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Designer Corner: Peace Conference

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And we shall have peace.

Hi folks,

It’s been a while since our last update on future plans for HoI, but we’re about ready to show you some of the work we’ve been doing. Before we begin, I’d like to indicate that there’ll be some differences in how we do this. As I’ve previously stated, we want to begin discussion around features and implementation details a little earlier in the process than usual. This means a couple of things.

Firstly, while we’ll be showing off some individual features, we’re not yet ready to give an overview of the entire scope of our next release yet. This will, of course, be coming in the near (ish) future.

Secondly, you’ll be getting an early look at what we’ve been working on, and this comes with all the caveats you might expect: lots of WIP design, interface, and gameplay.

Lastly, for the time being we’ll be producing these ‘design corner’ style diaries every two weeks, rather than weekly. This is likely to change as we get closer to being complete.

Before I hand over, I’ll give you a quick run down of the directive for the feature we’re looking at today: Peace Conferences. Our primary objectives are to:

  • Create a system that appropriately rewards participation.
  • Allow for conflict and conflict resolution within the scope of the conference.
  • Create a limited ‘economy’ within conferences, where you may have to sacrifice your overall aims in order to secure immediate concerns.
  • Produce more ‘realistic’ outcomes where the AI is concerned.

And with that, I’ll hand over to @Yaboi_bobby to dive into the deeper details!

Hey everyone, over the past months we have been working to overhaul the peace conference system. It is no secret that in HoI4 the peace conference system has a number of issues with how it functions. Combining that with the fact that it is a surprisingly hard interface to learn how to use, it is rightly one of our most disliked and complained about features. We have taken a large step away from how the system currently works and I am excited to show what the future holds for peace conferences.

The first major departure we made from the old system was shifting from absolute claiming of territory to contestable claiming of territory. In the old PC system once somebody claimed a state, that was it. That claim would be locked in and no one would be able to interact with it further. Now, players may contest other players' interactions in the conference. This doesn't come without cost. Contesting claimed territory will come with a point tax, and every time a contest happens the price of interacting with that state climbs further. This effectively creates a bidding war between all parties invested in a given state. This change should have some interesting outcomes, allow mid and low level participants to have more agency, and give players the tools needed to go after the states that are most important to them for things like achievements and forming new tags.

Here Brazil prepares to bid upon Chao Boreal which has already been claimed by Argentina
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Contestable bids help solve some problems, but without further changes many still persist. One of the most obvious issues was how the old system handled turn order. The old system would order countries by participation, and then go in order based upon the number of points held by participants. Where it gets weird is the fact that the order of the list would get updated after each nation’s turn. This meant that often the top two participants could have enough points when a turn ended that they would simply exchange turns between them and end up completely controlling the conference. This was in some ways a good method to allow two big faction leaders to have majority control after the end of a historical WW2, but is bad in virtually every other case.

We did a lot of thinking about turn order and how to structure the turn in general. Slowly we came to the conclusion that any system with a visible turn order, no matter how it was structured, would put people at disadvantage or advantage depending on turn order. This led to the creation of what we have been calling the “Blind Bid” system.

The main concept of the “Blind Bid” system is that everyone acts simultaneously. The way this functions is that, each turn, every conference participant uses their points to make bids. When every player has finished making their bids, all of the bids are evaluated at once. Bids have a fixed cost much like the current claims do, but now with more modifiers. In any instance where two participants made a bid on the same state, that state is marked as contested and the players involved have the majority of their points spent on the bid refunded. Each time a state is contested, it increases in cost for all subsequent rounds. This effect stacks on a state each turn in which a contested bid happens. The other side of this is uncontested bids. Each turn a bid goes uncontested, it increases in cost for everyone else except for the person who made the bid. This acts to, over the course of several turns, lock in bids as they become too expensive to realistically contest.

Brazil and Argentina attempting to resolve a contested bid on Chaco Boreal
image2.png


At this point you may be thinking “Yeah OK, but I get points each turn, how does the conference end?” This leads us to the final major change: limited points. This is pretty self explanatory. Each participant will get a fixed amount of points over the course of the conference based upon war participation score. The way we do this is by distributing a percentage of those points every turn until all points are distributed. Most of the work here comes down to rebalancing war participation and finding what we consider a good point ceiling for a conference. Limited points will mean, in some cases, that loser nations survive more intact than they did previously, but this should not be a common case. In general, we think this creates a fun and somewhat tense conference experience.

Beyond the big three changes listed so far we have a number of smaller tweaks, adjustments, and rebalance to overall cost of interactions and participation. However, that topic is not worth going into at this point as it is still very much WiP. So with that I will conclude the first overview of the peace conference rework. We look forward to your feedback, hot takes, and hopefully excitement. Until next time o7
 
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A serious question:
Will having claims/cores on territories make it cheaper to take in case of a conflict?
Like the case of germany with Danzig/Poznan/Vovoideship
Or will there be a system where you automatically gain these unless an another nation has a claim on the same territory like you.
 
