Fenrakk101 wrote:

The most perplexing this is that this is already exactly how the diplomacy mechanics functioned in ES1. You could negotiate for a ceasefire/peace treaty, and would generally require you to give the AI enough of what they wanted to spare your life for a few turns. That system worked far, far better than the force truce mechanic ever could in this regard.

I got the feeling in ES1 that the stronger the opponent's position, the harder it was to pacify them with gifts. If the war was going well for them, they would see no reason to end it. And that is exactly how it should be, for reasons of immersion, decisiveness, and putting the last X in 4X. 

Forced truce has it all backwards. 

AndreasK wrote:

So do both parties lay out demands then? Or only the aggressor?

Both parties - but that is beside the point. As Erwin Rommel said: "No plan survives contact with the enemy" - You have to specify your demands at the start of the war - unlike EU4 where you could do it dynamically. The oponent can release systems or destroy systems that you demanded, leaving you with absolutely nothing for winning the war.

And then there´s the exploit of giving away your stuff to another war that is started after yours. There is no way to make such a system balanced and exploit-free.

AndreasK wrote:

Just out of curiosity where you playing Vodyani all of the three times you experienced this? I suspect this problem is specific to them.

I think I was, now that you mention it. Every time I picked Sophon or Cravers, no one has thought to Declare War on me first.

jhell wrote:

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback and the great discussion. Like adelahaye wrote, we're going to retake the Force Truce mechanic. I just wanted to give you a few more elements as to why it may feel more prevalent now than it should when the game is complete:

- Currently it's the only condition we put for the AI to end the war: as soon as it can force a truce (winning or losing), it will

- There is no indication that the AI is going to use the force truce, do you think a message hinting towards it (a few turns before it happens) would help?

- The events contributing to the war score computation may be too high in value

- The reparations might not always be approriate

Also, the feature is currently cruelly lacking in feedback, but you do have access to the gauge that lets you know if you or the AI can force a truce soon in the diplomacy screen:

Here I am playing Lumeris and am at war with the Sophons. The red bar indicates that they are winning, and once it's full they will be able to force a truce on me (it changes each turn). On my side however, you can notice the red button next to the Sophons' race icon: it means I can already choose to force a truce if I so wish - in this case, as I'm losing, it will end the war but I'll have to pay reparations.

I hope this helps a little in the meantime, but rest assured we are working on this :)

I mean, I'd personally prefer it if the "Force Truce" was more "Beg for Mercy". It is stupidly frustrating to be forced to stop attacking as the Cravers or Vodyani. In fact, ceasing the attack can really screw the both of them over. I think the system would be more appreciable if it was like it is now, but with "Accept" or "Decline". Accept earns you the reparations, influential demands and perhaps a bit of a diplomatic bonus. Decline allows you to sacrifice all those things and press the assault.

Sir-Rogers wrote:

AndreasK wrote:

So do both parties lay out demands then? Or only the aggressor?

Both parties - but that is beside the point. As Erwin Rommel said: "No plan survives contact with the enemy" - You have to specify your demands at the start of the war - unlike EU4 where you could do it dynamically. The oponent can release systems or destroy systems that you demanded, leaving you with absolutely nothing for winning the war.

And then there´s the exploit of giving away your stuff to another war that is started after yours. There is no way to make such a system balanced and exploit-free.

Did not want to suggest anything like that for ES2 was just curious how it worked. Do not really care that much about the war reparation stuff (ie who won or lost) that part can go and can be left for a regular negotiated truce. The notion I like is that of having a forced truce (without any reparation) triggered automatically if both parties reach a certain war exhaustion threshold with an added degree of influence on your war exhaustion with different game elements. Such that wars have a limited lifespan and you have to manage your war exhaustion to sustain it longer. Obviously one would have to take great care as to design it such that neither the wars are ended to quickly by the mechanic nor the war exhaustion becomes so inconsequential that it does not matter.

