A "Surrender" mechanic

[clockworkBabbag]

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.

I think the correct response to this is: "And?"

Misplays are not the issue. The issue is that this happened, and Lithuania had no recourse whatsoever to be able to continue playing the game.

I didn't watch the stream, but I've been following the discussion a bit and it seems to me the problem people have had with the Ottoman's actions here has less to do with the fact that this was an attempt to use game mechanics to inflict the most damage on a potential threat and more the fact that Lithuania could do literally nothing. If mechanics had explicitly existed that allowed the Ottomans to inflict the exact same amount of damage on Lithuania without the Ottomans refusing to even consider a peace offer, this would not have been an issue. The problem people have is with the fact that Lithuania knew this was a war they had lost, but they had nothing they could do - not even unconditionally surrender - to end the war.

Framed this way, we completely avoid any discussion about whether or not this is an exploit or about how much damage it should be possible to inflict on large countries or whether this is only something that helps the player at the expense of the AI. Instead, we simply focus on discussions of player agency. And correct me if I'm wrong, but from discussions I've had with you in the past you've stated that you dislike playing monarchies precisely because you feel regencies and random ruler stats detract from player agency.

I don't think you can remain consistent with that position if you're going to continue arguing against people saying that there should be an option to unconditionally surrender. I can think of no possible situation where unconditional surrender is exploitable for a defender. If you really want to insist that this would somehow protect large nations more, simply make unconditional surrender additionally decrease warscore costs of peace deals so you can demand more than in a normal peace deal.

 

[bbqftw]

- That there is incentive to extend wars in the first place is strong evidence of a design issue wrt war score/truces, because extending wars is inherently costly.

even if there was a surrender mechanic, "you lose everything not of your primary culture" probably exceeds anything you can do with either 5 year or 15 year truce

WE camping would still seem to be optimal play with at anything requiring multiple wars to kill.

Arguably even call for peace helps the attacker in this situation as the attacker can intentionally spike unrest to cause nationalist revolts in his own occupied provinces.

 

[grommile]

even if there was a surrender mechanic, "you lose everything not of your primary culture" probably exceeds anything you can do with either 5 year or 15 year truce

You'd be surprised how many non-primary-culture provinces have particularists instead of separatists.

 

[happymix91]

Their whim changes and is not a viable criteria for a universal definition/discussion of the term. It's also utter nonsense in this case; the developers changed the rules in a way that actively incentivizes this behavior (rewarding it greatly) and defended those changes. To turn around and claim it is an exploit/wrong can't be valid, unless simultaneously changing stance on previous statements. Otherwise, the message is inconsistent.

Regardless, I've been gaming a long time. Players bust out the "e" work to describe tactics they don't like/jive with their expectations, but they will readily accept higher-utility tactics as legitimate. There's no consistent sense in the application of the term, and it comes off as a rather high-and-mighty message of "the way I prefer playing is better than yours". If I claim that full-annexing a player before they can grow is an exploit, there is literally zero objective/defensible basis you, the developers, or anybody can possibly use to make that claim any more or less valid than claiming rebel camping someone is an exploit. It all just comes down to opinion at that point.

But opinions vary. From a rule enforcement perspective, absent anything against doing one action vs another in-game, there is no valid basis for complaint when a player chooses an in-game option. Exploit claims tend to be players complaining because they perceive something as unfair but don't have any way to demonstrate that it is actually unfair.



Hahahahaha . No room for being exploited at all huh? Maybe you're right this time. We'll see.

Oh worring about exploiting and say 'You can't blame others using exploits!'? What you said is same with 'There is no moral principle.' It can have meaning of logic, but I don't feel like it can help make better game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

WE camping would still seem to be optimal play with at anything requiring multiple wars to kill.

Doubtful. If you could hit inside 5 years some damage would linger and the time it takes to camp someone is pretty long. From an attacker position optimization standpoint it would be a nontrivial consideration.

Misplays are not the issue. The issue is that this happened, and Lithuania had no recourse whatsoever to be able to continue playing the game.

