 5%
* Habitats now have their own fortress building (Security Zone) that is effective at unrest reduction but provides only a few defense armies and no FTL inhibitor or bombardment protection
* It is now possible to mod away serviles & pre-sapient traits if you have completed biological ascension
* Egalitarian ethics effect on faction influence increased from +15%/30% to +25%/50%
* Corvette Focus trait now requires Destroyers tech (as it's hardly a 'focus' if it's the only ship type possible)
* Scout admiral trait reduced from 20% to 10% speed (so Gale-Speed is faster)
* Admiral now always dies when last ship in fleet is destroyed and there are no disengaged ships to move to
* Drone Mining Lasers are now a bit worse against hull and a bit better against shields
* Broken and shattered planets spawned on galaxy generation can now have deposits
* Thrusters now cost different amounts of minerals and give different amounts of evasion based on which ship size they are for (corvette thrusters are cheaper and add more evasion, etc)
* Reduced cost of hiring Marauder leaders to 2000 energy
* Having an enclave in your border now gives +1 opinion per year instead of +1 opinion per month, as the latter made all other opinion boosts rather meaningless
* Increased opinion bonuses for ally of ally and mutual rivals
* Increased opinion penalties of allying rivals
* Tributary wargoal is now a bit easier to enforce
* Combat computers now give evasion_mult instead of evasion_add
* Asteroid Sighted can no longer pop after the first 50 years, to avoid it happening in large sprawling empires with limited time to respond
* First pirate event now tells you the system where they are based
* Increased time limits of all Special Projects requiring a ship in orbit (new minimum is 3 years)
* Federation fleet is now limited to an absolute max naval capacity of 500
* It is now possible to get the gateway activation tech if you know any other empire that has the technology
* When a Federation enforces ideology on an empire, that empire now gets opinion boosts with the entire federation

# Civics
* Citizen Service civic now also increases unity output from fortress and strongholds by 1
* Aristocratic Elite civic now gives +2 leader cap and +2 governor max level instead of +4 leader cap and -50% leader recruitment cost
* Distinguished Admiralty civic increases leader cap by +2
* Driven Assimilators now have the 'Assimilate' total war CB
* Purifier and anti-Purifier CBs no longer require neighboring status (was confusing and unintuitive to players)
* Nationalistic Zeal civic now gives -10% war exhaustion gain instead of +1 rivalries
* Free Haven now gives xeno migration attraction instead of migration attraction

# Traditions
* Expansion adoption effect now gives +50% colony development speed (down from +100%)
* Galactic Ambition expansion tradition now gives -20% starbase upkeep instead of +2 starbase capacity

# Ascension Perks
* Shared Destiny effect on integration cost reduction changed from -50% to -75%
* Nihilistic Acquisition can now be taken by purifier-style empires

# Edicts
* Drone Campaign food cost increased from 100 to 500
* Learning Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* War Drone Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* Patrol Drones planetary edict is now available to all Gestalt Consciousness-empires

###################
# UI
###################
* Added building descriptions to traditions that unlock buildings
* Starbase upgrade cost and Module/Building building cost now properly show modifiers affecting them
* Renamed Growth Speed to Pop Growth Speed to be clearer
* Added the correct icons for megastructures and starbases in the control-groups UI
* Contacts view has been improved
* Government view now displays ruler & heir skill stars
* Heir tooltip no longer displays skill effects (as heir has no skill effects until they become ruler)
* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title
* Galaxy resources now show the amount actually collected, and the tooltips give you the list of applied modifiers
* Resource modifier no longer show decimal values
* Removed pointless decimals for starbase caps, planet caps, naval command cap, and naval capacity
* Added the country resources add and multipliers modifiers to the budget tab
* Improved how the speed modifiers are shown in the starbase upgrade time tooltip
* Added a more clear warning that deleting templates will also disband ships
* Fixed several instances of a Status Quo peace being called a White Peace in peace messages
* Alert for High War Exhaustion is now more helpful
* Traits that are already present in species can now always be re-added while in process of modifying template
* Aura tooltip now differentiates between system-wide friendly auras and fleet-only friendly auras
* Changed the current value of template designs in fleet manager to show the current amount of ships including ones that only are scheduled for retrofit

