applecat144 wrote:

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.

Uh, no, that kind of reasoning allows for everything else. If you've got a ton of money or resources, you could buy your way out of a truce. If you've gone the diplomatic route, you could get allies to defend you. If you've got tons of planets, forfeit a few; if you've got techs, give a few. When I say "behind," I don't just mean "your fleet is weaker," I mean that you must have literally nothing to offer to save your life - if you do lack all those things, it's time for you to get knocked out of the game.

IMHO forced truce is a cancer. 

There s no way a looser can force a truce on someone winning. 

Especially when you think about a VOYDANI or CRAVERS Psicology.

GOLD, LUXURIES doesn t mean anything to them, all that matters is Essence and meat.

The only marginally truce could be forced on VOYDANi offering planets for them to feed.

For cravers...the crave for meet and war.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

Uh, no, that kind of reasoning allows for everything else. If you've got a ton of money or resources, you could buy your way out of a truce. If you've gone the diplomatic route, you could get allies to defend you. If you've got tons of planets, forfeit a few; if you've got techs, give a few. When I say "behind," I don't just mean "your fleet is weaker," I mean that you must have literally nothing to offer to save your life - if you do lack all those things, it's time for you to get knocked out of the game.

The way you say it means that the agressor will automatically accept your truce offer if it's a fair offer, and it may not be the case. Then if you don't want to lose at turn 15 you're forced to rush military stuff. I'm not saying that forced truce as it is is good, I'm saying that you need a drawback (a real one) when refusing peace over and over.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

applecat144 wrote:

Fenrakk101 wrote:

Uh, no, that kind of reasoning allows for everything else. If you've got a ton of money or resources, you could buy your way out of a truce. If you've gone the diplomatic route, you could get allies to defend you. If you've got tons of planets, forfeit a few; if you've got techs, give a few. When I say "behind," I don't just mean "your fleet is weaker," I mean that you must have literally nothing to offer to save your life - if you do lack all those things, it's time for you to get knocked out of the game.

The way you say it means that the agressor will automatically accept your truce offer if it's a fair offer, and it may not be the case. Then if you don't want to lose at turn 15 you're forced to rush military stuff. I'm not saying that forced truce as it is is good, I'm saying that you need a drawback (a real one) when refusing peace over and over.

But there's also already a lot of downsides to aggression. As I've said, the economic and approval tolls are pretty severe, and there's also the cost of maintaining a large fleet for war. If someone can successfully steamroll you, they're already very far ahead in many more ways.

Also, even more to the point - if you get rushed 15 turns in, so bloody what? Just start a new game. You don't see StarCraft rebalancing the entire game just because sometimes Zergs builds Zerglings first. Being aware that a rush can happen and accounting for it (or choosing when not to account for it) is part of the skillset required to be good at the game.

Are you guys still talking about the old forced truce? Or the new worked on truce with approval penalties if one refuses? Or just generally about the mechanics of war in a 4x game? 

Fenrakk101 wrote:

Both. He quoted a post in which I said I was still annoyed at the new system, because they're illogical, and are just a bad attempt at solving a problem that's already been solved perfectly well. I don't know why they're trying so hard to make this broken, problematic system work instead of just using one of the two perfectly good systems from their previous games.

I agree! This whole situation seems rather unnecessary because of it.

Fenrakk101 wrote:

The losses in Civ V make sense; losing a bunch of infrastructure isn't arbitrary. And if you play Endless Legend, you'll find the expansion disapproval far from manageable, especially in the early game. Unless you're near to an aggressive race like Necrophages, in which case you should be preparing for them to rush you, and failing to prepare for that is on you, not the fault of the game's mechanics.

Force truce, before anything else, is completely arbitrary. As I said, the only time you would refuse a force truce is when you're winning, or going to win, but you get disapproval from your people for that? As I said, the British Empire wasn't doing poorly while they were conquering most of the planet; quite the opposite, in fact. We're talking about a stellar empire, unless you're raising taxes to fund the war (which already nets you an approval cost in ES), nobody sitting in their homes lightyears away from the battles are going to give a damn. You might upset the Pacifists, but especially if you've lost a lot of territory in the war, you'd expect it'd be far easier to rile up hatred than sympathy for the enemy; just check out anti-German propaganda during both World Wars, and how effective they were.

