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Stellaris Dev Diary #108 - 2.0 Post-Release Support (part 1)

Hello and welcome to another Stellaris dev diary. As we are still in full post-release support mode, until we are ready to get back to regular feature dev diaries, we're not going to have full-length dev diaries. Instead, we'll use the dev diaries to highlight certain fixes or tweaks that we feel need highlighting. Today, we're going to be covering some changes coming to the 2.0.2 beta in regards to War Exhaustion and forced Status Quo.

In 2.0, with the new war system, we added forced status quo peace as part of the new war exhaustion mechanics. We felt that this mechanic was necessary to ensure that limited wars could actually happen and so that the outmatched side in a war still had a reason to fight (pushing the enemy into 100% war exhaustion in order to force peace and reduce their territorial concessions). There were some problems with this mechanic, however, primarily that people felt surprised by a sudden peace in which they might lose systems the enemy has just occupied days ago, and also that certain wars (such as subjugation wars) were very difficult to fully win before being force-peaced out.

After receiving intial player feedback on these issues, we decided to try out a different model of war exhaustion in the 2.0.2 beta, replacing the forced status quo with a penalty at 100% war exhaustion. We have since been playing, testing, tweaking and collecting further feedback, and coming to the conclusion that our original design was correct - forced peace is necessary for the new war system to not simply become a series of single wars to the death, or powerful empires forcing a weaker empire into 100% war exhaustion and refusing to peace while their enemies were crippled by penalties.

For this reason, we will be reintroducing forced status quo peace, and this time it's here to stay. However, we are not simply going to roll back to exactly the way it is in 2.0, instead it will now work as follows:
- When a side in a war reaches 100% war exhaustion, they are now flagged as being at high war exhaustion, and get the alert as before
- Once at high war exhaustion, a 24 month timer will start to tick down for that side in the war. Once the timer is up, that war side can be forced into a status quo peace
- There will be no penalties for war exhaustion, but we will leave in the functionality for modders, as well as the ability to change the number of months before a forced peace is possible or disable forced peace altogether, so that those who truly hate to the idea of ever being forced to peace can at least change it through modding

These changes should mean that a status quo peace is something that doesn't come as a sudden surprise, and give the player time to start winding down their war and retake occupied systems when that war exhaustion counter ticks over into 100%.

We are also going to look into the possibility of changing Subjugation and Forced Ideology wars to either provide a clearer path to win such a war when the enemy has allies defending them, or by allowing Status Quo in such a war to achieve a 'limited victory' (liberating/subjugating part of the enemy empire instead of the whole).

These changes will not be in the very next version of 2.0.2 (as that is already being internally tested and will hopefully be with you before the end of the week), but we expect to roll them out sometime next week if all goes well.

That's all for today! See you next week for another 2.0 post-release dev diary.
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Very good decision, forced status quo peace add strategical layers to the war that the beta version was missing.
The 2.0 war system was carefully crafted by profissional designers and is very good: Slow travel time, hyperlanes, defensive starbases, fortress worlds, forced peace, system claims, etc. All these things interact together to create strategical and tactical wars and solve the doomstack problem.
 
I fully understand the need for balance and I'll definitely have to keep an open mind and see how quickly (or not) war exhaustion accumulates for my Empire with all of the appropriate exhaustion-reduction options chosen. As long as every war I fight doesn't end in a forced peace I'm sure the game will still be fun. I've never enjoyed using mods in the past and will make sure I give this a serious chance before deciding I truly don't enjoy it!

At the moment I definitely share HereticSaint's thoughts.
 
I have only 2 suggestions:
1- Increase WE from lost armies in ground invasions. In my experiemce WE from land battles is very irrelevant and sone times I lost 1-2 armies qnd gain 0 WE.

2- Adjust the speed of WE gain. It cant be very fast but cant be very slow, otherwise the strategical and tactical layers of the system are lost. The devs probably already known abou it.
 
These sound like good design decisions to me. I thought the decision to rip out the new forced peace system was a real knee-jerk reaction. It just needed some bug fixing, balancing, AI work and overall polishing pass to deal with some of the issues, including subjugation wars, which clearly didn't work well with the forced peace system.

I personally would also support some reasonable penalties associated with war exhaustion (e.g. unrest, lowered happiness, maybe a production malus instead for the hive/machine races). Penalties shouldn't just turn on when you hit 100%, but scale up over the course of the war as your war exhaustion increases, maxing out at 100%. Wars are supposed to be expensive and costly, make it actually worth considering trying to peace out early for limited gains instead of just running down the war exhaustion forced peace clock.
 
I'll chime in with agreement as to the puzzlement over ignoring the excellent EUIV system, where if you press a war for too long, you tank your war exhaustion and are a sitting duck while your country recovers (manpower plays a role here too of course).

While this mechanic may address the concern about individual wars spiraling into mega-conflicts every time, it does nothing to address the concern about the ability to wage unlimited war (so long as you have a variety of targets) indefinitely, with your population and economy not caring one whit, so long as you have the minerals and energy to support it. Game needs some form of global war exhaustion.
 
