Note: There is a quick Tl;dr at the end if you can'T be bothered to read walls of text.
I think I have figured out a rather interesting, if not important, detail of AE that may be the cause of bother to a lot of people (including myself), but wasn't directly mentioned in any of the countless discussion threads yet.
Let's do quick review on the way AE was in the past versions:
1.4:
It's usually agreed upon that AE in 1.4 was close to non-existant, with coalitions forming at best after long, agressive expansion or within the HRE.
We can conclude that 1.4 AE levels were, in general, to low.
1.5:
1.5 saw a major increase in AE. Expanding would often lead to coalitions by neighbour states, especially in the HRE. Personally, 1.5 is still my favourite of the 'vanilla' AE's, though it had it's own problems.
1.5 AE was very straight forward, giving harsh AEs upon conquest to neighbours, quickly causing coalitions to form, surrounding an expansionist player.
1.6:
In 1.6, we received the (as long as I've been playing) largest buff to AE. This was mainly caused by vassalization and PU's being increased from flat 15 AE to an AE scaling along the target's basetax (F.e. resulting in the amusing 300+ AE for winning a succession war over a greater power). Additionally, a 'bug' regarding spread of AE to nations of different religions was fixed, as well as AE spread increased in general. Which led to the unfortunate result that a few annexations would cause enough AE to trigger 'global' (or at the very least continental) coalitions, with many players complaining that nations who should never have even cared suddely coalition'd against them (famous example: Dutch minor expansionist ending up in a war against Ottomans/Muscovy).
Fun fact along the lines, actually the base AE for various actions was halved (though this is compensated for by other modifiers and harsher spread).
The 1.6 AE came under harsh fire because it was a big step up from 1.5, especially when it comes to the wide spread.
1.6.1:
After 'popular demand', Paradox released a quickfix, which reduced the AE spread ratio from 0.75 to 0.5 and added an AE reduction of 50% to vassalization/forcePUs.
Now, next, up, let me describe my persional wish for AE and how, as I think, AE should function:
'Agressive Expansion' is a mechanic intended to limit the growth of expansionists. Since the AI expands much slower then a player, is less opportunistic and even gets AE reductions by up to half, we can safely assume that AE is more of an anti-player mechanic (Actually, the only other coalitions I'Ve ever seen are medium HRE powers blobbing into OPMs. And across my few hundred hours of play I've seen one coalition war that wasn't against me, overall). Before we start raging about Paradox trying to nerf players, I would actually dare to say this is a legit mechanic. We players are extremely AE-watching, in fact we often decimate expansionists BEFORE they accrue AE (Muscovy, anyone?). Since the AI doesn't have the capability to predict the player's actions, it relies on judging the player actions after he has expanded. It's the next best mechanic and it definitely belongs into the game.
So, how is AE implemented? AE reflects an AI's worry about a certain nation's expansion. AE is generated by hostile actions (conquest, fabricating claims, unprovoked CB), causes the forming of coalitions (defensive alliances against a certain aggressive target) and diminishes over time. In gameplay, this means that ruthless expansion will produce AE, leading to coalitions leading to AI's trying to defend against the expansionist, limiting his expansion.
In theory, this is all fine and correct, but in practical gameplay, we have seen a lot of issues with this:
In my oppinion, AE is a reasonable mechanic, but suffers from the complexity that is needed to simulate the aggression properly. Therefore, I would dare to claim that AE must be completely redesigned, coupled with a more complex, dynamic implementation, to turn it from a weird, abstract mechanic into something that makes sense AND fullfills it's gameplay reason. My main issue is that Paradox usually seems to avoid implementing complex solutions, but I hope that with the right quantity and quality of feedback to this we can entice them to actually spend the workhours necessary to fix this issue.
Now, let me introduce you to my own, reworked concept of AE. Which is, naturally, something that will for sure need tweaking, but from which I still believe it would replace the current AE system as a better one anyways. And, please, before throwing 'omg, your idea sucks, X is completely unreasonable' at me, try giving a reasoned argument and change suggestion pleased, I'm very much open for contructive critique.
My new suggested AE-concept:
First of all, static base AE values will never be sufficient to work in a dynamic system. Even in 1.6.1, taking single provinces or annexing nations still causes a static amount of base AE (which is then modified by distance, etcetc). An example of absurdity from 1.5: Taking a province? 20 AE. Annexing a nation? 20 AE. Vassalizing a nation? 15 AE. This means that the whole world always prefers you to completely obliterate and annex an independant state, then taking two provinces, regardless from whom or how valuable the provinces are. This was my main beef with the 1.5 AE system and shows by static base AE's won't cut it.
In 1.6, Paradox now introduced scaled AE to PU's and vassalizations, increasing with the basetax of the target. This is, in fact, a great change, but it was so terribly designed and used that it's glory became it's downfall and forced them to half the AE from these actions in the 1.6.1 hotfix.
The concept of scaling the AE from an action along the value of the target of said action should be a no-brainer. Note that, whilst I will keep talking about basetax as main factor, the actual 'value' of aprovince could as well include factors like ports, trade centers, buildings, etc, just like warscore calculation alraedy does.
For our new AE system, the first step is to make all base AE's dynamic. Taking a province? BT*X=AE. Annexing a nation? BTofAllProvinces*Y=AE. Vassalizing a minor state? BTofAllProvinces*Z=AE.
To add a sense of realism, the values of X, Y and Z should definitely not be equal, not even static!
Annexing a foreign, independant state by war is probably the most threatening and intimidating kind of agressive expansion and should be considered as such. After that, taking provinces forcibly is the next worse, albeit it's naturally 'less agressive' then annexing a full state (given you still didn't destroy an independant government and probably took less territory then with an annexation). And in the end, a vassalization is the 'least aggressive' form of expansion, because you actually don't expand yourself, but just widen your sphere of influence. Actually, vassalization should yield only a fraction of the other option's AE, but additional AE should be incurred upon annexing a vassal, because THAT would be a notable expansion again (even though of the 'diplomatic aggressive' kind).