Let's see...I know! I'll use your tactic!
"And?"
The outcome is identical when you're full annexed.

I didn't watch the stream, but I've been following the discussion a bit and it seems to me the problem people have had with the Ottoman's actions here has less to do with the fact that this was an attempt to use game mechanics to inflict the most damage on a potential threat and more the fact that Lithuania could do literally nothing.

Not taking loans and being mired fighting a war against a 3 man dogpile would be a start.

If mechanics had explicitly existed that allowed the Ottomans to inflict the exact same amount of damage on Lithuania without the Ottomans refusing to even consider a peace offer, this would not have been an issue.

Correct, I made this point also. The rules of the game create incentive to do this, and the design team has increased the incentive to do this over time while defending the mechanics that create that incentive.

Framed this way, we completely avoid any discussion about whether or not this is an exploit or about how much damage it should be possible to inflict on large countries or whether this is only something that helps the player at the expense of the AI. Instead, we simply focus on discussions of player agency. And correct me if I'm wrong, but from discussions I've had with you in the past you've stated that you dislike playing monarchies precisely because you feel regencies and random ruler stats detract from player agency.

The assertion that this situation didn't have player agency doesn't hold. He "couldn't do anything" because he lost a war to a 3 man dogpile while in sufficiently massive debt that even as a major he bankrupted. Numerous choices (IE player agency) led to that outcome, very much in contrast with the not-comparable regency mechanic.

I don't think you can remain consistent with that position if you're going to continue arguing against people saying that there should be an option to unconditionally surrender. I can think of no possible situation where unconditional surrender is exploitable for a defender. If you really want to insist that this would somehow protect large nations more, simply make unconditional surrender additionally decrease warscore costs of peace deals so you can demand more than in a normal peace deal.

I don't like the current setup either, but the existence of an unconditional surrender will not by itself change the incentive structure...unless the person receiving the surrender takes penalties for refusing it. But in that case the suggestion that the defender can't possibly abuse it is...disingenuous given previous examples of EU IV mechanic implementations...I could cite them but they're a bit off topic beyond their existence as reminders of what is likely to happen.

Oh worring about exploiting and say 'You can't blame others using exploits!'? What you said is same with 'There is no moral principle.' It can have meaning of logic, but I don't feel like it can help make better game

If you can build an argument to support your point of view I'd like to see it. For now there isn't one presented.

 

[Republic of Mercury]

The assertion that this situation didn't have player agency doesn't hold. He "couldn't do anything" because he lost a war to a 3 man dogpile while in sufficiently massive debt that even as a major he bankrupted. Numerous choices (IE player agency) led to that outcome, very much in contrast with the not-comparable regency mechanic.

What would you have done if you'd been playing Lithuania in that situation?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What would you have done if you'd been playing Lithuania in that situation?

From the start, or when 3 people declare at once?

MP is inherently a diplo game. If you're getting 3 man piled and don't have help, you're going to die. If you're definitely going to lose a war though, racking up loans is foolhardy. If you don't know your borders are secure, taking a bunch in a tough war is similarly a poor choice. That dismantling was the culmination of poor planning.

From my understanding they didn't even declare 3 separate wars, which is possible. What happens with unconditional surrender then? What about with an instant truce-break turnaround? What are the penalties for ignoring a surrender request?

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Let's see...I know! I'll use your tactic!
"And?"
The outcome is identical when you're full annexed.

No, we're not playing this game. My point of saying "And?" was because I'm arguing that misplays are not at all relevant to this discussion. Your point seems to be to try to be snarky.

The same argument you try and make here with regards to "no, they weren't lacking player agency because REASONS" can be applied to your complaints about monarchies to show that they're not a problem either.

Be consistent, that's all I'm asking. If you think that player agency is important enough to justify spending an inordinate amount of effort to shift away from a monarchy to a republic (note that monarchies never, even when in regency, actually stop you from playing the game), then you better well think that player agency is important enough to be in favor of something that prevents another player from literally not being able to play the game when they should by rights be able to get out of a war and have at least 15 more years to try and recover.