###################
# AI
###################
* AI now activates some of its anti-crisis logic when under threat from a mid-game crisis like the Great Khan
* AI no longer picks shared destiny unless it has at least one vassal
* Added separate definitions for mid-game and end-game crisis factions, with slightly different AI logic to respond to them
* Fixed another cause of AI endlessly inviting player to the same war

###################
# Modding
###################
* Added a country modifier for war exhaustion gain (when multiple countries are involved on the same side in a war, the averaged modifier of all of them is used)
* add_threat effect now once again takes country scope (generates threat scaled towards whole target empire)

###################
# Bugfix
###################
* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of additive
* Fixed additional potential out of sync issues in multiplayer
* Afterburners can no longer be installed on defense platforms, as lovely as it was to uselessly vent fuel in to space as a gesture of contempt to environmentalists
* Deep Space Black Site now requires you to own a planet in the system, instead of erroneously using the same trigger as trading hub
* All Satrapies are now properly liberated when the Horde fractures into the Diadochi
* Fixed bug where the planet class transition effect started too late
* Fixed adopting the Domination tradition tree not unlocking certain diplomatic actions for eligible Machine Empires
* Fixed auto-exploring science ships doubling up (exploring the same system simultaneously)
* Fixed a CTD. Could sometimes try to merge invalid fleets.
* No longer possible to hold Casus Belli on non-empire factions such as Crises and Marauders
* Galactic core visibility is now lifted when you explore all systems adjacent to it, instead of just one
* Fixed empires not being able to see primitives in other empires' space due to lack of comms spread
* Ships merging in to fleets directly from stations now behave properly
* Fixed scientists not dying when their science ship was destroyed in battle
* Fixed raiding stance not having bombardment graphics on planet being raided
* Fixed tooltips for status column in contacts view to reflect accurately what they represent
* Fixed raiding not always abducting pops when it should, due to bad habitability calculation
* Fixed raiding stance not having the correct pop limit (would abduct at >6 instead of >4 pops)
* Fix a freeze when trying to upgrade technologies more than their max levels
* Fixed Determined Exterminators starting with a farm building
* Construction is now paused for starbases in combat
* Fixed force ethics not correctly calculating a government for the defeated empire's new ethics
* Enigmatic fortress now properly disables even after saving and loading the game (status was not properly saved)
* Iron Fist governor trait is no longer available for Hive Minds, making it disabled for all types of Gestalt Consciousness-empires
* Fixed being unable to land armies on a colony seized by Mutants
* Fix bug where queued items wasn't moved to the new fleet design when a design upgrade becomes available
* Fixed Slaving Despots being far too common an AI personality because of wrongly scripted weights
* Disables the bypass cache when calculating the distance to capital modifier, hopefully solving an OOS issue
* Fixed a crash when quitting to the main menu in the middle of a war
* It should no longer be possible to try to spawn a star system with an invalid star class
* Fix crash when comparing the relative power of a country that has no power
* Prevented fake country from trying to initialize a technology module it does not have for some reason
* UNE now uses correct name list when spawned in Commonwealth games
* Fixed revolting slaves greedily snatching the capital planet when they're not supposed to
* No longer possible to force ideology on Fallen Empires
* Fixed Omega Theory tech sometimes not appearing at the end of the Horizon Signal chain
* Fixed an event-spawned science ship not getting a hyperdrive
* Fixed planet unrest modifiers not being properly recalculated
* Fixed Ascension Theory tech not being available to players who do not own Apocalypse

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN OPT-IN PATCH. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO JOIN IN ORDER TO TEST THE NEW VERSION.

Here's how to opt in:

Right click on Stellaris in your Steam library -> select Properties -> go to the Betas tab -> select "2.0.2_beta"

I'll of course ping this thread and let you know when an updated version of the beta goes out. Thank you all for your support, we think it's really great that we get to work with our fan community to constantly improve the game together.

Make sure to check out next week's Dev Diary for a first look at our development priorities going forward in the...wait for it...POST-APOCALYPSE.

(I've been waiting so long to say that)

Have fun everyone!

