This is really annoying. I've taken a city, but my war score isn't high enough to keep it. I received this "offer" of surrender, but even after taking their capital on the same turn, my war score still doesn't go up. I've won numerous battles & sieged down two cities - why does that only net enough war score to take a single territory?

I was quite excited for this game, but it's turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I'm glad I got to try it out on Game Pass. It's not worth buying right now. Bugs aside, game design decisions like this are just bone-headed.

Someone will probably mod the ability of painting the map with your color, I doubt they'll remove the system though, or change it so you can eliminate another player in a single war.

People keep bringing up paradox because, yes, it's not a new concept at all, and it keeps coming back because people like it. If it's too big of an issue, there are other games: endless legends doesn't have anything stopping you from wiping a player in a single war for example

I'm uncertain how I feel about the war system. I don't mind grievances but I'm not sure how to manage war support.

In my current game the Edo Japanese attacked one of my ships, I demanded compensation and they refused - so I went to war. I didn't have an army in the area, but I had around 15 ships. I won every naval battle, killed their armies as they attempted to cross onto my colony and took no losses - yet they forced me to surrender and pay them. That is just ridiculous.

I blockaded their largest city, yet that doesn't have any impact on them, so I don't get the point of war in this game. I also would say comparing this to EU4 is silly, as in EU4 I could blockade and also win a war through battles, even if that war was just white peace. There's no war exhaustion management from what I can tell, so honestly I just don't understand how I'm supposed to win without conquering their cities, which wasn't the point of this conflict.

Maybe this game just isn't for you, lad.

Another thing I'm noticing - this time I've managed to keep my war support high and devastate theirs (they went to war with me), but I can't offer terms, or even a white peace. Why?

People need to understand the grievance system better.
ANY and ALL CITIES that you have a grievance (demand) on, you will take when you win, no matter the war score. In fact, you can't refuse them.
So if you want a city, make sure to get a grievance on it first.

I agree, this needs to be fixed. It was confusing and frustrating to not be able to cancel and own their entire cities. I should be able to take their cities through turns, not through surrender only. They really need to focus more on combat and victory through war.

Dale_K wrote:

Light_Spectrum wrote:

Yes, you can't do it, cuz YOUR war support is low. Maybe YOUR people don't want to fight for you so much. You don't have enough demands or grievances on this empire. It's pretty logical IMO.

It isn't logical, and there is no reason for it either. The logical situation is if I have totally conquered someone, wiped out ALL resistence, then what is stopping me just taking it all? There is no one left to negotiate with about "demands" or "grievances". It's stupid that the loser dictates the end of the war.

I saw @Light_Spectrum 's argument, and dispite the attitude thought, ok I could see my citizens not being up for continuing a war, maybe it had to be above 80 like the support required to start a formal war. 

But nope, even at 100% still forced to give in. 

Name one war in history where you're close allies with everyone around you, have full support of your electorate, conquer 80%+ of a country and because the conquered country got bored of a war they instigated, you have to stop. This isnt a gameplay choice it's a bug, or you wouldnt have the option to cancel presented. 

Siptah wrote:

Syn-Kaan wrote:

The worst part is the bug with your units getting locked in the enemy territory and dying after the enemy force his surrender on you lol

I think the whole system needs some tweaking, I don't want to remove it but it seems a bit exaggerated sometimes...
I played a game yesterday my enemy had 3 cities I conquer the first 2 my enemy still didn't want to surrender (and I can't propose it, even with good terms) so I attacked the last city and just before he lost it, he chose to surrender... I had war support and my population was fine with the idea to continue but OK.
Then I can't make him a vassal and I'm forced to let him his last city but I also have to give him back one of the previous one I had already conquered :/ so yeah I think it's a bit much...

And of course the worst part, once I accepted to take only the first city, my army was trapped in the enemy territory, they couldn't leave and the enemy didn't want to sign open borders (and I couldn't even force it back when he surrendered) so my army was just loosing life every turn and I could do shit lol.

So I came to conquer, and the game forced me to take only one city in exchange for my whole army lol.

You can always leave foreign territory. What you can‘t do is roam around in it. So you need to order a movement outside the foreign territory and your army will move there. It may take several turns, but that is no problem once ordered. If you really couldn‘t click on a friendly or neutral tile, it is a bug and you should report it.

No it does happen. Likely another bug. 

