1.8 Coalitions and you.

[Mafiabrett]

Make coalitions form against a nation because it is powerful, not hated.

Ok I agree to some extent about this. But heres a problem, what about a major power that is passive? Lets say Ottomans expand and get all of the former Byzantine Empire borders, he may get coalitions at first from the muslim nations and Hungary/Austria. But once he gets his land, at that point he stops all wars and for the rest of the game is a passive huge empire. The only wars he fights is defending himself and alliances.. never taking any land. He should not be punished for being a passive empire.

But you make a good point about a powerful nations. A OPM who annexes a nation of 3 provinces, should not have all of the world after him.. hes already small as it is, but if he continues expanding at alarming and fast rate, then the player who rage quits when all the strong powers form a coalition at him deserves it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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!

In essence, coalitions are an anti-player mechanic in the sense that only players see them most of the time. Tanking diprep simply removes the viability of a mechanic that people paid to use ^_^. What you are asking is not viable at the fundamental level; you're asking that the AI, when banded together, becomes a threat to the human player when it was not a threat previously. In the past, the only thing coalitions proved a threat to was pacing. If you want no coalition truces, make that cut both ways so that the aggressor also doesn't get coalition truces, else don't bring up the ridiculous real-world examples to attempt to compare how coalitions should function...but if you represent truces fairly in the context of coalitions in that manner, it becomes a blobbing mechanic even more so.

Tedium constraints are the worst kind, and creating unified truce walls with prohibitive resource costs to pace faster regardless of war success is exactly that. We don't need that back.

 

[AurochsAway]

Ok I agree to some extent about this. But heres a problem, what about a major power that is passive? Lets say Ottomans expand and get all of the former Byzantine Empire borders, he may get coalitions at first from the muslim nations and Hungary/Austria. But once he gets his land, at that point he stops all wars and for the rest of the game is a passive huge empire. The only wars he fights is defending himself and alliances.. never taking any land. He should not be punished for being a passive empire.

But you make a good point about a powerful nations. A OPM who annexes a nation of 3 provinces, should not have all of the world after him.. hes already small as it is, but if he continues expanding at alarming and fast rate, then the player who rage quits when all the strong powers form a coalition at him deserves it.

If he doesn't take any land he won't be affected by running into a coalition. That they could be attacked by a coalition would be easily fixed by making aggressive coalition wars have to use the coalition CB and only countries suffering from AE would join in.

 

[ringhloth]

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.

The entire point to OP is that he can take more territory through claims in a coalition war than otherwise he could.

Previous iterations of coalitions were about diplomacy. Managing the opinions of people around you, and where and how often you expanded.

The entire point of OP is that he can take a lot of land, and, while there will be a massive coalition, they don't manage to do anything against him.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The entire point to OP is that he can take more territory through claims in a coalition war than otherwise he could.

Previous iterations of coalitions were about diplomacy. Managing the opinions of people around you, and where and how often you expanded.

The entire point of OP is that he can take a lot of land, and, while there will be a massive coalition, they don't manage to do anything against him.

The only difference between before and now is that they're not a magic shield ignoring most other game mechanics, they only ignore some game mechanics.

I haven't seen a strong alternative proposed yet (I have some reservations on how I'd tune my own), but if I did it would be a pleasant surprise. Going back to "pay -5 stab or wait because these nations get to defend themselves by *massively* restricting what can be taken even with 0 unit" isn't going to help matters though.

 

[uwor]

Well, currently coalitions are more a threat to the AI than to a human player. If your are smart enough, you'll either expand at a slow rate or just attack the coalition as soon as it forms. You can even use the Feed-Vassal-Strategy to block of coalitions, if you don't intend to expand in a specific direction for a while and just won't the AE to wear off.

But the AI just fail completely. I had an AI Austria Emperor conquer 2PM Wurttemberg yesterday. They got swarmed by HRE members and 2-3 GPs and had to release Wurttemberg and Tirol. And I see France being attacked by a coalition after HYW quite often.