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A serious question:
Will having claims/cores on territories make it cheaper to take in case of a conflict?
Like the case of germany with Danzig/Poznan/Vovoideship
Or will there be a system where you automatically gain these unless an another nation has a claim on the same territory like you.
The new system let's you spend points on a demand early in the conference, and if no one contests your demand it becomes progressively more expensive for other nations to demand what you have already demanded.

It would be cool is that if you have a claim on a state, you automatically get some bonus points allocated to that demand for free. Other nations can come in later and demand it, but the nation with the claim starts the conference already demanding that state.
 
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please add a little land to the Scandinavian region and customize the Scandinavian federation
What do you mean by that? I'm intrigued.

You meant by dividing existing lands (especially in the north) into smaller pieces?
 
please add a little land to the Scandinavian region and customize the Scandinavian federation
The devs said they're going to do a region/flavor pack for Scandinavia eventually, so that will probably come.
 
The new system let's you spend points on a demand early in the conference, and if no one contests your demand it becomes progressively more expensive for other nations to demand what you have already demanded.

It would be cool is that if you have a claim on a state, you automatically get some bonus points allocated to that demand for free. Other nations can come in later and demand it, but the nation with the claim starts the conference already demanding that state.
Also if you completed a war justification or focus
 
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I actually really like this system but one thing I think you should consider while this is still in development is the potential for conferences to begin wars, at least civil wars. We of course saw this in real life in Korea and the idea that there might be wars to resolve claims might work well with the contested state system. I think that hoi4 already has the systems in place to allow these kinda things to break out without allowing them to become bigger global wars immediately after the end, and it gives a use of the volunteer system after the world wars end.
 
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I'm afraid you haven't addressed the most important problem. Currently, a peace conference is held by the three main countries with the highest war scores. All the others are practically excluded from the conference, and if they get anything they'll be scraps. An example would be my recent game with France. As France, I conquered practically all of Africa because I focused my efforts there. At the end of the war I had a powerful army, but a tragically small result in the war because African territories did not contribute much. Nevertheless, I wanted to keep the conquered territories. The USA, Great Britain and the USSR participated in the conference. I was far behind them in terms of the score. Nevertheless, my army occupied all of Africa. And the conference forced me to withdraw from all territories because AI-USA invented that it would create a series of useless states in Africa. This is a bug that should be fixed first and foremost. An armed player controlling certain territories should be able to simply keep them and leave the conference without looking at its arrangements. Of course, this may give the AI a free casus beli per player and the AI will have to decide whether it will seek to reclaim the occupied territories or give up. Of course, this requires improving the AI because now AI is able to declare war with 0 human strength and a totally bombed country, which should never happen.
 
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You can perform actions on behalf of other countries.
One thing on this. Currently you can only claim territory for other countries but can't set up puppets. In the new system can those diplomatic actions be added so I can create puppets on behalf of my allies when I want them to manage the territory but don't think they can hold it directly. It also makes for more realistic peace conferences that a country might be "given" mandate over Palestine for instance but not allowed to out right annex it.
 
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I'm afraid you haven't addressed the most important problem. Currently, a peace conference is held by the three main countries with the highest war scores. All the others are practically excluded from the conference, and if they get anything they'll be scraps. An example would be my recent game with France. As France, I conquered practically all of Africa because I focused my efforts there. At the end of the war I had a powerful army, but a tragically small result in the war because African territories did not contribute much. Nevertheless, I wanted to keep the conquered territories. The USA, Great Britain and the USSR participated in the conference. I was far behind them in terms of the score. Nevertheless, my army occupied all of Africa. And the conference forced me to withdraw from all territories because AI-USA invented that it would create a series of useless states in Africa. This is a bug that should be fixed first and foremost. An armed player controlling certain territories should be able to simply keep them and leave the conference without looking at its arrangements. Of course, this may give the AI a free casus beli per player and the AI will have to decide whether it will seek to reclaim the occupied territories or give up. Of course, this requires improving the AI because now AI is able to declare war with 0 human strength and a totally bombed country, which should never happen.

That is fixed in the new system - all countries do blind bidding at the same time. But if your war score is higher you will get more points to bid with. Add in modifiers for adjacency & ownership and you should be able to at least try to keep your conquered territory.

From the DD
The main concept of the “Blind Bid” system is that everyone acts simultaneously. The way this functions is that, each turn, every conference participant uses their points to make bids. When every player has finished making their bids, all of the bids are evaluated at once. Bids have a fixed cost much like the current claims do, but now with more modifiers. In any instance where two participants made a bid on the same state, that state is marked as contested and the players involved have the majority of their points spent on the bid refunded. Each time a state is contested, it increases in cost for all subsequent rounds. This effect stacks on a state each turn in which a contested bid happens. The other side of this is uncontested bids. Each turn a bid goes uncontested, it increases in cost for everyone else except for the person who made the bid. This acts to, over the course of several turns, lock in bids as they become too expensive to realistically contest.
 
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I remember playing as Japan, I was able to quickly out manuver the USA and UK, seizing all of their core land and capitulation them. However in the peace deal, Germany and Italy got almost everything I've occupied in the British Isles, North America and the pacific just because they started the war earlier and thus have more points from their bloody stalemate. The axis had no capacity what so ever to even change the tide of war. Please don't let that happen again in the new system. Thankyou
You should have priority to take control of land that you conquered or that your forces occupy.
 
