I had 100% war exhaustion before his fleets were even dead. This was real early in the game. It was an empire that only had 4 planets to my 3, and only a 2k fleet vs 6k. Every time I attacked his fleet it would emergency FTL out after like 5% damage, so I had to chase it all through his systems to finish it. The AI generally loves to run away and avoid fights now.
The whole argument is stupid, because this was a 100% contained opponent like hitler in the bunker. It's beyond retarded that anyone would be forced to give up at that point. The only possible hope he would have would be to get another Empire to come in on his side.
Isn't surrender through orbital bombardment a thing now?
This works great when you have a 100k fleet, not so much with an early game corvette squad. The time it took to eliminate defense armies was way too slow.
There are ways to limit exhaustion build up.
I was playing militant ethics with a government agenda for power projection; didn't matter. There are edicts and such that help too but it snuck up on me so fast it was crazy.
I could have played tall, gone the appeasement route with my neighbors, rushed habitats, and attempted a breakout later. But in my experience playing on Admiral you go wide ASAP or you die.
I don't think the war exhaustion mechanic itself is bad, it's the hard stop and sudden forced diplomacy that's stupid. WTF is a ten year forced truce? Who is enforcing that? Make it so the player gets stacking penalties to infinity over time, but I'll decide when I'm done.
I had one game before this, playing Lithoid with Calamitous birth, Technocracy and Fanatic Materialist/Egalitarian, Admiral difficulty. Went pretty good even though I forgot the fleet manager existed or how to efficiently use shipyards, I was attacked by a superior neighbor at one point and I was building fleets from just a few shipyards. Still overcame the attack and grabbed about half his planets, I was gearing up to take the rest when another neighbor attacked. This one had about the same fleet power of 300k, but the border was so wide it was hard for me to defend. The AI loves to split their fleets and attack five places at once, and while I was able to repel all their assaults it was difficult to make any progress. I eventually gave up some space back to a choke point and took a decent bite out of his territory before the forced peace, but that dragged on for so long it felt reasonable. The war was mostly a stalemate, some borders were redrawn, revenge sworn, and life goes on. I ended up abandoning that game when I saw I was really falling behind the rest of the galaxy and wanted to restart and play more efficiently.
I love this game but it enrages me sometimes. It's always either way too easy or impossible, kinda just how it is.
Armageddon Bombardment), and a passive accumulation over time called Attrition. When a side's war exhaustion hits 100% they can be forced into a status quo peace after 24 months.
