AE - A literate and exhaustive rework suggestion

[yahiko]

This is actually a good question. Is it more threatening if a big guy grows a small bit, or if a small guy grows a big bit?
If you penalize big nation expansion by giving it more AE, that actually means that smaller players will have less trouble expanding, which might make it too easy for them.
On the other hand, if you suggest that big nations get more AE, it means that at some point any empire will stall, because even the slightest conquest will trigger massive AE (Russia, f.e.).

My point was to suggest that the bigger a nation grows, the more AE it gets.
Beyond a given size considered as acceptable for other nations, a big nation should face massive coalitions, whatever the size of a target country.

 

[Alblaka]

My point was to suggest that the bigger a nation grows, the more AE it gets.
Beyond a given size considered as acceptable for other nations, a big nation should face massive coalitions, whatever the size of a target country.

We must be careful not to go the Paradox router here, though: AE DOES already limit and punish expansion. For a nation to grow as large as you mentioned, it must alrady have led conquests and accordingly racked up a lot of AE.
It's bad design to say 'We give you more AE because you have a lot of AE'. (Which is what Paradox did with multiple layers of OE, increased coring costs, increase nationalism, etc)

I'm currently rolling with the assumption that, with a proper AE system, a superblob would obtain enough AE during it's growing phase' that it actually gains the coalitions you mention 'along the way'.

 

[yahiko]

We must be careful not to go the Paradox router here, though: AE DOES already limit and punish expansion. For a nation to grow as large as you mentioned, it must alrady have led conquests and accordingly racked up a lot of AE.
It's bad design to say 'We give you more AE because you have a lot of AE'. (Which is what Paradox did with multiple layers of OE, increased coring costs, increase nationalism, etc)

I'm currently rolling with the assumption that, with a proper AE system, a superblob would obtain enough AE during it's growing phase' that it actually gains the coalitions you mention 'along the way'.

Your assumption works if on November 11th 1444, each country has already AE according to its size.
But this is not the case. A the begining of a game, AE is set to zero for everyone.

It means that an expansion from France is considered equivalent than an expansion from an OPM, given a same target. Which is not very intuitive.

 

[Sophotrates]

It means that an expansion from France is considered equivalent than an expansion from an OPM, given a same target. Which is not very intuitive.

AE scales with defender's size too, so France would still get more AE for attacking a country compared to Provence, for example.

 

[Alblaka]

Your assumption works if on November 11th 1444, each country has already AE according to its size.
But this is not the case. A the begining of a game, AE is set to zero for everyone.

It means that an expansion from France is considered equivalent than an expansion from an OPM. Which is not very intuitive.

But that means you want to have coalitions against every larger nation from the very start. Which would be a bit weird in some cases, too.

AE is meant to limit an overly expansionistic player. And whilst, from a logical point of view, it seems more threatening if a big guy eats a small one then two small ones eating each other... I could actually imagine that Russia would be less worried about, f.e., Lituania eating a few small states (because it doesn't change much in the balance of power), opposed to a 'new' small state suddenly growing and forming a third powerbase (all hail Tver?).

My issue is, that one must be careful not to tilt AE to far into punishing one kind of country. Because this will lead to large nations amassing way too much AE to be fun to play as. Then we need to lower AE again, but then you can freely conquer everyone surrounding you with smaller nations, etc. That's why I say keep AE generated unaffected by an aggressors own size, but let his continous expansion gather the AE for him.

Though I just had the idea, that maybe we're seeing this from the wrong side. It is not more threatening if a bigger nation attacks. It is threatening if a nation bigger then YOURSELF attacks(a neighbour). So, instead of just increasing the AE for large nation across the board, shouldn't we rather think about adding an additional +% modifier to the AE gained by nations which are notably smaller (and probably have the 'threatened' attitude towards the aggressor), so those minors actually form up faster into a coalition?
But now we're again going the 'multiple layer' route: Attacking larger nations already gives less AE, so why should we again increase the AE for attacking smaller nations? It's two things doing the exact same, just on two different ends. :/


@below:

In OP's current assumptions, France annexing one province of Savoy would get as much AE than Provence annexing one province of Savoy.

Correct.

 

[yahiko]

AE scales with defender's size too, so France would still get more AE for attacking a country compared to Provence, for example.

In OP's current assumptions, France annexing one province of Savoy would get as much AE than Provence annexing one province of Savoy.

 

[Sophotrates]

In OP's current assumptions, France annexing one province of Savoy would get as much AE than Provence annexing one province of Savoy.

My mistake. I thought it was based on percentage compared to the attacker, not basetax. I'm just going to back down from this thread before I'm making it too confusing.

 

[Alblaka]

My mistake. I thought it was based on percentage compared to the attacker, not basetax. I'm just going to back down from this thread before I'm making it too confusing.

