"Peacekeepers" anything but

[Crai-Crai]

There is a Fallen Empire next to me. They wake up. They call themselves Peacekeepers. They send a message out to everyone demanding that we sign their policy that we basically become their vassals. It includes a ban on any kind of purging or slavery.

Now, I'm in the middle of a bunch of gang wars with xenos on one of my worlds and I'm slowly displacing them away but it's taking a long time and the crime is taking its toll. So I say 'no' to the deal at first. I need to get rid of the criminals first.

But things go sideways fast. My fellow federation member, a buddy of mine that I play with, takes the most aggressive option. ("I just killed their envoys" he says.) So the awakened "Peacekeepers" go to war with us.

Around that time, we call it a night. I don't normally pull up saved games for a do-over - I try to keep moving forward - but this situation is a tough one and I want to test out some strategies before meeting up to continue the game.

1) Fight the Peacekeepers: They steam-roll over me and take a couple of my planets. Federation is unable to assist. The Peacekeepers focus all their attacks on me because I'm closest.

2) Don't even fight - just try to surrender immediately, even though it will likely involve keeping the criminal problem. But this didn't work because "my war goal does not allow surrender." I was not given the option to have a war goal, strangely, because they are a fallen empire that declared war on me so I guess the only option was "containment" by default. All I could hope for was war exhaustion to eventually allow peace.

3) Reload to pre-war and ask to be "signatory" - they refuse because they want to fight me instead.

Anyone have suggestions on how to proceed?

(Also, side note, why does having xenos in my empire always result in gang wars, rampant crime and unemployment? Am I not nice enough to them? In real life, I'm a Canadian who enjoys a multicultural society, but in this game it seems that xenophobia is the only option.)

[The Guy with Lag]

This is pretty realistic for me. Nations that go for democracy and peace playing world police go to far more wars than any other nation, :)
i am a xenophile for some plays now and i havent had this problem about xeno gang wars. are they on full citizenship? are they "happy"? check pop happiness, or check for faction approvel.
what is the game year? can you hold on againts a fallen empire by military? İs there a chance to basically stall the war for war exhaustion by turtling behind starbases and fleets?

[Crai-Crai]

They do not have full citizenship and they are on a planet that I captured in a war. Even though they have plenty of amenities, they are not happy, probably with the living standards. With the high crime, I used Decisions for fighting crime, and Martial Law, which did not seem to reduce the crime at all but instead made the people less happy and more prone to crime. Or maybe I'm just not reading the numbers right. It's all pretty confusing to me.

Game year is 2516. Yes that is pretty late. My buddy wanted to set up the game so that we have lots of time to prepare for end game crisis (which we still have not seen aside from the FE waking up).

On one test run, playing solo with AI taking over the human player slot, we had almost all the federation and my fleets in one spot when the FE ran their death stack over. The FE lost about half their fleet numbers and went for a White Peace at that point. So I still lost a few systems and most of my fleets, but turtling and choosing battles may be the best option. Hopefully my buddy will be willing to sacrifice federation fleets and can control them better than the AI did in my test run.

In other test runs, I lost 2 planets before they slowed down enough to sue for peace.

[The Guy with Lag]

how long has it been? recently conquered pops have a happyness debuff. Try to make them happy and let go of crime it doesnt do much. build some presinct houses temporarely and disable martial law, get happiness up.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Crai-Crai:

(Also, side note, why does having xenos in my empire always result in gang wars, rampant crime and unemployment? Am I not nice enough to them? In real life, I'm a Canadian who enjoys a multicultural society, but in this game it seems that xenophobia is the only option.)

I go on a wild guess and say: the unemployment is because you dont make enough jobs, or if you bar them from higher level jobs (certain kinds of slaves can only take worker jobs), not the jobs they can actually fill.

Basically the unemployment is then the source of your other problems
also freshly conquered pops are unhappy because they were conquered (a penalty that goes away).
Crime might also be because the planetary population is too big compared to the crime-prevention measures you have in place. Crime gets lowered by:
- certain techs
- some traditions
- the skill-level of the governor assigned to the planet
- filled enforcer jobs

Crime goes in general up by population number, but how much crime a pop produces depends on its happiness. so if your planet has a high number of unemployed pops at minimal living standards who are also unhappy with your politics and having little amenities you can expect crime to explode.

Its why higher standards of living even though it costs more in consumer goods can actually be beneficial. Happy pops are more productive, less criminal and higher standards of living means they produce more trade.

In general besides the initial "recently conquered" happyiness penalty, if your crime problem is with xenos species thats either because the planets you conquer are poorly built up or their species-settings are dampening their happiness (low standard of living, not many rights).

Also important to keep in mind that even a well run world might be in serious trouble after conquest, because the former happy and productive population gets unhappy, lowering production bonus wich then in turn might press the amenities production under the needed rating, FURTHER lowering happiness and productivity and thats not even taking into account that the old owner might have empire bonusses you don't have and the planet now lacks to be in good shape.

[Crai-Crai]

Thanks, galadon3. A few things you mentioned seem to apply. Recently conquered pops don't have the rights to work specialist jobs and there aren't enough slave-level jobs. I guess I have to change their rights. Also, it seemed like the recently-conquered penalty didn't go away despite many efforts to raise happiness, but I guess it went away eventually regardless of my efforts.

Same thing for crime: My efforts at crime-reduction seemed to have no effect for the longest time until one day the crime went away altogether without explanation.

Thanks for the other tips as well. Some I knew, some didn't apply here, but I also learned something new as well.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Crai-Crai:

Thanks, galadon3. A few things you mentioned seem to apply. Recently conquered pops don't have the rights to work specialist jobs and there aren't enough slave-level jobs. I guess I have to change their rights. Also, it seemed like the recently-conquered penalty didn't go away despite many efforts to raise happiness, but I guess it went away eventually regardless of my efforts.

Yes the recently conquered modifier is just a timed one, it expires on its own and afaik there isnt anything you can do to speed it up. You can at best raise standard of living / give them more rights / have high amenity on the planet to counter it.

Same thing for crime: My efforts at crime-reduction seemed to have no effect for the longest time until one day the crime went away altogether without explanation.

probably related to the recently conquered modifier, a pop unless 100% happy produces crime, the less happy it is the more crime it produces, so the moment that modifier expired on a lot of pops the amount of crime they produce goes down significantly