15 year truces seem a bit long

[TheMeInTeam]

It's a nonsense defense though. These places survived historically because they got other strong countries to agree that it would be a terrible thing if, eg, France, just walked over and annexed them. They shouldn't get an arbitrarium shield, they should be forced to assemble a defense of friendly nations, or get stomped.

Small nations can be annexed instantly. Truces afford them no protection of significance if they're off the map.

The nations in the game that receive the largest benefit from long truces are the ones that need it least, the very blobs like France and Ottomans you're talking about.

Before and after 1.7, you can full-annex Mewar in a single war. No truce benefit.

Before 1.7, it took over 100 years less (assuming you honor truces) to destroy Ming. Enormous truce benefit. France and European majors are similar, but less extreme examples.

That these truces protect anybody at all except blobs is a myth. They protect blobs and block the progress of blobs against other blobs, a giant blob protection racket that works in tandem with coalitions to maintain status quo on pain of gobs of monarch points or workarounds.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Small nations can be annexed instantly. Truces afford them no protection of significance if they're off the map.

The nations in the game that receive the largest benefit from long truces are the ones that need it least, the very blobs like France and Ottomans you're talking about.

Before and after 1.7, you can full-annex Mewar in a single war. No truce benefit.

Before 1.7, it took over 100 years less (assuming you honor truces) to destroy Ming. Enormous truce benefit. France and European majors are similar, but less extreme examples.

That these truces protect anybody at all except blobs is a myth. They protect blobs and block the progress of blobs against other blobs, a giant blob protection racket that works in tandem with coalitions to maintain status quo on pain of gobs of monarch points or workarounds.

Well, I was assuming he meant mid-sized nations like Savoy who you can't annex in one go, but who look pretty weak next to France (in the odd situation where they have no allies).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, I was assuming he meant mid-sized nations like Savoy who you can't annex in one go, but who look pretty weak next to France (in the odd situation where they have no allies).

If you are a human controlling Savory and you get 100% taken, you are now an OPM. A surrounded OPM with no units. 15 years isn't going to save you.

 

[JStrayer]

Well, I was assuming he meant mid-sized nations like Savoy who you can't annex in one go, but who look pretty weak next to France (in the odd situation where they have no allies).

A moot point when he was demonstrating truces protect blobs, vs small nations, i.e France benefits more than Savoy, or Mewar or about 200 other nations in response to someone else's suggestion that they could see it make sense from the perspective of helping small nations, which it does not, or in the case of Savoy not as much (arguably not at all as the protection it affords Savoy's threats overshadow the protection it offers.) Sorry for redundancy.

 

[ErikHeinrichs]

No.. At any given day, 15-25% of all players play MP.

But MP is irrelevant for this discussion.. I just wanted to know why some feel frustrated with truces, and some dont even notice.

Of course MP is relevant for this discussion as you have clearly stated that the SP game called EU4 (with MP feature) is balanced around MP. The longer truces are as bad game design as coalitions are.

 

[Wixit]

In eu1, eu2, eu3, you had 5 year truces, and a recovery of a nation in 2-3 years maximum.

In Eu4, manpower is now a resource, and recoveries can take over ten years..

Isn't that the point though? If throwing men pointlessly into the grinder results in nothing more than waiting a bit longer to do it again, what value does this resource really have? In my mind, resources in games should be like resources (e.g. money) in real life, you should be forced to economise it to maximise your personal benefits and protect yourself from adversity. Hell, you even say as much when quoting Machiavelli in the Accumulate Money mission. Why should manpower be different from money? I should be terrified of the prospect of low manpower, not because of some peasant war or similiar event, but because I'm leaving myself vulnerable to basically everyone around me.

Personally, I'd ditch the warscore costs and truce timers altogether. You're free to take whatever you want from the enemy, as long as they're willing to give it to you for peace. Your limits should be overextension, local autonomy, money, manpower, the sentiment of your allies, neighbors and enemies. The "threatened" attitude should push nations harder into seeking alliances with anyone willing to assist, even going over their diplo-limit or agreeing to be vassals to your rivals, your allies should begin to abandon you if you've grown beyond their ability to contain you, your enemies should desire and seek any means to cut you down to size or destroy you. Should a coalition or alliance attack and you lose spectacularly, it should be game over for you, no pardons, no mercy, you should be ripped to shreds by the states trying to contain you. I'm thinking post-WW2 Germany level of dismemberment here (EDIT: or, more period appropriate, the partition of Poland). You'd probably need to keep the WS system or something similiar for the AI to understand how badly it's winning/losing and offer/accept appropriate deals though.

Oh, speaking of coalitions, my understanding of the reasoning behind the no-separate peace rule is that you can wipe out small states and they're gone forever. If there is no WS limit to demands the coalition can simply demand the release of every annexed state, or perhaps you can add a unified demand to "return all territory conquered in this war".

