ES1 was a simple game with the usual conquering snowball where you won the first war of annihilation and the game is more or less won.ES2 is trying to be more like Paradox games and even Civ6 when one war does not end an empire.Space 4x games should be than just military free for alls.All 4x aspects should be playable.

Ashbery76 wrote:

ES1 was a simple game with the usual conquering snowball where you won the first war of annihilation and the game is more or less won.ES2 is trying to be more like Paradox games and even Civ6 when one war does not end an empire.Space 4x games should be than just military free for alls.All 4x aspects should be playable.

I agree, but crippling to balance is not the way to do it, imho.  In my situation, I would lose the war diplomatically with their sphere of influence taking my planets simply because the game is giving me a lose/lose situation by trying to force a truce on me.  So I will lose this game simply because I cannot defend against Influence Tech spamming.  Right now there is too much weight on influence, dust, and happiness, and neglecting any of this tech will be a net loss.

Space 4x games should be more than just influence absorption free-for-alls. All 4x aspects should be playable, including Military Aggression.  As the United Empire, it makes no sense to place artificial brakes on the military-industrial complex when 80% of my entire Empire is Miliarist, 15% is Industrialist, and 5% is pacifist.  Why are my people unhappy about perpetual warfare???

What they need to do is make other play styles as viable as military aggression, not make nonsensical checks and balances on warfare.  The reason ES1 was a military conquest struggle was just bad balancing of weapon modules vs defensive modules.  They designed those weapon modules to be the trump card and once you started capturing more star systems, the science and dust would snowball out of control.  This was a balancing issue and not a mechanics issue.

Its pretty easy at this stage to ignore the force truce, especially if you are picking the right laws and your empire wasn't unhappy to before the war.  Jingoist parade and safer skies for example when implemented will counterbalance even a -40 happiness from 2 force truces refused, and they are military laws.  Fleet hero xp does need a look at though. 

MadMyke2010 wrote:

Jingoist Parade only works in War.  Once you accept that Truce, you lose the +Happiness.  I will check out Safer Skies and break of some of my weaker ships to orbit my planets.  The biggest hit to Happiness I have at this point is Over-Population.

That's why he said: refuse the truce. :D Jingoist Paradise should basically nullify the first truce-refusal malus. If you still think you don't have enough happiness: Declare war on someone on the other end of the galaxy for the bonus happiness, since you get +15 for each war. Too much pops on planets? Reorganize pop or convert them to manpower. Safer Skies works well, too. 

mixerria wrote:

MadMyke2010 wrote:

Jingoist Parade only works in War.  Once you accept that Truce, you lose the +Happiness.  I will check out Safer Skies and break of some of my weaker ships to orbit my planets.  The biggest hit to Happiness I have at this point is Over-Population.

That's why he said: refuse the truce. :D Jingoist Paradise should basically nullify the first truce-refusal malus. If you still think you don't have enough happiness: Declare war on someone on the other end of the galaxy for the bonus happiness, since you get +15 for each war. Too much pops on planets? Reorganize pop or convert them to manpower. Safer Skies works well, too. 

I received a response from the devs in another thread and the -50% Dust on Empire Approval = Unhappy was not intentional and it will be changed for the next update.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/22329-please-change-empire-disapproval-penalty

Once this is resolved, hitting Unhappy in Empire Approval will not be an issue.

MadMyke2010 wrote:

mixerria wrote:

MadMyke2010 wrote:

Jingoist Parade only works in War.  Once you accept that Truce, you lose the +Happiness.  I will check out Safer Skies and break of some of my weaker ships to orbit my planets.  The biggest hit to Happiness I have at this point is Over-Population.

That's why he said: refuse the truce. :D Jingoist Paradise should basically nullify the first truce-refusal malus. If you still think you don't have enough happiness: Declare war on someone on the other end of the galaxy for the bonus happiness, since you get +15 for each war. Too much pops on planets? Reorganize pop or convert them to manpower. Safer Skies works well, too. 

I received a response from the devs in another thread and the -50% Dust on Empire Approval = Unhappy was not intentional and it will be changed for the next update.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/22329-please-change-empire-disapproval-penalty

Once this is resolved, hitting Unhappy in Empire Approval will not be an issue.

Ah, nice to know. I favoured the hit in science instead of dust, too. (makes much more sense)

mixerria wrote:

MadMyke2010 wrote:

mixerria wrote:

MadMyke2010 wrote:

Jingoist Parade only works in War.  Once you accept that Truce, you lose the +Happiness.  I will check out Safer Skies and break of some of my weaker ships to orbit my planets.  The biggest hit to Happiness I have at this point is Over-Population.

That's why he said: refuse the truce. :D Jingoist Paradise should basically nullify the first truce-refusal malus. If you still think you don't have enough happiness: Declare war on someone on the other end of the galaxy for the bonus happiness, since you get +15 for each war. Too much pops on planets? Reorganize pop or convert them to manpower. Safer Skies works well, too. 

I received a response from the devs in another thread and the -50% Dust on Empire Approval = Unhappy was not intentional and it will be changed for the next update.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/22329-please-change-empire-disapproval-penalty

Once this is resolved, hitting Unhappy in Empire Approval will not be aandn issue.

Ah, nice to know. I favoured the hit in science instead of dust, too. (makes much more sense)

and that is what I have been talking about.  For me, it was a hit to happiness for trucing or a hit to happiness for not trucing.  The core issue here was a complete lack of happiness due to needing to settle Steppe planets for bits of Dust and a single Snow planet for the little bit of science I could get.  If it were -50% science, I could have easily ignored the truce penalty and went full military.  The -50% Dust penalty made it so I had to scrap some of my fleets, some of my improvements and put every system into persistent  >>>  just to avoid immediate Bankruptcy.  This meant I could not manage my population, and that just made the Approval rating drop even more.

ES1, if you had no science, full military was how you compensated.  -50% Science when your Science is abysmal is not a problem.  -50% Dust as a military power is instant death.  I went from netting about +75 Dust per turn to -322 Dust per turn if I neglected the truce or accepted it (-  from Jingoist without War).  Accepting Truce gave me reparations around +100 Dust per turn, so I only had -200 Dust to try to balance by scrapping ships and improvements.  After that, it was only a matter of time before the Vodyani tech'd up an steamrolled my crippled Empire.

As for now, I will wait for them to change it to -50% Science before I play again.  The taste is still a bit bitter on my tongue.

what difficulty/galaxy settings  are you on?  Also what's your early game tech look like?

Im still yet to get anything that isnt a total runaway, so i'd like to test what others are doing

Eji1700 wrote:

what difficulty/galaxy settings  are you on?  Also what's your early game tech look like?

Im still yet to get anything that isnt a total runaway, so i'd like to test what others are doing

Try it with rare resources, rare curiosities, rare anomalies, hard minor factions, many minor factions.  Medium size with Hard difficulty and Twin Elliptical with 4 unique factions.  I was in one half of the galaxy with Pilgrims and Vodyani.