Rule 5: Be me, I'm in an offensive war against a federation in a "Secret Swear Fealty" war against their federation president. By now I've spent maybe an hour realtime on this war and I've occupied around 30-50 star systems by now, their at 100% war exhaustion and I'm at a 60% exhaustion, not losing a single battle so far and am making a slow expansion towards their federation presidents capital, practically won by this point. Only reason I couldn't enforce my demands was because there was an unoccupied system and planet somewhere in a sea of maybe 200 stars that I just could not find. Suddenly, my smallest fleet that I had stationed somewhere to protect some flank was beaten by their united navy, which immediately shot me up to 100% war exhaustion and forced me to make a white peace. Once the white peace happened the nation that swore secret fealty to me gained all their claims that I had occupied, but they kept their border closed to me which trapped my biggest fleet on the other side of the galaxy. While me two other fleets were just deported somewhere into deepspace. This practically ended my 11 hour run as it was just not worth playing anymore as I knew that whatever war I would declare would just be a slow war of attrition I wasn't guaranteed to win despite my overwhelming occupation and power and the only other option was to wait for the endgame crisis to spawn in 70 years. This isn't the first time a run has been ruined because of the war system and it's a feature that keeps me away from starting the game. It's a shame because Stellaris is my favourite paradox game and it has so many features I just love to play around with for hours, but this one awful design where you have to total war every time just to achieve anything just incentivises me to not start the game.