 

[air1sam]

So I Just Got a pretty ridiculous bug where I declared a rivalry on someone who I recently won a war with and it immediately gave me a bunch of notification pertaining to a colossus ,which doesn't exist, and whenever i try to get ride of them they re-spawn forever. To add a little more information I did have closed border with them before the war however for some odd reason they could enter my territory after it and when I found out they were in my territory I declared a rivarly

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Why would a machine, a hive mind or a devourer ever get tired of war? It seems like it would have a single minded purpose, until given another reason

A person gets tired, gets exhausted if they focus on something for too long- especially something strenuous or painful.

Why wouldn't a hivemind?

 

[Popenhauzen]

So i started a new game, i built 2 outposts and now my starbase maintenance tooltip is saying i spend 6 energy. So its 4 for a normal starbase and 1 for outposts? I thought the 2.0 maintenance for regular starbases was only 1?

 

[nilsjeppe]

Here's my second batch of bug reports. Sorry if any of this is redundant, unfortunately I do not have time to read all the posts in this forum.

Bugs

- I *think* there are circumstances that reset a fleet's homebase, but I haven't figured out exactly when it happens.
Will keep an eye out for this. Theory: Homebase gets disabled by enemies.

- No "go to" camera icon on "Incoming raid" event popup. Would be nice to go to the raiding fleet or the raiding empire.

- When you build a robotic pop, and double-click quickly on the pop to build, sometimes the planetary gui will be closed.
I think this is because the build panel completely disappears for the fraction of a second.
Yes, this is a minor issue.
Yes, I could change my habits.

- When a fleet needs a Titan for reinforcement, but no Titan assembly yard is available, the tooltip does not reflect this.

- There's a problem with reinforcements going through known hostile systems and getting picked off one by one.
I think reinforcements should just be Evasive.


Improvement Requests

- It should be possible to assign/reassign fleet Admirals from the Fleet Manager GUI. For consistency, if nothing else.

 

[MarQan]

@MarQan - I'll be honest, some of what you write I agree with and think is interesting but you have a very abrasive style. I'll assume it's me and try to be more objective but hopefully that explains how I have responded thus far.

It seems we are working from different data, I don't see how protecting your scientist with a fleet costs 10% research bonus or derails tech progression. My suggestion was to allow a fleet to protect a scientist as an alternative to making them invincible, which is presently not possible. It makes me think I'm addressing something you weren't discussing.

We definitely have different experiences about being abrasive and boorish, but I'm all for objective discussions, even if my wording seems rude at points.

Assuming that for an effective research setup you would only have scientists with certian field-specializations, since exploration-related skills (anomaly research risk and speed, survey speed, Archeologist) are currently negligible and meaningless. So depending on what you resarch you rotate specialists among 3 dedicated assignments: explorer, Assist Reserach, and leading research projects.

Now since the only way to enter an unexplored system is with a scientist in a naked science vessel, you risk 10% or more research speed and the available techs you're offered after finishing a project.
This is just unintuitive and unrealistic and overall a bad mechanic in my opinion.

Now a possible workaround/exploit is to put new, useless recruits into the science vessels temporarily and then switch them back to level up the important ones. This means that the only change that "fix" did was make you spend 'x' times 200 energy credits depending on how many you lose and add a lot of unnecessary micro.

So if the intention was to add more risk to exploration then there are other, much better ways (increase cost of science vessel); if the intention was to make you risk your important scientists, then the fix is not achieving its goal.

I'm suggesting to simply go back to a previous state.

What you're suggesting with military escort would require military ships to enter new systems at the same time as science vessels, but you also can't allow military to enter by themselves, which is a new, more complex mechanic (although probably not by much).
I have arguments against and for that change, but I think that's a separate discussion than just rolling back a fix that in fact didn't fix anything.

 

[Endo]

So I Just Got a pretty ridiculous bug where I declared a rivalry on someone who I recently won a war with and it immediately gave me a bunch of notification pertaining to a colossus ,which doesn't exist, and whenever i try to get ride of them they re-spawn forever. To add a little more information I did have closed border with them before the war however for some odd reason they could enter my territory after it and when I found out they were in my territory I declared a rivarly
View attachment 341411

I've had this bug as well, several times, except mine say that another empire has the stop colossus CB on me. Seems to happen randomly(or at least i can't see a pattern). Reloading my last save fixes it, although it happens again at some point

 

[Rudow56]

Speaking personally as a russian bot. 2.0 turned a great game into one not worth playing.

