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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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The Boz said:
Have you thought about modifying the War Exhaustion "pool"/gain depending on the type of war declared? Something like "I want to take your three border systems that each have two mines total" should generate more WE/have a smaller WE "pool" than "I wish to come to your planet, take it, and eat your face", which is a rather... existential concern.
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As the attacker, you're unlikely to grab that much before WE trigger auto Status Quo. Meanwhile the defender can hang on for as long as they want and fight a war of denial to force you to settle for less.

Not sure what this would actually add.
 
James Fire said:
You not being prepared for them claiming the system more than you does not make it stolen from you.
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Slynx said:
I think it's pointless discussion. I'm not trying to change your mind. and you will not change mine, because i'm only describing what I think about the situation and how I treat things.
and I treat it as thievery. that's all. for example i'm not telling you to treat it as thievery as well. not at all.

also, just to be clear, if i'll like your system i'll treat it as mine. and even if it'll be your homeworld system i'll treat it as a "system stolen from me". and it'll make you my enemy. it's simple as that.
after all I just need a reason to kill you, because there can be only one winner. and the only way I see "you" surviving this - is by becoming a vassal
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Eh, it's pointless because y'all are talking past each other. One side saying it's the game's rules, the other side saying he views it as theft. Those are 2 unrelated and non-exclusive stances.

Slynx, I think, has made it clear he understands it's the rules (they are slightly different than he originally thought). But it means he'll immediately turn on that ally. And, I would, too! My first game in 2.0, I'd just been forced into status quo before taking the FE homeworld (which was fine, I went to war unprepared, and I liked the original WE system). When I attacked again, I had a Colossus, so it was total war. My federation partner attacked from a different side then me. And immediately took a system. And my response was "Oh. That makes sense. I better split my fleet so I can take the rest before him." And that's what I did, so he only got 2 systems, 1 with a planet. And then I broke the federation, and rivalled him.

Because those were my systems.

I think there are cases where I wouldn't react that way, and even be happy my ally is taking the systems. After WiH in the tall game I just played, I gave all but the home systems and 1 Gaia world system to my protectorates and vassals. But if I'm not happy, then they've just made an enemy.

The game mechanics make sense, and I think both sides are in agreement. And how both sides view the results, in context, make sense. There's not even an argument happening, at least not one that makes sense.
 
It could be fun to add a Stages of Grief type event chain to 24 month 100% War Exhaustion period with events for Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance. Denial for example could have options to either launch a war propaganda campaign (influence cost) or to get increased Pacifist faction attraction. Anger may involve either executing a certain Admiral/General scapegoat or accepting a Unity/Happiness hit.
 
Cheers for the DD Wiz, and that sounds like the best option from my angle (but either way, top work on continuing to refine and improve) :D.

Wiz said:
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
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Bless - big props for this - while it's not something I'd go with, leaving it there for people who are keen on it is tops :cool:.
 
bodhi said:
Have no idea if you've been playing Beta, but the bugs it has in the release version have been fixed. It's beautiful now. You'll love it and if you still don't then you just need to learn how to use it properly.
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It needs an associated hotkey pretty badly though; I keep wanting to press F11 to invoke it.
 
Defiler99 said:
It needs an associated hotkey pretty badly though; I keep wanting to press F11 to invoke it.
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F11 is already the screenshot button though.
 
This forced peace systems is highly artificial and difficult to relate to outside fiction. I wished you instead had went for a scaling unrest/economic loss system (which increased over time when war exhaustion was 100 % (with status listed in the UI). I would have had the same effect and probably explained a lot easier for the player what the exact effect of war exhaustion is. Also you could then have introduced tactics which increased WE for the enemy to make his situation unbearable (like some sort of guerrilla tactic/hit and run) which should have more effect of the side who is would have the best result in any peace treaty. This should be possible to balance in more ways than one to get the result the developers are after (and improve it when needed).

