haaaate this mechanic.

However, I wouldn't really object to a stat that eventually causes a forced truce, rather than it being utterly up to the other nation. My personal theory so far is that they appeal to the senate and thus bypass you (the senate that passes laws and thus has substantial power in the nation), but it'd be nice if you could delay it somewhat (at least noticeably) by having a militarist nation, or make it go faster if you somehow got pacifists to be in power in your senate despite you being in the middle of a war.

I'm just going to do a shameless copy paste of a solution I proposed in another thread on this subject. Preety long wall of text but hey, I took time to think what would be the best way to do such a mechanic imo.

To begin with I am not advocating for a complete removal of forced truce, truthfully I can see it beeing an interestig mechanic but only in some specific context. Now how do I propose the goal of prolonging wars is achieved? Rather than warscore, war fatigue. The system would essentialy work like this: you start with a war fatigue of 0, then, as you fight the war fatigue will increase at a fixed rate per turn. This rate will be determined by certain factors, from the senate compsition and leadership as well as type (a militarist tyranny for example would acrue war fatigue much slower while a pacifist democracy would have it skyrocket in comparison). This rate would be further modified the skills dependant on the curent leader of that political party and his level. A third factor that influences this rate is the race you play as (vodyani for example would have more of a stomach for war than sophons as such they will grow tired slower - yes I know cravers exist, I will get to them soon). This basic growth level would further be influenced by a ... let's call it war circumstance. Loosing ships and teritory will drive your people to fear for their future and fight harder, keeping war fatigue from growing as fast (and even lowering it) as they try to save themselves, taking over new teritory will not just be a strain on you to control the new population, but it will also increase war fatigue as you start using more and more resources to support the conquest and streching your people. A pacifist people fighting in their teritory only and on the defensive will grow war fatigue much slower than if they went around conquering people, but a militarist one will crave conquest and not want to sit idly by. And other logical things to this effect. Wonderfull so far, but what will war fatigue do? Simply put: nerf the shit out of you. Your population will turn against your leadership and wishes and desire an end to the war. Or at least a period of peace to rebuild. This will be illustrated by progressive penalties to FIDS, happyness, influence, growth. As War Fatigue increases even more, people will refuse to enlist (manpower will slow to a trickle or cease) and crews for new ships will refuse to work anymore (you start loosing acces to larger ship classes as people both refuse to build them and crew them). Finaly they may enter open rebellion. Simply put: war fatigue will tear your empire down if you do not manage it properly. All of a sudden you want to end the war as a player before war fatigue gets out of control, but when and how you end it is your choice. You are in command, in full control, you manage the risks and carefully balance the mailed fist of war with the silk glove of diploacy and truce to reach your goals. And this is never a bad thing. In times of truce after a war has ended, the war fatigue will start to decrease at a fixed rate determined the same way growth was but in reverse (militarist people who view peace as more of a time-out to rebuild will be quick to get back into the fight while peacefull races who view war as a traumatic experience will need longer to recover). This process will of course be affected by diplomacy. For example, a pacifist race that has just made heavy concesions and staved off their destruction might not seem like one to quickly recover and be ready for a new war, ah but if they forge alliances and seek others to help them, then their spirits will recover much faster. A warlike people who have just been apeased with great gifts of dust and territory on the other hand may find themselves less inclined to go to war as soon, their warlust sated for some time (and plus all these shiny new lands need to be tended to and their populace ... enlightened). And other things to this effect. This raises a very interesting dynamic. The balance of war fatigue becomes important, the clever use of diplomacy and war to keep it from becoming a liability, the knowledge and skill to know when to strike and when to call for a truce. It adds depth and intertwines 2 aspects of the game people think are the exact oposites of one other: war and diplomacy. If you truly wish to thrive, you must master both.

Now, I said something about cravers up there somewhere. Cravers would be the special children of this rule. They do not have war fatigue. They have peace fatigue. Oh sure, you can strip planets of resources much faster and grow much sooner ... but can you do that if your people expect fresh mea- ... I mean fresh flufy pets to cuddle with? And they would like you to go spread the news and ensla- ... I mean persuade these new pets to come live with them? I doubt it. Cravers would start seeing war fatigue penalties during peace time basicaly, but grow stronger than ever during war. The mechanic turned on it's head. Rudimentary diplomacy will be seen as weakness, while warlike zeal as strenght. Yes I know the intetion was to let every civilization turn against its own history and even the cravers can get a pacifist faction, but honestly some changes should be a "come the apocalypse" type of scenario. Cravers turning pacifists should be something almost impossible to achieve and a system like this would make it that. But if they do turn, they loose their special rule regarding war fatigue (peace fatigue for them) and start behaving like everyone else.