AndreasK wrote:

XDAvenger93 wrote:

I think the biggest problem I can still see right now is the unilateralness of how force truce works. It is fundamentaly as presented to us a mechanic that strips control away from one side of the conflict no matter if that side is actualy winning or loosing. And this is an inherent flaw in the warscore system. It's why I maintain that a war fatigue system that tracks independent values for both factions involved while more complex is actualy closer to reflecting a more realistic aproach to warfare. Prolonging of wars can still be achieved by making truces a desireable outcome by making said fatigue cary a hefty impact on the performance of the empire. It can even a bounce back mechanic, as an empire even though it is winning, is exhausting itself too much, allowing the aparent looser to mount a counter offensive that will temporarily reduce the war fatigue of his own people and let him claim the uppen hand, snatching an overall victory from the jaws of aparent defeat. Crucialy though, because each side of a war tracks it's own fatigue we get rid of the nonsensical scenario we have now due to the warscore system where one faction is esentialy relishing the war and gaining benefits from it yet is forced to cease hostilities by the loosers.

Another major advantage I see to a war fatigue system is that, beeing an empire specific value it also opens up new avenues of realism by making it a global value of the empire, not one specific to a single conflict. So we stop getting the curent scenarios where my population is oh so tired of the constant war with faction A that they want to force a truce, but faction b? Fuck those guys war all the way! By making the war fatigue value one that every war contribues to, it makes deciding to actualy wage a war a tougher decision as the more wars you fight the greater the fatigue will get. It builds this need to carefully manage it through well planned agresion and diplomacy and slows down the game preventing genocidal wipes from occuring with frequency by making it increasingly difficult to wage endless war (with some factions having an easier time than others doing it). It would mean giving control back to the players while still achieving the desired prolonging of the duration of conflicts. And as I stated before, when it comes to a 4x game giving control the player is priority number 1. Yes, I can see the reason you can only direct general strategy during fights, I even like this aproach as it has it's own charm and complexity while not devolving into micro hell, but in aspects of empire management, diplomacy and orchestrating galactic war campaigns, anything that takes away control from the player's hands is not a good thing, and the warscore/force truce system sadly does that. Ultimatly, even if reworked to not be an annoyance (gamebreaking one at points), it's still too powerfull and unilateral an ability to exist outside a specific lore context/faction feature and it strips too much control that a player should have. Was it not the stated goal to have the player feel like an emperor managing an empire and less like a ship captain that drove the battle system of ES? Well how much of an emperor are you if the guys you are curently curbstomping in a war to the cheers of your entire population sudenly are capable of calling a unilateral time-out that they impose on you with nothing on your part able to prevent this or counter it in any way?

Some form of your earlier suggestion from this thread would probably be fine by me too but i would leave out the part with "peace fatigue" for cravers mentioned as I suspect it would screw to much with the counter parties of cravers in war. For your system to lead to shorter wars you would have to make the penalties you accumulate to FIDS, hapiness or whatever to be substantial as the war progresses. That also means, as the Cravers do not incur these penalty, they have no interest in ending wars and will declare war on everybody. This is fine lore-wise, but will lead to everybody but the Cravers being economically crippled as long as at least one Craver faction is alive (assuming proper exploration by the Cravers).

Having had a chance to paly around with numbers in my head for fun for a bit, I realise the peace fatigue option for the cravers was not that good an ideea as I initialy viewed it. Sure it sounds good for the lore, but in terms of actual gameplay it goes against every stated goal of a war fatigue system. So I'll toss that one out. Still, as befiting the harvesters of planets, their tolerance to war and thus ability to endure mounting war fatigue should be greater than that of more peacefull races.

@ jhell

Obviously its more convenient to postpone a peace treaty till I've conquered all the enemy systems I had my eye on, instead keeping an eye on the progression bar in diplomacy will certainly do for now. So thanks alot for that info. :)

Sofar I had only noticed those bars show me the likelyhood the AI will declare war on me, and I did receive plenty of warnings when they filled up; Some nice and threatening diplomatic messages. Enjoyed it. 

