A "Surrender" mechanic

[grommile]

How did Lithuania go to bankrupt? Even if you're 100% occupied and dismiss everything you have no real expenses.

If you have fewer ducats in your treasury than the total outstanding principal of your loans, and your income is less than or equal to your current interest payments, you are guaranteed to eventually go bankrupt if held in that state for long enough.

 

[Chlodio]

If you have fewer ducats in your treasury than the total outstanding principal of your loans, and your income is less than or equal to your current interest payments, you are guaranteed to eventually go bankrupt if held in that state for long enough.

How long is long?

 

[Republic of Mercury]

How long is long?

Your monthly interest being greater than your monthly income is what triggers bankruptcy. So under those conditions: Immediately.

 

[yerm]

That is *exactly* my point. What theoretical reason is there that as a nation grows, it becomes increasingly impossible for it to be under existential threat, even if people *really* batter it? A small nation gets no revanchism, truce, or magic anti-WE mechanic. It just gets dead, which is an inferior state to any damage that can possibly be done to a large nation under the present rules.

Given that 1) large nations are inherently preferable and stronger anyway and 2) they are already afforded extra protection, what credible gameplay basis does buffing the most powerful nations on the board serve? I look at the perceived need for surrender to protect large nations along the same lines as the perceived need for long truces: a fundamental design issue. Not as bad as regencies, perhaps, but still a design choice that makes no sense from a gameplay standpoint.

EU4 is a game of expansion. They added mediocre ways to go up, but it's still a numbers game and wide is still optimal. If being big is only to increase your winning ability, and not a buffer to mitigate loss, it seems to fly in the face of game design. If I grow larger than you, I can and should be able to absorb a loss better, not JUST win easier. That's why. I know, I know, it's kinda sucky that the big get bigger and the weak stay weaker, but that's sort of how I fully expect a game like this should go!

I think there are really good possible counterbalances, but mid-war is not the place for them. Diminishing returns on growth, AE factored by the target's total size just like the conqueror's, scaling -LA based on size, defensive only alliances vs an aggressor, better coalition design, etc. I do hope we can agree, whatever our issues with too much handholding for big nations, that permanent devastation in a single war due to peace refusal isn't fun and isn't good.

How did Lithuania go to bankrupt? Even if you're 100% occupied and dismiss everything you have no real expenses.

What if length of war would increase unrest? Occupied provinces would be harder keep under control and you would have send armies back to deal with your revolts.

If you owe interest and your income is zeroed, yeah. Even if you fire your advisors and drop all military, missionaries, etc, and try to zero your budget, you need to be debt free or a zero income still kills you. Even then... you're still wide open to rebels wiping the floor with you.


The biggest thing here might be a big overhaul to occupation. Occupied provinces should not spawn rebels hostile to the owner, but instead the controller. Perhaps war taxes should suspend interest payments.

 

[BrokenSky]

What about harsher penalties for extending a war longer than necessary? Making reduce war exhaustion either harder or impossible comes to mind.

 

[jonnydesperado]

One of the real issues here is that in the actual outside world, people still had to live with each other. Meaning, in reality there is usually a limit on the amount of dickery you can inflict onto other people until things find their way right back at you. So beside from wars being costly and exhausting and dangerous, you simply had the aspect that if you get to the position of being beyond all common sense and/or noble responsibility, things would end up looking bad for you.

I'm not a Multiplayer kind of guy, but aside from actual game mechanics, this is basically what I would imagine to be a positive limitation. Historically, there were no "game mechanics" that ruled how you fought a war, and still, people made up rules and stuck to them (even if it was actually to their own detriment). I feel that in any MP context, you can simply operate on the base of "don't be a dick". I know that's not what's being asked for here, but I feel it's a very important rule for any sort of game that is collectively enjoyed by people who perhaps even have to (or want to) talk to each other normally thereafter. Of course a game is about winning it, but... I mean, do you really have to do everything within your power to get that last little advantage?

