Endless War?

[Hardlec]

I have been playing a campaign for 20 game years, as France.

I have reduced the Navies of Germany, Italy and Austria to the point that I have more ships that all three "enemy" navies combined.  My technology is "Advanced" my Naval prestige is 700 while my opponents all have negative values.

And yet after three months of being asked for peace, the same country is declaring war on me.
It seems the only way to reduce tension is to give my enemy from 25% to 100% of my naval budget.  Sadly, it is much less costly for me to let them declare war, blast the pongees out of their tiny navies, and get their money in Reparations.

Should I "Fight to the End" and totally destroy my enemy to get a little peace?

(I don't ask for ships as reparations.  My ships have better technology, it is more efficient to get the money and build my ships with it.)
 

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

Ship location and sea roles plays a big part here. When I played as France, I randomly started getting -4 or -5 tension with Austria-Hungary in the Western Med. So I move my single task force back to Toulon and set them to "in being" rather than "sea control" and all of a sudden, I'm not losing relationship points with A-H anymore. Once A-H started building up their navy and started sending more taskforces with bigger ships everywhere in the Med, however, I started gaining tension with them again (as did Italy and the UK) despite my ships all being in port and set to "limited."

So if you don't want somebody constantly declaring war on you, I would check how many ships are deployed and where they are currently deployed to, as well as their sea role. If you've got a large taskforce (or multiple smaller taskforces) sitting off the coast of a nation, and that nation is constantly declaring war on you...it could be you who is causing the tension, thus leading to war.

[Admiral Donuts]

The reparations I'm offered would never pay for one of my ships.

[Vinrellren]

The diplomacy is indeed broken. The same country can wage war against you over and over again and there is no enforced peace time before they can declare again. This lead to many problems including countries collapsed or endless pointless war

[Hardlec]

The war ended.  I sent all my ships back to port.  I put all my ships on "In Being" but for my Capital ships, which I set to "limited."  I had no threats to potential enemies.

I had war in 4 months.

Developers must not only allow players to reduce tensions,  but the means to do so must be clearly explained.

[Ben J]

It's not just the diplomacy that makes the current game basically default to endless war (the diplomacy aspect was also touched on in this post - https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/40442-about-international-stress-and-tension/)

I've also realized that - because your budget -immediately- doubles (more or less) when you go to war - and also doubles your research budget - you are ALWAYS going to be advantaged to be in a basically limited war with some other power, if only so that you are getting more research more quickly.

If you are able to stay in a war with a power you've already beaten down, and you don't let them surrender for peace, and you kill their ships as soon as they leave port, one-by-one..... it's the best possible scenario for you to increase tech and advance past any power who's not also at war. And the same in reverse - if the AI nations are at war, they are advancing and you're not...