 

[Xiandrus]

First forum post and first personal opinion to the Changes to 2.0 and the 2.02 beta.

Making a new game without charging anything, like "Stellaris 2", is a great move and makes me like Paradox (Developement and Publisher) even more.
Nobody did it bevore and let's see what happens. In my humble opinion it is great.

Now to the changes of 2.02:
All is great except for the Outpost costs an Energy credit now.

Since all Systems have at least 2 energy in the system, you need to put in 165 Minerals in to let this thing run on it's own, and don't even get a credit out, since the mining station needs an energy credit as well (wich could be taken away btw).

Thanks for reading

 

[Steelwhip]

so did 2.0 break the final step for the Worm in Waiting again? Got the 2 prereqs but the final tech isnt firing and I've been playing about 100 years past when I got the prereq techs.

 

[Elimdur]

Since all Systems have at least 2 energy in the system, you need to put in 165 Minerals in to let this thing run on it's own, and don't even get a credit out [...]

Mining stations on energy ressources don't have running energy costs.

 

[vren55]

I hate this new patch to be honest. I liked the challenging, but gradual growth of the old stellaris pre Cherry Patch, but after 2.0... the challenge is... just way too hard.

Midgame is horrifyingly difficult with the Great Khans. I'm staring death in the face now with 35K fleets just destroying everybody beside me and probably going to wrekc my 12 k fleet. I could build up, but i did a Tall strategy with life-seeded and just don't have the requisite minerals.

The whole frontier post thing is just... okay I like the realism of it, I don't like how it's so impossible to defend against pirates. It's just really aggravating having to rebuild tons of my infrastructure and I'm a regional powerhouse (okay mainly through advanced tech, but still, I think i'm doing okay compared to the other AI players).

And this is after I put the crisis difficulty down to 0.5. At this point, I'm so sick and tired of the frontier outpost and crisis system I probably am going to have to turn the crisis difficulty to 0.25 if I want to play an actual campaign.

Now though, literally the only reason I would conceivably play a long Stellaris campaign is for the mods. aka Star Trek New Horizons.

 

[Arnaas]

I have two questions. What prompted the Stellaris team to take an amazing game and add drastic changes that make it, not so great? And can you please take it back? #makestellarisgreatagain

 

[Haxton Fale]

Midgame is horrifyingly difficult with the Great Khans. I'm staring death in the face now with 35K fleets just destroying everybody beside me and probably going to wrekc my 12 k fleet. I could build up, but i did a Tall strategy with life-seeded and just don't have the requisite minerals.

Crises are generally meant to be hard and rarely overcome by a single empire, unless it's an Awakened Empire or a regular one who has been steadily conquering the entire galaxy at a breakneck pace. There are a few problems with that, however, and at least one of them remains the same since before 2.0.

First issue is how reluctant the AI is to ally up. It might have changed now, but generally if a crisis spawns within your borders it's a little too late to form a federation and make meaningful use out of it. It gets even more fun when you're playing something like Determined Exterminators and don't get a single machine empire to talk to.

Second issue, and it's a more of a 2.0 grievance than 2.0.2 particularly (i.e. I should probably just open a thread for that), is how the Contingency basically means death for a machine empire due to the fact that you need to be running at barely positive income to maintain large fleets, and then get hit with the massive 40% income penalty sending you down the death spiral. Pre-2.0 you could have had enough firepower to at least wear down the Contingency fleets (~110k in power), but now it takes pretty much the full fleet cap to achieve this.

 

[andarian]

Hello, I've notticed AI doesn't use jump drive at all (except of usage for returning to home system). There is also strange behaviour of AI on modded maps. When you have removed some of hyperlanes that causes there is no other way to access system except of Jump Drive AI Jumps directly to it's home system no matter how far they are from it.

 

[vren55]

First issue is how reluctant the AI is to ally up. It might have changed now, but generally if a crisis spawns within your borders it's a little too late to form a federation and make meaningful use out of it. It gets even more fun when you're playing something like Determined Exterminators and don't get a single machine empire to talk to.

It doesn’t help that while you can coordinate an ai to help with a war, you can’t coordinate with your ai ally to help you with a crisis! So how does a single empire beat a crisis? Answer, not really. It was an issue with the base game but could be addressed by building a bigger fleet. However, with new stellaris, even small fleets are difficult to maintain.

