Something is messed up with the war system.
I had a war where 2 ais attacked me, they claimed a number of my systems, got sick of me, and attacked in a claim war.
I had one ally with a defensive pact. I don't think that's significant, but I figured I'd mention it.
So at the start of the war, I was caught unprepared. So the enemy occupied about 8 of my systems, including a planet.
I built up and pushed them back, destroying their fleet a few times, eventually getting the warscore tied up, at around 84.
At this point, 4 of my systems are still occupied by them.
I move in to take another system, and fight another enemy fleet. The instant combat ends, I get a message from the AI that started the war, saying it's over, and it's a status quo. I have no option but to agree.
After this, the 4 occupied systems become owned by the 2nd AI (the one who had occupied them). Now, this can't be right. Now, after turning around an invasion attempt, after getting the enemy on their heels, they get to just say "Time out, no more war for 10 years, and we'll just keep these systems". I mean... wtf?!?
This is like after Germany invading france and england in ww2, after taking a few losses holding england they just get to say "OK OK, that's enough war, status quo, we keep england and france, no takebacks for 10 years!"
That is not how things work. No war has ever worked that way!
Firstly, the war exhaustion timer is just way too fast. With the travel times being so incredibly long now, it's even more of a problem.
Secondly, the way exhaustion works is just nonsense. The aggressor gets the exact same amount of time until their people are sick of the war as the defender?!? Surely it's obvious why that's stupid. The aggressors can always just go home, they're not defending themselves, so the civilians are going to get sick of the war faster (Think US in Iraq). The defenders, on the other hand, are having their worlds taken from them by an aggressive enemy empire. They're probably going to support the fight for a really long time, especially if they are making any sort of progress (Think occupied England and France).
So here's how I think it should work:
If attacker exhaustion fills up, attacker can propose either a white peace (Defender gets all occupied systems back and keeps whatever they took), or they propose a surrender (Give in to war demands)
Then the defender gets the same options in reverse.
Even that's not perfect, but if they're going to keep this stupid exhaustion system, it can at least make a little sense. But really, the exhaustion system should do nothing but be a modifier to surrender acceptance(And probably a happiness modifier, based on ethics). As it is, it's just such an odd and inelegant system, who the hell is enforcing these 10 year peace treaties? I didn't join the space UN, damn it!
Also, it seems that garrisoning armies doesn't knock down unrest anymore. This is sort of a problem when you play with slaves, and the tooltip indicates that you should be able to lower it with garrisoned armies, so I think it's a bug. Anyone else notice that, or discover any workarounds?