Basically, I'd like a game that makes me nervous, that captures the essence of leadership, that revels in letting me know that if I make too many poor choices, or one really idiotic one, it could ultimately lead to my destruction. As is now, it's very difficult to "lose" in this game, and it really shouldn't be.

To me, the ADM is the big bottleneck here, with the added problem of not being able to vassal feed effectively if you get bugged out by a fully-annexed nation still having max AE with you on release (no matter what I do, I can't get that to behave consistently, and releasing a big vassal with 500 AE versus 0 AE is an enormous difference). Otherwise even with ADM you're talking about a ~200 ADM price tag on breaking a truce (and comically, with over 50% reduction in DIP cost for -WE, trivial amounts there).

Nouli figured it out for DDRJake a while back, first half of all opinion "modifiers" is cut. Note that not everything that effects opinion is a modifier in this sense. Check out his post and this thread:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...owards-you&p=17776087&viewfull=1#post17776087

 

[Peachrocks]

Of course MP is relevant for this discussion as you have clearly stated that the SP game called EU4 (with MP feature) is balanced around MP. The longer truces are as bad game design as coalitions are.

I see this being misunderstood a lot.

Balancing a game to multiplayer makes the single player experience better. After all, shouldn't the AI play fairly capably and reflect some capacity of human behaviour with varying levels of competence depending on the difficulty level? In an ideal world it should know or at least have an idea of the same mechanics and tactics a human can use. Granted the AI is a long way from that but considering it that way, balancing it around multiplayer and single player becomes one in the same.

The problem however is that the results of this 'multiplayer balance' policy do not achieve multiplayer balance and therefore not single player balance either which causes a lot of discontent within the community over this 'multiplayer balance' policy. Even the AI Ottoman one province minors will attack the big bad Ottomans if they are sufficiently weakened all the while the person who did all the work just has to sit and watch for fifteen years or take horrendous penalties that can only begin to be ignored or considered 'suggestions' in the late stages of the game, else the consequences are not going to be worth it.

Humans are far more opportunistic, no truce timer or sensible rule is going to protect the Ottomans in this case against a third party believing they make a nice snack. So if truce timers won't save them how do the Ottomans survive and recover? The same way small nations grow and protect themselves, Diplomacy.

If they fail at this, then their fate is no different to the loads of tiny OPMs that get wiped off the face of the earth before 1480 and no arbitrary 15 year truce should prevent the person who did the bulk of the work from capitalizing on their ineptitude to deal with the threat they bring.

Summing up: Multiplayer balance and single player balance is effectively the same thing. Truce timers, coalitions and other similar unpopular mechanics do not bring multiplayer or single balance to the table which is why Johan's multiplayer balance policy is an effective scape goat for the bad design choices made in EU4 even though it is actually a noble goal.

 

[Beagá]

Basically, I'd like a game that makes me nervous, that captures the essence of leadership, that revels in letting me know that if I make too many poor choices, or one really idiotic one, it could ultimately lead to my destruction. As is now, it's very difficult to "lose" in this game, and it really shouldn't be.

Changing truces back to 5 years will do NOTHING to change that. We had the game all the way up to 1.6 with 5 years timer... and guess how the game was.

Besides it´s far too easy to expand in other directions or abuse defensive call to arms. While the timer maybe should be more dynamic, the truth is that it doesn´t stop players from expanding ahistorically, and to huge sizes. If it makes WC harder is another history.

 

[Cherubael]

I see this being misunderstood a lot.

Balancing a game to multiplayer makes the single player experience better. After all, shouldn't the AI play fairly capably and reflect some capacity of human behaviour with varying levels of competence depending on the difficulty level? In an ideal world it should know or at least have an idea of the same mechanics and tactics a human can use. Granted the AI is a long way from that but considering it that way, balancing it around multiplayer and single player becomes one in the same.

...

Summing up: Multiplayer balance and single player balance is effectively the same thing. Truce timers, coalitions and other similar unpopular mechanics do not bring multiplayer or single balance to the table which is why Johan's multiplayer balance policy is an effective scape goat for the bad design choices made in EU4 even though it is actually a noble goal.

Honestly, if this is the goal, stuff like AE and coalitions should behave in roughly the same way with humans and AI. I think this disconnect is one of the primary sources of disagreement and timers feeling arbitrary in SP.

Seeing them implement an AI-ish rule forcing humans to join a coalition (say, if you have >50AE and <0 relations with a country, you go into a coalition against that country. If this is the case for multiple countries, you join the coalition against the country with the most AE) for their next office multiplayer session would lead to some pretty rapid fixes to AE and the coalition system, I think.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

If it makes WC harder is another history.

