Two things that bother me are truce requests and the underpowered Horatio.  Truce is no longer "forced" but the effect is still unfortunately not much different. Now, the enemy faction can request a truce anytime at their whim and each time you refuse, the game slaps a +20 approval penalty on you that stacks. I once refused twice in less than 10 turns because there's no control over the timing of these truce requests, and in that same short period, I got a 20+20 = 40 approval penalty. If the intention was for a mechanic more similar to war weariness, this has failed. What should have been done was for the approval penalty to be incurred at fixed turn intervals throughout the war until you conclude a truce at your discretion. In other words, segregate this "war weariness" penalty from truce requests. Otherwise, the current system can unfairly affect the campaign victory outcome. To be clear, I'm not arguing for domination victory to be more easily achieved, but for it to be viable to invade and take over enemy systems to prevent/delay their progress when they're close to other victory types.

Another thing is that the game should allow truce terms to be negotiated according to a war score system. It's silly that the loser begging for peace imposes a "take it or leave it" offer and gets the advantage of a +20 approval penalty that stacks on the winning side for refusing the truce each time. How is it that the human player never gets the option to ask for peace but the AI can and with such impunity?

My Horatio campaigns have been frustrating. With pirates enabled, they fall victim early on because every colony they start siphons manpower from the home system, and they get attacked/invaded before they reach the population threshold needed for efficient ship production. Without pirates, they still grow too slowly even though I invested in farms early and depending on their starting home systems' FIDSI, could fall behind other factions very quickly. Siphoning manpower to speed up colonization should be an option, not a compulsory Horatio trait.

I once triggered a forced truce myself when I decided I was done with a war.  It looked like it's functionally the same mechanic as diplomatic pressure, or whatever that's called.  Thus, having more influence than your enemy may delay how quickly they can force a truce, and having less influence might allow them to do it more quickly.  Maybe.  I'd have to look into it some more (The same people I was able to demand a forced truce from, in a previous war, I think we went half the game at war before they finally triggered a forced truce against me, so whatever allowed me to demand a forced truce seems to have prevented them from doing it to me)

I don't know about the influence part. The truce requests came within 10 turns even though my influence was overwhelming to the point that my nearest rival's (not the one I was at war with) systems were covered by it. Even if my influence was relatively less than the enemy faction's, how can the losing side dictate peace terms at any time on the winning side? A much better solution would be for the overexpansion approval penalty to scale up progressively the more planets you exceed over the cap limit (unfortunately, the game doesn't tell you the specifics of this aspect). So for example, owning 10/9 planets allowed incurs +10 approval penalty, while having 20/9 planets would incur a +20 approval penalty. If this was implemented, then there's no need for a war weariness penalty or even if there was war weariness, it could be toned down to stack on top of this for balance.

idlih10 wrote:

Now, the enemy faction can request a truce anytime at their whim.

<..> How is it that the human player never gets the option to ask for peace but the AI can and with such impunity?

I think you got the mechanics a bit wrong. You can only request a truce once a certain pressure threshold was reached in either direction (winning or losing). The winning side has to go all the way to propose a truce (and get the spoils) while the losing side has the option to propose the truce earlier. It works very well in my experience. The devs' intention (and please correct me if I got it wrong) was to have more frequent wars rather than one massive war to the death. With this system you have the option to carry on fighting, but there is a penalty associated with that. Previously, in what was forced truce, you didn't have that option. There is a pretty detailed thread on the forum with various pro and contra arguments around this.