AAR Thread

[wilcoxchar]

Can't wait to hear some historical examples of two great powers gaining nothing and bleeding each other out because one minor country attacked another minor country

Good example of healthy Diplo play is second Italian war for independence - France supported Piemont after securing important piece of land from them

Apparently you haven't heard of the little known conflict the American Revolutionary War. Where France, the Netherlands, and Spain joined some far away colonial rebellion to take the British Empire down a peg while gaining nothing for themselves.

 

[yurcick]

Apparently you haven't heard of the little known conflict the American Revolutionary War. Where France, the Netherlands, and Spain joined some far away colonial rebellion to take the British Empire down a peg while gaining nothing for themselves.

Britain losing the American Revolution is a thing weakening Britain massively in itself, so clearly beneficial to all her rivals. However, no difference in Britain's strength is easily observed between the cases when the Central America does or does not annex Cuba. That's why this example is not close to what it's trying to describe.

As it has been pointed out many times, if France just wanted to pick a fight with Britain over anything, it could do so without Guatemalan help.
However, maybe France just didn't want to get more infamy, or didn't want risking starting a DP in a region where other GP were present and the balance of power was not as clear. That would explain picking a safe fight over irrelevant goals just to have a legal reason to damage Britain.
The biggest question, again, is "why does Britain care whether Central America eats Cuba or not?" It's not in an alliance of any kind with Central America. They're not even trading that much, IIRC. It is, judging by the battallion and ship number, much weaker than the other GP possibly involved (France), so it's not that they just want the fight. What interest do they have? No answers yet.

Since it's not the release week, I'd be absolutely OK with the answer "that's a minor balance bug that is likely to be fixed in the coming months". However, you seem to be dead set that this behaviour is normal. That's why I'm putting up this argument.

 

[The Goldfinch]

Apparently you haven't heard of the little known conflict the American Revolutionary War. Where France, the Netherlands, and Spain joined some far away colonial rebellion to take the British Empire down a peg while gaining nothing for themselves.

My bad - I thought I said "minor country attacking a MINOR country"

I also thought it's sort of obvious I was asking about victorian era timeframe. Or can we talk about Aetolian League vs Macedonia?

I also thought "Bleed out" Implies losing significant amount of manpower in a full out war. I am all for materiel/monetary support btw

 

[FranklyJustNess]

(...) or didn't want risking starting a DP in a region where other GP were present and the balance of power was not as clear. That would explain picking a safe fight over irrelevant goals just to have a legal reason to damage Britain.

Well that also sounds pretty gamey and not entirely as something we would like to be an intended behaviour. Getting in the way of UK making gains seems fair, but actually demanding stuff from them in an unrelated conflict they have no demands in, is kinda weird.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Perhaps there should be a way for great powers (or perhaps any nation of a higher rank than the nation that started the diplomatic play) to support a side in a diplomatic play/war without fully committing themselves militarily. This would mean that the default method of great power confrontation would be through regional proxy wars rather than direct, global confrontation. I think the example from the AAR would be more palatable if Central America had had British financial/material support and Cuba the same from France, but Britain and France were not actually at war with themselves.

 

[yurcick]

Well that also sounds pretty gamey and not entirely as something we would like to be an intended behaviour. Getting in the way of UK making gains seems fair, but actually demanding stuff from them in an unrelated conflict they have no demands in, is kinda weird.

At least that would have some logic to explain the behaviour.
And to be honest, I think "to weaken a rival on favourable terms" was a reason for many countries participating in many wars. For an example inside the timeframe, see the Crimean War. In it hardly anyone but Turkey and Russia really had concrete territorial goals. However, there was a pretty big coalition against Russia because the members wanted Russia to hurt and to have Turkey alive to keep Russia in check (neither of which was directly beneficial to the coalition members, but it's the example of indirect benefits gained by weakening the rival).

 

[wilcoxchar]

2) Britain joins the diplomatic play - Why?