It doesn´t unless you start as Chimu, the only thing that it does is to annoy the player that does not like rules that come out of nowhere; like TMIT said longer truces only benefit AI blobs. What I would really like to see is much more effort spent on improving the AI meaningfully instead of wasting resources with (more) gimmicks to disguise the AI sad state of affairs.

 

[Peachrocks]

Honestly, if this is the goal, stuff like AE and coalitions should behave in roughly the same way with humans and AI. I think this disconnect is one of the primary sources of disagreement and timers feeling arbitrary in SP.

Seeing them implement an AI-ish rule forcing humans to join a coalition (say, if you have >50AE and <0 relations with a country, you go into a coalition against that country. If this is the case for multiple countries, you join the coalition against the country with the most AE) for their next office multiplayer session would lead to some pretty rapid fixes to AE and the coalition system, I think.

Lol... You know I'm surprised the most obvious way to exploit coalitions hasn't been done in their multiplayer sessions. Join them willy nilly for no real reason against anybody you feel like and watch as any progress they make grinds to a halt. Still your way is more amusing, AI's join coalitions with much less than 50 AE.

As for comments on WC, WC is not difficult for the right reasons. Coalitions and prolonged truce timers are by far the biggest obstacles and not because of the military threat, or even the threat of rebels from the lands you conquered, any military oppostion is easy to destroy but WC is 'difficult' because the game mechanics forcibly choke your progress. That is after all why coring times got changed a while back but then they stepped so far backwards with this...

 

[Wixit]

Changing truces back to 5 years will do NOTHING to change that. We had the game all the way up to 1.6 with 5 years timer... and guess how the game was.

Besides it´s far too easy to expand in other directions or abuse defensive call to arms. While the timer maybe should be more dynamic, the truth is that it doesn´t stop players from expanding ahistorically, and to huge sizes. If it makes WC harder is another history.

And where did I suggest we revert to 5 year truces? If you qoute me, at least make your arguments counter what I actually wrote.

 

[Cherubael]

As for comments on WC, WC is not difficult for the right reasons. Coalitions and prolonged truce timers are by far the biggest obstacles and not because of the military threat, or even the threat of rebels from the lands you conquered, any military oppostion is easy to destroy but WC is 'difficult' because the game mechanics forcibly choke your progress. That is after all why coring times got changed a while back but then they stepped so far backwards with this...

Agreed. If better AI isn't feasible (and I can see why that would be the case), I would personally prefer that they boost the AI by increasing their manpower/force limits/income by x%, instead of the arbitrary rate-limiting of progress that seems to be getting worse every patch.

At least that would be a relevant strategic challenge that you could outplay by superior tactics and management, instead of the status quo where it feels like I spend most of my time counting AE and looking for ways to circumvent truces without the truce-break penalties.

 

[Beagá]

And where did I suggest we revert to 5 year truces? If you qoute me, at least make your arguments counter what I actually wrote.

The other stuff you demanded are ALREADY in the game. Why I said 5 year truces would barely make difference?

Because the biggest limitation to expansion are monarch points first, and Manpower and gold early game. You can wage war EVERY bloody year if you know what you are doing. What will limit you? Overextension and monarch points.

So, the game itself ALREADY does the "stuff" you posted... Let´s see what was that, shall we?

Personally, I'd ditch the warscore costs and truce timers altogether. You're free to take whatever you want from the enemy, as long as they're willing to give it to you for peace. Your limits should be overextension, local autonomy, money, manpower, the sentiment of your allies, neighbors and enemies. The "threatened" attitude should push nations harder into seeking alliances with anyone willing to assist, even going over their diplo-limit or agreeing to be vassals to your rivals, your allies should begin to abandon you if you've grown beyond their ability to contain you, your enemies should desire and seek any means to cut you down to size or destroy you. Should a coalition or alliance attack and you lose spectacularly, it should be game over for you, no pardons, no mercy, you should be ripped to shreds by the states trying to contain you. I'm thinking post-WW2 Germany level of dismemberment here (EDIT: or, more period appropriate, the partition of Poland). You'd probably need to keep the WS system or something similiar for the AI to understand how badly it's winning/losing and offer/accept appropriate deals though.

See?

If the game is too nice with Manpower loss or if coalitions are too weak, ok (and I for one honestly think coalitions are almost irrelevent if you´re outside the HRE). But This is a thread about truce timer. I´m just saying all the reactions to truce timer in the end are over the top, as you could change truce timer to zero and it wouldn´t really make much difference to strategy, the way the game is currently balanced. Or at least blobbing speed. Can´t DOW Ming? Ok, DOW somewhere else and spent ADM and endure overextension from other enemy. In the end the only thing the Truce timer changes is the order in which you do conquest (and even so not that much if you abuse defensive all to arms).