Nah, don't do that, discussing with 3 people beats discussing with just 2.
With 2, you will just have one side vs the other. With 3, you have backstabs and rock-paper-scissors.

 

[K.Kingen]

"Taking provinces from a target should additionally scale the AE based upon the target's size: A larger nation losing 1 BT is less of an threatening act then a small 2BT nation losing half of it's territory."

Basically this.

 

[Sophotrates]

Nah, don't do that, discussing with 3 people beats discussing with just 2.
With 2, you will just have one side vs the other. With 3, you have backstabs and rock-paper-scissors.

It's time I did some serious work now, so I'll just come back in a couple of hours and reply.

 

[yahiko]

But that means you want to have coalitions against every larger nation from the very start. Which would be a bit weird in some cases, too.

AE is meant to limit an overly expansionistic player. And whilst, from a logical point of view, it seems more threatening if a big guy eats a small one then two small ones eating each other... I could actually imagine that Russia would be less worried about, f.e., Lituania eating a few small states (because it doesn't change much in the balance of power), opposed to a 'new' small state suddenly growing and forming a third powerbase (all hail Tver?).

You mentioned a very important concept that is watched very carefully in EU4 MP games and probably which was at the core of European Diplomacy until the end of WWII : Balance of Power.
Nations were much more worried that a big nation like France extends than a small nation "unifies" with another small one.

My issue is, that one must be careful not to tilt AE to far into punishing one kind of country. Because this will lead to large nations amassing way too much AE to be fun to play as. Then we need to lower AE again, but then you can freely conquer everyone surrounding you with smaller nations, etc. That's why I say keep AE generated unaffected by an aggressors own size, but let his continous expansion gather the AE for him.

Your mechanism condemning annexions of small target nations is still relevant. I just want to focus on the fact that the agressor's size should be taken into account.

Though I just had the idea, that maybe we're seeing this from the wrong side. It is not more threatening if a bigger nation attacks. It is threatening if a nation bigger then YOURSELF attacks(a neighbour). So, instead of just increasing the AE for large nation across the board, shouldn't we rather think about adding an additional +% modifier to the AE gained by nations which are notably smaller (and probably have the 'threatened' attitude towards the aggressor), so those minors actually form up faster into a coalition?

Yep, this goes to the direction of the balance of power awareness.

 

[Alblaka]

You mentioned a very important concept that is watched very carefully in EU4 MP games and probably which was at the core of European Diplomacy until the end of WWII : Balance of Power.
Nations were much more worried that a big nation like France extends than a small nation "unifies" with another small one.

Again a question of is more worried though. For France it would be those other big nations that want to keep a status quo. Aka, France's rivals. For the smaller nations, it really doesn't matter whether France is 50x or 51x times larger then them, but they should be more worried about Their neighbour suddenly rising from 1x to 2x in strength. Since minors tend to rival amongst each other (Ok... are SUPPOSED to rival amongst each other), this would again be solved with the rivalling AE boost.

Your mechanism condemning annexions of small target nations is still relevant. I just want to focus on the fact that the agressor's size should be taken into account.

I think, in the end it as well comes down to 'how much' we take the aggressor's size into account. Technically, to provide a further challenge, a large player would need an accordingly larger coalition created by more AE. Albeit I'm not sure this isn't already ensured by large nations having large rivals (who gain more AE and will join coalitions quicker anyways, forming a counterweight). On the practical side, the AE increase musn't be too large or will cause the '1 war, xty years of peace' problematic again... Though that, again, could be solved by the concept of increasingly faster AE-decay if people stay at peace for multiple years (and would cut down, f.e. 50 years to 20... but wouldn'T that make expansion too easy again? blargh).

 

[yahiko]

Again a question of is more worried though. For France it would be those other big nations that want to keep a status quo. Aka, France's rivals. For the smaller nations, it really doesn't matter whether France is 50x or 51x times larger then them, but they should be more worried about Their neighbour suddenly rising from 1x to 2x in strength. Since minors tend to rival amongst each other (Ok... are SUPPOSED to rival amongst each other), this would again be solved with the rivalling AE boost.

In a MP game, I recently played Brandenburg and had a western neighbourg of similar size, Brunswick.
However I was less worried by Brunswick's expansion than Moscovy's one. Easy to understand.
A rival of a similar size is much less a threat than an ennemy 10 times bigger than you.

I think, in the end it as well comes down to 'how much' we take the aggressor's size into account. Technically, to provide a further challenge, a large player would need an accordingly larger coalition created by more AE. Albeit I'm not sure this isn't already ensured by large nations having large rivals (who gain more AE and will join coalitions quicker anyways, forming a counterweight).

