Stellaris Development Diary #20: War and Peace

While not being as long as the Tolstoy tome, Stellaris has released another Dev Diary  about the aforementioned idea of War and Peace.

Like other Grand Strategy Games that have come before Stellaris, you’ll need to have a pretty good reason to declare war, i.e. Europa Universalis-style. So, you pick a few reasons to go to war, as long as the war score doesn’t go over 100 points, and poof, you have a reason to obliterate all the ETs. This is a little trickier with the alliance system in Stellaris; they will need to approve your war goals before calling in any orbital nukes.

What happens if you are being attacked? Well, as the defender, will have the ability to add your own war goals with one added bonus: you have a one-year grace period. This grace period will allow you to choose targets that are dependent on how well the war is already going. Don’t want to go in blind.

Like Europa Universalis, Stellaris will have the players negotiating peace depending on how much they’ve lost or gained — creating a tense balance between what you can achieve and what you’ve already done. A peace isn’t always struck for imperial gain. You might find that merely humiliating an enemy is enough, or vassalizing those unrefined beasts might even be better. The choice is yours.

A peace screen

You might be worried that this is just a clever reskin of the Europa Universalis model and maybe you’re right. Yet, there is one major difference which allows some great Sci-fi storytelling. Doomdark explains more

Like in most of our games, occupying a planet with your armies does not mean it immediately becomes yours, of course; you need to demand it in the peace talks. There is a notable exception to this rule though; so called “first contact wars”. Before you have established communications with another civilization, it is possible to simply attack them and even take one of their planets (but once you take a planet, communications are immediately established.) Of course, such early hostility will never be forgotten, and will sour your relations for the rest of the game…

So, what do you think about the War and Peace system? Too similar to their prior titles? Let us know in the comments below.

Alex D'Alessandro

Gaming from the swampy flatlands of Florida since 1989, Alex D’Alessandro is always looking for a way to stay inside and escape the southern heat.