Another thing that needs to be considered: If two 2PN hit each other and one takes 1 province from the other, that's a notable expansion, threatening the other small nations nearby. If the same 2PN however takes a single border province from France (because France so silly), no other greater power should bat an eye. This means any kind of expansionistic AE must as well be scaled by the size of the target nation. If a big nation loses territory, it should realistically have less of an AE impact then a smaller nation losing the same amount of territory. This will additionally give the player the option of intentionally expanding slowly, only a few BT per war, to gain reduced AE.
Summarizing this paragraph, I want to emphasize how important it is to drop the concept of 'static base AE's and make them fully dynamic. It's just a couple of functions and numbers, don't be that lazy, Paradox, please!
Now, that we have 'fixed' the basic AE values, we need to go over another, very important aspect of AE: Spread.
In 1.5, we had technically good AE values (in my subjective oppinion, but just roll with it for now, please), but they were absurdly static. In 1.6 they became slightly more flexible, but instead we got insane range on AE spread. People only set the forum ablaze on the 1.6 patch, so we can liberally claim that spread is every bit as important as base AE.
Naturally, if a nation spreads, all it's neighbours should be worried, this concept comes natural. However, what always bothered me, is that the spread of AE is much more focussed around culture groups, religion and geographical distance then actual 'political interest'. If there is a large nation A in the west, which is completely focussed on expanding west and overseas and then there is a much smaller nation B in the east, which expands into it's neighbours and then starts bordering A... why would A ever care for the expansion of B as long as it's still much smaller? Nation A never had any interest in the territory to it's east to begin with! In EUIV however, A will hate your guts as equally as any of your neighbours, or even more, if you have the same culture group, because science.
What we need is a system that calculates the AE spread not just based upon distance (or worse, culture/religion), but upon just how much a nation actually cares. For example the ally, protector (guarantuee) or overlord of a target should be really upset, even if he lives on the other side of the planet.
It's more tricky with the enemies of the target, because one side they will be happy you beat up their enemy, on the other hand they will envy you for the territory they originally wanted for themselves. In EUIV, rivals of a target still get the normal AE for their position and a basic positive relations modifier. However, with 1.6 it became clear that the AI actually targets provinces. So why not use that: The enemies of a target get REDUCED AE for the sake of being their enemies, but they get an increase to AE for those territorys taken that they have an own interest in, potentially negating the AE reduction.
Another thing to consider: Your own enemies. We can safely assume that any rival of nation ABC will always be worried about ABC gaining any kind of advantage against the mentioned rival. And expandin, obtaining new territory and ressources, should deinitely fall into that category, so rivals of an expanding nation should get a boost to AE generated and always care for the expansion, even if it's not close to them.
On the other side, we as well got an expansionists allies, subjects, overlords. Naturally, the latter two should not worry about any expansion (unless an expanding vassal is growing in strength to rival it's overlord). Allies should use the same mechanic as 'enemies of the target': Lessened AE per default, but increased AE if the expansion took territory they actually wanted themselves.
The HRE would be another factor to consider. A boost to AE generated by HRE members is already in place, albeit that boost seems to be a bit weird at times (Austria attacking Hungary? BOOSTO. Burgundy eating Liege? Nobody cares). There should, definitely, be a harash AE effect for agressively expanding into the HRE. But it should be independent from where the attack came. An outside attacking should cause just as much HRE-bonus-AE as a prince attacking another.
And, as last mention, everyone in a coalition against an expansionist should, of course, be extra worried.
Another thing to consider is the 'fragile balance of power' that was a major diplomatic focus of the Renaissance era in Europe (and an actual inspiration for the EU series): Big powers like France, England, Austria, etc, were always in quarrels and alliances alike in order to maintain a status quo, which brought stability to Europe as whole. For that reason, Greater Powers should always gain a (additional, if they would already be affected) share of AE when any other Greater Power is expanded against (which means the Greater Power loses territory) and probably gain another boost to AE if the attacker is a Greater Power themselves.
Summarizingly spoken; the political relations between countries should influence the spread of AE much more then they do now, and potentially replace AE spread conditions like culture or religion.
We're not done yet, though. There is another very powerful factor to AE that is even already implemented in the game, but terribly under- and missused: Casus Belli.
Paradox already took this step, albeit in a weird way, by making no-CB declarations cause AE (and WE, and with 1.6 even stabilityhits, because science). But then they add features like 'enforce military rights', but don't give players any actual way to gain a CB for this purpouse. Which means, to gain military access by force, you need to fabricate a claim or find any other weird war justification just to demand something completely besides the point of the CB. This IS absurdely unrealistic and CB's have probably one of the most exploited and gamey aspect of the game overall.
To fix this, I would suggest dramatically changing how CB's work: Declaring war, without a CB should not have any weird consequences by itself! No-CB-DoW's are a legit tool to declare war if you just can't find a different reason, but need to achieve a goal that actually might justify the DoW in reverse. HOWEVER, declaring war without any reason and then doing expansion things should incur MASSIVE AE, because that's exactly what 'arbitraty, tyranical conquest' is. Let players DoW for no reason. Let the war have no wargoal, or even a -15% 'Unjustified war' modifier to warscore. Additionally, consider the war goal reached the instant the war was started (causing 'call for peace' to trigger much sooner). This is all it takes to make it into a situational, but legit option to the player with it's own drawbacks. However, any kind of demand at the end of the war should be accompanied by an increased AE and ALL options should carry an AE cost, even simple things as demanding money or access rights.