Melliores wrote:

@Cruor34

History actually shows quite a few examples of the reverse situation - where the aggressor actually tried to force a surrender both to avoid casualties on their end and to stop the war as soon as possible.

Napoleon wanted to take Moscow with the hope of making the Russian empire surrender in 1812. However they preferred to burn down most of the city than sign a peace treaty. The same happened with Germany in 1942 - Germany's main objective was to take Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow thus forcing a surrender.

The USA justified the use of nuclear weapons with wanting to make the Japanese surrender. The USA managed to take Okinawa but seeing how horrific the battle there was, they did not want to risk a full scale invasion of mainland Japan.

If anything, the war support mechanic is too lenient on the negative modifiers to make it more fun ingame - in the real world war support disappears way faster.

Except this game is like Germany getting Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, but during the surrender only getting Minsk, Pskov and Kiev.

Or the Allies winning Okinawa, flattering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but during the surrender only getting Iwo Jima.

Except it is not like that - if you want to get the whole country in one war, yes, that is not possible. You can still get large swathes of land, population and districts in one go however. And you can even chose which as the victor. In your example you make it sound like the losing side is always choosing what to give you after the war, which is not the case in game.

Also this leads me to the counter-point - the defender has little in the way of raising their own war support apart from military action. We need some propaganda and espionage in the game to spice up the wars and give you more demands, war support and even war score.

I see both sides of this argument have a point.

 OP has a logical point of view which is basically:

"I'm stomping you and you have lost all hopes and don't have any internal support for this war. That's ON you, not on me!"

And he/she is totally right. It is true that some other games have this kind of war support feature which is, imo, a good feature overall but it has been improved over the years and it's clearly not polished in humankind.

You shouldn't be forced to simply end a war because your opponent doesn't have the spirit to keep fighting. At this point, wars are basically a race. You need to have lots of units when starting a war to attack as many cities as you can because whenever the enemy says "hey, it's over" you have to accept their peace offer... and this is nonsense, both in gameplay and in a historical sense.

War support has to exist because it's a very good feature that has proven useful for lots of strategy games in the recent years but imo, they need to make it less "railroading" and more "well, you are ignoring the situation and this is gonna have some consequences".

Lots of people here are talking about paradox games which include that kind of features... well, those games never force you to accept a peace offer when your enemy doesn't have the will to keep fighting. You can always refuse their peace offer and keep fighting but if they are making a "good peace offer" based on your warscore and you keep refusing it, you are gonna be punished and you'll lose war support and maybe start having some internal unrest because you are maintaining a war which you have already won. But really, I have played lots of EU4 and never accepted a peace where I had to return some provinces because my enemy didnt want to fight anymore. You just get unrest, instabilty and aggressive expansion by being greedy, which means some internal difficulties and other countries having low opinion of you because they see you as a threat and an expansionist.

In Humankind there would be some simple ways to improve this system... I could suggest some which I think would prove useful:

1. Whenever someone gets to 0 war support, you enter peace negotiations, but as long as you still have war support yourself, you can refuse that peace.

2. Whenever you refuse a peace offer when your enemy is at 0 war support, you get a war support penalty yourself. Maybe -10 or something like this. The enemy is broken and the war is won. Your people want their soldiers back and you keep pushing, so you are losing support of your own country.

3. Then, if you keep refusing multiples times because you are greedy, you should start getting events each turn, which have different effects such as:

1. You get a stability hit on all your cities for X turns
2. You get a traitorous badge level increase
3. You get a diplomatic ongoing penalty with all neigbhors.
4. Other countires get grievances against you

Kaede11 wrote:

Lots of people here are talking about paradox games which include that kind of features... 

I don't play Paradox games because of this exact mechanic.

Another option, keep war resolution as it is for situations when both sides still have support. But if one side hits 0 support force the surrender, and the other side keeps everything they occupy.

That would be fair and make sense for both sides of this discussion.

The "Oh my God, save the AI, don't allow comp-stomping" people can keep their precious AI's around, but the warmongers who get lots of enjoyment comp-stomping can actually get some enjoyment out of this game. Otherwise, what is the point of people like myself playing this game?

I don't play Paradox games because of this exact mechanic.

If that's the only reason you don't play those games, I think you should try. You probably stopped a long time ago and this mechanics are quite well implemented. You are not forced to end wars you don't want to end and would see what I'm talking about in my post.

Please Devs, pay attention to everything Kaede11 proposed. This would save some frustration and significantly improve the War Support mechanics.