The new rivalry system doesn't play the same role as AE and coalitions.
This was designed, among other, to avoid status quo and force countries to act.
AE and coalitions are more a tool to unify countries against a big threat against the Balance of Power.

So, we shouldn't rely our assumption on this rivalry system.

On the practical side, the AE increase musn't be too large or will cause the '1 war, xty years of peace' problematic again... Though that, again, could be solved by the concept of increasingly faster AE-decay if people stay at peace for multiple years (and would cut down, f.e. 50 years to 20... but wouldn'T that make expansion too easy again? blargh).

AE should be a function like this:
AE increase(agressor, target) = function [ g(agressor's size), h(target's size) ]
where g is an exponential based function, and h is an inversely proportional function.

 

[Alblaka]

AE should be a function like this:
AE increase(agressor, target) = function [ g(agressor's size), h(target's size) ]
where g is an exponential based function, and h is an inversely proportional function.

I hope you meant to say that AE increase less the larger you become. Because otherwise we will end up with Russia taking one province for a 4-digit sum of AE

 

[yahiko]

I hope you meant to say that AE increase less the larger you become. Because otherwise we will end up with Russia taking one province for a 4-digit sum of AE

AE increase should be higher the larger you become.
To be realistic, big nations should face coalitions even when they only annex one province.

Also, an exponential based function doesn't mean a 4-digit AE ^^
For instance : exp( sqrt(x) ) / 10
where x is agressor's base taxes,
would grow reasonably (to be checked of course).

 

[TheRingisHot]

Nice Thread, although I didnt read through it compeletly.

I agree with your suggestions (especially the CB part) and the fact that the AE needs to be tweaked (far 2 easy 2 expand now), but I doubt that all this mechanics can be implemented without a decent increase in bugs and lagg (not sure on this). So we may rather see your proposals in EU5, so I guess..

However what needs to be fixed (alongside the normal AE mechanics) is how AE works on taking colonies. In my case (Netherlands) I declared war on Caribbean Portugal, took 5 colonies from them and did not even get one point of AE towards their overlord Portugal, nor towards any other colonizing nation such as France, Castilie and England. Well, the American Natives got a big portion of AE as did Carribean Portugal, which is.. okay.. but for whoever picks exploration as an idea and especially those nations, that colonize within the area you just grabbed provinces from, should feel as offended as you would conquer land in Europe or maybe a little less at least, in my opinion. Logically, other nations that dont pick exploration shouldn't mind it, but.. yea, you get the idea..

 

[Beagá]

Ok, first of all, please explain how it would break the game?
Secondly, please explain why you compare EUIV, an era of constant warfare, with the 20th century were great wars were single, devasting events and any kind of warfare was actually looked down upon.
Your complaint makes as much sense as if I would say "It would have been totally fine for America to invade Afghanistan for oil if they would have sent a diplomat there first to fabricate a claim on the oilfields."
Comparing completely different time periods is bollocks.

It´s VERY simple.

The game is balanced towards keeping agressive nations in check. What would happen in practice in your system was that big nations would pile on big nations to get land, which wouldn´t be bad if, and that´s a BIG if, said big nations usually weren´t at war with OTHER big nations and thus weren´t crippled often.

Example, in my Denmark game Muscowy was attacking Poland and Lithuania. What I did? Joined the fray to get land from them. Under your "brilliant" system I would get a handful of AE... AND cripple my rivals. Good for me, crap for the game.

Got it? So while other suggestions you made might be good, I frontally oppose that one. Finally, from a long term POV France getting two extra ports from Spain instead of, say, Britanny is just as dangerous to a UK player. The bootom line: ANY expansion can be threathening and thus ANY expansion demands AE. Specially in a game where it´s very easy to get major nations wth their pants down.

 

[neaiskink]

generally great ideas by the OP.

I honestly believe the game would improve if there were several levels of competition:
a) among great powers, where a disbalance would be joined by the big guys to "set things right"
b) among small regional powers, where the italian OPMs keep bickering around while spain, austria and france sip wine and laugh

That would avoid several issues:
a) as an OPM you ate 2 OPMS. France, Austria, Burgundy join coalition. Coalition war. You are DEAD.
b) as burgundy you allied England and Castille, beat the shit out of france. No AE for either england or castille. You beat the shit again. Again no AE. Finally, when you annexed 2/3 of the area castille breaks alliance, england still happy. WTF? a superpower just died and the only important country to care was austria and savoy? nonsense
c) as france you eat and OPM. one province? who cares? no one? while it should immediately rile EVERYONE in the "regional powers" legue and cause a coalition (a big guy beating kids is not nice, not nice at all!!!)
d) as a opm, you become a 10P(not so minor). the regional league hates you, however, the Great Powers also notice you. Any additional moves and you should have both great powers and minors at your throat, upstart.