Technically the next two things don't relate to an AE rework, but will be necessary due to the other changes to CB's: As well add a new 'Enforce Access' CB that is gained for 1 month if a request for military access is refused. Rather simple: Demand access. If they don't yield, DoW them for it. Brute, but realistic. The wargoal should be something simple, probably superiority, and as peace deal, only access rights can be taken without AE. Another good CB would be 'Rivalship'. If you have a rival, you should always have the CB to attack him 'for the sake of diminishing our rival'S threat to our own nation'. Slap notable AE for expansion on it (albeit 150-200% would be fully sufficient), no AE for money or concede and you got another legit CB that can hardly by exploited.
Now, rework all other CB's to give AE for any kind of peace deal that is not part of the original CB. Cancelled Loan CB? Okay, you can take money (and really, for this CB you should be able to demand as much money as the loan was worth, even it causes the targeted nation to go bankrupt) and maybe even trade for low AE, but any kind of expansion causes massive AE. Dishonored call to arms? (Hell, this is, imo, one of the most absurd CB's in first place, but blargh) Same. Conquest CB? Here you can actually take provinces and expand for NORMAL AE. Likewise the Holy War AE should work. Cleansing of Hereesy however, should permit to force a religion switch for 100% warscore (and damnit, if we completely conquer a naton, let us flip their religion!), but again yield high AE for anything else. Likewise for revoke Electorate or Force Government change.
As well, vassalizing via a subjugation CB (which should as well be gained if you demand vassalization on a much smaller neighbour and the demand is refused) naturally reduced the AE generation for vassalization and ESPECIALLY towards the new vassal. Likewise PU CB's should notable reduce the AE (to something like 20% perhaps) created, and yet again further scale it down for the new PU partner.
By streamlining and funneling the CB's to actually only do what they are supposed to do, AE will gain a completely new meaning and importance. As well, it will naturally make expansion more reasonable (Annexing Ireland because of a cancelled loan without any notable AE is just wrong and makes the AI appear as stupid as it actually is).
To represent realism, it would be really important to have CB's show more effect. France got 'legit' claims on Burgundy? That's a reason for expansion. Burgundy owns France money? Well, ok, if they refuse to pay France should have the right to make them pay, but not to suddenly conquest their territory.
As well, I should mention that this is the only point where I actually see a reason to link AE spread to religion: CB's like Holy War or Cleansing of Heresy should yield reduced AE for nations with the same religion as the attacker and increased AE for nations with the same religion as the target. Because THAT actually makes sense (and will as well make using those CB's much more interesting and less 'lol, I can DOW you all!' style).
Lastly, I would like to suggest a modification to the current, static AE decay. Naturally, the decay is another notable balancing factor for AE. A high decay makes even harsh AE generation pointless, whilst a slow AE decay forces a player to play a boring peace game after even slow expansions.
So, the most reasonable approach that was agreed upon in this thread would be a DYNAMIC AE decay:
Whenever you declare a(n offensive) war, your AE decay is reset to 0 (or a low value clearly lower then the current static 2). Whenever you are at peace, the decay increases by 0.x points per month. This means staying at peace for a prolonged amount of time will progressively clear you of AE faster and faster, preventing any kind of '50 years of peace periods'. On the other side, leading constant wards will prevent you from losing any AE, forcing players to go for the occasional break period, or deal with the rising coalitions in their ongoing conquest.
Now, let me summarize my proposed changes in a big
Tl;dr: Fix the AE!
Main proposal
Core:
- AE linked to total value of conquered/acquired provinces/vassal
Modifiers:
- Type of acquisition: Annexation gives more AE than Conquest which gives more AE than Vassalization
- Size of defeated country in case of conquest: Taking province from small country gives more AE than taking province from large country
- Relations with 3th party: Your rivals / target / allies of target / province contenders (countries that also have claim/core) receives more AE than neutral countries, who receives more AE than your allies / rivals of target
- Any aggression against the HRE should naturally spread (partially) to all HRE members, regardless whether the attack came from outside or inside
Extra:
- Distance of AE spread reduced but interested parties like rivals receive full hit, no matter the distance
- Culture has little to no influence, as they will already receive high AE due to proximity with target
- Religion has little to no influence except for Holy Wars/Crusaders/Cleaning of Heresy
- Rework of all CB's to punish non-wargoal demands (like provinces without claim or core and vassalization without mission)
Suggestions discussed in the thread
Size of attacking country:
- Big countries getting more AE when attacking another country because they're greedy/bully/dangerous
- Small countries getting more AE when conquering because they grow big (e.g. +50% size in one war)
--> First one might be too punishing for late-game conquest, last one might be too punishing for early-game conquest
Size of bystander country (other country than attacking or defending):
- Large bystanders compared to attacker getting less AE because why should they care?
- Small bystanders compared to attacker getting more AE because they are threathened.
Reduced/dynamic decay: Reduce current levels and make it dynamic. The longer at peace, the faster the decay.
Balance of power for great powers: Great powers prefer status quo in power and will 'punish' all countries that rise too fast (France eating Burgundy would be an example) or take territory from another Greater Power, no matter the alliance --> Roughly what the rival system does.
Religion-based AE: Ottomans and other Muslims should get increased AE for Castillian conquest in Morocco, but the Pope and other Catholics should get reduced AE.
Multiple religion/region-based coalitions instead of a single coalition against a target: It's not logical that Ming and Poland join against Russia. Ming + Japan + other asian countries make one coalition while Poland + Sweden + other European nations make other coalition. More 'Federation'-like.
Coalition leader: Coalitions have a real leader instead of the first nation that created the coalition or the nation that declared war.
Colonial overlords: Colonial Overlords should get same AE as Colonial Nations because it is an interested party.
