Augustus wrote:

The devs have responded that this is an early alpha stopgap that they're going to change once we come up with something better.  So let's come up with something better.

It's right in front of everyone, war weariness is a far better alternative to arbitrarily stopping a war just like that. Though I must qualify that war weariness should also vary in severity depending on your faction trait and government affinity, and mechanics like say boosters from Endless Legend should also be available to allow the player the option to make it work for his strategy.

Let's be fair, Amplitude hasn't released the truce system in its present state. This is early access, which means that while this thread and its general thrust are appropriate (discussing and addressing a perceived issue), accusations of misconduct on the part of the developer are not. I'm harsh on the truce system, yes, but there's a difference between attacking the current system and attacking the people behind it. Cool your jets.

I do, however, question the design imperatives behind the current system. I understand them (put the brakes on someone winning a war so the loser doesn't just get curbstomped), but I question the priority behind its implementation. There are some game features that are important enough that them making sense doesn't matter, they have to exist. I, as, the ruler of the great and terrible Vodyani empire, do not possess the power to wrench the flow of time around to my whim, and yet the save/load system must exist from a game perspective, and that's fine. I do, however, violently contest against the idea of a preserve-the-loser-of-a-war system being a feature that warrants that sort of protection. If you can find a way to make it make sense and give it limits that also make sense, fine, but it's not important enough to exist in defiance of the in-character universe.

AndreasK wrote:

SethG wrote:

If you want to avoid people calling you out on terrible work, it's better not to release it until you've improved your efforts.

Assuming you want to be heard in your call for a change that is an irrelevant sentiment.

You know what, they're adults.  They've grown long past the point where every idea they have must be praised.  If they're at all honest with themselves, they know it's awful, and if all you have to offer is whiny white knighting.....

Yes, I know this is alpha, but the current system is so horrible that there can only be three things going on.

1. The programmer gave them exactly what they were asked to provide - This is terrible game design.

2. They asked the programmer for something else, and got this - This is terrible programming.

3. (And by far the most likely as far as I'm concerned) They told the programmer they had three months to work on it, came by after two days and crammed what was finished into the game - This is really poor decision making.

At this point the mechanic is so poorly implemented and game-breaking that it is impossible to understand what it's doing in alpha.  If it doesn't even work, wait until it does to put it in.  The truce is stopping people from being able to fully test the product that we have now.

Could be interesting if a victorious civilization might impose ideology conditions on the conquered.  This might lead to choices down the road for the conquered civ to diverge from that set path.  I'm thinking something like Germany after the Treaty of Versailles...  

The reason why diplomacy costs currency in the Endless games is because the games encourage you to use it in a more muscular and direct way than other 4x games do.

Augustus wrote:

Could be interesting if a victorious civilization might impose ideology conditions on the conquered.  This might lead to choices down the road for the conquered civ to diverge from that set path.  I'm thinking something like Germany after the Treaty of Versailles...  

If you could do something like demand a regime change and pick which party becomes dominant in your opponent's Senate, that would have really interesting implications.

SethG wrote:

You know what, they're adults.  They've grown long past the point where every idea they have must be praised.  If they're at all honest with themselves, they know it's awful, and if all you have to offer is whiny white knighting.....

Yes, I know this is alpha, but the current system is so horrible that there can only be three things going on.

1. The programmer gave them exactly what they were asked to provide - This is terrible game design.

2. They asked the programmer for something else, and got this - This is terrible programming.

3. (And by far the most likely as far as I'm concerned) They told the programmer they had three months to work on it, came by after two days and crammed what was finished into the game - This is really poor decision making.

At this point the mechanic is so poorly implemented and game-breaking that it is impossible to understand what it's doing in alpha.  If it doesn't even work, wait until it does to put it in.  The truce is stopping people from being able to fully test the product that we have now.

I did not suggest you should praise them for a feature you dislike. What I did suggest was that you moderate yourself when voicing your concerns. Explain why you are frustrated and feel need to describe the feature with loaded words and phrases instead of actually using said words and phrases. Being disrespectful might give you attention, but it is counterproductive in regards to getting any of the good points you might have across to the recipient.

SethG wrote:

You know what, they're adults.

Well I'm glad someone in this discussion is, because by god are you ever abrasive.

