1.8 Coalitions and you.

[hauptman]

So after toying around with a few games and seeing how 1.8 works in and out... it was time to stop messing around.

One of the main 1.8 'features' is how coalitions work. I dare say, getting a huge coalition against you is a good thing now. It harkens back to the days of the EU3 badboy wars. Where you could simply wait for the next DoW against you to expand your borders without the stab hit from DoWing yourself. Leading of course, to unchecked expansion.

So today, I picked up a Brandenburg game, and went in hard and fast. ADM tech 10 and form Germany (instead of Prussia) then now that I have claims on everyone, I start eating the empire.

The problem is now... when you have a coalition war, only the warleader's provinces count towards warscore. So if you DoW a OPM in the coalition, seige his single province, you now have 100 warscore to use as you wish.

Like this, I dont want to annex the electors, so I DoW Palitinate. Trier has the land I want. So I seige Palitinate's one province and start on the Trierian provinces I want. I can completely ignore every other member of the coalition. They dont dare attack one of my stacks.

Couple years into it, and I can take what I want.

It's my poor allies that have to take the work at combat. All I need to do is siege, although I do pick the occasional fight to lift a siege or farm some prestige.

Now as long as I keep the coalitions broken up, dont let them rest, I'll never need to fight the whole world, Until even then, they cant hurt me. It may take me a while to work off this AE and nab the emporership, but it's only 100 years into the game and Nearly all of Germany is unified.

Coalitions are good.

 

[Freudia]

Coalitions are good.

I agree; I really like how they work in 1.8 in general. I know some people think coalitions just flat-out don't exist, but they do still spawn, and there's actual reasons to fight them now. You listed one, the other is to shatter the coalition for a length of time. There's actual reward for fighting one now too, instead of just getting roadblocked by a gigantic wall that requires fastforwarding for a hundred years to dissipate.

 

[hauptman]

I agree; I really like how they work in 1.8 in general. I know some people think coalitions just flat-out don't exist, but they do still spawn, and there's actual reasons to fight them now. You listed one, the other is to shatter the coalition for a length of time. There's actual reward for fighting one now too, instead of just getting roadblocked by a gigantic wall that requires fastforwarding for a hundred years to dissipate.

Your actually rewarded for having them now... Without a coalition, To get 100 warscore you need to seige down every province in the alliance... So if I didnt have this coalition, I'd need to DoW trier, and either sege all his allies out of the war first, or just settle for 1 or 2 provinces after seiging every trierian province. It requires much less work, and far less time to get what I want from a coalition war.

Now if I could just get some more ADM points before my claims fade... not likely.

 

[bbqftw]

I was trying to find a test campaign to really see how far I could push the 100% thing. Sadly I wanted to try something fresh outside the HRE neighborhood and really, anywhere else, you really can't piss off enough people to make the OPM thing work (India is waaay too religiously / culturally fragmented).

Now if you could implement this into an Ulm rapid-expand strategy that would be pretty sweet. The problem is that if any provinces of yours are sieged down and given to warleader, then you lose the 100%. If Defensive still had leader siege they'd be ideal for this sort of strategy. maybe administrative - use 20k cheap mercenaries to quick assault down an OPM,then you're safe from catastrophic defeat in coalition war.

when you have a coalition war, only the warleader's provinces count towards warscore.

I don't think this is correct. I think warscore correctly scales with coalition warscore UNLESS the warleader is 100%'d

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Your actually rewarded for having them now... Without a coalition, To get 100 warscore you need to seige down every province in the alliance... So if I didnt have this coalition, I'd need to DoW trier, and either sege all his allies out of the war first, or just settle for 1 or 2 provinces after seiging every trierian province. It requires much less work, and far less time to get what I want from a coalition war.

Now if I could just get some more ADM points before my claims fade... not likely.