A similar warning threatening to declare peace on me (lol) would be helpfull, though also quite obsolete now I know where to look. I would suggest a one-time hint from our 'expert'-helper to avoid repetitiveness. (Triggered by start of war) Though, if you dont care about that, something in the line of Recent intelligence reports seem to suggest the enemy is whimpering and ready to give in to our demands... Or preferably something more disrespectfull of the enemy. 8)

I suggested this in another thread, but since this seems to be the one the devs are reading-

atejas wrote:

The basic idea behind the forced truce/war exhaustion mechanic seems to be giving losing or overextended factions a chance to limp away and lick their wounds for a bit. That's a good feature in theory, but it's clearly not working right now.

Here are my suggestions:

-Every player has a baseline 'war exhaustion' bar that represents the political will to keep fighting. This is fundamentally the same for all factions, but can be modified by faction traits, political ideology, and maybe government type. Every turn, this fills up by a certain amount.

-Suffering material losses should also increase this. Losing ships, population units, planet improvements, and trade routes, as well as having systems blockaded, should all be events that contribute towards filling it.

-Gaining control of a planet should initially generate a major exhaustion penalty every turn, which eventually grows lower as the planet is brought under control. This may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but from a lore perspective it represents the political will needed to consolidate and suppress new planets and from a gameplay perspective it makes pursuing wars costly.

-Conversely, losing a planet should significantly reduce the bar. This represents the renewed political will to keep fighting to take back one's planets on the one hand, and again, shifts the exhaustion costs of war onto the winning party. My next points will hopefully explain why.

-Once your bar fills up, you begin to suffer approval global approval penalties that worsen every turn. Remaining at war while overextended for a turn or two should be viable, but 10 or more turns should have all your planets rising up in rebellion (though a law to mitigate this might be a good idea)

-Once either side's exhaustion bar has filled up completely, either side can then force a truce. The costs for this should be heavily asymmetrical. The higher your exhaustion score, the more it costs to force a truce. Regular bilateral truce costs are unaffected.

-Forced truce tributes should be scrapped entirely. The winning side already has the upper hand when it comes to negotiation payments.

The basic idea behind my proposal is to make wars of attrition viable for outgunned factions. If I am attacked by a numerically or technologically superior enemy, but I manage to recoup my losses after losing a handful of systems and then shift to heavily defending my frontiers while harassing and blockading enemy planets, then I can effectively overextend them despite being militarily inferior. On the other hand, the winning faction can still negotiate regular truces for little cost and probably get significant tributes from the loser, while the losing faction will have to balance forcing the enemy to overextend vs. cutting their own losses.

I can't stand the Forced Truce, and I agree with everyone saying it especially makes no sense for the Cravers. There are a lot of things about ES2 that seem to just straight up take agency away from the player, from the unpredictable elections forcing new laws, to the AI force-trucing you into oblivion, to the removal of the battle-cards system that ES1 had for a boring range-based battleplan, to weapons only being able to fire at their optimal ranges.

I loved Endless Space 1 but when I play Endless Space 2 I feel like they upped the production values massively but reduced player agency to the same degree.

Agree with OP wholly.

I was about to wipe a race off the map, but "forced truce" popped up, and because I had to stop expanding in that direction and another peaceful faction encroached on my other front, I essentially became land-locked...in space. XD

My fleets upon fleets of warships should not be able to be locked down by opponents if my (and my people's) conviction for their extermination is strong enough. I just don't see it being something that would actually happen between two groups.

Then again, maybe I just don't understand the mechanic thematically?

Either way, all this military tech and nothing to blow up with it. :/

Hello everyone,

I’m going to address the concern of the Forced Truce that has been questioned by quite a fair number of people here.

So first of all, as I already mentioned in another thread, the whole Truce mechanic is being currently reworked but no worries, I’ll tell you a bit more about it than I did last time

This whole rework of the Truce includes getting the systemic, automatic, rigidly forced aspect out of the way. What we’d like to do instead is a softer, more population-centric approach of the problem.

Lemme give you a basic rundown:

Once a certain point in the war is reached, both parties would have the ability to propose a truce so the “loser” can avoid getting wiped in a single war and have an opportunity to recover, or so the “winner” can stop waging a war that takes its toll on their economy.

