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[Aoi]

I am still so confused as to how war score works...

I had claims on 5 systems (3 were recapturing my old ones) out of maybe 60 they had, and took my fleet to rampage all over their territory. In the meantime, they went in through a backdoor I overlooked and ravaged an enormous empty swath of starbases... they never got to my sole inhabited planet, defended to the gills.

Fast forward, I've literally minced all but two of their pops, courtesy of Purge/Processing and Nihilistic Acquisition, and taken over one of the three planets they had. (The other two I was in the process of escorting my army to.)

And yet, I couldn't force a surrender... I eventually took a huge loss via Status Quo.

What do you actually need to do to win a war? Capturing starbases or post-bombardment planets don't seem to work, and no matter how decisively I beat them in a space battle, I come out worse.

[Mini]

You pretty much need to control all of the stuff contested in the war to force a surrender. You can probably get by not taking a system or two, but the modifier to make the AI not surrender stacks up pretty quickly, and the modifier for planets is really big so you definitely need to capture all of those that are contested. For forcing a surrender bombarding planets doesn't matter, winning battles doesn't really matter.

[LoSboccacc]

Spoiler: lost colonies in multiplayer.jpeg (click to show/hide)

but what difficulty were you all playing?

[Kanil]

Yeah, I dunno what's going on in that screenshot to cause the outrage, but if my origin empire ever actually manages to kill someone in MP, I'd consider that strictly a win for all of spacefoxkind.

Also, I'd probably laugh. A lot.

[LoSboccacc]

Yeah, I dunno what's going on in that screenshot to cause the outrage, but if my origin empire ever actually manages to kill someone in MP, I'd consider that strictly a win for all of spacefoxkind.

Also, I'd probably laugh. A lot.

that why I asked, three player near an advanced empire can easily put it to an end unless difficulty is up to the sky

[Rolan7]

I am still so confused as to how war score works...

I had claims on 5 systems (3 were recapturing my old ones) out of maybe 60 they had, and took my fleet to rampage all over their territory. In the meantime, they went in through a backdoor I overlooked and ravaged an enormous empty swath of starbases... they never got to my sole inhabited planet, defended to the gills.

Fast forward, I've literally minced all but two of their pops, courtesy of Purge/Processing and Nihilistic Acquisition, and taken over one of the three planets they had. (The other two I was in the process of escorting my army to.)

And yet, I couldn't force a surrender... I eventually took a huge loss via Status Quo.

What do you actually need to do to win a war? Capturing starbases or post-bombardment planets don't seem to work, and no matter how decisively I beat them in a space battle, I come out worse.

Status Quo is like 9/10 wars for me, though their exhaustion builds up quickly when I'm stomping their fleets.  Even when I hold all my claims it's kind of tough to get them to surrender (and they seem to volunteer it when they're willing). 

You probably had a warscore penalty from their occupations.  Logically, why would they have surrendered your systems back to you?  Status quo was a better outcome for them, so they took it.  As a corollary, there are a few situations where it's better to surrender than to continue fighting for a status quo truce.  The more powerful empire might make new claims, or be demanding vassalization/humiliation, or simply distracting from another war. 

So yeah, it's not so much convincing some star-jury that one side's the victor - it's more of a cost/benefit analysis between surrender or drawing things out.  It's important to defend one's planets even against a weaker foe.  I don't know whether bombing or even Nihilistic Acquisition change the value of systems mid-war or not.  The only practical way to get a surrender is to occupy all your claims, defend against all their claims, and then crush their hope of that changing.  The last part is particularly difficult when they have potentially-distant allies, but status-quo eventually gives you what you've earned.

[Aoi]

It just seems really weird that it would be considered a stalemate when I've captured and am in the process of eating literally over 99% of their planetary population, and the last <1% are spared because of game mechanics.

I mean, sure, they captured a ton of mostly empty star systems, but pretty much now their entire civilization is what remains of their space navy.

From a real-world perspective if peace agreements were binding, Status Quo was an awful deal, and an early surrender far better: I've given up those territories up immediately-- they want three mostly empty systems back, fine. They want two more systems adjacent to what they lost... Eh... One has a wrecked megastructure in it which hurts to give up, but... THEY'RE WRECKING OUR HOME PLANET (and manufacturing base) and promising to go away if we give them 10% of the empty space we technically own. Yes, we have to give up the empty space we captured, but that involved practically no losses, as opposed to leaving our pops to be thrown into a meat grinder.

Update:

Okay, here's the results of a different battle-- This time, I attacked a federation I vastly outpowered, and my battles represented that: I swept across all of one civ's holdings-- 38 systems, five planets. I did not lose a single ship or army unit to them (I did lose a few to a trader faction I decided to punch in the face since it was on the way.).  At no time did I lose any territory, or even ceded any territory back to them. I had to eventually Status Quo it because the federation-mate was across a wormhole and I didn't have the tech for it, but even by then, it was 95-100. I suffered no losses, destroyed an entire civilization, and that gave me a 5% lead?

[Eric Blank]

I think you have to control 100% of the enemies' systems, planets and destroy all their fleets to force them to surrender.