I also mentioned forced truce not going away. I saw someone sugest it's an ability of the pacifist goverment. I disagree, for the simple fact that it still makes it too generic and it's such a powerfull tool it makes pacifist the de facto best goverment (given how cripling force truce can be for a militarist empire). Also because aparently cravers can get pacifists ... for some reason. No, rather than that, forced truce becomes a racial power that some can employ. A very few some. In a game of 8 factions, I would say a maximum of 2 races have the power to outright force peace. Candidate number 1 I nominate the Lumeris. They could have the option of bribing the political leadership of their oponents to convince them to end hostilities. Candidate number 2 ... well we will get a species of ecologist peace loving hippie fucks I will relish harvesting, they could have some form of racial ability to do such an act. Either mind manipulation, pheromones or spores or whatever, it's a SF universe. Even dust powers or something whatever. Which would translate into doing the same thing lumeris do, but with influence instead of cash.


well those are my thoughts. I'm curios to see how you guys react to them.

Jomsviking wrote:

TLDR:

While I see your point about the Cravers being strong if they can ignore this mechanic as they can just steamroll people that is also the entire point of their playstyle. Players shouldn't be forced to shift their Cravers towards a more pacifist ideology if they don't want to. 

Absolutely ! In addition, cravers, always at war, often have a majority (if not unique party thanks to their dictatorship faction trait) for militarist party ; why would they accept a forced truce ?

In my opinion, the lore and gameplay mechanics of cravers are not compatible with this force truced system (which, as developpers explained, was intented to avoid swipping wars).

For other factions, it may have sense

My point was mainly about giving an equally high war tolerance to all militarists. Provided good balance like emphasizing inability for competitive long-turn development of militarism and/or introducing this feature through an expensive law. Or as a mix of the above mentioned: make it a directive instead of the current war happiness and make the least an ordinary law. I think it will be a comperable exchange.

You gave quite am important quote. "Long" war is really irrelevant to the current situation. In practice, whenever there are 2+ opponents, you can sustain militarist behaviour with "war rotation" (may Cravers be bored with current prey and have urge to kill someone new - as a justification for forced peace?) and possibly keep population militarism with military production.

Sotnik wrote:

I've recently tested Cravers and I can say for sure that they don't need an additional feature like inclination for war.  My empire was ruined because I was preparing to war during a too long time instead of actually waging eternal war. Militarist Dictatorship has a really strong impact on approval unless you nourish militarism among your population by straight militarist policies. So, you don't need to make Cravers an exception. It is enough to work with militarism ideology. On the other side, ES2 is about evolving societies (remember the moto of the game) and even Cravers can eventually deny their initially destructive nature (but slavery is forever! or is slavery is becoming replaced by pacifist cravers' industrious cultural norms that is hard to accept if you are non-craver?) via abolishing dictatorship and other means.

By the way, the devs have some plans for amending the situation,

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/20681-community-gdd-10-update-diplomacy

but I seem to completely fail to understand how these mechanics should work. Can anyone explain with an example?

I see where you are coming from with the Cravers, but I think that they really do need to have the ability to either ignore Forced Truces or at least have them take longer to trigger. As you mentioned, the Craver economy relies entirely on war to survive as they need to be at war to stay happy. Yet, in the current build, you are likely going to be unable to wage war for a very large part of the game. If you are kicking another faction's teeth in, you are rewarded by having your economy and approval tanked for 15 turns with nothing you can do about it. It is extremely frustrating to have your mighty warfleet conquering a pathetic Lumeris faction, only to have your economy crash for 15 turns through no fault of your own. Not fun, and this certainly doesn't fit into the dev's stated lore based reason for including this feature:

"this should be considered the populations desire to leave or stay in long wars" 

Except that the Cravers never want to leave war, accepting a truce is anathema to their way of life even if they are losing the war. The solution of changing your government structure isn't exactly easy to execute, and along the way to that solution you'll still be getting burned by this mechanic. The technologies required are fairly expensive, and the shift over from Militarism would potentially be catastrophic. 