Also, the game has Hard and Very hard difficulties for a reason... When the game is easy it´s time to increase difficulty and then the chances of happening what you asked rise a lot - the AI will be much more active in containing the player.

Paradox games are the only ones where people demand that Normal difficulty should be the equivalent of Hard or Very Hard of other games. You never run out of Manpower? Time to raise the difficulty. It´s that simple.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Changing truces back to 5 years will do NOTHING to change that. We had the game all the way up to 1.6 with 5 years timer... and guess how the game was.

Besides it´s far too easy to expand in other directions or abuse defensive call to arms. While the timer maybe should be more dynamic, the truth is that it doesn´t stop players from expanding ahistorically, and to huge sizes. If it makes WC harder is another history.

So remove truce timers entirely? 15 years is way too long, and 5 years would make the game feel less like a chore and/or 'find the exploit to get out of truce free'. As it stands, the real game right now is 'how can i declare war on the same country in less than 15 years?', and that's a sucky game.

 

[Novacat]

If Paradox really wants to keep the 15-year truces, then I suggest:

Reduce the warscore costs of provinces by 66%. If you can get three times as much provinces then the longer truces wont seem so bad. Also opens up the possibilities of vassalizing larger realms.

 

[hitchens]

If Paradox really wants to keep the 15-year truces, then I suggest:

Reduce the warscore costs of provinces by 66%. If you can get three times as much provinces then the longer truces wont seem so bad. Also opens up the possibilities of vassalizing larger realms.

Or reduce penalties for breaking truces. the penalties as it is today is unbelievable....as in what was they thinking.

 

[Lindorn]

Small nations can be annexed instantly. Truces afford them no protection of significance if they're off the map.

The nations in the game that receive the largest benefit from long truces are the ones that need it least, the very blobs like France and Ottomans you're talking about.

Before and after 1.7, you can full-annex Mewar in a single war. No truce benefit.

Before 1.7, it took over 100 years less (assuming you honor truces) to destroy Ming. Enormous truce benefit. France and European majors are similar, but less extreme examples.

That these truces protect anybody at all except blobs is a myth. They protect blobs and block the progress of blobs against other blobs, a giant blob protection racket that works in tandem with coalitions to maintain status quo on pain of gobs of monarch points or workarounds.

I agree with most of what you're saying here - I'm just really interested in the reasoning of the guys making the calls. What has frustrated me in the past with EUIV has not been the changes themselves, but the lack of context around them to the point where it feels like I'm in the backseat of a car with no idea where I'm going. If I could understand/rationalize why 15 year truces made the game better, then I'd be better able to accept them.

 

[freedavebrown]

The problem with truce timers isn't that they are too long it's that they are too static. That's what leads to the waiting around. One war ends and you know exactly when you can start the next one and exactly what the penalty will be for starting one early until that date.

If truces were more dynamic then it wouldn't feel like "waiting around"

Some options:

Events that effect truce length and give certain benefits/maluses. I.e., After 10 years of a 15 year truce "Our clever diplomats have found a way around the truce we signed with X" Then you can proceed to shorten the truce and lose Dip points or gain prestige by honoring the original truce. These events could be based on idea groups. Advisors. Rulers. Etc. would make truces feel like part of the gameplay instead of monolithic roadblocks:

Activities that your diplomats could do to shorten truce: This could be a great use for the currently useless espionage ideas. There could be a "justify negation of truce" action that a diplomat (or two) could do with the countries that have a high opinion of the target. It would add diplomatic activity to do during the truce. It would need to be hard but it would be a nice option.

Legitimacy/Rep tradition should effect truces. If a "noble succeeds to the throne" of the target country, the truce should end. If a repub becomes a monarchy or vice versa, the truce should end. If legitimacy or repub tradition becomes low enough it would make events that effect the truce likely to fire.

Make truce breaking penalties scale. If you break a truce the day after it was signed you should lose legitimacy as well as stability and any nearby country that has a higher opinion of the target than you should automatically join in in defense. If you break a truce 6 months before it expires you should lose less stab. etc.

I think any/all of these (and I'm sure people can come up with way better ones) would make the game way more fun and make truces less onerous. Again, the problem isn't how long they are. It is how static and monolithic they feel. Every 15 year truce that has ever been signed in EU4 will last exactly 15 years regardless of anything that happens in the world and the penalty for breaking it will be same (I know, diplo ideas effects this but doesnt' scale with truce time).

 

[srd5090]

Just a question? For those that complain about it..

- do you have different nations you rotate between fighting?
- how quickly does the game do 1 year for you at max speed?

1. Do you play Scotland?

2. Does it matter? It's needlessly and boringly wasted time.