The recipient of the proposition will be able to refuse and keep the war going for a few number of turns. However, refusing a truce will result in an approval penalty: the population being unhappy about the war being waged longer than necessary. If truces keep being proposed and the same party keeps refusing them, the disapproval from civil unrest will grow bigger each time, to the point of becoming utterly crippling.

Though, the player with the disapproval penalty will be able to get rid of it by either accepting or proposing a Truce.

This system will also feature a cooldown on Truce propositions to avoid Truce/Disapproval spam at every turn.

I hope this clarifies the Forced Truce situation!

Regarding how militarist governments / dictatorships / Cravers / whatever warmongers etc… react to this new system: this will come in a later stage, since right now all the Major Factions have the same diplomatic behavior. Once we start refining their personalities and behaviors, we’ll consider whether some government/politics/affinities should be taken into account in this regard.

Thank you guys for your enthusiasm and your feedback!

Cheers,

adelahaye wrote:

Hello everyone,

I’m going to address the concern of the Forced Truce that has been questioned by quite a fair number of people here.

So first of all, as I already mentioned in another thread, the whole Truce mechanic is being currently reworked but no worries, I’ll tell you a bit more about it than I did last time

This whole rework of the Truce includes getting the systemic, automatic, rigidly forced aspect out of the way. What we’d like to do instead is a softer, more population-centric approach of the problem.

Lemme give you a basic rundown:

Once a certain point in the war is reached, both parties would have the ability to propose a truce so the “loser” can avoid getting wiped in a single war and have an opportunity to recover, or so the “winner” can stop waging a war that takes its toll on their economy.

The recipient of the proposition will be able to refuse and keep the war going for a few number of turns. However, refusing a truce will result in an approval penalty: the population being unhappy about the war being waged longer than necessary. If truces keep being proposed and the same party keeps refusing them, the disapproval from civil unrest will grow bigger each time, to the point of becoming utterly crippling.

Though, the player with the disapproval penalty will be able to get rid of it by either accepting or proposing a Truce.

This system will also feature a cooldown on Truce propositions to avoid Truce/Disapproval spam at every turn.

I hope this clarifies the Forced Truce situation!

Regarding how militarist governments / dictatorships / Cravers / whatever warmongers etc… react to this new system: this will come in a later stage, since right now all the Major Factions have the same diplomatic behavior. Once we start refining their personalities and behaviors, we’ll consider whether some government/politics/affinities should be taken into account in this regard.

Thank you guys for your enthusiasm and your feedback!

Cheers,

Oh thank goodness, it's exactly what we were all asking for! That'll be much more enjoyable to play with.

adelahaye wrote:

Regarding how militarist governments / dictatorships / Cravers / whatever warmongers etc… react to this new system: this will come in a later stage, since right now all the Major Factions have the same diplomatic behavior. Once we start refining their personalities and behaviors, we’ll consider whether some government/politics/affinities should be taken into account in this regard.

Hopefully there's a practical reason for Cravers & militarists to quit fighting a war after a while, like "it's a lot of work to subjugate/raze all these colonies" or "we need to give our troops a breather". But that'll require some major tweaking & balancing of invasion downsides first.

adelahaye wrote:

Hello everyone,

I’m going to address the concern of the Forced Truce that has been questioned by quite a fair number of people here.

So first of all, as I already mentioned in another thread, the whole Truce mechanic is being currently reworked but no worries, I’ll tell you a bit more about it than I did last time

This whole rework of the Truce includes getting the systemic, automatic, rigidly forced aspect out of the way. What we’d like to do instead is a softer, more population-centric approach of the problem.

Lemme give you a basic rundown:

Once a certain point in the war is reached, both parties would have the ability to propose a truce so the “loser” can avoid getting wiped in a single war and have an opportunity to recover, or so the “winner” can stop waging a war that takes its toll on their economy.

The recipient of the proposition will be able to refuse and keep the war going for a few number of turns. However, refusing a truce will result in an approval penalty: the population being unhappy about the war being waged longer than necessary. If truces keep being proposed and the same party keeps refusing them, the disapproval from civil unrest will grow bigger each time, to the point of becoming utterly crippling.

Though, the player with the disapproval penalty will be able to get rid of it by either accepting or proposing a Truce.