In general, the forced truce actually makes a Military Victory as a Militarist faction (ironically) really really hard to pull off. They rely entirely on Jingoist Paradise to survive, and have to desperately scrape to survive in between arbitrarily short wars. 

TLDR:

While I see your point about the Cravers being strong if they can ignore this mechanic as they can just steamroll people that is also the entire point of their playstyle. Players shouldn't be forced to shift their Cravers towards a more pacifist ideology if they don't want to. 

Galanthein wrote:

Downer wrote:

The goal of force truce (as far as I am aware) was to change war from being total war to being skirmishes. So now rather than building a death armada and throwing it at the enemy, you have timing windows that you need to figure out if it's worthwhile or not to take advantage of. Do you want to declare war to take out a lone system? Or maybe you should go for a later timing and go for something bigger? Or would that be too late, and then they'd have their offense up and you'll be put on the defensive?

Can't be sure that was the goal of devs but this sure, as you said, move war from anhiliation to .... trading some kind.

But to be really efficient this way, player needs more informations to plan accordingly (espionage would be a good start)

Unfortunately the net result is that no matter how well you plan your invasion you won't be able to accomplish all of your strategic goals. As the Cravers I have found that besieging planets is easy as they decrease man power very fast due to their large fleets. Conquering multiple worlds is doable with them. With the other races....not so much. 

This is why I think it really needs to be based on politics as well as race, as it would give players a choice before the game as well as during the game. For example, in my second run as the Lumeris I spawned right next to a Craver. I had to build up a very large, and powerful, fleet very quickly and was able to hold them off. As a result, my culture shifted radically towards militarism. Dynamic shifts like this example would be very cool if they actually had a more sweeping effect on the way you can interact with other races on and off the battlefield.  

Downer wrote:

The goal of force truce (as far as I am aware) was to change war from being total war to being skirmishes. So now rather than building a death armada and throwing it at the enemy, you have timing windows that you need to figure out if it's worthwhile or not to take advantage of. Do you want to declare war to take out a lone system? Or maybe you should go for a later timing and go for something bigger? Or would that be too late, and then they'd have their offense up and you'll be put on the defensive?

Can't be sure that was the goal of devs but this sure, as you said, move war from anhiliation to .... trading some kind.

But to be really efficient this way, player needs more informations to plan accordingly (espionage would be a good start)

Daral wrote:

Downer wrote:

Forced Truce

• My suggestion
  • I would invert it. Rather than giving the opponent a Force Truce option, I would restrict the Declare War option.
  • When you Declare War, you have to identify targets and a set number of turns to conquer those targets.
    • You can declare them generally as systems or planets, but this will cost more.
    • They will cost more the further away from your home system they are.
    • The more turns you have to conquer them the more influence it will cost.
  • After a successful or unsuccessful campaign, you cannot Declare War for a period of time.
    • If you are successful, you will be recouped the influence you paid to Declare War and gain a happiness boost for a number of terms.
    • If you are unsuccessful, you will you lose that influence and take a happiness penalty.
  • Opponent can pay influence to decrease number of turns of Declare War.
  • Player can pay more influence to regain those turns.

               This seems to favor influence generation a little too much, particularly with say the Cravers who want to war all of the time it creates a weird need to dip into the resource that is about cultural impact.  It also gives a little too much leeway to the defender they can just choose to influence nuke the opponent declaring war, particularly for pacifists that never intend to start a war in the first place and only need it for diplomacy and messing with an opponents ability to wage war.  

On the subject of the Cravers directly I feel like there is too much of a tendency to create broad exceptions where they are concerned.  The comments about having the Cravers get opted out of any forced truce mechanic to be playing it a little too hard on the devouring swarm trope.  I understand it is their gimmick but what interested me in them when it comes to ES2 is that they are not a monolithic species.  They have at least some individuals that are capable of forming a different opinion.    I feel that if they get too many exceptions playing into the always at war trait they sort of lose too much that is interesting about them.  Also from a pure mechanics standpoint the forced truce is almost meant to deal with surprise Cravers on your door opting them out feels like it removes the biggest call for the mechanic in general.  

It all depends on the numbers. 

Factions with military politics can simply be cheaper to declare war than other political parties. And it's not like Cravers can (or should be able to) just neglect Influence. I think it's perfectly thematic that they would have to sustain a war culture.  Like you said, they aren't monolithic.

