Why is it so hard to win a war?

[[SPAYED]Bud]

I'm obviously dominated a war. They have no chance in my experience. Yet it's a constant cat and mouse game. I destroy their territory but don't own it because I don't have enough time to destroy their planets and invade (and then presume the responsibility of owning their planet).. giving my opponent enough time to stall and force a peace treaty... what?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

You just described exactly what Paradox said they wanted to achieve.

[[SPAYED]Bud]

I just described an unfulfilling and annoying experience. that's what they were going for?
interesting. I really enjoy being forced into a peace treaty. makes a lot of sense. Not being able to genocide a planet is incredibly aggravating.. If that was the dev's pursuit, mission accomplished.

[Darren]

Concentrate on securing a few areas. If you do really well in the initial push you can keep pushing outward, but make sure you always secure your captured areas. Just blitzing through doesn't cut it anymore, you have to take and hold every system.

[[SPAYED]Bud]

How do I take and hold every system when I can't sustain that many colonies? I'm trying to fight AI with well over 7-10 colonies. Securing an area requires me to take over a planet which can be several hindering. It makes more sense to me to just annihilate (or eradicate) their planet and not deal with the repercussions of their sad world.

[HacaPotato]

Git gud to be honest.

[Darren]

引用自 BusBoyBud：

How do I take and hold every system when I can't sustain that many colonies? I'm trying to fight AI with well over 7-10 colonies. Securing an area requires me to take over a planet which can be several hindering. It makes more sense to me to just annihilate (or eradicate) their planet and not deal with the repercussions of their sad world.

Build some strongholds to deal with unrest, and then shove them in a Sector. You don't have to use them as Core Systems (and you probably don't want to). Alternatively wait until later in the game and just vapourise the planets with the new superweapons.

[Tree Diagram]

Start small, you won't win the entire war in a single war (wierd I know but that's paradox for you) so instead make each war a minor victory with small gains consistently over time leading to the win.

[Tyrannosaurus Zuko]

引用自 BusBoyBud：

How do I take and hold every system when I can't sustain that many colonies? I'm trying to fight AI with well over 7-10 colonies. Securing an area requires me to take over a planet which can be several hindering. It makes more sense to me to just annihilate (or eradicate) their planet and not deal with the repercussions of their sad world.

To continue on what Darren said above, this game has two 'types' of colonized planets. Those you take and hold as core colonized worlds, and those that are worlds placed in sectors.

Placing a world or system in a sector is done by either pressing the F5 key or opening the 'more' tab on the UI on the top (to the immediate right of the 'research' button).

Opening this allows you to create a new sector with the 'create a new sector' button. It will allow you to click on systems that you wish to sector off and only control in part. You can place planets in sectors, and have them govern themselves via AI, where they collect local resources in the systems sectored, build buildings on occupied planets, colonize planets within the sector, and build robots (if enabled).

The sectors share food and research with your core systems at 100%, and you can choose to gain as much as 75% of energy and minerals.

[ArcticISAF]

Try building an army and just invading the planets. You don't need to bomb it.

[It's a Mind Game]

I have no problem winning my wars vs empires that have "equal" strength. You really need to take it slow and focus on your objectives (claims) instead of blizzing them.
It wouldn't work anyway since you can't destroy starbases (and shipyards) anymore, so going for their industrial capacity just can't be done as easily anymore.
They made it somewhat closer to how for example Europa Universalis is played; you take small bites and yours or theirs defeat in battle does not mean automatically GG like it used to.

Me and AI both don't do anymore death stacks and position my fleets strategically with is great change IMO.

[Admiral Obvious]

I've not had any trouble at all winning any wars as a result of the patch. If you pay attention to what the enemy fleet is comprised of, and hard counter them, it's often pretty easy to in most cases blitz through them, and take down every defense they have. If you want to make them surrender, you are going to need to ruin a pretty massive fleet, with the way the new WE system works for ships.

Occupation of planets doesn't do too much unless you already have a claim to the planet, in which case, you can still technically "win" if you manage to occupy the enemy territory and force status quo.

It's not about "winning everything at once" anymore, it's about slow, steady progression. You can't take over a quarter of the galaxy in a single go anymore, and I think that's a good thing.

[DPT]

引用自 Tree Diagram：

Start small, you won't win the entire war in a single war (wierd I know but that's paradox for you) so instead make each war a minor victory with small gains consistently over time leading to the win.

This would make sense except the peace treaties last ten years.

[DPT]

引用自 Admiral Obvious：

I've not had any trouble at all winning any wars as a result of the patch. If you pay attention to what the enemy fleet is comprised of, and hard counter them, it's often pretty easy to in most cases blitz through them, and take down every defense they have. If you want to make them surrender, you are going to need to ruin a pretty massive fleet, with the way the new WE system works for ships.

Occupation of planets doesn't do too much unless you already have a claim to the planet, in which case, you can still technically "win" if you manage to occupy the enemy territory and force status quo.

It's not about "winning everything at once" anymore, it's about slow, steady progression. You can't take over a quarter of the galaxy in a single go anymore, and I think that's a good thing.

This goes against what makes sense in war, they didn't just take Normandy in ww2 then make peace because they had suffered attrition, then attack again ten years later and call it quits for another ten years after reaching Paris. It's more logical to destroy your enemy in one go than to pick at him over centuries. Not to mention I don't understand how an intergalactic war should be over quicker than any real war in history when it takes months just to move systems. It took 2 decades for America to give up in Vietnam because of attrition, yet my space empire gets into one big space battle which it wins, and suddenly has 90 attrition, 100 attrition before you can even get soldiers on the ground.

[It's a Mind Game]

I must admit that there is some issue with attrition after all. I just finished vassalization war and despite crushing my opponent I almost lost it, because as I was getting close to having enough war goal points at the same time attrition was getting very close to 100%. I finished it with 97% war weariness so it was almost for nothing. I actually lost my previous attempt with different weakling. Still, makes you wonder if Domination just gotten itself useless.

[[SPAYED]Bud]

I appreciate all the input. I didn't know about the sector function.. that helps with the influx of planets conquered... I didn't play before the patch, but it sounds like they are trying to gimp domination? I wish this as well as the forced peace treaty was configurable, my preference is shorter games, or at least shorter wars. I'll probably attempt to mod this if it hasn't been already.

I still find the war goals and attrition to be pretty confusing. I couldn't ask them to surrender as I always had -997 points or something ludicrous even though I was winning by the book. It also felt like their armies would respawn, is that a thing?