Look on the flip side I get why the developers made these changes. They make for a far more realistic game. The problem is that the difficulty has scaled to a point that it’s maddening.

 

[Haxton Fale]

It doesn’t help that while you can coordinate an ai to help with a war, you can’t coordinate with your ai ally to help you with a crisis! So how does a single empire beat a crisis? Answer, not really. It was an issue with the base game but could be addressed by building a bigger fleet. However, with new stellaris, even small fleets are difficult to maintain.

Look on the flip side I get why the developers made these changes. They make for a far more realistic game. The problem is that the difficulty has scaled to a point that it’s maddening.

I wholeheartedly agree. There are ways to overcome the odds, but already getting ~150k firepower takes a fair amount of effort and resources. And you need far more than that to actually end threats.

 

[xxaxx]

There's a lot of tweaking to be done. Here are my 2 cents after almost beating the scourge (tnx invulnerable planet bug). Since i'm in a big ass Federation, and have fleet capacity around 600, so i'm running around with 3 90k fleets, i have basically won the game, since its only matter of time to take on some other weaker federations and FE's.

First thing is there needs to be some kind of way to force peace. Seriously. I disliked how it was done in 2.0, but now its just stupid since the AI can't handle it. My Federation was in a war (started in 2.0 then i downloaded the beta) and the other federation just wouldn't give up. The two federation members we were fighting were at 100% warscore for about 50 years, they had no navy and 2/3 of their space occupied, but still got a -1000 modifier because unoccupied claims. I took one over completely by myself, then i had to transport my fleets, build a massive army and my colossus to the other side of the galaxy (thank god for gateways) and systematically take over or shield their planets one by one. I guess this could work in MP since the attacked player would give up when faced with the 100% war exhaustion penalty, but the AI doesn't seem to care. At all. Very frustrating.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Midgame is horrifyingly difficult with the Great Khans. I'm staring death in the face now with 35K fleets just destroying everybody beside me and probably going to wrekc my 12 k fleet. I could build up, but i did a Tall strategy with life-seeded and just don't have the requisite minerals.

Well, there's your problem. Tall empires are going to be disadvantaged in a military sense.

With like, ~8 planets on a Medium galaxy I had two 20-something-k fleets that I used to whittle down and take out the Khan's fleet.

 

[Valentin Vattista]

This is part of a longer discussion in my "The war of one Battle" Thread. Refer to it for context:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...h-war-exhaustion.1074419/page-3#post-23891221

I have downloaded 2.02 now, and the Problem has shifted. The AI is now incapable of winning wars in the super late game. Since 2.02 is save game compatible, I continued my playthrough and started a second war with this Federation. War exhaustion took far longer to rise, which initially pleased me, and thus I was able to fight a war of attrition with them. But eventually, I reached 100% of course.

What happened then was not worse, but somewhat baffling to me. I'm playing a militaristic democracy with utopian living standards for everyone and the Harmony tree completed. I never even noticed the -20 (%) happines. The war continued for another 25 years after I hit 100% exhaustion, and since I had 1000 unity stored before that point and already had all of my desired traditions, I had little incentive to stop the war before taking 50% of the territory of the Federation and then calling it a day because I was getting tired.

The new system may be highly functional in the early game, but it renders war echaustion inconsequential in the late game. Especially for democracies, the form of government which should suffer from war exhaustion the most. The new system allows me to fight wars according to my capabilities, but it might aswell not exist due to how inconsequential it can get.

My Idea towards how the penalties should work is the following:

1. Instead of a flat -20 (%) in happines, one should get a -10 (%) each year for the first Ten years, -20 (%) each year for the subsequent decade etc. Thus, one would hit -300 (%) happines after 20 years. It's going to change very little in the early and midgame, but it will keep the system relevant in the very late game, because no amount of utopian living standards or chemical bliss will save you from a population which is basically running Amok at some point.

This change will however allow wars to last longer the bigger and the more advanced and Wealthy your empire is, which is a good thing in my book.