In my opinion, beyond the rules of the game, there can be simple rules of civility. Exactly the thing that allows such weird things as societies to exist in the first place.

 

[nephilim2k]

I found that 100% occupation is handy as you can sit 1k stack on all provinces and effectively and efficiently loot provinces until call for war...at which point you can release several smaller nations which will love you, and weaken the enemy at the same time.

The AI should have a mechanic which offers this sort of solution to 100% occupation or when it's forces and manpower are depleted.

 

[ahyangyi]

I'm not a Multiplayer kind of guy, but aside from actual game mechanics, this is basically what I would imagine to be a positive limitation. Historically, there were no "game mechanics" that ruled how you fought a war, and still, people made up rules and stuck to them (even if it was actually to their own detriment). I feel that in any MP context, you can simply operate on the base of "don't be a dick". I know that's not what's being asked for here, but I feel it's a very important rule for any sort of game that is collectively enjoyed by people who perhaps even have to (or want to) talk to each other normally thereafter. Of course a game is about winning it, but... I mean, do you really have to do everything within your power to get that last little advantage?

Well, no. Chess doesn't have a "don't be dick" clause in their rule. Go doesn't have one either. Bridge doesn't have one either. As long as a player is playing within the rules, there's nothing to blame. Saying "don't be a dick" is important for "any sort of game that is collectively enjoyed by people who perhaps even have to (or want to) talk to each other normally thereafter" is unjustified.

If people have to agree on something to make a game enjoyable, why not make the thing agreed upon into real game rules instead? Single player games can benefit from this too -- the AI occasionally bugs you on this issue too, so this is not a multiplayer exclusive issue.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

EU4 is a game of expansion. They added mediocre ways to go up, but it's still a numbers game and wide is still optimal. If being big is only to increase your winning ability, and not a buffer to mitigate loss, it seems to fly in the face of game design. If I grow larger than you, I can and should be able to absorb a loss better, not JUST win easier. That's why. I know, I know, it's kinda sucky that the big get bigger and the weak stay weaker, but that's sort of how I fully expect a game like this should go!

My point is that *this already happens as a matter of course*. Big nations already hold that advantage. Now, they're adding increasingly more mechanics whereby once someone has that advantage, they can't lose it as easily. That's what doesn't make sense.

I think there are really good possible counterbalances, but mid-war is not the place for them. Diminishing returns on growth, AE factored by the target's total size just like the conqueror's, scaling -LA based on size, defensive only alliances vs an aggressor, better coalition design, etc. I do hope we can agree, whatever our issues with too much handholding for big nations, that permanent devastation in a single war due to peace refusal isn't fun and isn't good.

Yes, we agree on that. I don't believe a surrender mechanic is likely to change the picture though, because the problem lies in the incentive existing in the first place. Nations that are winning then make a mistake should eat the full consequences of that mistake, not be given a springboard whereby they can catapult forward again in a way that doesn't even exist as a viable option unless they're already winning. I have in the past suggested diminishing returns on size, better coalition design, and multi-sided AE scaling myself (I believe the AE is already scaled down on large targets as of a recent patch).

 

[ahyangyi]

diminishing returns on size

I really wish they implement this and throw away the weird LA floor for Ming. It's not like Ming was particularly autonomic in 1444.

 

[Ober]

I can speak about singleplayer only (never been a part of serious MP game, I'm too damn nervous for that crap) AND as a man who always played EU 2 and now 4 to get immersed in history and stuff, but it all seems to lead towards the general problem of conflicts always (or for the most part) turning into total wars. You declare war for conquest of [insert province] but nothing stops you or another side from all-out invasion WW1 style. Before 1.13, maybe even 1.12 patch when Austria and France used to rival each other most of the time, their first war in 1460s/70s would always end either with HRE Alliance burning Paris or French dancing in Vienna, even if war was declared for some OPM or one province on HRE-France border.