Because Britain in general supports Central America as we've seen earlier in the AAR. That, plus Britain has a trade agreement with Central America so it's beneficial for Britain to expand the resources Central America has access to.

3) France joins the diplomatic play and demands colonial territory from Britain - It makes some amount of sense that France would want to oppose British interests, so the main issue here stems from the fact that we haven't actually established what the British interests are. Though we know that the British interest has something to do with Central America annexing Cuba, the French main goal is to prevent that (Which they back up by sending divisions). They also want to annex some territory from Britain.

Maybe, but not entirely. It's also reasonable that France would just want to use this as an excuse to fight Britain. It was pretty common, moreso in the 18th century but no reason that couldn't continue into the 19th century more than it did, for powers to use an external excuse to fight another imperial power and try to knock some territory off them if the advantage arose or at least get them to back down from expanding their power in the region. Again, this is a pretty common diplomatic tactic throughout history even in the modern day when powers are jockeying for position and influence.

4) Cuba is annexed and Central America abandons the war, the French let them (In fact, I don't think they have an option to reject "capitulation). Now the French and the British fight over some colonial territory. - Alright, this is the biggest issue. If the French cared about Cuba they shouldn't let this go. We know they care about Cuba because if they only cared about Britain they could just go to war with them at any moment, without getting the Cubans and the Guatemalans involved at all.

If France wanted to defend Cuba, then... they should've defended Cuba better. It's really not an issue. And you say France could go to war with Britain at any moment, but that's ignoring a lot of the strategic considerations involved. If France directly goes to war with Britain, it would potentially bring in the other great powers into a world war or at least a Europe-wide land war, and France might not want to deal with that. Instead, Britain's involvement in a minor conflict that France also has an interest in gives France an opportunity to get involved in the war without potentially drawing in the rest of the European powers into a Europe-wide land war. It is in France's interest to keep the war a colonial war without dragging in the rest of Europe, and their interest in the Caribbean gives them the opportunity to do that.

People really need to actually think about how real international relations and diplomacy works with what the game might be trying to model, and all of what potential interests a country might have beyond just being strictly about territorial gain.

 

[wilcoxchar]

My bad - I thought I said "minor country attacking a MINOR country"

I also thought it's sort of obvious I was asking about victorian era timeframe. Or can we talk about Aetolian League vs Macedonia?

I also thought "Bleed out" Implies losing significant amount of manpower in a full out war. I am all for materiel/monetary support btw

Lol "bleeding out", you're acting like France and Britain are just launching everything at each other, completely depleting all of each other's manpower, and fighting an existential conflict, when that is clearly not happening from the AAR and they are fighting over a few minor colonial islands. You're talking about something that would happen in EU4 or previous Victoria games, that the devs have said they are avoiding in Victoria 3 through this system.

This is really one of the big adjustments in mindset that it sounds like people are going to have to make in Victoria 3's diplomacy that, from the reaction people have had to the AARs so far, a lot of people still have not made. Not every war is going to be some big existential crisis that necessitates the activation of total war tactics. That was true in previous Paradox games because of things like the war goals not being set at the start of the war and being able to take whatever you wanted or add war goals during the war, and that was a problem that they have now fixed for furthering this goal of having some conflicts even among great powers be limited conflicts. Some conflicts are going to be minor colonial conflicts or effectively proxy wars. That's a good thing and an improvement on previous games.

 

[Skales]

Because Britain in general supports Central America as we've seen earlier in the AAR.

Why? People need to get over this strange Polandball-like mindset. Countries cannot have "friends" only interests.

plus Britain has a trade agreement with Central America so it's beneficial for Britain to expand the resources Central America has access to.

Trade agreements are not reason enough to dramatically change a balance of power in a region in favour of another country. Even if that country is technically your ally (Which isn't even the case here). For the reason for this refer to the first paragraph.