And as a mechanic, this means it is nothing short of frustrating. Either the approval penalty barely matters, in which case what's even the point of the force truce mechanic? Or you could end up crippling your empire in order to continue a war that you are going to win and quite possibly need to win in order to stay in the game - for example, reclaiming stuff you've lost, or to carve a path through/around an empire that's trapped you in a corner. Forced truce is not a balanced drawback to invasion, and their suggestion does not in any way promise to be one either. Make the expansion penalties more similar to Endless Legend, or make conquered cities much less desireable like in Civ; make it more worthwhile to accept a truce offering from the empire if they offer you resources, than to burn their empire to the ground and their riches with it. That would be balanced. They've done this perfectly well twice now, why are they trying so hard to reinvent the wheel, and why should we believe that square wheels are acceptable?

The fact that expension disaproval hit you hard in Endless Legend doesn't mean that it's the case in ES2. Well it's the case if you actually expand by colonization, but if you're invading you can get approval tech fast enough for this to not be a real issue. Furthermore, and once again, I'm not saying that forced truce is good. I'm just saying that in my opinion a game like ES2 needs something to prevent extensive snowball from agressive players / factions. Forced truce may be a bad solution (and once again that's also my opinion) but it's here for a reason.

Forced truce needs to be removed or deeply reworked, but in the end the game needs a mechanic to limit military snowball. You could have seen this kind of snowball with Hisho in ES1 but it was OK because it was one faction and it kinda was their whole purpose. In ES2 it wouldn't be limited to any faction if there wasn't a mechanic to prevent it. It would end in a situation where rushing your neighbors is the most viable tactic for expension, which ultimately lead to a military wargame instead of a 4X.

applecat144 wrote:

The fact that expension disaproval hit you hard in Endless Legend doesn't mean that it's the case in ES2. 

That... was my point. It could be the case. There's no reason for it not to be the case, except that the balance of the game is completely out of whack and they're spending effort trying to make Force Truce work instead of just giving up on it and using any of the other hundred solutions that actually make sense.

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,

While this sounds like an improvement, I think this is just improving something that just isn't really that great of idea to start with.

I think the core issue is that it runs contrary to a decision the player makes. You could view that "war" is not dissimilar from any other choice that the player makes during the course of the game. However, in my opinion this is wrong. Economies are managed. We may choose how we manage them, but a player does not really choose to "have an economy." 

However, a player does choose (or at least when it is them who declares war) to go to war. To me this isn't something like over expansion penalties, because that is intrinsic to how the economy runs. It's not clear (at least thus far) how this force truce mechanic is a part of "how a war is run." It seems to be an altogether separate system. 

So it ends up feeling more like if "at a certain point in researching" all of your research just stopped until you choose to pay some influence. The issue isn't that there is some inherent problem with this, but unless if paying this influence is naturally part of the act of researching, then the sudden requirement to do so frustrates the player.

Perhaps once all the details are known I would feel differently, but currently Force Truce feels like a complete separate and arbitrary game mechanism that suddenly comes out of nowhere and denies your player choice (in going to or continuing to go to war) for a reason that had nothing to do with war prior to the Force Truce and disappears completely after the Force Truce.

Again, compared to over expansion, this is very different. The mechanics of over-expansion are omni-present and exist prior to it having an impact on empire productivity and continues on after it is initially managed. Force Truce runs on an algorithm that is hidden (or irrelevant) until it suddenly and abruptly halts your plan and then returns back into hiding.

Note, the fact that I can decline the offer makes it better, but it doesn't change it's undesireability in principle or practice. 

I think a secondary, but still important issue is that... there really doesn't seem to be a point. 

For example, let's say that I conquer 70% of an opposing Empire and I am forced into a truce afterwards. While in theory, I could lose (at least with respect to this empire), in all likelihood I will not. I mean I have my Empire + 70% of a second Empire, all other things equal I should win. 

Is it really then worthwhile to prolong the game? If I have reached a point where my fleets are bigger stronger, and my economy outproduces and researches my opponent, then what value is there to playing the game further? I would only be going through the motions so that I can technically win, despite having functionally won many turns ago.

From a gameplay prospective, I would only go to war to win. Whether I would need to conquer all of an opponent or just parts of an opponent, I would only go to war to place myself into either an actual or functional victory.

I had a suggestion elsewhere, but I had another (and perhaps simpler) suggestion.

Declare Total War.

This would be different then "Declare War," which would operate as you describe. However, there would be a separate type of warfare (perhaps requiring a technology to unlock) that would not be able to be canceled (at least by the opponent, but perhaps also by the player who declared it as well).

