There is another thread on Forced Truces, are there forum moderators who can merge the two? :)

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/20834-forced-truces

just give us some "war weariness" with an increasing happiness penalty, so even the winning side gets to a point where a "cease fire" is wanted.

in this like 5-7 turn "cease fire" the losing side can try to recover, and negotiate a "truce".

it has the same effect as the "forced truce"(prolonging wars), but dynamic and with playerchoice, instead of arbitrary and forced.

would also be a nice hook into populations and political parties, a mostly pacifist population would get weary a lot faster than militarists.

Yes I do fell that Force Truce is too easy for the losing side to implement.

Make it a lot harder.

1000 times this. Forced truce is broken, frustrating, and un-fun. Let me tell you a story.

The sophons in my first real game were happily sitting in a corner, teching up and expanding. I had just hit 3 worlds when the Vodyani nearby dropped an ark and 4 ships on an outlying world. I was caught with my pants down, having expanding greedily and had no fleet. This is perfect. I was greedy, and got punished.

I lost the world, declared vengeance, and started building a fleet / getting a war hero, etc. This is where it gets frustrating.

I send my fleet, blow up theirs, then a second one, and the arc around my planet. I see they don't have ANY defensive fleet around their homeworld, so I send my fleet to punish them. And then, screw you, forced truce. 

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

What is this? They aren't space drakon? Ok, whatever, I pull back, have to wait 15 turns (way way too long), and then attack again. Blow up their capital ark, but before I can move to their next world, ANOTHER force truce.

Is forced truce there just to save the AI from the conquences of being bad at military?

How to fix:

- Rip it out completely.

- If not, drastically reduce the length, increase the cost. Make them hand me a planet or something.

- If it's in the game, it needs a MUCH better explaination. Right now, it appears totally random from what I can tell.

donblas wrote:

- If not, drastically reduce the length, increase the cost. Make them hand me a planet or something.

ES1 had the AI surrender and give you all but one of their systems when you were sieging or took one of their systems. Making the AI hand-over systems does not work either! So I would not suggest that.

Sir-Rogers wrote:

ES1 had the AI surrender and give you all but one of their systems when you were sieging or took one of their systems. Making the AI hand-over systems does not work either! So I would not suggest that.

Agreed. A good system (however just a little bit to predictable to be really great) is the war score of EuropaUniversalisIV : each victory rises this score (and, of course, each defeat lowers it) and, at any moment, a side may chose to end the war.

Higher the score, more the winning side can demand.

But, again, from a lore perspective, force cravers to truce is totally insane.

Hard to disagree with wanting the force truce mechanic looked at. Happened to me in my last game playing as the Sophons ; the Lumeris commenced a surprise war - I was caught unprepared but managed to turn the tide, eventually managing to capture several of their systems. Just as I was making a bee-line for their last two territories they pulled a forced truce. I was suckered into a deal that I didn't want, and didn't actually reflect my superiority in the conflict at that time. Througout the entire war ( and the post truce period ) I was locked out of any diplomatic actions to effect an alternative outcome. If this forced truce mechanic is to remain in the game, I would at least like to have the option to view information detailing the current position, possible actions, war score etc.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

 Take Civ for example. You could conquer an enemy in a single war, but to do so would usually come at extreme cost to yourself: those new cities can provide a lot of unrest, there's a lot more territory you now have to defend and your army's just been in a war.

Agreed that (too) quick and (too) swift conquers in Civ often result in major problems for attacking party. This make sense from a lore perspective : you can't conquer half the world (or galaxy here) without some kind of MAJOR opposition.

Strange thing here is that, in ES2, the political system already offers enough mechanics to manage such takeovers :-(

This Forced True idea is totally anti-game its so stupid its beyond believe.

Lost a game by score because could not conquer the other guy systems in time I was playing with Sophons and this was bad.

Now with the Vodyani.... did not got a single system won a couple of battles and Forced Peace on me... and now my Leeching fleet will be unable to move for 25 turns because its on enemy influence zone which is stupid enough by itself the two together its beyond believe.  

I am putting the game on a shelf and hope that in 6 months time someone come to their senses.