This system will also feature a cooldown on Truce propositions to avoid Truce/Disapproval spam at every turn.

I hope this clarifies the Forced Truce situation!

Regarding how militarist governments / dictatorships / Cravers / whatever warmongers etc… react to this new system: this will come in a later stage, since right now all the Major Factions have the same diplomatic behavior. Once we start refining their personalities and behaviors, we’ll consider whether some government/politics/affinities should be taken into account in this regard.

Thank you guys for your enthusiasm and your feedback!

Cheers,

This sounds like it would fix the problem pretty well! I'd still like it if different factions/populations had different sensitivities to this but it looks solid overall.

Adding something to prevent steamrolling over a whole empire in one war is crucial (unless you are Cravers of course), however forced truce isn't a good mechanic and I tend to agree with Sir-Rogers.

Adding something to prevent steamrolling over a whole empire in one war is crucial (unless you are Cravers of course), however forced truce isn't a good mechanic and I tend to agree with Sir-Rogers.

adelahaye wrote:

Hello everyone,

I’m going to address the concern of the Forced Truce that has been questioned by quite a fair number of people here.

So first of all, as I already mentioned in another thread, the whole Truce mechanic is being currently reworked but no worries, I’ll tell you a bit more about it than I did last time

This whole rework of the Truce includes getting the systemic, automatic, rigidly forced aspect out of the way. What we’d like to do instead is a softer, more population-centric approach of the problem.

Lemme give you a basic rundown:

Once a certain point in the war is reached, both parties would have the ability to propose a truce so the “loser” can avoid getting wiped in a single war and have an opportunity to recover, or so the “winner” can stop waging a war that takes its toll on their economy.

The recipient of the proposition will be able to refuse and keep the war going for a few number of turns. However, refusing a truce will result in an approval penalty: the population being unhappy about the war being waged longer than necessary. If truces keep being proposed and the same party keeps refusing them, the disapproval from civil unrest will grow bigger each time, to the point of becoming utterly crippling.

Though, the player with the disapproval penalty will be able to get rid of it by either accepting or proposing a Truce.

This system will also feature a cooldown on Truce propositions to avoid Truce/Disapproval spam at every turn.

I hope this clarifies the Forced Truce situation!

Regarding how militarist governments / dictatorships / Cravers / whatever warmongers etc… react to this new system: this will come in a later stage, since right now all the Major Factions have the same diplomatic behavior. Once we start refining their personalities and behaviors, we’ll consider whether some government/politics/affinities should be taken into account in this regard.

Thank you guys for your enthusiasm and your feedback!

Cheers,

That of course sounds much better. However, I think that disapproval penalty when refusing peace should be based on how hard the war raged,  i. e. if someone declares war to me and that I ask for peace without any fleet fight or ground invasion occured, there's no approval penalty if my opponent declares war on me.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

applecat144 wrote:

Adding something to prevent steamrolling over a whole empire in one war is crucial 

Is it, though? If you've fallen so far behind that another empire could completely steamroll you, preventing them from doing so is just arbitrary.

Plus, there are already mechanics in place that deal with this; the expansion disapproval from captured systems will ripple through your empire, and these captured systems almost always have a negative Dust balance thanks to disapproval, so it's very costly. For an empire to be steamrolled, the difference in power needs to be massive.

Even with the change to Force Truce, I fear it will still be an inherently infuriating mechanic; it's a system that will only realistically be utilized by empires who are about to lose the war. Either they issue a force truce to an empire steamrolling them, or an empire builds up a superior fleet to deal with an enemy and they send a force truce to secure their victory. The empire denying the force truce will always be the empire winning the war, and quite often, the empire who has lost a lot but is ready to get it back. Is it really practical for people to be upset about continuing the war at that point? The British certainly weren't enduring a depression while they were looting the majority of the planet.

Being military behind doesn't mean you're behind overall. Can't count how many time a truce saved me in my various 4X games to see me win hundread turns later, both vs players and vs AI.

You could say "then don't get military behind" but this kind of reasoning wouldn't allow for anything else than full military openings with every race, which would be quite bad imho.