If you use the real world as a model the forced peace system have never happened. There has been revolutions because of unrest (Russia after WW1) and retreats to avoid more severe political consequences (Vietnam war), but also conflicts where the defender never surrendered despite heavy losses (Great Britain and Russia after WW2, France in WW1) and attackers until they were at the brink of destruction (Japan in WW2). I'm afraid the unexplained forced peace system will antagonize many regular players (including me).

I hope Wiz (and his team) are not too stubborn to keep evaluating other ways of improving this system since WE is really counter-intuitive i many ways, especially since defenders usually fight harder than attackers (and these labels may change during a conflict depending on who is winning). I'm afraid Wiz comment about "and this time it's here to stay" seems to be more about his pride than anything else.
 
Is it just me who's feeling rather silly for not having suggested that sooner? I was all like "Make WE build slower" and "scaling penalties"...but I never thought of "Okay, full WE - now you better wrap this up in two years".

I like this change.
 
CAN WE HAVE A BAD BOY METER IN ADDITION TO WE?

Often the result of the WE system is that the stronger side is abitrarely forced to stop aggression if the weaker side isn't totally pathetic.
My idea is that WE should just end stalmates and pure stubborness. Therefore WE should accumulate with losses and over time BUT should be reduced to a smaller degree evertime
you win a battle conquer systems and especially take back planets etc. That's much more realistic than ignoring positive turns in a war effort.

The BAD BOY METER on the other hand should increase the price of aggressive expansion.
Everytime you make claims, declare war, make greedy peace deals and so on the bad boy meter of your empire rises. The level of the bad boy meter should sink over time or if you liberate other nations etc. If your bad boy meter is is too high other empires should stop cooperating at first and if the situation gets worse team up on you.

With this system aggressive empires wouldn't be fored by dumb mecanics to stop expanding, but would have to pay a realistic price for doing so.

PS: Aren't Doom STacks still a thing in 2.0? Have you additional ideas for that?
 
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Ur-Quan Lord 13 said:
Slynx, I think, has made it clear he understands it's the rules (they are slightly different than he originally thought). But it means he'll immediately turn on that ally. And, I would, too! My first game in 2.0, I'd just been forced into status quo before taking the FE homeworld (which was fine, I went to war unprepared, and I liked the original WE system). When I attacked again, I had a Colossus, so it was total war. My federation partner attacked from a different side then me. And immediately took a system. And my response was "Oh. That makes sense. I better split my fleet so I can take the rest before him." And that's what I did, so he only got 2 systems, 1 with a planet. And then I broke the federation, and rivalled him.

Because those were my systems.
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The missing piece here is that the only ways to resolve this sort of overlapping-claim dispute are unilateral surrender and war. The mechanics are biased towards fighting over the division of spoils because there's no way to negotiate the matter.

I'd like to see claims be tradeable, though I think this would open up a boatload of exploits.
 
same exploit as with diplomacy. if we'd be able to tell AI "stop talking to X he is a bad boy" (or "here is your money, now leave X alone") it'll probably lead to a lot of exploits from player's side :D
 
Oh, hell -- if you really need games without exploits you wouldn't be looking at Paradox titles in the first place.
 
100% exhaustion forced peace just force players to peace, that was stupid, why we cant force to surreder enemy when they have 100% exhaustion ? even after that 2 years?.
 
Aligetion said:
100% exhaustion forced peace just force players to peace, that was stupid, why we cant force to surreder enemy when they have 100% exhaustion ? even after that 2 years?.
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it's simple. there is forced status quo afaik.
and if you'll force surrender...that'll be abusable. especially with TotalWar casus belli. (where surrender leads to game over)
 
Hi, its getting better with all the balancing.
Just wanted to share some minor UI tweaks, that might be helpful for others as well:
1. After using jump drive, its not visible how many days is left for cool down
2. Adding space between number (thousands and hundreds), when you have enemy fleets on map, its very easy to mistake 10000 fleet with 100000 fleet by fast overlook

Also I think fleet limits should apply to Federation fleets as well... Federations now can get HUGE single fleets, which is kinda unfair when big single empires can not.
 
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