And actually maybe try to give a real response to my claim that player agency is the issue here instead of going right back to talking about something I've already claimed is irrelevant to the discussion. Show me why I'm wrong about player agency first. Your attempts so far have been incredibly poor ones - nothing you've brought up about loans or allies has any bearing on the fact that the Ottomans decided to simply camp on Lithuania and refused all peace offers. Whether or not Lithuania could have avoided the losing war in the first place does not change the fact that the Ottomans did what they did. Whether or not Lithuania ended up bankrupt would not have changed that. And the reason Lithuania left the game had nothing to do with going bankrupt either:

Before the war I already knew what the coalition wanted and was already offering it to them before the war had even started to Hungary but was turned down. Ottomans declared the war still and when I offered my unconditional surrender he ignored it and kept occupying my stuff in order to devastate me completely so I can not turn around in the future. (Why fight a war you can't win when you can recover instead and come back later). So I decided I had better stuff to do during my work hours and left.

(Emphasis mine)

The reason he left is not solely that he could not win the war. It was that he could not win the war and had no option to end it.

Stop trying, against all evidence, to say that bankruptcy and misplays are the issue here. They are not. They never were.

I don't like the current setup either, but the existence of an unconditional surrender will not by itself change the incentive structure...unless the person receiving the surrender takes penalties for refusing it. But in that case the suggestion that the defender can't possibly abuse it is...disingenuous given previous examples of EU IV mechanic implementations...I could cite them but they're a bit off topic beyond their existence as reminders of what is likely to happen.

Changes to the incentive structure were reasonably implied in that proposal, otherwise there would obviously be no point. But I didn't mention it because specific implementation is not actually relevant to the idea.

Regardless, this quote here basically translates to: "Exploits are technically possible, although I can't actually think of any situations where this particular proposal could be exploited. Therefore this is a flawed proposal." The fact that exploits are always technically possible is trivially true, but also not worth bringing up. Otherwise, it would be an argument against literally every game mechanic ever. If you don't have any actual possible ways a defender could somehow abuse a mechanic that allows their opponent to take anything they want, potentially at a decreased WS cost, then do not bother. Again, I'm not willing to play this game. Please stop trying to nitpick incredibly minor things, and actually give good, relevant responses to the points I bring up.

And where do you get off complaining about a proposal being potentially abusable when you said earlier in the thread that you think the concept of "exploit" is meaningless?

 

[BrokenSky]

What if war exhaustion increased autonomy by 0.01 per month per exhaustion? The loser gets revaunchenism in 1.14 so they have quicker war exhaustion reduction, which should offset the fact that they'l get more, and if rev. also gave reduced autonomy it should balance out to affect the attacker way more?

 

[Plastic_Duke]

I'm not sure there should be an unconditionnal surrender mechanic (meaning a peace proposal impossible to refuse) but I believe there should be drastic consequences if one would voluntarily keep on with a war that is already won (100%), in order to wreak so much havoc on an already defeated state so that it won't ever recover from said war. At least there should be diplomatic consequences. A monarch actually doing that would evidently be seen by the neighboring international community (and maybe his own people too) as a blood thirsty maniac, a furious warmongerer, ennemy of peace and prosperity, destroyer of worlds and people, because occupying and thus pillaging a whole country again and again is surely way more atrocious than, for instance, what french troops did two times in the renish Palatinate during the 17th century ("ravage du Palatinat" (1674) and "sac du Palatinat" (1689)). For some reasons I can't find an english article on the subject. Still, here is a summary of what the french wikipedia has to say on the matter :

Spoiler

Au printemps 1689, Louis XIV, pressé par son ministre Louvois, donne l’ordre de mettre à sac le Palatinat pour assurer une « défensive sur le Rhin ». Cette décision est considérée comme l’une des plus graves erreurs stratégiques du roi de France puisque la plupart des princes allemands se rallieront à la bannière du Saint-Empire Habsbourg et renforceront par la même occasion le parti anti-français en Europe.