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I'm slightly worried about this obsoleting Player-led Peace Conferences. The worst possible outcome is we lose that and are left with a new system that is slightly less bad or differently bad than the current vanilla system.
PLPC is a mod. It's not Paradox's job to make sure it stays up to date, it's the creators. Pdx has already said that it will probably be able to mod a similar system in the new system but again: that is not their job.
 
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I hope with this system we'll see much less american or british savoy or occitania...
some colonies , why not, but the mainland would never have been agreed upon
To be fair this is really more of an issue of all released territories of democracies automatically becoming colonies. Realistically it would make alot more sense for them to be called mandates or something, since most of the colonial designations only make sense in the context of the British Empire. I hope we eventually get some sort of update where each ideology gets a puppet system which fits them best like facist states do, and perhaps the British could have a special one like Japan which allows their puppets to be colonies and what not. Non-aligned governments could also use colonial names, but Democracies and Communist states should have things like mandates and autonomous socialist republics respectively. Unfortunately it's such a niche system that I question whether pdx would devote that much time on it, though then again it's also small enough that it probably wouldn't be that much work.
 
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Interesting, but it does not ultimately address the main thing making any sort of conflict outside of the "main" Axis/Allies/Comintern war very frustrating. That is random minors dragging everyone and their mothers into a fight with the US/Germany/Russia. Peace Conferences usually only happen at the very start of the game (where no-one can quick-join factions yet) or at the very end of the game (where you occupy Washington/Moscow/Berlin). In the mid game, any attempt at regional conquest invariably means that Tibet joins the Allies and now the US is shifting its focus to a full naval invasion of China. Or that Brazil attacks Peru, who promply joins Comintern dispite being unaligned and now there wont be a peace conference until Brazil occupies the entire USSR.
 
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I'm afraid you haven't addressed the most important problem. Currently, a peace conference is held by the three main countries with the highest war scores. All the others are practically excluded from the conference, and if they get anything they'll be scraps. An example would be my recent game with France. As France, I conquered practically all of Africa because I focused my efforts there. At the end of the war I had a powerful army, but a tragically small result in the war because African territories did not contribute much. Nevertheless, I wanted to keep the conquered territories. The USA, Great Britain and the USSR participated in the conference. I was far behind them in terms of the score. Nevertheless, my army occupied all of Africa. And the conference forced me to withdraw from all territories because AI-USA invented that it would create a series of useless states in Africa. This is a bug that should be fixed first and foremost. An armed player controlling certain territories should be able to simply keep them and leave the conference without looking at its arrangements. Of course, this may give the AI a free casus beli per player and the AI will have to decide whether it will seek to reclaim the occupied territories or give up. Of course, this requires improving the AI because now AI is able to declare war with 0 human strength and a totally bombed country, which should never happen.
I don't know how to implement this realistically or if it is possible at all, but i have the distant dream that some form of conferences, apart from the historic ones like Yalta, will exist allowing us to already make some claims, perhaps even with the help of focus trees, so we can focus our fighting there and already start negotiating a better starting position for the future peace conference.

The conference to dissolve the allied possesions in Africa and share them between Spain, Portugal and Italy, (i believe it's in either the Spanish or Portugese tree), is a very good early example of this. It would allow on one hand for more RP, more somewhat plausible alt-history and plausible peace-deals, and on the other for a smoother and (hopefully) more predictable experience.
 
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Is there any looking into what happens to minor powers who didn't capitulate? Can they decide to keep fighting rather than surrender? I always found it odd when Australia and India surrendered and were annexed by Germany. I can see forcing peace by Germany so you don't have to invade but I don't see Australia just surrendering all their territory to Germany when non of their core territories are occupied.
 
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Is there any looking into what happens to minor powers who didn't capitulate? Can they decide to keep fighting rather than surrender? I always found it odd when Australia and India surrendered and were annexed by Germany. I can see forcing peace by Germany so you don't have to invade but I don't see Australia just surrendering all their territory to Germany when non of their core territories are occupied.
As India is a puppet of GB, and thus GB dictates the diplomacy of India, I find the current situation reasonable. Independent minors however- I agree.
 
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As India is a puppet of GB, and thus GB dictates the diplomacy of India, I find the current situation reasonable. Independent minors however- I agree.
I would like it if the Puppet controller could be transferred but if they haven't capitulated then maybe don't allow annexation outright. Heck even with the India example I would give the puppet one step closer to independence (puppet becoming a colony). The people in India spoke English not German and the British officials in India couldn't just be swapped seamlessly.
 
I would like it if the Puppet controller could be transferred but if they haven't capitulated then maybe don't allow annexation outright. Heck even with the India example I would give the puppet one step closer to independence (puppet becoming a colony). The people in India spoke English not German and the British officials in India couldn't just be swapped seamlessly.
Sure, but I still think is weird that a minor that is a puppet can turn into a major mid war and stop a war from ending early, as it now has to be capped for the war to end.
 
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