I'd like to see all coalition provinces count, but with the current truce rules. It's a bit odd to 1-shot a coalition instantly with an assault if you want, but the pacing with the truces the way it is now makes the down time in the game so much less frequent (in fact, you're encouraged to keep the pace up lest you face a giant dogpile). To me, the best balance is to simply avoid a fast 1-shot war on a small coalition war leader, I don't see a reason this type of war should bypass the usual requirements to full annex an OPM...part of the problem with coalitions the other way in past patches is that they bypassed otherwise typical game mechanics to make the game more tedious. Trivializing the war to the extent of 1 assault = win is the same issue in reverse.

 

[Pornek]

Well you get free claims on land there. If you can fabricate only on border provinces it isnt that much helpful. Eg. you wouldnt be able to get Pfalz without the free claims.

It might be faster, when you can 100 the warleader in one siege and want one or two certain provinces other then that I dont see a benefit to let a coalition ever form. Especially with the new vassal feeding and co-belligerence multiple 100% WS for your vassals and no OE for you to deal with.

 

[bbqftw]

new vassal feeding is exactly what generates massive coalitions...

 

[ErikHeinrichs]

new vassal feeding is exactly what generates massive coalitions...

Err, no it's not. I can just as easily get coalition against me without a single vassal.

 

[Pornek]

new vassal feeding is exactly what generates massive coalitions...

Hm I would rather say, not having a truce creates coalitions.

 

[bbqftw]

Err, no it's not. I can just as easily get coalition against me without a single vassal.

the two main checks against unrestricted AE generation (only taking 100% warscore in any coalition war, overextension) were made a lot less relevant in 1.8

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

Wait, does the 5 year wait to get 100% WS not apply in coalition wars?

 

[bbqftw]

nope, which is why the "assault OPM vs huge coalition" thing works.

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

nope, which is why the "assault OPM vs huge coalition" thing works.

Oh, wow. I wonder if 1.9 is fixing this, or if this is WAD...

 

[hauptman]

Honestly I hope this was intended... Coalitions are not a roadblock any more.

I hated coalitions before like it was the Wurst... and would even mod down AE multipliers in order to make my games bearable (after they killed AE decline rate from 10 to 3). As it is now, I dont mind the way it works. I still get punished for massive expansion, but it doesnt outright halt more expansion. I'll just spend the next 100 years trying to kiss up to everyone that's left when my borders are pretty enough. Then get the emporership.

Previouse versions; AE decay was fast enough to just nab what you want and wait it out. But now with every BroT bonus I can get, I've never seen it decay faster than ~3.5ish. Used to decay at over 10 with full prestige, religious, and an advisor. Which means this instance, Austria would be over it in 33 years instead of 110.

So unless they revert to higher decay, they best not change the way coalition wars work, or I'll get frustrated and bored, and go back to play something else.

 

[hauptman]

Actually I just had deviouse idea to get emporership much faster.

As it stands, the entire empire hates me. No elector would vote for me.

However, some nations, that are not within the borders I want, currently do not exsist. Utrech, Hianut, Luxembourg, and Holland (as well as some Italian states). If I make folks release them after my last land grab, then annex current electors, I'll get some friendly electors much faster.

Oh yeh and Frankfurt. I was going to make Hesse release my piggy bank so I can steal his money once in a while.

 

[Viperswhip]

Well, you got lucky, I had the most manpower in the game by 30% or so, but as Castile my 65 man army, nicely composed, barely won against an 85 stack of coalition members. It started out as 25 v. 12 in one province and ballooned to that. They declared on me though. That's when I did a test, and I think it was less than 68 men, they declared, 68+ they did not declare.