Maybe, but not entirely. It's also reasonable that France would just want to use this as an excuse to fight Britain. It was pretty common, moreso in the 18th century but no reason that couldn't continue into the 19th century more than it did, for powers to use an external excuse to fight another imperial power and try to knock some territory off them if the advantage arose or at least get them to back down from expanding their power in the region. Again, this is a pretty common diplomatic tactic throughout history even in the modern day when powers are jockeying for position and influence.

An excuse can be easily fabricated and doesn't require you to get involved in a Central American war. This is especially true in Victoria 3 where all of this is abstracted behind the diplomatic play mechanic.

If France wanted to defend Cuba, then... they should've defended Cuba better. It's really not an issue.

There is no "if" we know that France did actually send divisions to defend Cuba, so they clearly cared about it. And the entire war is about blocking British interests, the interests, in this case, being the Guatemalan annexation of Cuba.

And you say France could go to war with Britain at any moment, but that's ignoring a lot of the strategic considerations involved. If France directly goes to war with Britain, it would potentially bring in the other great powers into a world war or at least a Europe-wide land war, and France might not want to deal with that. Instead, Britain's involvement in a minor conflict that France also has an interest in gives France an opportunity to get involved in the war without potentially drawing in the rest of the European powers into a Europe-wide land war. It is in France's interest to keep the war a colonial war without dragging in the rest of Europe, and their interest in the Caribbean gives them the opportunity to do that.

If other European powers are so concerned over who owns the Indian Ocean Territory, they should want to get involved anyway? Especially in the second phase of the war when Cuba and Central America are out of the picture. What sort of logic would lead the other great powers to conclude that, while they would care about Indian Ocean Territory under normal circumstances, they won't when the war technically started over Cuba, even though the Cuban question has already been resolved and the war is entirely indistinguishable from one started by France alone.

People really need to actually think about how real international relations and diplomacy works with what the game might be trying to model, and all of what potential interests a country might have beyond just being strictly about territorial gain.

Indeed they should.

 

[Mengli Giray]

People really need to actually think about how real international relations and diplomacy works with what the game might be trying to model, and all of what potential interests a country might have beyond just being strictly about territorial gain.

The arrogance of saying that while a the same time saying things like these:

If France wanted to defend Cuba, then... they should've defended Cuba better.

In real life, if France had an interest in defending Cuba, it would simply send an expeditionary force to retake the island, not let Central America simply peace out and keep Cuba there, which is the main reason why they theoretically joined the war in the first place.

There was very little in this Diplomatic Play and war that resembled how international relations really work, especially in the game's time period, where Great Powers tended to avoid war against each other for the most part.

 

[The Goldfinch]

Lol "bleeding out", you're acting like France and Britain are just launching everything at each other, completely depleting all of each other's manpower, and fighting an existential conflict

That's how pdx wars look like, it matters little what's the wargoal, is it Curacao or Kent. Do change my mind if you saw some relevant mechanics to limit this behaviour

That's a good thing and an improvement on previous games.

Cute, but no one ever argued that. Obviously Vic3 is big improvement to other titles in certain areas

... Still waiting for historical examples of minor attacking minor causing major Great Powers conflict

 

[wilcoxchar]

That's how pdx wars look like, it matters little what's the wargoal, is it Curacao or Kent. Do change my mind if you saw some relevant mechanics to limit this behaviour


Cute, but no one ever argued that. Obviously Vic3 is big improvement to other titles in certain areas

... Still waiting for historical examples of minor attacking minor causing major Great Powers conflict

Still waiting for the evidence that this is actually a major conflict between great powers since everything presented in the AAR points to the contrary.

 

[FranklyJustNess]

I think the main issue I see is that countries joining a play should mostly care about what they are trying to prevent, not what they are trying to gain. You can always start an offensive play against someone to gain something, but you only have a single shot at preventing the other side from winning - it is now, in this ongoing play.