Heretic Saint said:
Have to agree with many of the other posters here; (actually meaningful!) War Exhaustion penalties would be a much better option compared to a magically Forced Peace that "just kinda happens".

This game already offers so many mechanics that could be tapped to achieve the desired result without making the player feel like it's the game rather than circumstances dictating the end of a conflict. Examples:
  • At 60% War Exhaustion, Pacifist Faction attraction begins to grow, indirectly affecting population Happiness and thus production. Attraction will rise in steps for every further 30% WE. Countered by propaganda efforts such as Information Quarantine or Hearts and Minds.
  • At 80% War Exhaustion, Traits, Civics and Buildings/Modules that provide XP to new armies and ships are rendered inactive as training is rushed in order to churn out casualty replacements. An empire-wide penalty to Pop Growth comes into effect. Consumer Goods Cost increased by 5%.
  • At 100% War Exhaustion, starships begin to accumulate minor stacking penalties to various stats as supply lines and maintenance cycles become unreliable. The penalties are randomized, but each ship is assigned one for every 10% WE above 90 (e.g. a cruiser might receive a -5% Fire Rate debuff at WE 100, and -5% Tracking at WE 110). If a ship is docked at an allied starbase at the start of the month, the newest penalty will be wiped. Consumer Goods Cost increased by 10%.
  • At 120% War Exhaustion, Unrest begins to spread, increasing the risk of rebellion. Countered by garrisons and the Martial Law Edict. Armies receive a penalty to Damage and Health as the empire is "scraping the barrel" (to borrow a term from HoI4). Consumer Goods Cost increased by 15%. Leaders run an increased risk of receiving negative Traits such as Lethargic or Substance Abuser.
... and so on. At some point, continuing the war will become unbearable, but it'd be to the player to decide when this point comes, and it will be forced by tangible economic devastation rather than a timed pop-up in the game. Hell, if a player feels like sticking with a war indefinitely, have them run a risk of the empire splintering in a civil war.

Furthermore, I believe War Exhaustion should not just completely reset after a war, but instead recover slowly, making empires coming out of a devastating conflict vulnerable for a time. Aside from added realism, this would give even large empires a reason not to go overboard with their wars, lest they risk becoming easier targets for the enemies they made. As an added bonus, it would allow the addition of economic or even diplomatic measures for post-war "reconstruction" efforts, such as Edicts, Policies or Trade deals.
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Precisely this. If some sort of infamy or threat statistic was added so winning countries cannot abuse 100% war exhaustion on losing countries to make them fall appart this would be far better. Plus it would make existing mechanics a lot more fun to play arround with. This would make the game more grand strategy like than adding board game like 4x rules.
 
How about capping "status quo" at your claims? That way, you can never lose (or gain) more than you claimed regardless. Would also make claiming a lot more important.
 
arc2611 said:
The problem with penalties is that empires could exploit the 100% war exhaustion penalties to cripple their opponent by refusing to peace out.
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and why it's a bad thing? if you're 100% exhausted and i'm not...why shouldn't I take advantage of your situation and keep you in your state as long as I can? (it's irrelevant if there are no penalties though)

also forced status quo make little sense if you're speaking about Total War casus belli....
 
I don't understand why a perfectly fine Militarist Empire's war exhaustion is rising passively afterall. I mean... what is wrong with your people that they start crying from the first day on despite all your fleets do is crushing the opponent and taking one planet after the other? This time pressure feels just incredibly unneccessary in some situations. At least there should be more techs or modifiers to decrease it, you know, something a la HoI4, a Ruler trait or Empire modifier that appears after you have fought a lot of wars and that significantly reduces your WE gain.

Also... Will the Eigmatic Fortress be fixed soon?
 
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I still don't know why forced peace should be needed, penalties are in my opinion the superior system.
People made good suggestions so far:

* Make penalties that actually mean something and hit energy and minerals
* Penalties start if you refuse a peace offer
* Refusing a peace offer costs influence

If ships cost more and more upkeep you will lack minerals to build more and it would start to drain your stored resources, if the are empty you already get a huge penalty to weapondamage.
If penalties are applied after a peaceoffer there will be no mp-shenanigans.
If refusing a peace offer something similar to forced statusquo is achieved but you can refuse for some time until you have no longer influence. In combination with the current zero influence gain this can happen rather quick.
 
As this status quo countdown is designed to stop players from being surprised by a forced peace, possibly loosing a system or two in the process, I was wondering if there will be a change to the claims map mode in 2.0.2 as well? So far I'm missing a clear overview of who is claiming what during a war, or even at peace.
 
Could you look into how much losing land armies contribute to war exhaustion? I was in an end-game war, with 4 different armies of 30+ troops each sweeping the galaxy, when suddenly i jumped to max exhaustion because of troops lost in invasions. Every invasion was a victory, but apparently my people didnt see those troops to be as expendable as I did.
 
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