Dynamic AE decay: AE should decay faster, the longer a nation is at peace, and in reverse only slow (or even not!) decay whilst the nation leads offensive wars.
Now, for some numbers and theorycrafting. Of course, neither me nor Paradox can actually create good numbers without proper testing, but I'll just try my best to give you numerical examples.
Let's assume taking a province incurs a base AE of 2+BT/2. So, ~9AE for Paris, but only 3 for the far distant, poor Honulululutrololo African island. If we now take both these provinces in a peace deal against France (and please don't ask me why they named their African colony like that), that's 12 base AE.
If France would only consist of those two provinces and we would annex them, it should cause a bonus flat amount of AE and a %tual increase. F.e. base AE*1.5 + 10. In this case, annexing the ~14BT of France would cause 28 AE. Vassalizing them would merely gain +5 +25% and additional split the AE into half. We would gain 10 AE upon the vassalization and further 10 AE once we annex them.
Assuming France isn't some weird global 2-province nation, let's assume we just take those two provinces from a really BBB. This would incur less AE, because, seriously, who cares if France loses 1% of it's BT? An exmaple calculation could be that, if the taken BT is smaller then 20% of the nation'S total BT, the AE is reduced by 3% for every 1% below that line. So, in this case, since France loses 1% of it's basetax, that's 19% below the line and would cause 57% less AE. This means big nations can more easily smack each other around without triggering unreasonable coalitions (Because, SERIOUSLY! Who the france cares if France and Burgundy's borders go back and forth in a few years?!). Alternatively, you could intentionally only take thoe two provinces to gain the reduced AE and avoid coalitions.
For simplicity's sake, lets assume that, after all these modifications, the base AE is 12.
Now, since France would be reasonable unhappy about your expansion into their territory, they gain 2*base AE = 24.
Assuming you are a powerful nation such as superblob Ulm, you will now cause 12 AE to all neighbours of yours and everyone that is somehow interested in either you or France. F.e. your neighbour Bigblobansbach. You two are allied, so Ansbach only gains 50% of the base AE, giving them 6. Your rival neighbour Austria, however, gains 50% more AE because they are your rival.
Even worse, another neighbour is Italia, who are not only your rival, but as well France's ally. This gives them +50%AE +50% AE for a total of 24. Then there's your neighbour Liege. Technically nobody ever cares for Liege except Burgundy, but in this case they will gain AE as well. However, they are indifferent to you (good diplomats working right there), have France as rival though (because the new rival system does these things). Accordingly they earn -50% = 6 AE.
France got another ally, namely OPM Russia. And whilst Russia is currently in Japan and completely desolate (and didn't even join the war), they will receive AE as well, albeit not being remotely close to you, but because they care for France. Since they are remote, they technically gain 0 AE, but with the +50% of 'being ally of target' this is increased to 6.
Now we got a special case for Burgundy, though. Burgundy is the rival of both you and France. So at first glance they gain +50% -50% AE. BUT they have a claim on Paris and want that province for themselves. Therefore, the AE gained from the conquest of paris specifically is increased, let's say by 33%. Paris made up 9 AE, so this gain Burgundy an additional 3 AE. This makes 15 AE in total.
As well, we will now assume that everybody likes to gossip about recent conquests. Accordingly EVERYONE (who didn't yet gain AE) neighbouring ANY of the countries who have just gained ANY AE, will now receive a part of the AE (f.e. ~33%), too (note that neighbours of these 'second wave AE-gainers' are not affected, this doesn't spread as a chain).
In total, this means your little conquest has caused a resonable AE, spread around the nerby states. But it's not exactly a big, threatening tyrannic thing that would require the NATO to act. It's just a bit expansion that will make France and it's allies look at you much more closely.
See? Taking provinces from France as Ulm is really that simple with the new system. It appers much simpler, yet provides more dynamic modifiers and is probably more realistic (if we just ignore the part about Bigblobansbach for now, because we all know Ulm eats Ansbach for breakfast). And, another important point: It's easy to understand and transparent.
As mentioned before, the numbers used for the examples are just numbers, not doctrins you must obey or resist to. In the end, even gaining 1000 AE per province would be legit if the AE influence on relations is cut down by a factor of 100 and coalitions only form at 50000 AE. It's a number puzzle only testing and rebalancing can figure out, so don't eat your hair if you don't like some of these values ^^
As a closing word:
Thanks for reading this long text (or at the very least reading the TlDr... no? Well, then probably thanks for reading THIS line).
Any kind of comment is appreciated for the sake of keeping this thread active until a reasonable and powerful member of Paradox sees this and then decides to bash it into the next patch (Well, hope dies last. Like the three mountains.)
As well, any kind of no-flaming, constructive critique is highly welcomed, after all it would be arrogant to assume I've just created a perfect solution after merely a few hours of design and thought. There are errors and I will love you for every of them you can find and point out for fixing.
edit1: After a hint from Sophotrates, I went through some math and realized that the 'less AE if conquering parts of large nation' would affect medium nations along 40 BT wrong. Tweaked the numbers.
edit2: Freudia pointed out a tricky missformulation that led to confusion, fixed. As well the suggestion came up that large nations should care less about the expansion of smaller nations, I'm working on that, any suggestions welcomed.
edit3: Freudia as well suggested that Greater Powers are more careful when it comes to other Greater Powers being attacked. Whilst this seems weird at first glance (because usually they all rival each other sooner or later), that mechanic would be an accurate presentation of the actual real diplomay that was going on at that time. Added.
edit4: Added HRE AE and dynamic AE decay
I think I have figured out a rather interesting, if not important, detail of AE that may be the cause of bother to a lot of people (including myself), but wasn't directly mentioned in any of the countless discussion threads yet.