I don't see the issue with Influence nuking, either. Diversifying strategies is a good thing, so I don't see any problem with that. It might not be to one player's liking that they can't force a military fight, but oh well. Can't please everyone all the time. They gathered and stockpiled resources and funneled them into a counter to what you funneled the resources that you have been stockpiling and gathering. Which sounds fair to me. (And I tend to prefer the war factions). This is just a numbers issue.

Also, and maybe I should have made this a bit more clear, but there would be a threshold number of turns that the opponent couldn't decrease the War below. So, you would never *completely* eliminate the war. The idea would be that you be limiting it to the outer fringes of you territory. 

The goal of force truce (as far as I am aware) was to change war from being total war to being skirmishes. So now rather than building a death armada and throwing it at the enemy, you have timing windows that you need to figure out if it's worthwhile or not to take advantage of. Do you want to declare war to take out a lone system? Or maybe you should go for a later timing and go for something bigger? Or would that be too late, and then they'd have their offense up and you'll be put on the defensive?

Just want to add a little irritating effect the forced peace has on the Vodyani: You cannot harvest from anyone you have a truce with. This winds up REALLY heavily punishing the Vodyani for going to war at all, since it inevitably removes a neighbor as a potential source of food. Similarly, an enemy can simply go to war and play defensively until the forced truce kicks in to completely hamstring the Vodyani's growth potential.

Downer wrote:

Forced Truce

• My suggestion
  • I would invert it. Rather than giving the opponent a Force Truce option, I would restrict the Declare War option.
  • When you Declare War, you have to identify targets and a set number of turns to conquer those targets.
    • You can declare them generally as systems or planets, but this will cost more.
    • They will cost more the further away from your home system they are.
    • The more turns you have to conquer them the more influence it will cost.
  • After a successful or unsuccessful campaign, you cannot Declare War for a period of time.
    • If you are successful, you will be recouped the influence you paid to Declare War and gain a happiness boost for a number of terms.
    • If you are unsuccessful, you will you lose that influence and take a happiness penalty.
  • Opponent can pay influence to decrease number of turns of Declare War.
  • Player can pay more influence to regain those turns.

               This seems to favor influence generation a little too much, particularly with say the Cravers who want to war all of the time it creates a weird need to dip into the resource that is about cultural impact.  It also gives a little too much leeway to the defender they can just choose to influence nuke the opponent declaring war, particularly for pacifists that never intend to start a war in the first place and only need it for diplomacy and messing with an opponents ability to wage war.  

On the subject of the Cravers directly I feel like there is too much of a tendency to create broad exceptions where they are concerned.  The comments about having the Cravers get opted out of any forced truce mechanic to be playing it a little too hard on the devouring swarm trope.  I understand it is their gimmick but what interested me in them when it comes to ES2 is that they are not a monolithic species.  They have at least some individuals that are capable of forming a different opinion.    I feel that if they get too many exceptions playing into the always at war trait they sort of lose too much that is interesting about them.  Also from a pure mechanics standpoint the forced truce is almost meant to deal with surprise Cravers on your door opting them out feels like it removes the biggest call for the mechanic in general.  

Forced Truce

• My suggestion
  
  • I would invert it. Rather than giving the opponent a Force Truce option, I would restrict the Declare War option.
  • When you Declare War, you have to identify targets and a set number of turns to conquer those targets.
    • You can declare them generally as systems or planets, but this will cost more.
    • They will cost more the further away from your home system they are.
    • The more turns you have to conquer them the more influence it will cost.
  • After a successful or unsuccessful campaign, you cannot Declare War for a period of time.
    • If you are successful, you will be recouped the influence you paid to Declare War and gain a happiness boost for a number of terms.
    • If you are unsuccessful, you will you lose that influence and take a happiness penalty.
  • Opponent can pay influence to decrease number of turns of Declare War.
  • Player can pay more influence to regain those turns.

Jovian09 wrote:

I'm not sure why the forced truce system is needed. It bears resemblance to Stellaris' War Goals system, but (unless I missed it) doesn't make those parameters visible to, or controllable by, the player.

Personally I think it's okay to have your civilisation's war tolerance represented in the approval system, with varying penalties or bonuses depending on your faction and political party. The diplomacy system is powerful enough to handle truces and terms of peace.