4x games have EXTERMINATE in the last X it is not real world when we all try to behave and and be friends (and even that doesnt work well as we can all around us) so yes drop the pacifist and political correct crap and let us do some old fashion racial cleansing !

ps. No pixels where harmed while posting this mainly because of Enforced Truce :)

I think the idea of prolonged wars costing increasing amounts of Influence for the aggressor is a good one. For one thing, it gives Cravers an actual use for Influence, and for another thing it's far more transparent. The most frustrating part of the current system is how it comes totally out of nowhere. You can't plan around it, and in fact it often interferes directly with your plans, such as when you get your big invasion fleet ready only to find that the war ends the moment you arrive. That's just a frustrating moment for a player. If you knew ahead of time that the war would end in exactly 5 turns, because that's how much influence you budgeted for, it would be much less annoying and you could actually prepare to wind down your military focus.

Also, well, the game desperately needs some kind of Influence sink at the moment. Influence is important in the very early game, but by the late game you generally have far more than you could ever reasonably spend.

Clarste wrote:

Also, well, the game desperately needs some kind of Influence sink at the moment. Influence is important in the very early game, but by the late game you generally have far more than you could ever reasonably spend.

You must not have unlocked the advanced election rigging options. They are quite the influence sink. And I assume more game mechanics will be added which cost influence.

I found a workaround to the current force-truce mechanic: you can issue demands to the AI, and if they refuse to give in, they'll instantly declare war. This works at any time throughout the truce period, but seems to have a cooldown. Just go to the diplomacy pie, and find the button next to the AI's faction symbol that resembles a contract. The downside is that the AI might just accept your demands, even if it's for a tech and hundreds of a strategic metal. It's a very gimmicky tactic, but so is the arbitrary force-truce. I agree that some sort of mechanic involving the spending of influence by the aggressor to maintain the war would be better.

I actually don't find the Force Truce/ War Exhaustion mechanic that bad. *ducks for cover*

Needs some tweaking but I would not throw it away. It also seems to me that some of you have not realized that you can actually see the War Exhaustion and the threshold for Force Truce in the diplomacy menu.

AndreasK wrote:

I actually don't find the Force Truce/ War Exhaustion mechanic that bad. *ducks for cover*

*throws grenade* "Fire in the hole!" :-)

At the risk of hijacking this thread's original discussion, here's a long idea:

Maybe the devs could change this mechanic into a minigame of sorts, similar to the battle space/ground battle options or the pre-election interventions? The winning side could get a window pop-up before the "negotiations" to 'Bluff', 'Intimidate' or 'Make Concession', while the losing side gets 'Remain Steadfast/Unwavering', 'Concede', or 'Double-cross', with each choice acting as multipliers (that either counter or exacerbate given opponent's decision) the current scores of military power, empire production, tally of lost ships/manpower/occupied worlds, etc. that are used to decide who gets the "upper hand" in the negotiations. This then determines the severity of reparations to be paid by the loser and the influence cost of continuing the war to the winner. If the winner can pay the influence, the war continues. If not, the losing player then gets the choice to accept terms, or pay even more influence to continue the war.

Or the negotiation minigame could just be cut out as unnecessary fluff . But it does seem to fit the general theme of the game and an opportunity for even more art splashes . Either way, it needs to be made clear in advance that the negotiations will happen soon and that they're an integral part of war, just like elections happening every 20 turns. Number tweaking would also be critical so human players don't feel that they get cheated by the system.

Just ran into a forced truce for the first time and it killed my enthusiasm for that save. I had the Sophons on the ropes and was preparing to move on to crushing the Lumeris with my holy crusade of Vodyani warriors when the little scientists locked me out of the space and stopped my legions of war. Extremely frustrating and unexpected. The Lumeris will likely win now via score, but had I been able to move through the last of the Sophon's systems I could have captured enough Lumeris worlds to possibly turn that game into a win. Changes are needed.

Yes it has to go.

Adds nothing to the game except frustration.  All offers should come from diplomacy and not forced upon the player.  Ending protracted conflicts without total domination needs to be a diplomatic offer that both players must agree to.  ES1 had the offer of star systems being granted in return for a cease fire.  Mush better way to deal with this in my opinion.