Let's do quick review on the way AE was in the past versions:
1.4:
It's usually agreed upon that AE in 1.4 was close to non-existant, with coalitions forming at best after long, agressive expansion or within the HRE.
We can conclude that 1.4 AE levels were, in general, to low.
1.5:
1.5 saw a major increase in AE. Expanding would often lead to coalitions by neighbour states, especially in the HRE. Personally, 1.5 is still my favourite of the 'vanilla' AE's, though it had it's own problems.
1.5 AE was very straight forward, giving harsh AEs upon conquest to neighbours, quickly causing coalitions to form, surrounding an expansionist player.
1.6:
In 1.6, we received the (as long as I've been playing) largest buff to AE. This was mainly caused by vassalization and PU's being increased from flat 15 AE to an AE scaling along the target's basetax (F.e. resulting in the amusing 300+ AE for winning a succession war over a greater power). Additionally, a 'bug' regarding spread of AE to nations of different religions was fixed, as well as AE spread increased in general. Which led to the unfortunate result that a few annexations would cause enough AE to trigger 'global' (or at the very least continental) coalitions, with many players complaining that nations who should never have even cared suddely coalition'd against them (famous example: Dutch minor expansionist ending up in a war against Ottomans/Muscovy).
Fun fact along the lines, actually the base AE for various actions was halved (though this is compensated for by other modifiers and harsher spread).
The 1.6 AE came under harsh fire because it was a big step up from 1.5, especially when it comes to the wide spread.
1.6.1:
After 'popular demand', Paradox released a quickfix, which reduced the AE spread ratio from 0.75 to 0.5 and added an AE reduction of 50% to vassalization/forcePUs.
Now, next, up, let me describe my persional wish for AE and how, as I think, AE should function:
'Agressive Expansion' is a mechanic intended to limit the growth of expansionists. Since the AI expands much slower then a player, is less opportunistic and even gets AE reductions by up to half, we can safely assume that AE is more of an anti-player mechanic (Actually, the only other coalitions I'Ve ever seen are medium HRE powers blobbing into OPMs. And across my few hundred hours of play I've seen one coalition war that wasn't against me, overall). Before we start raging about Paradox trying to nerf players, I would actually dare to say this is a legit mechanic. We players are extremely AE-watching, in fact we often decimate expansionists BEFORE they accrue AE (Muscovy, anyone?). Since the AI doesn't have the capability to predict the player's actions, it relies on judging the player actions after he has expanded. It's the next best mechanic and it definitely belongs into the game.
So, how is AE implemented? AE reflects an AI's worry about a certain nation's expansion. AE is generated by hostile actions (conquest, fabricating claims, unprovoked CB), causes the forming of coalitions (defensive alliances against a certain aggressive target) and diminishes over time. In gameplay, this means that ruthless expansion will produce AE, leading to coalitions leading to AI's trying to defend against the expansionist, limiting his expansion.
In theory, this is all fine and correct, but in practical gameplay, we have seen a lot of issues with this:
- In 1.5, coalitions would usually only form from neighbours. Other religions would completely ignore your conquests all together. Heck, you could even beat a minor nation and it's big ally, annexing the minor without too much AE on the big ally himself.
- In 1.6, any kind of AE would spread extremely wide, causing completely absurd effects like a minor nation conquering 1-2 provinces triggering a coalition in which most major powers of the world were united.
- In 1.6.1, forcePU's still cause absurd amounts of AE, whilst continous conquests isn't closely as AE-generating as 1.5 anymore. Instead of coalitions forming as local solution to expansion, they usually form late, but then on a very wide scale.
In my oppinion, AE is a reasonable mechanic, but suffers from the complexity that is needed to simulate the aggression properly. Therefore, I would dare to claim that AE must be completely redesigned, coupled with a more complex, dynamic implementation, to turn it from a weird, abstract mechanic into something that makes sense AND fullfills it's gameplay reason. My main issue is that Paradox usually seems to avoid implementing complex solutions, but I hope that with the right quantity and quality of feedback to this we can entice them to actually spend the workhours necessary to fix this issue.
Now, let me introduce you to my own, reworked concept of AE. Which is, naturally, something that will for sure need tweaking, but from which I still believe it would replace the current AE system as a better one anyways. And, please, before throwing 'omg, your idea sucks, X is completely unreasonable' at me, try giving a reasoned argument and change suggestion pleased, I'm very much open for contructive critique.
My new suggested AE-concept:
First of all, static base AE values will never be sufficient to work in a dynamic system. Even in 1.6.1, taking single provinces or annexing nations still causes a static amount of base AE (which is then modified by distance, etcetc). An example of absurdity from 1.5: Taking a province? 20 AE. Annexing a nation? 20 AE. Vassalizing a nation? 15 AE. This means that the whole world always prefers you to completely obliterate and annex an independant state, then taking two provinces, regardless from whom or how valuable the provinces are. This was my main beef with the 1.5 AE system and shows by static base AE's won't cut it.
In 1.6, Paradox now introduced scaled AE to PU's and vassalizations, increasing with the basetax of the target. This is, in fact, a great change, but it was so terribly designed and used that it's glory became it's downfall and forced them to half the AE from these actions in the 1.6.1 hotfix.
The concept of scaling the AE from an action along the value of the target of said action should be a no-brainer. Note that, whilst I will keep talking about basetax as main factor, the actual 'value' of aprovince could as well include factors like ports, trade centers, buildings, etc, just like warscore calculation alraedy does.
For our new AE system, the first step is to make all base AE's dynamic. Taking a province? BT*X=AE. Annexing a nation? BTofAllProvinces*Y=AE. Vassalizing a minor state? BTofAllProvinces*Z=AE.
To add a sense of realism, the values of X, Y and Z should definitely not be equal, not even static!