On topic with what others suggested earlier, I recognize they don't want the game to devolve in to war state, but that should be a player's call. And if you want to increase diplomatic options, give us diplomatic options. Having a forced mechanic only serves to completely stonewall a military approach (Which is necessary in certain races), while undermining intelligent diplomatic moves. It's the worst of both worlds.

As I like the idea of war weariness of aAmplitude, I just want to share this screenshot:

In this war I fought only a battle against a single sophon explorer. And received dust for free 20 turns after!

Don't sant to make another post blaming Amplitude (there are enough of them in these forums). Just put an example of how this feature is actually working. I'm sure they'll fix it before release, but I hope they, at least tweak a bit before next alph/beta.

lo_fabre wrote:

As I like the idea of war weariness of aAmplitude, I just want to share this screenshot:

In this war I fought only a battle against a single sophon explorer. And received dust for free 20 turns after!

Don't sant to make another post blaming Amplitude (there are enough of them in these forums). Just put an example of how this feature is actually working. I'm sure they'll fix it before release, but I hope they, at least tweak a bit before next alph/beta.

Yeah, that does seem hilariously punitive for having lost a single ship. Perhaps it calculates relative strength (As in, if you could conceivably just steamroll the Sophons if the war didn't end) as part of the payment?

Augustus wrote:

The devs have responded that this is an early alpha stopgap that they're going to change once we come up with something better.  So let's come up with something better.

There are plenty of suggestions in some of the other threads about it ;) Besides the devs have also revealed some of the things they will replace it with.

SethG wrote:

If you want to avoid people calling you out on terrible work, it's better not to release it until you've improved your efforts.

Assuming you want to be heard in your call for a change that is an irrelevant sentiment.

Wintermote wrote:

mezmorki wrote:

I agree - I found the truce mechanic terribly irritating.  

This is the same problem that Stellaris has with it's warscore.  There is an arbitrary limit to how far you can take a war in a given period of time - which is jarring to the player.

Stellaris warscore is a rough representation of your ability to actually make and enforce a claim on another political entity. It's a holdover from Paradox's Europa Universalis days, which largely deals with human history before we started fighting total wars; when fighting a war did not mean complete destruction / utter subservience to the winning party. You would instead fight and take a small territory - back and forth like this for decades.

What you want in your war, is a total war. This is quintessentially what World War 2 was, (and World War 1 kind of was) - something where the political landscape completely changes. Borders completely redrawn, absolute submission of your enemies, etc. etc.

The important question here is, "do you want to win everything all at once?" 

Being that Endless Space is not a war simulator like Hearts of Iron, but more politically minded - like the Europa Universalis games, I don't think that having every conflict turn into a "win everything / lose everything" proposition is a good idea.

Why shouldn't we win everything at once, if we've built up the strength to do it? Especially if the alien race we're roleplaying isn't the peaceable sort like Cravers? Should we never have games where there are innate conquering races who would stop at nothing, if they were having continued success? 

It takes a lot of the sci-fi fun out of the game, when systems like Stellaris' war score are carryovers from European history and jammed into a game where not everyone should act like a 15th Century Human. In Stellaris, exactly *who* is stopping me from declaring another war for a 10 year period? Some disembodied Galaxy God? It doesn't arise organically from the conflict between factions. It's just a forced system that feels out of place in a space 4x game.

I'm not against ways to slow down a steamrolling faction if it feels organic and "emergent", like war weariness. Or maybe an abstracted logistics chain spread too thin. What I object to are limits that just seem forced and arbitrary, like we're fighting the game designer and not the AI factions. 

Zenicetus wrote:

Why shouldn't we win everything at once, if we've built up the strength to do it? Especially if the alien race we're roleplaying isn't the peaceable sort like Cravers? Should we never have games where there are innate conquering races who would stop at nothing, if they were having continued success?

THIS. I have never understood why a game ever punishes those who performed well. If I'm out autocrossing, we don't suddenly throw extra time on the guy who finished first to "help even things up". He did best. He's earned the early advantage he has. Same goes for gaming. If someone has the best military, or the most tech, or did the best at exploring and colonizing, they should not be punished for that success. If they've become a threat, it's on the other players in the game to figure out how to deal with that threat.