This is a fair statement, I guess I just wanted to see if I could come up with a way to make it work and compromise between the vision laid out by the developers and our experience as players. 

You bring up a good idea though, using approval as an indirect way to effectively force a truce while giving a player the option to ignore it and face the consequences. 

Even if the devs choose the keep the idea as is, some small things could be changed. The biggest one for me is the fact that I, as the victor, cannot dictate the terms of the truce. If the winning party is allowed to accept, or edit/refuse, the terms of such a treaty I see no problem with the mechanic overall. 

I guess additional informations will be available in future releases ; just an alpha yet ;)

Hey everyone,

I've been talking with some fellow early access users over on the Steam Discussion boards about the forced truce mechanic. Many of us find this to be a particularly frustrating aspect of conquest in this game in its current implementation. 

Don't get me wrong, the core idea here is very sound and adds depth to a the combat system. Without it, it would be far too easy to quickly knock out another empire from the game. Furthermore, in our history few wars have ever been fought to the bitter end with one side usually capitulating before severe losses are incurred. With that said, however, this mechanic definitely needs some work. The situation that many of us have come across is as follows: The player is a Craver, and their fleets are currently besieging multiple enemy systems. Suddenly, upon ending the turn in anticipation of a final victory, a text box appears declaring the war over and your ability to conquest disabled for 15 turns. Not only is this event incredibly irritating, but also somewhat lore breaking for the Cravers. In response to this, we threw some ideas around and a few other users suggested I post my solution here. 

The idea we came up with is essentially this:

A more immersive way handle war weariness in ES 2, with the plus side of make each of the races even more nuanced in their playstyles would be a some sort of 'War Tolerance' trait or modifier. My basic idea for this is that when declaring war on someone else, though not in a defensive war as the player would have the moral invective to keep fighting, the game tells you how long your people will be willing to remain in a state of war before demanding a truce. The amount of time would be based on several factors, how strong/weak the pacifist/militarist parties are in your senate, your species (i.e Cravers would have a much higher tolerance, if not an infinite tolerance, than say the Sophons or Lumeris), and any number of other things such as technologies, happiness, laws etc....  

Tweaking the existing forced truce mechanic in this would potentially make wars much more fun because, for example, a Lumeris player with low War Tolerance (due to their racial traits and current political atmosphere) would need to put much more thought and planning into a war (which fits their lore as well) and strike the most vital targets before their society turned on them. On the opposite spectrum, Cravers should be able to sustain a never ending conflict if they so desire. This take on the mechanic would also encourage players in general to plan far ahead politically, setting up a militarist take over on the eve of your intended invasion of a neighbor would greatly improve the odds of achieving any strategic goals you might have. Furthermore, this type of mechanic would mesh very well with any political espionage mechanics to be introduced down the road. For example, a Vodyani faction with a powerful military appears to be gearing up for war. The player, a Lumeris faction, uses their spies to rig the upcoming Vodyani elections in favor of the pacifists and effectively neuters the Vodyani's ability to prosecute an effective war. 

I am not a developer, so I apologize if this is too ambitious of a change to ever be implemented but I wanted to get my ideas onto this forum where the team is more active. 

Thanks for reading! 

I like the war score mechanic that Stellaris as is.  In reality as we know it, there is almost never any war that goes to complete destruction of another.

I ran into this Forced Truce and it sucked.  Was playing Sophons, had a planet attacked and taken over by another power.  I just built up my ships to take it back.  When I moved in, I was winning the space battles but the ground fight was tougher.  Still I had blockaded the system and was in control.

Then all of a sudden, I get this Forced Truce thrown upon me.  It was 87 dust/turn.  I was not very powerful or rich.  It was to last 10 turns.  By the 5th or 6th turn I was defeated.....for winning!  I was forced to liquidate all my system upgrades and even all my combat ships.

Game over.  No understanding of what happened or why.

Definitely needs to be revisited and fixed.

I'm not sure why the forced truce system is needed. It bears resemblance to Stellaris' War Goals system, but (unless I missed it) doesn't make those parameters visible to, or controllable by, the player.

Personally I think it's okay to have your civilisation's war tolerance represented in the approval system, with varying penalties or bonuses depending on your faction and political party. The diplomacy system is powerful enough to handle truces and terms of peace.