Annexing a foreign, independant state by war is probably the most threatening and intimidating kind of agressive expansion and should be considered as such. After that, taking provinces forcibly is the next worse, albeit it's naturally 'less agressive' then annexing a full state (given you still didn't destroy an independant government and probably took less territory then with an annexation). And in the end, a vassalization is the 'least aggressive' form of expansion, because you actually don't expand yourself, but just widen your sphere of influence. Actually, vassalization should yield only a fraction of the other option's AE, but additional AE should be incurred upon annexing a vassal, because THAT would be a notable expansion again (even though of the 'diplomatic aggressive' kind).
Another thing that needs to be considered: If two 2PN hit each other and one takes 1 province from the other, that's a notable expansion, threatening the other small nations nearby. If the same 2PN however takes a single border province from France (because France so silly), no other greater power should bat an eye. This means any kind of expansionistic AE must as well be scaled by the size of the target nation. If a big nation loses territory, it should realistically have less of an AE impact then a smaller nation losing the same amount of territory. This will additionally give the player the option of intentionally expanding slowly, only a few BT per war, to gain reduced AE.
Summarizing this paragraph, I want to emphasize how important it is to drop the concept of 'static base AE's and make them fully dynamic. It's just a couple of functions and numbers, don't be that lazy, Paradox, please!
Now, that we have 'fixed' the basic AE values, we need to go over another, very important aspect of AE: Spread.
In 1.5, we had technically good AE values (in my subjective oppinion, but just roll with it for now, please), but they were absurdly static. In 1.6 they became slightly more flexible, but instead we got insane range on AE spread. People only set the forum ablaze on the 1.6 patch, so we can liberally claim that spread is every bit as important as base AE.
Naturally, if a nation spreads, all it's neighbours should be worried, this concept comes natural. However, what always bothered me, is that the spread of AE is much more focussed around culture groups, religion and geographical distance then actual 'political interest'. If there is a large nation A in the west, which is completely focussed on expanding west and overseas and then there is a much smaller nation B in the east, which expands into it's neighbours and then starts bordering A... why would A ever care for the expansion of B as long as it's still much smaller? Nation A never had any interest in the territory to it's east to begin with! In EUIV however, A will hate your guts as equally as any of your neighbours, or even more, if you have the same culture group, because science.
What we need is a system that calculates the AE spread not just based upon distance (or worse, culture/religion), but upon just how much a nation actually cares. For example the ally, protector (guarantuee) or overlord of a target should be really upset, even if he lives on the other side of the planet.
It's more tricky with the enemies of the target, because one side they will be happy you beat up their enemy, on the other hand they will envy you for the territory they originally wanted for themselves. In EUIV, rivals of a target still get the normal AE for their position and a basic positive relations modifier. However, with 1.6 it became clear that the AI actually targets provinces. So why not use that: The enemies of a target get REDUCED AE for the sake of being their enemies, but they get an increase to AE for those territorys taken that they have an own interest in, potentially negating the AE reduction.
Another thing to consider: Your own enemies. We can safely assume that any rival of nation ABC will always be worried about ABC gaining any kind of advantage against the mentioned rival. And expandin, obtaining new territory and ressources, should deinitely fall into that category, so rivals of an expanding nation should get a boost to AE generated and always care for the expansion, even if it's not close to them.
On the other side, we as well got an expansionists allies, subjects, overlords. Naturally, the latter two should not worry about any expansion (unless an expanding vassal is growing in strength to rival it's overlord). Allies should use the same mechanic as 'enemies of the target': Lessened AE per default, but increased AE if the expansion took territory they actually wanted themselves.
The HRE would be another factor to consider. A boost to AE generated by HRE members is already in place, albeit that boost seems to be a bit weird at times (Austria attacking Hungary? BOOSTO. Burgundy eating Liege? Nobody cares). There should, definitely, be a harash AE effect for agressively expanding into the HRE. But it should be independent from where the attack came. An outside attacking should cause just as much HRE-bonus-AE as a prince attacking another.
And, as last mention, everyone in a coalition against an expansionist should, of course, be extra worried.
Another thing to consider is the 'fragile balance of power' that was a major diplomatic focus of the Renaissance era in Europe (and an actual inspiration for the EU series): Big powers like France, England, Austria, etc, were always in quarrels and alliances alike in order to maintain a status quo, which brought stability to Europe as whole. For that reason, Greater Powers should always gain a (additional, if they would already be affected) share of AE when any other Greater Power is expanded against (which means the Greater Power loses territory) and probably gain another boost to AE if the attacker is a Greater Power themselves.
Summarizingly spoken; the political relations between countries should influence the spread of AE much more then they do now, and potentially replace AE spread conditions like culture or religion.
We're not done yet, though. There is another very powerful factor to AE that is even already implemented in the game, but terribly under- and missused: Casus Belli.
Paradox already took this step, albeit in a weird way, by making no-CB declarations cause AE (and WE, and with 1.6 even stabilityhits, because science). But then they add features like 'enforce military rights', but don't give players any actual way to gain a CB for this purpouse. Which means, to gain military access by force, you need to fabricate a claim or find any other weird war justification just to demand something completely besides the point of the CB. This IS absurdely unrealistic and CB's have probably one of the most exploited and gamey aspect of the game overall.
To fix this, I would suggest dramatically changing how CB's work: Declaring war, without a CB should not have any weird consequences by itself! No-CB-DoW's are a legit tool to declare war if you just can't find a different reason, but need to achieve a goal that actually might justify the DoW in reverse. HOWEVER, declaring war without any reason and then doing expansion things should incur MASSIVE AE, because that's exactly what 'arbitraty, tyranical conquest' is. Let players DoW for no reason. Let the war have no wargoal, or even a -15% 'Unjustified war' modifier to warscore. Additionally, consider the war goal reached the instant the war was started (causing 'call for peace' to trigger much sooner). This is all it takes to make it into a situational, but legit option to the player with it's own drawbacks. However, any kind of demand at the end of the war should be accompanied by an increased AE and ALL options should carry an AE cost, even simple things as demanding money or access rights.