2. Instead of making influence gain a flat zero, the pacifist faction should start existing as soon as you hit 100% war exhaustionif it isn't around already, and gain 20-100% ethics Attraction each year. Additionaly, it should get a negative happines modifier for each peace offer you reject. Thus, you will essentially be confronted with an ever-growing angry Mob of pacifists while all of your other factions are slowly but surely being rendered insignificant. This will cause you to lose your influence from factions pretty quickly. Especially if the pacifists get a dice roll each year which allows them to infect another faction with a "pacifist influence" modifier, which makes them angry aswell. This last part of course shouldn't work with militarists and Nazis, but they should still lose pops to the pacifists.

Furthermore, factions should be able to enforce their Ideology on the state if they hit 75-85% Pop support and their faction leader is currently the ruler. That's of course so that democracies and oligarchies -within which the pacifists will start to win elections- are less able to fight prolonged wars than dictatorships and empires. Because that's just more authentic. And if you have pacifists in power at this stage of the war, well... what about the forced status quo making a return in this specific situation, because the pacifists have taken control.

3. I know that this is a little stupid, but since unity is generated not by how conformist or happy your pops are with your current Ideology but by buildings, pacifist pops which sit in unity producing buildings should refuse to work, thus gradually reducing unity.

4. This is more of a Personals thing than a real suggestion: Give admirals and generals the ability to rebell with their navies/Armies fight you and stage a coup d'etat if one of the following falls true:
-your population has over 75-85% pacifist support, is not a democracy/oligarchy and said admiral/general belongs to the pacifists.
-your population has over 75-85% percent pacifist support, has elected the leader of the pacifist faction as ruler (and thus is a democracy/oligarchy), or is ruled by a pacifist for some reason which now enforcer pacifist ideologies, and said general/Admiral is part of the militarist/nationalist faction.

The coup d'etat should be successful if your Capital planet is conquered by the rebels, and they should enforce their ethics and Ideology. And to add a little something to this, you should be able to choose if you want to lead the loyalists or the rebels in this civil war. Just like in HOI IV or total war empire.

I think the first 3 points would be a real Improvement. You would still get huge penalties for fighting over your war exhaustion, but it would be less severe in the early game, and still be of significance in the late game due to the scaling per year. The way I want the pacifists -and the factions overall- to work makes them far more important and a far bigger concern in your game, especially if you're a democracy or an oligarchy. Because especially democracies have never felt that democratic to me since the people could never really influence my decisions by simply just getting Sad. If leaders of factions with enough support would however be able to change ideologies how they see fit, politics and faction Management would become a far more engaging, crucial and interesting thing.

These changes would make wars more of a matter of Player skill and empire politics/economics than of just giving you a flat minus when you're fighting too long. You will still get a Lot of penalties for fighting over your war exhaustion, but the way these penalties affect you should in this proposed system reflect the situation of your empire far better, and allowing the Player to counteract those penalties to a certain degree for a certain amount of time, without removing the threat by becoming to big to fail.

The 4th thing is just a crazy Idea of mine which I would just love to see. But it's Not really something that needs to be in the game in any capacity.

And I know that this would be a huge buff to Gestalt consciousness empires. But let's be real here: Gestalt consciousnesses shouldn't even suffer from war exhaustion in my oppinion. It somewhat contradicts the point of being a singular entity.

 

[ShoGuL]

I just wrapped up my first 2.0.2 game (on Insane), played inward perfectionist with mechanist (Kitsune Sakoku Shogunate), then after I got a ringworld I started annexing and vassalizing everyone around me (and renamed Kitsune Shogunate ). Is it WAI that you cannot release planets when they have been Synthed? Had to conquer some aliens and move some pops to planets to be able to release them which is kind of immersion breaking. Probably won't go Synth Evolution next time I do this.

Ended the game in 2430 with *5* completed (and self built) ring worlds. Amazing The entire galaxy was pathetic.

The only bugs of note I ran into were:
At some point I got the constant popups for Colossus CB. I got rid of it by handing the system bordering the empire in question to a vassal.
The unity calculation is still bugged, but I am sure Paradox is aware of that. The end result was that I had every unity ambition running and millions of unity in the bank


I really love how playing tall is viable (and fun!). One thing I have really noticed in 2.0+ is that it has made me aware of diplomacy in ways I never had to care about before. I have started actually bribing the AI for non aggression pacts (since travelling takes forever), which has also made me start getting research agreements with the strongest nations (until I overtook them in tech).