BlueberryMuffin wrote:

Not only has it no counter play but I also don't get how it integrates with the lore. Who forces the truce on you, exactly? And why do I only receive a paultry amount of dust for it and can no make my own demands? I mean, ~80 dust over x turns is nothing, if just repairing ships costs way more.

Forced Truce would be ok as an ability for a pacifist - diplomatic empire, but giving it to nearly everyone (even Cravers use forced truce on you ...) is just bad form. Made my Craver playtrough incredibly unsatisfying.

Got exactly the same feeling (saying in another post on the subject) with cravers wich are MADE for war : what's the point to accept a truce anyway ? 

And agreed on the too low reward for such forced truces : it barely pays off the upkeep of all the fleets needed to obtain such a truce. Not even speaking about repair costs

It's an interesting situation, because while it seems the majority of players on here and on Steam don't find the current implementation compelling I also think it's hard to say that this mechanic is inherently bad. 

This right here, is what I'd identify as the real issue we are struggling with:

Venatos wrote:

also in my current game im in my 3rd forced truce for 15 turns again after like 5 turns of war, at this rate i will probably spend around 70 or more turns in forced truce.

if i remember correctly the standard game only goes 150 turns or so and i still have 2 more factions to kill after this one.

spending up to half your gametime in forced truces is a tad exessive no matter how you turn it.

That being said, the game actually says that you can break forced truces in exchange for a large amount of influence. This isn't actually possible at the moment, but it suggests to me that a 'fix' for this mechanic is already planned.

With any luck, we'll soon see a more nuanced and useful way to interact during wartime using truces etc... Being able to extort a weak empire sounds like a pretty fun, and immersive, way to boost your economy (which would likely be strained by the large military needed to actually do this). 

Anyways thanks for the feedback, I'll keep toying with these ideas.

Really strange new mechanic.

I guess this has some sense, gameplay speaking, to give a chance to long terms strategies and factions to win but, lore speaking this has no sense.

Playing the cravers, as they don't know peace (can't even sign such treaties and lote explicitly says they are made for war and destruction) why would they respect a truce or being forced to truce ?

In addition, war result, when truce is forced, is way too light on available informations.

What is war result exactly ?Guess it's the same system as in EuropaUniversalisIV with war score being a direct way to "buy" things from other party.

Mainting fleets to have the upper hand in a conflict is way more expensive that the dust/turn you get in forced truce.

I guess (and hope) it's just some EarlyAccess attempt

the simple fact is that you cant force a truce! especialy if your on the loosing side of the conflict. 

who would enforce the truce? the loser certanly cant. 

if you offer enough money, the winning side might let you squirm a little longer, but you have nothing that could stop them if they dont want to.

also in my current game im in my 3rd forced truce for 15 turns again after like 5 turns of war, at this rate i will probably spend around 70 or more turns in forced truce.

if i remember correctly the standard game only goes 150 turns or so and i still have 2 more factions to kill after this one.

spending up to half your gametime in forced truces is a tad exessive no matter how you turn it.

i get that the mechanic is supposed to give the losing side some time to recoup and artificially lengthen the conflict time, but 15 turns is just way to long.

we all know that truces have to be agreed by both partys, but if you have to have this cluncy gamemechanic please turn it down to 5-7 turns or so.

While I do not have a fix for this feature...I agree that the current Forced Truce system is frustrating.  Jomsviking raising some interesting ideas.  For what it's worth I recommend taking another look at Forced Truce in the current form and possibly adjusting it.  Just my two cents.

It's a stupid mechanic when it has the ability to entirely collapse a strong empire almost instantly over territory not worth keeping. For whatever reason, losing a tiny backwater planet with only 1 population forced me into a treaty where I had to pay 70 dust/turn, but also turned my economy completely on it's head with a 200 dust/turn loss for no explained reason. Within two turns I was forced to sell off all the assets that would have saved my empire, all for a forced truce over a nothing planet. It's a dumb feature to begin with, even if all the kinks get ironed out. Maybe make it an option in setting up games?

At the very least the "Only War" Trait should mean that you cannot have a truce forced on you.

This 

For example, a Vodyani faction with a powerful military appears to be gearing up for war. The player, a Lumeris faction, uses their spies to rig the upcoming Vodyani elections in favor of the pacifists and effectively neuters the Vodyani's ability to prosecute an effective war.

would be awesome!