Spoiler

Turenne va frapper les esprits, mais pas de la façon escomptée. Dans toute l’Europe, ce n’est qu’un cri d’horreur indigné. Ces pratiques d’une cruauté que l’on croyait l’apanage de l’armée ottomane, exercées dans un « pays uni et fertile, couvert de villes et de bourgs opulents », au lieu d’effrayer les princes vont les dresser plus encore contre la France.

And these are my own translations :

Spoiler

During spring 1689, Louis XIV, pushed by Louvois (minister of war), gave the order to plunder the renish Palatinate in order to assure a "defensive line along the Rhine". This decision is considered as one of the biggest strategic mistakes of the king of France, causing most of the german princes to ally the Habsburgs and reinforcing the anti-french party in Europe.

Spoiler

Turenne (french commander) would strike people's minds, but not in the expected way. All of Europe was now crying out in horror and outrage. These cruel deeds, believed to be only those of the turkish army, done in a "united and fertile country, covered with cities and wealthy burgs", far from terrifying the princes, would get them closer together and make them rise up united against France.

So you see, barbaric behaviors, even in wars, tend to draw a lot of negative attention from your neighbors and make you a paria, or even a target. That's why I propose that, in case the player refuses a peace deal matching a 100% warscore, there should be consequences similar to those of a no-CB DoW (20 AE, 2 stab hit, +2 WE). This means that if you have your ennemy broken, begging on its knees, ready to offer you anything you may want, it's simple courtesy to show mercy and end the onslaught - if not, you will be seen as what you are : a cruel and sadistic tyrant, and people will hate you for that.

This doesn't prevent you from being a dick, but in most cases, it would not be worthwhile anymore. I think this might be a disincentive strong enough (and simple enough) to solve the problem.

Of course, that may require the implementation of a "negotiate" button between the "yes" and the "no" of proposed peace deal (ignoring the proposal would still be a no, and a no-CB Dow-like hit to your country in this case).

 

[Vanillamarine]

What, if the surrender button gives the attacker 100%, regardless of occupations or whatever (someone already mentioned this). It increases the warscore to 100% and further downstream will cause the call for peace modifier to kick in. That way the attacker can only fully occupy and fully wipe the defenders troops by risking massive WE himself.

We would also have to make it possible to demand ANY province from a surrendered defender, irrelevant wether it is occupied or not, afterall he has surrendered unconditionally.

In a situation where you have beligerents on a defenders side they can surrender aswell, upping the warscore to 100% (only for THAT beligerent). It would also cause call for peace but the attacker can just peace them out. This way the attacker can peace out everyone that surrenders immediatly to avoid the call for peace.

EDIT: Rejecting peace offers after you have unconditionally surrendered MUST incur stability hits down to -3 and auto accept at -3, of course.

EDIT2: Make the AI send a surrender offer at 80%+ warscore, it has probably been beaten quite hard anyhow and will put some more pressure on the attacker to finally make some terms.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No, we're not playing this game. My point of saying "And?" was because I'm arguing that misplays are not at all relevant to this discussion. Your point seems to be to try to be snarky.

Using "And" in that fashion is snarky in the first place. No taking the high road after committing to that. It has a direct implication of up-front trivializing the post you're quoting.

The same argument you try and make here with regards to "no, they weren't lacking player agency because REASONS" can be applied to your complaints about monarchies to show that they're not a problem either.

Objectively false. If you never take a loan, bankruptcy is completely impossible. Avoiding a dogpile as a major carries every bit as much agency as for minors that can be full-annexed and is tangential to the surrender mechanic.

Here is a list of things the player can do to avoid heir-kill events giving a regency council:

-

I can show there is agency for what happened, and you are incapable of demonstrating agency wrt regency councils. Apples to oranges.

should by rights be able to get out of a war and have at least 15 more years to try and recover.