This way you could still have the smaller and non-game ending wars, but players who do not be forced into a repeated set of smaller wars (which clearly is inherently undesireable or else there would be no need to force this upon a player) can have the option to avoid going down that path. Perhaps, this could be a required part of a military victory, effectively precluding the elimination of an empire until a certain technology in a certain era has been unlocked.

Declare Total War.

This would be different then "Declare War," which would operate as you describe. However, there would be a separate type of warfare (perhaps requiring a technology to unlock) that would not be able to be canceled (at least by the opponent, but perhaps also by the player who declared it as well).

This way you could still have the smaller and non-game ending wars, but players who do not be forced into a repeated set of smaller wars (which clearly is inherently undesireable or else there would be no need to force this upon a player) can have the option to avoid going down that path. Perhaps, this could be a required part of a military victory, effectively precluding the elimination of an empire until a certain technology in a certain era has been unlocked.

Total War sounds like a good mid-late-game diplomatic tech for the Cravers. I don't think it would fit with all the factions though. It would be interesting if it overrode even the Unfallen's ability.

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,

Sounds fat better than actual system. Will it be on next patch?

Downer wrote:

Declare Total War.

This would be different then "Declare War," which would operate as you describe. However, there would be a separate type of warfare (perhaps requiring a technology to unlock) that would not be able to be canceled (at least by the opponent, but perhaps also by the player who declared it as well).

This way you could still have the smaller and non-game ending wars, but players who do not be forced into a repeated set of smaller wars (which clearly is inherently undesireable or else there would be no need to force this upon a player) can have the option to avoid going down that path. Perhaps, this could be a required part of a military victory, effectively precluding the elimination of an empire until a certain technology in a certain era has been unlocked.

 May be a good point.

I think it shouldn't be cancelled. If you declare a war, may be you're looking for tribute or a concrete system, but when you go to Total War, only one will remain, it's all or nothing with other faction.

This way: you have to think carefully prior to do this, except if you use it to finish residual empires that are impeding a military victory.

Jlesaistu wrote:

what annoy me if when the game force truce you (AS LOSER) when you wanted to fight.

Hell, I had wars where I was very clearly winning the war (Had taken multiple systems, lost no ships, destroyed 100% of their fleet that I could see) yet the game said "OK, you lose, now pay them". That was my breaking point with Force Truce.

+1000 for removing any mechanic like Force Truce.  The whole idea of 4X is that you have to force your will on the enemy through superior strategic action, not some mechanic that says you won a battle or took a system so you can have some arbitrary reward that I never agreed to.

I quit playing other games I won't mention here because of that broken mechanic and I will quit playing Endless Space 2 until it is removed.  If it's planned for the final commercial release then I want my money back.

jjlegendre wrote:

+1000 for removing any mechanic like Force Truce.  The whole idea of 4X is that you have to force your will on the enemy through superior strategic action, not some mechanic that says you won a battle or took a system so you can have some arbitrary reward that I never agreed to.

I quit playing other games I won't mention here because of that broken mechanic and I will quit playing Endless Space 2 until it is removed.  If it's planned for the final commercial release then I want my money back.

Well if you go back one page in this thread and read the post by dev adelahaye, you will see what they have planned regarding the mechanic.

AndreasK wrote:

jjlegendre wrote:

+1000 for removing any mechanic like Force Truce.  The whole idea of 4X is that you have to force your will on the enemy through superior strategic action, not some mechanic that says you won a battle or took a system so you can have some arbitrary reward that I never agreed to.

I quit playing other games I won't mention here because of that broken mechanic and I will quit playing Endless Space 2 until it is removed.  If it's planned for the final commercial release then I want my money back.

Well if you go back one page in this thread and read the post by dev adelahaye, you will see what they have planned regarding the mechanic.

So I read that reply and it made me cringe.  The game I HATE is Stellaris and I hate it for that one reason.  It takes all the fun out of what was otherwise a really fun game.

Negotiating a truce is simply about I will stop attacking you if you give me x or do y, yes or no.  Then you respond and that is that.  You should not get penalties as that is not realistic.  What government broadcasts such things to its populations for them to even know?  The population can get penalties as the war goes on, but not for ignoring the truce from the enemy.

I really liked Endless Space and came back to Endless Space out of frustration with the War Score mechanic in Stellaris.  The idea that I would accept terms from someone who is declaring war on me while they are declaring war on me is absurd on the face of it.  It is completely not modeling the role of leader of a galactic empire and is just a fun sucking mechanic.