Everyone would be better off signing peace few years earlier without bringing or being a subject to annihilation since their goals were achieved anyway. Conquest of Cambrai ought to remain Conquest of Cambrai, it might evolve into conquest of Wallonia or even entire Austrian Netherlands - true, but is there really a necessity for total carnage that in the end leaves both sides bled out and unable to do a thing for next decade?

Frankly it's not going to happen until EU V is out maybe, but warring system has barely changed comparing even to EU2. From a historical standpoint, barely any wars of that timeline (at least until later) were a massive total wars. Many conflicts had breaks, and could continue for decades. Borders would change back and forth the entire time. From a gameplay pov, oftentimes you won't be even able to achieve your goals without total decimation of your enemy. How many times do AI enemies hang on refusing to peace out since they think their allies who won't or can't help them will come to their aid? In a long-term wars can wreck both defenders fighting for no good reason, and attackers who simply have to go after them because reasons.

What I mean is, no country player or AI, unless they're fighting for their survival, should be forced to fight total wars for every single province or goal or whatever. Silly war declared for one province between major A and major B can lead to armageddon. I have that issue in really chilly Castile -> Spain game at the moment. France keeps sneaking around my possessions in Indonesia or Africa with random islands and single provinces. But purely colonial war would have to end in a totaler krieg of all times with more than 100k of soldiers on both sides fighting in Europe and to achieve my goal (few small isles in Indonesia, Fernando Po, Galapagos, Tahiti) I would have to break through French army, several forts and probably reach Paris. Is it honestly worth it, especially that all I need these isles for is nice borders? Maybe it's colonial games tiring me so fast (despite me loving them ) but it's not worth the hassle and I just kinda don't fight France even if I could. Random blobs and total wars are not in my interests, at least not in this campaign. Alas, I have no other choice.

Just get rid of the total wars, you know what I mean. That's the issue, that breaks immersion historically, can get annoying inside the game and even lead to crazy situations like one mentioned in post #1. Just stopping mad AI would go a long way. I love the ferocity of AI allies helping in wars, like Venice using its entire fleet and army to beat down Irish OPM, or Circassian adventures to siege down Rousillon/Rosello. Whyyyyyyyyyy. Who needs that. Sending few ships or regiments, fine, but all of them?

I hate proposing new mechanics since we never know what can be done, but if there was a possibility, I would:

1.) Introduce cease-fires during wars. Whoever owns the wargoal province/provinces, keeps them as owned-contested, as in owns them in practice, but his actions are limited. If ceasefire lasts long enough, war ends, provinces go to their current owner.
*Also attacker should be able to add more wargoals during the war. Initially local conflict can evolve into something bigger now, but not necessarily end up in another WW0 just for the sake of few provinces.
*Also, sieging provinces outside of wargoal scope (for example attacking Vienna when having CB in Netherlands) should generate AE or something.
2.) Get rid of 5-15 truces and make them part of peace demand. Five year truce might be the base truce. You can add more via peace demands. Instead of being forced to take provinces to weaken your rival, enforce very lengthy truce on them.
3.) Create a limit of regiments allowed to use in certain war. So if one country attacks another war does not turn into instant total war. Limit wouldn't be enforced, you can go over it, but using more forces would generate more AE in peace deal. Look, everyone around would be scared if France used all of its regiments to invade Netherlands. Who wouldn't be scared of new neighbour walking around with huge stacks, ready to throw them all into meat grinder?
*That would also help with stupid crap like Poland-Lithuania flooding HRE because their HRE OPM ally declared war against another OPM. With limited involvement powerful friends suddenly aren't game-breaker.
*Past certain point, for example when defender can be vassalized in peace deal, he can use 100% of its army, since, you know, he's fighting for his survival, at last.

This is all pure fantasy considering EU IV is already two years old and I imagine PDX has plans for another year or two. Suggestions above are definitely not perfect, but they would tackle heart of the problem - limitless world war zeros, stubborn defenders and attackers, countries annihilated for no good reason.