If Prussia attacks Austria for a state, then what convinces France should be "crap, I don't want them to get stronger" and not "Austria said I can have one state for myself, as a treat". (They might still need some swaying, but the major reason why they can be convinced would be that)

If the focus is on gains then

1. It will be easy to pull nations in as aggressors and minor powers will keep causing major conflicts over "nothing".
2. It might create a mechanic of plays as dogpiles where nations join in, because they can easily win and get something, because there are already multiple major powers involved on their side.

 

[Lord Tataraus]

2) Britain joins the diplomatic play - Why?

Obviously, we can't know exactly why the AI decided to help, but it's not hard to come up with good reasoning.
Central America/Guatemala has been on very friendly terms with GB for the whole game and they are trading partners. GB is (assuming no major political changes) actively anti-slavery and has backed CA's plays against slave nations in the past. CA annexing Cuba would remove a large slave nation from a region of interest.

3) France joins the diplomatic play and demands colonial territory from Britain - It makes some amount of sense that France would want to oppose British interests, so the main issue here stems from the fact that we haven't actually established what the British interests are. Though we know that the British interest has something to do with Central America annexing Cuba, the French main goal is to prevent that (Which they back up by sending divisions). They also want to annex some territory from Britain.

Another point for GB to get interested especially with France in the picture is that GB and France are really the only big players in the Caribbean. With Central America getting involved and already on good terms with GB, France's interests are threatened by a strong local force allied to GB that could completely kick out France in the future. GB maintains strong control by having CA reliant on their assistance and so would remain as an ally and local force to keep GB's interest safe in the Caribbean.

 

[Skales]

Obviously, we can't know exactly why the AI decided to help, but it's not hard to come up with good reasoning.
Central America/Guatemala has been on very friendly terms with GB for the whole game and they are trading partners. GB is (assuming no major political changes) actively anti-slavery and has backed CA's plays against slave nations in the past. CA annexing Cuba would remove a large slave nation from a region of interest.


Another point for GB to get interested especially with France in the picture is that GB and France are really the only big players in the Caribbean. With Central America getting involved and already on good terms with GB, France's interests are threatened by a strong local force allied to GB that could completely kick out France in the future. GB maintains strong control by having CA reliant on their assistance and so would remain as an ally and local force to keep GB's interest safe in the Caribbean.

I have two things to say about this.

First is that if we accept that this is a reasonable explanation (And I believe it is) then we are in agreement that France abandoning its Caribbean allies at the slightest inconvenience is bad, and they should at least receive a war goal to restore the pre-war Cuba (though of course, they could just not go through with it at the final peace negotiations, lots of cases like this).

The second thing I want to talk about however is once again the notion of nations having "friends" and why it is such a flimsy idea. When dealing with politically divided regions empires have two options. The first is to conquer, but if this is unfeasible (as it is in the case of the Caribbean, through some combination of the Monroe Doctrine, the unwillingness of the Metropole population to support such a war, or better targets in China and Africa) they move to the second option, which is to keep the region divided. Why divided? Why not just pick a friendly government and support them, as Britain does with Central America? It's because it puts you on incredibly shaky ground. All it really is a single cabinet shuffle taking out the pro-British ministers from the Central American government, or people just changing their minds or interests, and your cultivated ally could suddenly become a competitor or even ally of the French! If this happens under normal circumstances, and this sort of thing happens all the time. You can just back Cuba, or Panama, or Costa Rica instead, which is why you kept them mostly divided. But you can't do that when you help your "ally" conquer everything with no assurances. Even actual puppet governments are not safe from this sort of internal change (This is one of my long-term pet peeves with Paradox games though, puppet governments are way too loyal).

Though all of this is quite academic and more of an issue I have with the way people often view history and diplomacy (Ah, yes, Central America and Britain are friends, so of course, Britain won't have a problem with Central American conquests...) and I don't expect any of this to be represented in-game properly.