 

[ringhloth]

Seems broken, and if coalitions don't block expansion, why have coalitions? I'd rather just have the AE gain turned down or the AE dissipation go up. Either would be good. Also, PDS should think about coalition wars being able to take claims, considering that claims are a dime a dozen. I feel that in most reasonable circumstances where coalitions are a thing, releasing people or retaking cores would be the logical goal of the war. I like coalitions. They make diplomacy and expansion creative instead of LOLBLOB.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Seems broken, and if coalitions don't block expansion, why have coalitions? I'd rather just have the AE gain turned down or the AE dissipation go up. Either would be good. Also, PDS should think about coalition wars being able to take claims, considering that claims are a dime a dozen. I feel that in most reasonable circumstances where coalitions are a thing, releasing people or retaking cores would be the logical goal of the war. I like coalitions. They make diplomacy and expansion creative instead of LOLBLOB.

I'm not following what you're trying to say. The AI will usually do release nations or return cores if the player loses coalition wars. Player members of a coalition are rare, and the restriction to claims/cores is reasonable in that case.

Previous iterations of coalitions were the opposite of interesting, largely creating a shield of pretend nothingness logic. The best route for them is to be a dogpile mechanic against blobs regardless of AE IMO (and make AE cause more general hostility/-opinion instead), but the developers disagree with that. The old model of repeatedly and soundly beating coalitions down only to get the war score you'd see from a war against 1 nation, then stuck waiting 15 years was absolutely awful, to the point where players with any knowledge of the game simply avoided engaging coalitions ever unless they had a way to continually chain wars into them, in which case no nation could survive the damage because they'd be forcibly called to arms over and over without remorse or recovery.

Right now, they're okay. If you take a lot of land and generate a lot of hate, any slip in your progress rate will create a massive coalition. If we can avoid 1-shotting an OPM to dissolve it, it's an okay model with some risk/reward that doesn't over-interfere with pacing.

I'd prefer a model of them forming on big guys and getting bonuses (similar in concept to crusade) while fighting the big guy though, rather than seeing headscratchers like France in a coalition against Magdeburg while it has 6 provinces and, if anything, is beginning to appear a threat to one of Frances present rivals.

 

[Mafiabrett]

This method feels like its cheating the system. I don't like it. The player should fear coalitions, not want and accept them (untill later game when a Coalition is the only challenge). The war score of a Coalition War should come down to overall Occupation/Battles from every member in the war. Kind of like the Great War system from Vicky 2. That way if you have a huge coalition after you and you fail, be prepared to be set back 50-100 years of expanding. You of course keep your cores so you can regain it all, but i notice a ton of people rage quit (HAHAHAHAHAHA fools).

One of the ways I think to fix it.
Current Version - You win the coalition and it splits up and the members arnt allowed to rejoin after set amount of years
My version - It originally splits up but if a new strong nation joins it against you, every nation then after can join against you (to resemble the coalitions against French Empire) British lost 5 wars, yet were part of almost every coalition.

A truce with a nation that is hated by everyone is to be frank quite unreal, especially if the coalition lost the war against the hated target. War justification as it is everyone would understand breaking the truce because the hated target needs to be punished and cut down to size at any cost.

HOWEVER! not only should the player suffer this fate, the AI needs to play by the same rules. France for example rarely ever gets coalitions for fully annexing Savoy, Switzerland, Lorraine, Dutch nations etc. Kinda bull... but needs to be done.

 

[yerm]

The present mechanic means that it is to your absolute advantage to punch right into a coalition against you, at first opportunity. Anyone with a truce can't be in it, so even if they fixed/changed getting 100% off a single tiny war leader, it still doesnt' change it being possible to use coalitions to balance truces and keep your neighborhood from ever being able to unite against you in a single war, and exploiting coalitions as a means of isolating enemies or abusing long truce mechanics.

Make coalitions form against a nation because it is powerful, not hated. Make aggressive expansion tank your diplomatic reputation (and foreign opinion) but not be the cause of coalitions mostly by itself. The result is that runaway powers are at least facing an attempt to keep them in check, while rampant uninhibited expansion causes making friends and/or annexing vassals a nightmare.

I know I probably sound like a broken record constantly hollering for coalitions to change to curbing the top powers, but, it's what I consider the single most important fix to the current game!