You're arguing from your own conclusion. Let's not engage in fallacies.

And actually maybe try to give a real response to my claim that player agency is the issue here instead of going right back to talking about something I've already claimed is irrelevant to the discussion. Show me why I'm wrong about player agency first. Your attempts so far have been incredibly poor ones - nothing you've brought up about loans or allies has any bearing on the fact that the Ottomans decided to simply camp on Lithuania and refused all peace offers.

You're ignoring the crucial reality of cause and effect. Being annexed prevents you from playing the game too. Are you asserting there is no agency with being annexed? You would *necessarily* have to make that claim or abandon your line of argument. The only difference between that and this scenario is that the player is large enough for immediate annexation to be non-viable. In both cases, however, the player is functionally removed from the game and in both cases the player had tons of agency before the event and basically none after being attacked and killed.

The reason he left is not solely that he could not win the war. It was that he could not win the war and had no option to end it.

He got salty and rage quit, though he'd mostly lost the game already so he didn't have to handle it that way. He could have simply said "gg" and left too. Or he could have just left admitting loss, if he didn't feel it was a gg. Regardless, Groogy's salt isn't really relevant to the viability of a surrender mechanic and how it fits into the game rules.

If you don't have any actual possible ways a defender could somehow abuse a mechanic that allows their opponent to take anything they want, potentially at a decreased WS cost, then do not bother

- Defender offers unconditional surrender, attacker ignores it for a time period (how long can he in this proposal?) to stackwipe. He then has allies declare separate war on the target and takes the surrender, which defender can't rescind because after all, the surrender is unconditional.

- Defender instantly offers unconditional surrender, secures revanchism, then breaks truce for reconquest to block coring with his army intact and much stronger from the revanchism mechanic.

Just offhand. Asking me to offer specific ways around an incomplete proposal is disingenuous in the first place though, and it's notable you're mostly ignoring my points against buffing large nations in this context.

And where do you get off complaining about a proposal being potentially abusable when you said earlier in the thread that you think the concept of "exploit" is meaningless?

The *term* exploit is meaningless, because there is no objective cutoff for what makes one. Also, strawman. I didn't "complain about potential abuse", I pointed out that the assertion that "this isn't abusable" is a murky and likely inaccurate assertion and thus not a credible means of defending the potential mechanic.

By the way, can allies in a war be kicked out with unconditional surrender? Is the new in-vogue MP strat to dogpile on someone w/o officially calling each other? What if someone is trying to help another player out, but is forced out of the war early because of unconditional surrender? Could this be used to exile troops mid-war and get a last minute super morale boost with revanchism, completely hosing another attacker with morale from nowhere?

Make the AI send a surrender offer at 80%+ warscore, it has probably been beaten quite hard anyhow and will put some more pressure on the attacker to finally make some terms.

Players that rebel-camp the AI can usually run it up to 20 WE with 40-60% war score, not 80%. Wiz claimed that replacing length of war with something better is low priority, but until it gets replaced you'll get asinine outcomes like "AI with 1 regiment that has lost 60k and is -40% war score can refuse 1% peace offers w/o penalty". Which is, of course, an AI cheat that the "facts and misunderstandings" doesn't mention, but that's a topic for another thread.

 

[Mozes000]

Maybe in the case of surrender the victor gets to place a relative on the throne, thus may get a possibility for a claim to the throne. Possibly even a PU, after the massive rebels depending on culture differences occur.

The loser could get either being exiled somewhere or being executed?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maybe in the case of surrender the victor gets to place a relative on the throne, thus may get a possibility for a claim to the throne. Possibly even a PU, after the massive rebels depending on culture differences occur.

The loser could get either being exiled somewhere or being executed?

You could lose on purpose to get same-dynasty and then counter-claim throne using revanchism, without losing your army because you surrendered . Besides I'm not a fan of putting PUs relevant in this at all because it's mostly a Europe-only mechanic post "not Christian religion" nerf.