But then we have simple fun factor and the fact that EU4 is a game after all. More restrictions and convoluted mechanics might mean less fun. After all EU originated from a board game. Maybe overcomplicating matters won't be the best choice. Maybe I don't play the game to play the game but to rewrite goddamn history, so for MP players or players in general all of it might sound wrong.

 

[pikaemperor]

How did Lithuania go to bankrupt? Even if you're 100% occupied and dismiss everything you have no real expenses.

What if length of war would increase unrest? Occupied provinces would be harder keep under control and you would have send armies back to deal with your revolts.

Interest from loans.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Interest from loans.

That suggests Lithuania stacked up a large number of loans to fight against an alliance where victory was unlikely. The functional difference between getting wiped after 50-100 loans or no loans is nothing, if you have nothing in the end in both cases, except that the loans in that situation were a misplay.

Lithuania made a bad judgment call and paid dearly for it in the literal sense.

Noteworthy is that giving up war score lowers war exhaustion (by 20 at 100% war score taken) even right now. So yes, Lith got camped, but bankruptcy is absolutely not something that alliance could possibly have forced absent a significant misplay. They could have camped until rebels came out, but that can take a long time and if they don't avoid call for peace, prohibitively long. 100% occupation doesn't cut the mustard in that scenario; you need to do something like pick a conquest CB, avoid the war goal, and avoid too many forts...but if you do that then your opponent necessarily will still have some income.

This wasn't some strict "exploit" situation. The defender choked badly, even with diplomacy considerations set aside.

 

[zsImmortal]

I really wish they implement this and throw away the weird LA floor for Ming. It's not like Ming was particularly autonomic in 1444.

Yes, large empires should be unwiedly in the sense that campaigning should be hard and that aristocracy/population should be harder to manage. The game is simply not designed to challenge you in that way though, so I doubt we'll ever see anything meaningful besides the Estates in that respect. They'll gladly beat down on large powers like Ming and the Timurids so they don't get a chance to do the same things as the 'historical' powers however.

 

[yerm]

That suggests Lithuania stacked up a large number of loans to fight against an alliance where victory was unlikely. The functional difference between getting wiped after 50-100 loans or no loans is nothing, if you have nothing in the end in both cases, except that the loans in that situation were a misplay.

Lithuania made a bad judgment call and paid dearly for it in the literal sense.

Noteworthy is that giving up war score lowers war exhaustion (by 20 at 100% war score taken) even right now. So yes, Lith got camped, but bankruptcy is absolutely not something that alliance could possibly have forced absent a significant misplay. They could have camped until rebels came out, but that can take a long time and if they don't avoid call for peace, prohibitively long. 100% occupation doesn't cut the mustard in that scenario; you need to do something like pick a conquest CB, avoid the war goal, and avoid too many forts...but if you do that then your opponent necessarily will still have some income.

This wasn't some strict "exploit" situation. The defender choked badly, even with diplomacy considerations set aside.

That's one of three possibilities. Another is that the loans were there before they declared war and he was attacked while in debt. Still another is that the loans and bankruptcy came after he decided to rage quit. The second one is a problem in general, even if not in this case; if someone happens to hit you when you have a debt and totally win, bankruptcy can be made unavoidable.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's one of three possibilities. Another is that the loans were there before they declared war and he was attacked while in debt. Still another is that the loans and bankruptcy came after he decided to rage quit. The second one is a problem in general, even if not in this case; if someone happens to hit you when you have a debt and totally win, bankruptcy can be made unavoidable.

Yes, but while that sucks it's still a relatively unusual scenario whereby the player definitely misjudged multiple parts of his situation. It's not like zero nations bankrupted against their best efforts in the time period, and getting hit by war on an unplanned/unexpected front when resources are already stretched thinly is easily among the more historical/gameplay plausible scenarios that would bankrupt somebody...

 

[jebates]

Should war be much more destructive/expensive (even for nations with space-marines and low WE), to help combat this problem?