I've been incredibly cheaty and used the "otter editor" mod to give myself extra inhabitable worlds and orbital resources (energy, minerals, alloys, and research), but I didn't have any problems conquering two weaker civilizations with my federation buddy. But to make them surrender I had to occupy every system, destroyed every fleet and invade every planet, and only then they capitulated. But I could request a status quo victory if I occupied every system an planet I and my federation mate claimed plus a few. I'm having a harder time with my current war because the enemy had more fleet power and wiped the floor with my fleets and killed three of my admirals, and has occupied all my systems on their side of the wormhole until the last ten minutes of game time last night. Warscore is definitely in their favor right now, and to force them to surrender will mean conquering a quarter of the (huge) galaxy, so like 200 systems. I might be able to force status quo but not until I retake my systems and some of those I claimed. This is a advanced start empire that has aggressively conquered at least 3 other empires, and declared rivalry on two of the FE's one of which declared war on them right before I quit for the night. When they conquered my systems and destroyed my fleets they used 4 fleets all with admirals totalling about 120k fleet power, versus my defending 30k

I started this game to witness the endgame crises since I've never survived that long before. It's currently like 2350 or something. And even though I'm playing a fanatical authoritarian empire, I have not been able to bring myself to commit genocide or force pops out of my empire either. I've just been making conquered empires domestic servants and genetically modifying them all to be naturally servile, obedient and happy. Which is probably the only thing holding this cesspool of an empire together besides the supercharged cheated-in economic resources allowing me to build amenities and consumer goods buildings immediately on every planet.


Oh and a wraith popped out of one of the stars I occupied and went on a short rampage. It destroyed 3 systems before wandering into the system containing the "Enigmatic Fortress" and disappeared. I assumed it was still in there and sent my pursuing fleets after it, totalling about 30k fleetpower. The wraith was nowhere to be seen and the fortress wiped the floor with my fleets. I'm guessing the wraith was destroyed by the fortress too?

[SOLDIER First]

It's not that strict. The game will show you how willing the enemy is to surrender (not accept a status quo peace via war exhaustion) in the war's menu, like the way it does opinion modifiers for diplomatic events. Even if you control all of their planets and systems they might not be willing to surrender if their navy is sufficiently large compared to yours.

[amjh]

I think there should be a "partial victory" between status quo and victory. Something like current status quo, but one sided.

[forsaken1111]

I have never had any problem with the way the current status quo works.

[Rolan7]

I haven't either, though I guess it could have more nuance.  The problem is that they're no more interested in surrendering than the player is.  The cases where a player would actually want to surrender instead of drawing things out are a little complicated.

Spitballing, an AI could be more interested in surrender when they're in multiple wars and generally overpowered.  Thus they could surrender some systems in order to improve their chances against others.  That's a heck of a calculus though, particularly when planets are involved (which is probably why the AI hard-refuses to trade away colonies, even for colonies).

Then there's the threat of "punitive" bombardment.  The problem is that any colony is effectively lost once its starbase is lost.  At least temporarily.  The "army" minigame is a total non-factor beyond UI tedium.  So the threat of bombardment is meaningless - might as well let the enemy conquer it via white peace instead of handing it over.

I suppose an AI might seek peace just to avoid sacrificing alloys, particularly when they're threatened or rivaled by neighbors, but that's really just an expansion of the first situation.

I really don't blame the AI for being unwilling to hand over territory.  ...However, maybe thinking about this too authoritarian/xenophobic (odd for me!).  I'm working off an assumption that all space war has the complete support of the people, as if it's a war for their homes or even survival.  And that's often the case in Stellaris!  But in a lot of cases, especially my own games, a change in territory can be good or at least neutral for the pops involved.  Of course the Empress is going to command the military to resist the Servobots to the last breath, but maybe some of the toiling serfs have doubts about that?  And less extreme examples.  Whereas there's little reason to surrender worlds to xenophobes (purge laws and slavery laws, to make it more general).

Fun thoughts but the system's pretty effective as is already.  It's just simpler than other Paradox games, maybe too much.

Edit:  There's also the fact that if they're more willing to surrender, they're a lot more likely to get attacked.  That could just be common knowledge.  Maybe there's a general policy of valuing all territory so as not to be an easy target for opportunists.

[LoSboccacc]

the fact is most wars are conquest wars because vassal/tribute requirements are so high to be pointless. in turn, a conquest war only lead to annihilation.

if claims influence were higher and tribute easier, you'd get a lot more 'modern war' were you contest strength and where a surrender makes sense. but that would make assimilator/purifiers and the whole lot of empires that can capture without claim completely op and they would need a rework as well.

but in the context of planetary claims, yeah, doesn't make sense how war works to begin with, so no amount of logic can be applied to surrender conditions.

 

[Rolan7]

I vassalize a lot actually.  They still rarely surrender, but status quo makes a new vassal empire from their occupied systems.  So the requirement is essentially the same - if you occupy the system long enough, you decide what happens to it.  Ideology wars as well.

[forsaken1111]

I do a lot of vassal wars. You don't have to completely conquer the enemy. Whatever you control is carved off of the enemy empire as a vassal when you status quo. Unless that has changed?