Technically the next two things don't relate to an AE rework, but will be necessary due to the other changes to CB's: As well add a new 'Enforce Access' CB that is gained for 1 month if a request for military access is refused. Rather simple: Demand access. If they don't yield, DoW them for it. Brute, but realistic. The wargoal should be something simple, probably superiority, and as peace deal, only access rights can be taken without AE. Another good CB would be 'Rivalship'. If you have a rival, you should always have the CB to attack him 'for the sake of diminishing our rival'S threat to our own nation'. Slap notable AE for expansion on it (albeit 150-200% would be fully sufficient), no AE for money or concede and you got another legit CB that can hardly by exploited.
Now, rework all other CB's to give AE for any kind of peace deal that is not part of the original CB. Cancelled Loan CB? Okay, you can take money (and really, for this CB you should be able to demand as much money as the loan was worth, even it causes the targeted nation to go bankrupt) and maybe even trade for low AE, but any kind of expansion causes massive AE. Dishonored call to arms? (Hell, this is, imo, one of the most absurd CB's in first place, but blargh) Same. Conquest CB? Here you can actually take provinces and expand for NORMAL AE. Likewise the Holy War AE should work. Cleansing of Hereesy however, should permit to force a religion switch for 100% warscore (and damnit, if we completely conquer a naton, let us flip their religion!), but again yield high AE for anything else. Likewise for revoke Electorate or Force Government change.
As well, vassalizing via a subjugation CB (which should as well be gained if you demand vassalization on a much smaller neighbour and the demand is refused) naturally reduced the AE generation for vassalization and ESPECIALLY towards the new vassal. Likewise PU CB's should notable reduce the AE (to something like 20% perhaps) created, and yet again further scale it down for the new PU partner.
By streamlining and funneling the CB's to actually only do what they are supposed to do, AE will gain a completely new meaning and importance. As well, it will naturally make expansion more reasonable (Annexing Ireland because of a cancelled loan without any notable AE is just wrong and makes the AI appear as stupid as it actually is).
To represent realism, it would be really important to have CB's show more effect. France got 'legit' claims on Burgundy? That's a reason for expansion. Burgundy owns France money? Well, ok, if they refuse to pay France should have the right to make them pay, but not to suddenly conquest their territory.
As well, I should mention that this is the only point where I actually see a reason to link AE spread to religion: CB's like Holy War or Cleansing of Heresy should yield reduced AE for nations with the same religion as the attacker and increased AE for nations with the same religion as the target. Because THAT actually makes sense (and will as well make using those CB's much more interesting and less 'lol, I can DOW you all!' style).
Lastly, I would like to suggest a modification to the current, static AE decay. Naturally, the decay is another notable balancing factor for AE. A high decay makes even harsh AE generation pointless, whilst a slow AE decay forces a player to play a boring peace game after even slow expansions.
So, the most reasonable approach that was agreed upon in this thread would be a DYNAMIC AE decay:
Whenever you declare a(n offensive) war, your AE decay is reset to 0 (or a low value clearly lower then the current static 2). Whenever you are at peace, the decay increases by 0.x points per month. This means staying at peace for a prolonged amount of time will progressively clear you of AE faster and faster, preventing any kind of '50 years of peace periods'. On the other side, leading constant wards will prevent you from losing any AE, forcing players to go for the occasional break period, or deal with the rising coalitions in their ongoing conquest.
Now, let me summarize my proposed changes in a big
Tl;dr: Fix the AE!
Main proposal
Core:
- AE linked to total value of conquered/acquired provinces/vassal
Modifiers:
- Type of acquisition: Annexation gives more AE than Conquest which gives more AE than Vassalization
- Size of defeated country in case of conquest: Taking province from small country gives more AE than taking province from large country
- Relations with 3th party: Your rivals / target / allies of target / province contenders (countries that also have claim/core) receives more AE than neutral countries, who receives more AE than your allies / rivals of target
- Any aggression against the HRE should naturally spread (partially) to all HRE members, regardless whether the attack came from outside or inside
Extra:
- Distance of AE spread reduced but interested parties like rivals receive full hit, no matter the distance
- Culture has little to no influence, as they will already receive high AE due to proximity with target
- Religion has little to no influence except for Holy Wars/Crusaders/Cleaning of Heresy
- Rework of all CB's to punish non-wargoal demands (like provinces without claim or core and vassalization without mission)
Suggestions discussed in the thread
Size of attacking country:
- Big countries getting more AE when attacking another country because they're greedy/bully/dangerous
- Small countries getting more AE when conquering because they grow big (e.g. +50% size in one war)
--> First one might be too punishing for late-game conquest, last one might be too punishing for early-game conquest
Size of bystander country (other country than attacking or defending):
- Large bystanders compared to attacker getting less AE because why should they care?
- Small bystanders compared to attacker getting more AE because they are threathened.
Reduced/dynamic decay: Reduce current levels and make it dynamic. The longer at peace, the faster the decay.
Balance of power for great powers: Great powers prefer status quo in power and will 'punish' all countries that rise too fast (France eating Burgundy would be an example) or take territory from another Greater Power, no matter the alliance --> Roughly what the rival system does.
Religion-based AE: Ottomans and other Muslims should get increased AE for Castillian conquest in Morocco, but the Pope and other Catholics should get reduced AE.
Multiple religion/region-based coalitions instead of a single coalition against a target: It's not logical that Ming and Poland join against Russia. Ming + Japan + other asian countries make one coalition while Poland + Sweden + other European nations make other coalition. More 'Federation'-like.
