Mutual Defense Treaties

[Cauldyth]

Sorry if this has already been discussed and I missed it. It's something that really frustrated me in DW:U, and it's the same with DW2.

Playing as the Zenox, I start next door to the Ikkuro. I work hard to earn their trust, and finally get a Mutual Defense Treaty with them. Then the Boskarans declare war on me. Dutifully, the Ikkuro join the war, and immediately embark 3 fleets in my direction - hooray!

And then just before they arrive, without having ever fired a shot, the Ikkuro negotiate a separate peace with the Boskarans, leaving me to face them alone. It's so very frustrating, and seems to make Mutual Defense Treaties pointless. Am I missing something?

[Nightskies]

As is, if an empire doesn't want to be at war, it will typically only posture for it while suing for peace. They will often be successful if the war is forced on the empires, such as in defense treaties. This is a more complicated process than implied- a lot goes into determining if an empire wants to war and what its objectives in the war are. So, in other words, in a forced war they don't want, their objective is something like 'ward off the enemy until peace can be reached', just like the Ikkuro in your example.

While there's no question the pact was useless in your case (and yours is not an uncommon case), it's not broken. Sometimes an empire needs a justification to go to war, and if the empires are neighbors and are unfriendly, they will likely commit. I think what would have made this situation not frustrating would be if the game was explicitly clear that the defense treaty only forces the empire to join but not commit to the war, and they'll only really commit if they want to.

So it's only really effective against an immediate mutual threat (the AI makes its 'choices' reactively and does not anticipate), but it also serves to reinforce positive relations between empires even if practically worthless otherwise.

[Cauldyth]

Want to know what's even more frustrating? The opposite of what happened to me. I haven't seen it in DW2 yet, but in DW:U, I'd honour my Defense Pact with a neighbour, then that neighbour would quickly negotiate their way out of the war, leaving me in it by myself! And then I'd often have difficulty negotiating my own way out, leaving me in a long drawn out war by myself, just because I honoured my treaty.

There should at least be a reputation hit for bailing on your allies during a war, and races which are described as honourable should be less likely to do so. Boskarans, yeah, I'm sure they'd turn their backs on anyone in a second...

I know it's unlikely to happen, but the one thing I wish they'd take from Stellaris is to make wars "events" with formal participants on both sides, and ending the war ends it for everyone.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

At the very least, wars should forcibly last longer. Right now, a war is forced for 1 year before allowing to sue for peace. With travel times as they are 1 year is nothing. It should be at least 5-10 years.

Ideally there could be different types of wars and their length + desire of AI to get out of them should differ, e.g. 1 year war for a diplomatic dispute on contact, 5 years for starting a war over not liking each other, 10 years for wanting to conquer, etc. Likewise AI dependability could work together with some sort of check. A 100% dependable ally would fight for at least the whole "forced' length and would be willing to take some losses/accumulate some war weariness before peacing out.