 

[Vanillamarine]

Players that rebel-camp the AI can usually run it up to 20 WE with 40-60% war score, not 80%. Wiz claimed that replacing length of war with something better is low priority, but until it gets replaced you'll get asinine outcomes like "AI with 1 regiment that has lost 60k and is -40% war score can refuse 1% peace offers w/o penalty". Which is, of course, an AI cheat that the "facts and misunderstandings" doesn't mention, but that's a topic for another thread.

The system I proposed uses mostly mechanics which are already ingame, why not program the AI that at 80%+ it sends the surrender offer I mentioned OR at 90% occupation, OR at running a deficit while having loans, OR at 50% occupation but having 0 troops etc. etc.

The criteria for the AI can be adjusted as necessary, most importantly a system like I mentioned would work perfectly for multiplayer and as soon as it works for MP its very easy to get it working for the AI in a half arsed way. At least it will not be worse than the situation we have right now.

The system I mentioned requires minimal effort to implement, every mechanic is already in the game. It would enable nations which have lost the war to give the aggressor 100% and put pressure on the winning side to come to terms.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The system I proposed uses mostly mechanics which are already ingame, why not program the AI that at 80%+ it sends the surrender offer I mentioned OR at 90% occupation, OR at running a deficit while having loans, OR at 50% occupation but having 0 troops etc. etc.

I agree with this proposal and would like to see it, with some fleshing out of what conditions trigger surrender. I'm just not holding my breath that it will happen given what Wiz said about the topic when discussing "length of war". Yerm even pointed out that *other* AI have some method of detecting when the target should be surrendering, because they dogpile on it, but that target AIs themselves don't use this same method for some reason.

 

[Vanillamarine]

Ahh that is a serious concern TMIT. All these bullcrap modifiers need to be null and void as soon as the AI takes the decision to surrender.

One beautiful thing about the instant 100% warscore + war exhaustion for winning side would be that it can be balanced for each participant of the war. Making it somewhat "easy". A co-belligerent does not have to calculate "alliance strenght" wether it wants to white peace or not, since surrender conditions must overrule all other conditions anyhow.

So it would be if "surrender conditions" are true then all other conditions are void and co-belligerent or warleader will send surrender offer to warleader of winning side. 2 months later ticking war exhaustion starts for the war leader of the winning side. War leader of the winning side can take up to 100% of the party that sent the surrender offer, declining surrender offer is -1 stability down to -3 then it will auto accept, also putting stress on the defenders side to come to terms.

EDIT: Of course the criteria for the AI to come to the surrender decision needs to be tested, same as the amount of ticking warexhaustion the winning warleader receives.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah, surrender triggers might make coalition wars less obnoxious finally. It would take some tuning for certain though so that target nations aren't baited into giving up or refusing to surrender in obvious losses.

 

[Vanillamarine]

The surrender mechanic I propose would work for coalition and religious league wars with one slight alteration. Co-belligerents will have unconditional surrender DISABLED, but the AI warleader will have a modifier to make peace depending of how many of his fellow allies are "in surrender condition".

EDIT: This would ensure proper carnage if you are foolish enough to end up on the losing side of coalition/religious wars.

EDIT2: Obviously we could come up with some quite sophisticated systems but I think it would be important that a surrender mechanic would work alongside the current bullcrap modifiers and whatnot. Otherwise such a thing will never see the game anyhow.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The surrender mechanic I propose would work for coalition and religious league wars with one slight alteration. Co-belligerents will have unconditional surrender DISABLED, but the AI warleader will have a modifier to make peace depending of how many of his fellow allies are "in surrender condition".

EDIT: This would ensure proper carnage if you are foolish enough to end up on the losing side of coalition/religious wars.

I think co-belligerents should be able to surrender unconditionally, otherwise you'll get another Groogy type situation, with the war leader not necessarily wanting to peace out. That's especially true in situations where the allies are not easily accessible to each other. Taking England because you made them co-bells while declaring on their ally Benin (which surrendered unconditionally) would be pretty strange.