There shouldnt be a real hard cap on this. Stellaris warscore changed also so you cant conquer a whole empire in a single run most of the time. I really dont get this why. If anybody wants me to stop try to do it.   In stellaris there are the fallen empires whose are much stronger than any other empire most of the time. There they could make one of them a peacekeeper like. If you wants to steamroll then they try to stop you.  In this game if you want to do it then implement a race to try to stop you. Or make the other empires form a pact against you whatever. Just not an automated stop

Well, the whole problem is more complex IMO.

In general, AI in Amplitude games behaves like a jerk.

All that "cold war" fluff means they just run amok and plunder your stuff, steal your pops, slap outposts in your face, and invade your systems as soon as they explore them.

This was the case in ES, was the case in EL, and now ES2.

It is even more affected by Endless difficulty, where you get huge hits on standings, basically making any sort of diplomacy except exchanging nuclear rockets impossible.

So of course, the rightful reaction to this is to mine all your planets to the core, build as much ships as you can, and go on a genocidal rampage spree of vengeance.

It is totally understandable.

And of course it is quite annoying when AI puts a truce leash on you every few turns to cool you down.

So, first things first, as with most 4x strategy lovers, we mostly take pleasure in exploring, expanding and building up our stuff, researching, and so on.

The actual need for violence comes when we literally have nowhere to expand.

Or we don't even care for violence when we pursue another sorts of victory (scientific, diplomatic, etc).

Like, in Civilization BE all you do as Harmony is smell flowers, build a bunch of cities, then needlejets to defend them and then just sit, wait, juggle your workers and cities while researching and building Mindflower to transcend everyone and finish the game. Meanwhile all the warmongering dickhead neighbors are going hysterical at your borders, even without having developed their own territories.

Or, to take Civilization V as example again, some wars are waged to just help your buddy when he gets jumped on by a tandem of warmongering imbeciles like Monty and Shaka. Even if that buddy is AI sometimes.

So, back to ES2 issues:

- The dickhead AI behaviour and "cold war" being actually quite hot of course eventually forces you to go to war

- It is pretty much impossible to make friends on higher difficulties

- There are no options to help someone, like "I want you to make peace with..." mechanic in Civ series to stop someone from being a dickhead

So, forcing a truce is a good mechanic which can be useful, just not in current implementation, of course.

Romeo wrote:

Zenicetus wrote:

Why shouldn't we win everything at once, if we've built up the strength to do it? Especially if the alien race we're roleplaying isn't the peaceable sort like Cravers? Should we never have games where there are innate conquering races who would stop at nothing, if they were having continued success?

THIS. I have never understood why a game ever punishes those who performed well. If I'm out autocrossing, we don't suddenly throw extra time on the guy who finished first to "help even things up". He did best. He's earned the early advantage he has. Same goes for gaming. If someone has the best military, or the most tech, or did the best at exploring and colonizing, they should not be punished for that success. If they've become a threat, it's on the other players in the game to figure out how to deal with that threat.

Because the logical outcome of this is that there's very little point to have a diplomacy system or going for anything other than "kill and take everything" routes.  No matter how much better I play than you in the early game, if you just mass produce ships, and I do not, you will take my systems (which are better than yours) and use them against me.

You shouldn't punish a warmongerer as the current system does, but you need a way for civs that are "non violent" to compete otherwise it's basically just business as usually (go wide and mass produce a fleet).  In fact right now with literally every race you can still do this.  It takes longer due to forced truce, but you can usually eliminate the other race in your arm by turn 20/30 and spring from there.

Romeo wrote:

If I mass produce ships, I've been neglecting planetary upgrades, economy and tech. If I don't kill you, or if you ally with a partner, I'm completely and utterly boned. I will be outperformed the longer the game goes on. It's certainly not a guaranteed win. You'll notice Galactic Civilization doesn't have a "force you to stop" mechanic, yet somehow, military isn't the most common means of winning.

Exactly. This has been dealt with in other strategy games without shackling the player with a Hand of God reaching out of the stars and saying "No, you can't do that!" as with Stellaris' white peace time limits, or this forced truce idea.

If the intent is to put a brake on a player steamrolling neighbors with an early military rush, then make the limitation organic like war weariness, or an extended logistics penalty. Or that old hoary standby.... unhappiness for conquered planets, so you have to dedicate resources to garrison duty.