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.
What happened here is that your war exhaustion hit 100% after that combat. The AI proposed a status quo peace and you cannot refuse them if you're at 100%. They're already changing this for next patch, where you can refuse but you will suffer severe penalties on unity and influence income for fighting an unwanted war, so the choice will be yours.
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?
This is correct. ONLY defensive buildings such as forts built on planets or certain edicts will knock down unrest. You CANNOT garrison assault armies, and defense armies are generated automatically.
That makes some sense, but I guess it's weird that I just have no way to bring down unrest other than wasting planet tiles on an otherwise useless building. I mean... it sort of defeats the purpose of running slavery (food and minerals +10%) if I have to waste more than 10% of my building space on keeping unrest down. The idea of taking unity as a slaver species seems.... odd... Of course I have the special slave processing facilities on all my worlds, because that's another +10%! Plus 2 food and 2 minerals ain't bad either. However it seems probable that just keeping pops happy instead of enslaving them is the much better strategy now, due to the limited controls one has on unrest...
The war exhaustion thing just seems to prevent someone from making a comeback in a slightly losing war. I had 1 planet and a bunch of empty systems occupied, and smashed their fleet. After that last battle, while it's possible it took us both over 100%, the AI exhaustion was higher. So why should they come out ahead after the war? They were losing!
What bothers me about this is that it prevents an empire with a great economy and a weak fleet from mobilizing their industry to churn out a fleet, push back the attackers, then take some of their territory. Or even just push the attackers out, because it takes so little to fill up the war exhaustion. This might not be such a big deal, except that now, I've gone and churned out a fleet, pausing my economy, increasing my maintenance, and since the enemy "Surrendered" I can't actually use this fleet on them for 10 years, giving them plenty of time to build back up. Why the hell would I accept that truce? No nation would, it makes no sense. "Oh yes, they've been our rival for years, and just tried to kill us, but we managed to cripple their fleet. Then they asked politely if we would just let them keep the systems they went through on their way to kill us, and of course we said yes, take 10 years to build back up and try to kill us again please!"
I don't hate all the changes, and even the ones I hate currently probably just need some work to make more sense, but this in particular is very frustrating to me.
Since then I've tried a war of aggression against an AI. When you're ready to fight at the start of the war, it's another story entirely. My exhaustion went up to about 14 over the entire war. The AI was at 100% for quite a while (I took a long time to take a planet, I wasn't prepared for the new defensive army strength, a positive change in my opinion). Even though the AI was at 100%, they wouldn't surrender until I actually occupied the planet, which is odd. But all in all, the mechanics felt sensible for a straightforward invasion with superior forces. It's the back and forth wars that make a bit less sense, in my opinion. Maybe you should be able to take away some exhaustion when you take back systems, so as to allow comebacks.