Lastly, I want to mention that realistically speaking, Britain probably isn't having a consistent foreign policy regarding Central America and the Caribbean. Even if we discount changes in the British government as the result of elections. Most of it would probably be vague, contradictory, "don't screw anything up" sort of idea. And in practice, it would depend heavily on the personal disposition of whichever British diplomat serves as the ambassador in the given country.

 

[Froonk]

The second thing I want to talk about however is once again the notion of nations having "friends" and why it is such a flimsy idea.

I agree with your post but I have an issue with this statement. States don't have friends but people have sympathies or even lobbies. Generally states behave in self-interest because collectively the individuals preferences matter less but there has been cases where sympathies of population or establishment have directly or indirectly affected policy.

This idea that states are separate and distinct from people they contain rather than metastructures that include them is rather extreme. It feels like a counterpart to homo economicus as homo realpoliticus.

 

[Anna_Gein]

Apparently you haven't heard of the little known conflict the American Revolutionary War. Where France, the Netherlands, and Spain joined some far away colonial rebellion to take the British Empire down a peg while gaining nothing for themselves.

You never heard of the others treaties of Paris in 1783. Admittedly they are usually called the treaties of Versailles / peace of Versailles.

France, Spain and the United Provinces made little gains, except maybe the first state. Understandably so as the conflict was indecisive outside the North American continent.

I agree with your post but I have an issue with this statement. States don't have friends but people have sympathies or even lobbies. Generally states behave in self-interest because collectively the individuals preferences matter less but there has been cases where sympathies of population or establishment have directly or indirectly affected policy.

This idea that states are separate and distinct from people they contain rather than metastructures that include them is rather extreme. It feels like a counterpart to homo economicus as homo realpoliticus.

I agree wholeheartedly on that.

In addition, honor and loyalty can mean a lot in some societies including in European Early Modern societies. There are countless examples.

It say something about our present societies that such concepts escape many people including highly educated politicians / statesmen and generally speaking, people interested in politic and international relations.

 

[Lord Tataraus]

First is that if we accept that this is a reasonable explanation (And I believe it is) then we are in agreement that France abandoning its Caribbean allies at the slightest inconvenience is bad, and they should at least receive a war goal to restore the pre-war Cuba (though of course, they could just not go through with it at the final peace negotiations, lots of cases like this).

I agree there should be some kind of repercussion, or at least opportunity for France to get an automatic "release ally" wargoal added after the annexation. I think I remember the devs mentioning they were thinking about adding something like that, but I don't remember where.

The second thing I want to talk about however is once again the notion of nations having "friends" and why it is such a flimsy idea.

In fairness, I specifically didn't call them "friends" and used the more flexible and diplomatic term "ally". There are plently of examples of "friendly" nations i.e. nations with historical good relations that may or may not be on-paper allies. Yes, those relations can change over time, but a once ally is better than nothing. I do think that Central America should have built up some kind of diplomatic debt to GB because of their backing in the wars. Even where GB might have gotten enough out of the deal, CA still was dependent on GB's help and should have to pay that back in the future. Maybe not as strong as the obligation mechanic, but something like harsher penalties for rejecting the next diplomatic request GB sends their way.

 

[pheonicia]

I'm more concerned why all of Cuba is one state while hispaniola is two, you could easily split Cuba into a west and east state.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

Still waiting for the evidence that this is actually a major conflict between great powers since everything presented in the AAR points to the contrary.

What everything? It's rather you who should show the slightest proof that a war between GPs is not a "major conflict" as AI not sending large chunk of their forces during a war would be a totally new thing in Paradox historical games if I'm not mistaken.
And even if you somehow manage to prove that, still, GPs fighting "minor" wars with each other for the sake of tiny countries they'd see as their colonies is not historical. Solution here is simple - if a tiny country wants GP's support, they should offer own independence. There I could imagine GP fighting a war to protect/expand their protectorate (or market) . I can also imagine GP intervening if their GP rival is trying to expand somewhere, as this is historical - Crimean war, Moroccan crysis.