Random events taking away development while on offensive war, a call for peace that starts ticking whenever the other side would accept a white peace, event chains where you have to decide between a white peace or a stab hit, occupied regions rising up against you, ticking AE for long occupations?

 

[Knight_of_Ni]

The real issue is that Pdx seems to not be able to simulate limited warfare for some of their titles. Even CK2 has issues where whenever you try to take a single duchy off of a kingdom you need to completely destroy their army and siege half of their land down. And make that 100% if it's against a Karling.

Personally I think this is the result of making warfare too easy and managing your lands even more so.
-Having a standing army of 100k men by the middle of the 16th century should simply not be possible. For the first half of the game mercenaries were just as common if not more prevalent than regular troops. And the sad thing is that the limit on your army size is more often the rather arbitrary number of your forcelimit rather than any indication of your coffers ability to pay for them.
-Even when you completely destroy their armies, beating a nation's military has next to no meaning besides an uninterrupted siege of your target. In reality, dismantling an opponents army should give you almost 100%. That being said, I think the chances of destroying armies should be lessened greatly.
-Empire management is even more absurd. For example, while I was certainly happy when autonomy was introduced, I feel it hasn't been harsh enough. Take your standard Ottoman Empire. It will often stretch from Hungary to North Africa, to the edges of India and many players go for Ethiopia too. And all of it can be at 0% autonomy. This is an era when bureaucracy is being established in few areas and when roads and speedy means of travel are few and far between.
-And I will probably get some flak for this, but this game should not be as heavily military focused as it is. Look at the border changes in Europe during the time period. Aside from inheritances, the biggest expansion (in Europe at least) was France filling out its borders, the conquest of Hungary, and the dismantling of Poland. The key changes to society in this time were not the establishment of massive states in Europe (at least not until the last few years) but actually creating robust nation states that had the infrastructure to project their power.

I think the best thing to do to force limited wars is to reduce army size and for how long you can raise forces and limit the effects of size on how large a force you can raise If you can only raise an army for a limited time, you might be forced to accept a smaller gain. Similarly, smaller nations may have to exert proportionally larger resources raising a similarly sized army, but they would only have to do so for a shorter time.

 

[jonnydesperado]

Well, no. Chess doesn't have a "don't be dick" clause in their rule. Go doesn't have one either. Bridge doesn't have one either. As long as a player is playing within the rules, there's nothing to blame. Saying "don't be a dick" is important for "any sort of game that is collectively enjoyed by people who perhaps even have to (or want to) talk to each other normally thereafter" is unjustified.

If people have to agree on something to make a game enjoyable, why not make the thing agreed upon into real game rules instead? Single player games can benefit from this too -- the AI occasionally bugs you on this issue too, so this is not a multiplayer exclusive issue.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. Even games like Chess have rules beside their rules. You're not going to take off your pants, prance around like a clown, and sing a drinking song at the top of your voice during a game of chess. While none of those things is technically against the rules of the game you're engaging in, it's probably not encouraged by most players (unless it's like 2 AM, everyone is drunk, and tomorrow's not a work day).

What I'm saying is not an in-game fix. It's simply an observation about how actual people can and will handle how they play a game. Of course it would be better to have a more beautiful ruleset that does not encourage, well, "regrettable" forms of play - but is it really realistic to achieve that once something reaches a certain level of complexity? I'm not discouraging anyone from trying, that'd be far from my mind - and the single player aspect remains very valid - it's just that in my opinion, when people come together to play a game, they have a lot of ways to play it, rules or not.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Should war be much more destructive/expensive (even for nations with space-marines and low WE), to help combat this problem?

Random events taking away development while on offensive war, a call for peace that starts ticking whenever the other side would accept a white peace, event chains where you have to decide between a white peace or a stab hit, occupied regions rising up against you, ticking AE for long occupations?

You want to turn the problem around and encourage stubborn defenders? Because if you go this route, that's where it leads. It's not even realistic (attacker's land took less damage than looted defender's), so there's not a lot of merit.