Coalition leader: Coalitions have a real leader instead of the first nation that created the coalition or the nation that declared war.
Colonial overlords: Colonial Overlords should get same AE as Colonial Nations because it is an interested party.
Dynamic AE decay: AE should decay faster, the longer a nation is at peace, and in reverse only slow (or even not!) decay whilst the nation leads offensive wars.
Now, for some numbers and theorycrafting. Of course, neither me nor Paradox can actually create good numbers without proper testing, but I'll just try my best to give you numerical examples.
Let's assume taking a province incurs a base AE of 2+BT/2. So, ~9AE for Paris, but only 3 for the far distant, poor Honulululutrololo African island. If we now take both these provinces in a peace deal against France (and please don't ask me why they named their African colony like that), that's 12 base AE.
If France would only consist of those two provinces and we would annex them, it should cause a bonus flat amount of AE and a %tual increase. F.e. base AE*1.5 + 10. In this case, annexing the ~14BT of France would cause 28 AE. Vassalizing them would merely gain +5 +25% and additional split the AE into half. We would gain 10 AE upon the vassalization and further 10 AE once we annex them.
Assuming France isn't some weird global 2-province nation, let's assume we just take those two provinces from a really BBB. This would incur less AE, because, seriously, who cares if France loses 1% of it's BT? An exmaple calculation could be that, if the taken BT is smaller then 20% of the nation'S total BT, the AE is reduced by 3% for every 1% below that line. So, in this case, since France loses 1% of it's basetax, that's 19% below the line and would cause 57% less AE. This means big nations can more easily smack each other around without triggering unreasonable coalitions (Because, SERIOUSLY! Who the france cares if France and Burgundy's borders go back and forth in a few years?!). Alternatively, you could intentionally only take thoe two provinces to gain the reduced AE and avoid coalitions.
For simplicity's sake, lets assume that, after all these modifications, the base AE is 12.
Now, since France would be reasonable unhappy about your expansion into their territory, they gain 2*base AE = 24.
Assuming you are a powerful nation such as superblob Ulm, you will now cause 12 AE to all neighbours of yours and everyone that is somehow interested in either you or France. F.e. your neighbour Bigblobansbach. You two are allied, so Ansbach only gains 50% of the base AE, giving them 6. Your rival neighbour Austria, however, gains 50% more AE because they are your rival.
Even worse, another neighbour is Italia, who are not only your rival, but as well France's ally. This gives them +50%AE +50% AE for a total of 24. Then there's your neighbour Liege. Technically nobody ever cares for Liege except Burgundy, but in this case they will gain AE as well. However, they are indifferent to you (good diplomats working right there), have France as rival though (because the new rival system does these things). Accordingly they earn -50% = 6 AE.
France got another ally, namely OPM Russia. And whilst Russia is currently in Japan and completely desolate (and didn't even join the war), they will receive AE as well, albeit not being remotely close to you, but because they care for France. Since they are remote, they technically gain 0 AE, but with the +50% of 'being ally of target' this is increased to 6.
Now we got a special case for Burgundy, though. Burgundy is the rival of both you and France. So at first glance they gain +50% -50% AE. BUT they have a claim on Paris and want that province for themselves. Therefore, the AE gained from the conquest of paris specifically is increased, let's say by 33%. Paris made up 9 AE, so this gain Burgundy an additional 3 AE. This makes 15 AE in total.
As well, we will now assume that everybody likes to gossip about recent conquests. Accordingly EVERYONE (who didn't yet gain AE) neighbouring ANY of the countries who have just gained ANY AE, will now receive a part of the AE (f.e. ~33%), too (note that neighbours of these 'second wave AE-gainers' are not affected, this doesn't spread as a chain).
In total, this means your little conquest has caused a resonable AE, spread around the nerby states. But it's not exactly a big, threatening tyrannic thing that would require the NATO to act. It's just a bit expansion that will make France and it's allies look at you much more closely.
See? Taking provinces from France as Ulm is really that simple with the new system. It appers much simpler, yet provides more dynamic modifiers and is probably more realistic (if we just ignore the part about Bigblobansbach for now, because we all know Ulm eats Ansbach for breakfast). And, another important point: It's easy to understand and transparent.
As mentioned before, the numbers used for the examples are just numbers, not doctrins you must obey or resist to. In the end, even gaining 1000 AE per province would be legit if the AE influence on relations is cut down by a factor of 100 and coalitions only form at 50000 AE. It's a number puzzle only testing and rebalancing can figure out, so don't eat your hair if you don't like some of these values ^^
As a closing word:
Thanks for reading this long text (or at the very least reading the TlDr... no? Well, then probably thanks for reading THIS line).
Any kind of comment is appreciated for the sake of keeping this thread active until a reasonable and powerful member of Paradox sees this and then decides to bash it into the next patch (Well, hope dies last. Like the three mountains.)
As well, any kind of no-flaming, constructive critique is highly welcomed, after all it would be arrogant to assume I've just created a perfect solution after merely a few hours of design and thought. There are errors and I will love you for every of them you can find and point out for fixing.
edit1: After a hint from Sophotrates, I went through some math and realized that the 'less AE if conquering parts of large nation' would affect medium nations along 40 BT wrong. Tweaked the numbers.
edit2: Freudia pointed out a tricky missformulation that led to confusion, fixed. As well the suggestion came up that large nations should care less about the expansion of smaller nations, I'm working on that, any suggestions welcomed.
edit3: Freudia as well suggested that Greater Powers are more careful when it comes to other Greater Powers being attacked. Whilst this seems weird at first glance (because usually they all rival each other sooner or later), that mechanic would be an accurate presentation of the actual real diplomay that was going on at that time. Added.
edit4: Added HRE AE and dynamic AE decay
Last edited:
