I updated and slightly tweaked this mod, if anyone wants it for 2.7.2

https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2112961959

Does this still work?

Mod as been updated for 2.3.*.

Thank you for your support.

Message received. I will update for the user base.

Still works in 2.3. Would appreciate a quick re-upload to get rid of the pesky warnings every time I launch the game though.

is this compatible with 2.3

is this compatible with 2.3

@ MisadventuresVG

Defenders don't seem to receive any war exhaustion from losing armies. While I agree it should be much higher for attackers than defenders, they should still recieve some.

Interesting concept. Going to try it out in my modpack. Hopefully this helps make my games more enjoyable because when I’m smacking the AI down and demanding their surrender they just want to keep fighting until I end up fighting for 50+ years.

I have fully reviewed this mod and decided to make a number of small changes.
Now occupation is balanced between the demands of the player and the AI. The AI will now be more accepting when it is clear they are getting smacked down hard. Systems, Planets, Starbases and Population all count more towards occupation and increase the WE accordingly.

The main difference now is the emphasis on the diplomatic acceptance value. Now with the new changes the AI will be realistic that they are losing and be more welcoming to accepting of surrender.

I also felt points made on the behalf of players on the defensive side of war were valid. To help players who are attempting to defend against attacks, destroying AI fleets and troops will now count 2.5 and 1.25 times more accordingly, it will still take a long time to wear the attacker out entirely. To really defend yourself, you will need to get active and attack and occupy territory of the enemy to make them realise you aren't a soft target.

I have a feeling that old multiplier for planetary occupation is gone, it was present in the early 2.0 version of Stellaris but was later removed. You get a score from occurring planets but you can't scale it i.e. make it worth more, instead you have to scale the ship scoring down to give planetary occupation the greater importance, hence why the mod draws combat out if not occupation occurs.

I'll double check the files and get back to you.

Maybe just up the exhaustion penalty for planetary occupation? That was my big problem with the current exhaustion mechanic - that taking/losing planets didn't really matter.

I dont think the base dame is more realistic. It generelly needs more emphasis on archieving your wargoals. I just dont think reducing war exhaustion by shiploses or ticking attrition is a good idea. For a weaker defender, reducing the enemies military should be the main wargoal, not trying to take planets he can never hold.

As for how much, that could still be tweaked - would be nice to modify that by gov and ethics. To my knowledge, the base calculation for war exhaustion though unit loss is actually quite ingenious. Would be a shame to let it go to waste. Something like (Lost naval capacity/Total naval capacity), so you can even mitigate it by building up on capacity you have no intention of using.

I was about to say, Endugu's thing is correct in a psychological perspective, however nowhere in war, or even the AI (who will attack even when on the defense) does it prevent the defender from attacking the enemies lands, and if they don't than at least this way when I lose half my fleet and wipe their fleets, take their planet and destroy a station I don't end up with one fucking percent less than them. In fact, historically, once a defense has the upperhand it's important to move into enemy lands. Until you start inflicting damage on their resources and families at home soldiers and empires will fight far better and, frankly, not nearly as many people back home will care.

It definitely *could* be more nuanced, but the amount of change and work that would be required would take a *lot* of time. However if you think the base game is more "accurate" you clearly haven't had to deal with completely dominating a smaller empire yet but then being forced into a white peace because of the bullshit systems they have in place. probably a good 20% of my wars or so are fought against minor empires to incorporate them because vassalage is still dumb, but because I tend to play swarm games, focusing on improving fleet construction speed and large numbers of ships instead of big ones, I often still lose several ships no matter what. But when I have 15 planets and I lose the equivalent of like.... a cities worth of people for my military vessels and that's it? Why does my empire, regardless of who I am, have as much war weariness as someone who's lost the same amount in terms of ships, but also several planets and military command centers?

MisadventuresVG what you said: "However that relies of empires actively engaging in war rather than just turtling up and trying to bat away till there is no more enemies."

I Agree with that a lot. The game just promotes just following enemy ships and killing them. I like your general idea for this mod.
Thumbs up

Thinking about the impact of WE for the defender, it occurs to me that the reduce for ship losses might be too little, the idea behind the mod is to allow attacks the freedom to truly express their intent on the defender without running out of time to quickly.

However the defender isn't given any help to wear down their enemy. That being said the current mod does allow for successful use of counter attacks and counter conquest as a means to retard the attackers advance, adding to their WE. However that relies of empires actively engaging in war rather than just turtling up and trying to bat away till there is no more enemies.

I'm going to have another look into this.

Hmm... this is sort of already in place within the gameplay mechanics, which I just haven't touched on. However I believe these empire penalties only apply during the war, once it is over the effects fade away immediately.

The longer term effects however are sort of there too, when you think of the diversion of resources and population into troops (subjective) and ships to fight the war you find yourself economically worse off afterwards. Lost are the countless resources that could of been used to build up your civilization but instead you have had to prioritise them towards weapons of war and troops. although with the new resource system the "components" kind of divorce the military economy from the civilian one, which I do not agree with. The two should be the same so when diversion of resources occurs for war efforts it immediates on the civilian population.

You do however make a good point about the defender.

Its also better from a purely gameplay perspective. Without the possibility of the defender outlasting the enemy in a war, the game would become much more predictable. Any combatant with a superior fleet would always win. Just a question of time.

I believe a better system woud be EUIVs war exhaustion. Something that increases much slower, but with more severe consequences and that you slowly lose in peace time. That way you could go over the line in a really important war and then pay for it later. You also woudnt even need the long truce system.

In this I have a different opinion. This isnt just public disapproval in democratic societies. War Exhaustion should be a concept known to all beings with a sense of self. Anyone who fights any real struggle that puts hardship on them should experience War Exhaustion as that hardship drags on. Resources have to be put towards the war effort, everyone works as much as possible and even hardcore militarists see their friends die. Only special cases like FE military smacking down some upstarts without the hedonists at home even knowing they are at war should have no War Exhaustion. You may make a case for GestaltC, and they should be MUCH more resistant to the effects. But even machine empires should get problems from running their components on highly degrading 130% emergency outputs and hiveminds from feeling more and more parts of themselves die. In conclusion, I believe that there should be some kind of rising, negative modifier.

Subbed.

War Exhaustion is a very human democratic opinion concept unfortunately.

You only have to look at examples from WW2 to see how little a civilization/country can care about it's soldiers and their plights during warfare. To suggest alien civilizations would be bothered by material losses seems counterproductive when the alterative could be their own genocide.

Are you say a civilization should be more bothered with a loss of a few ships as opposed to the invasion and loss of an entire planet with potentially billions of citizens? Because unfortunately the ships and their crews are relatively easy to replace, the planet however is somewhat more difficult.

I am happy to be offered alterative ideas.

I also think that archieving your objectives should be higher weighted. But this seems heavily biassed towards the attacker. How can you effectively defend yourself if any attrition you inflict on the enemy is meaningless?

Holy shit, I'm definitely putting this on. Playing a Devouring Swarm hivemind game right now, walking over my enemy cause I can out manufacture my super speedy but weak ships and armies, but I lose so much that I'm forced into white peaces even though I'm taking *every system* I just lose a lot of ships. But why the *fuck* does a hivemind swarm devoted to overwhelming small fast numbers care about losing those so damn much!?

So guys, hope you are enjoying the mods I am posting. If you are please be kind and throw me a good rating...

I am working on a number of other mods to improve different aspects of the game, keep an eye out on my various mod pages to see links to my future work as they are released.