The great powers should probably have some sort of power distribution index, to identify who messes with the balance. As an option would be to introduce a HH (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index) index for BT of provinces. If there are signs of high concentration, great powers should seek to dismatle it running a "minimum number of CBs required for largest change of HH" calculation.
This would essentially mimic Austria tidying the HRE and France having some 1v1 with overambitious savoy

 

[Alblaka]

I agree with your suggestions (especially the CB part) and the fact that the AE needs to be tweaked (far 2 easy 2 expand now), but I doubt that all this mechanics can be implemented without a decent increase in bugs and lagg (not sure on this). So we may rather see your proposals in EU5, so I guess..

And that's exactly the policy Paradox is running right now. They rather prefer to do everything half-baked. We still have an American Dream DLC which doesn't work if combined with CoP. We have a rivalry system that penalizes you for not having 3 rivals, but in certain cases just doesn't offer you any rivals in first place. I could go on, but please understand that "Je, this will actually take WORK to implement" is an argument you should never, ever use to justify not doing anything. It's lazy.
Ergo: of course reworking the entire system would implement bugs and flaws. But since the current system is bugged and flawed in first place, I really don't see why that should keep us from reworking it.

However what needs to be fixed (alongside the normal AE mechanics) is how AE works on taking colonies. In my case (Netherlands) I declared war on Caribbean Portugal, took 5 colonies from them and did not even get one point of AE towards their overlord Portugal, nor towards any other colonizing nation such as France, Castilie and England. Well, the American Natives got a big portion of AE as did Carribean Portugal, which is.. okay.. but for whoever picks exploration as an idea and especially those nations that colonize within the area you just stole provinces from should feel as offended as you would conquer land in Europe, in my opinion. Logically, other nations that dont pick exploration shouldn't mind it, but.. you get the idea

This would be fixed with my suggestions. Allies, vassals, overlords, are all subject to receiving AE if you conquer amongst them. So, if you conquer parts of a CN, it's overlord will naturally gain AE, too. Though, I agree with you, they should probably gain more AE then normal allies would, (probably the exact same AE as the CN itself), but that is a special case related to CN's alone, so I neither spent time thinking about it, nor would it be useful to note it on a concept writing.

The game is balanced towards keeping agressive nations in check. What would happen in practice in your system was that big nations would pile on big nations to get land, which wouldn´t be bad if, and that´s a BIG if, said big nations usually weren´t at war with OTHER big nations and thus weren´t crippled often.

Example, in my Denmark game Muscowy was attacking Poland and Lithuania. What I did? Joined the fray to get land from them. Under your "brilliant" system I would get a handful of AE... AND cripple my rivals. Good for me, crap for the game.

Whilst your case would be an issue, you are vastly overestimating the actual numbers. My currennt suggestion reads that if you take less then 20% of a countries BT, you receive 3% per 1% below that line. In theory, this means you can get up to a 60% reduction. In practice however, that would require you to take ~1% worth of provinces. And I'm not talking warscore here, I'm talking total bastax. Let's assume you are attacking a starting muscovy... muscovy has how much? Let's be very generous and assume 80 basetax. This means to gain 'only a handful of AE' you cannot take more then ONE SINGLE 1BT province. Are you now going to tell me that this 1 lost BT will cripple Muscovy? Let's assume you actually take ~8BT worth of provinces (2-4 provinces). You now take 10%, which means you get a slight reduction of 30%AE. However, you as well took 4 provinces, which will generate a fair amount of base AE by itself.
So, as you can see, this 'brilliant system' isn't reducing AE nearly as much as you made it out to be.

Got it? So while other suggestions you made might be good, I frontally oppose that one. Finally, from a long term POV France getting two extra ports from Spain instead of, say, Britanny is just as dangerous to a UK player. The bootom line: ANY expansion can be threathening and thus ANY expansion demands AE. Specially in a game where it´s very easy to get major nations wth their pants down.

And what do you think will make the difference whether I get 7 or 10 AE if I take a port that is apportantly important enough to cripple a nation to 'pants down'?
The issue you describe is one outside of the reach of the AI. The game cannot evaluate the worth of a province from a strategic point of view (at best it can determine provinces to be less important if they are far off or disconnected). The issue that a player can strategically conquer single provinces that give him an advantage the AI can't comprehend is something neither the old, nor my suggested, nor any future AE system could compensate for in first place.


@neaiskink: I'll come back to your suggestion after thinking about it, good stuff.

 

[Sophotrates]

To recap what has been said or discussed, as it's quite a hefty topic. Alblaka, please correct me if I'm wrong. Btw, maybe redo the first post and start with the TLDR so new readers know immediatly what's up?


Main proposal
Core:
- AE linked to total basetax 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

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), 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.



Hope I'm not forgetting anything. Some really good suggestions here, keep them coming!