AE is broken > coalitions are broken > game is broken

[unmerged(780209)]

I suppose people on this forum will never stop using this straw-man argument. Expansion to something less than the historical Ottoman borders is not 'world conquest', and the elements which are restricting the player's expansion are not the AI's ability to resist, they're the mechanics which prevent any real gains from being made after defeating a coalition.

Exactly! "A touch I must confess!"

It's not that it's impossible to beat a coalition. It's usually fairly easy. It just gets boring because there's no real payoff. And you have to repeat the exercise every 10 years.

And as for the players who never see the same coalition. I've seen it over and over again in my last game. Same countries. I kick their ass every time. They never learn. I get 2-3 provinces each time and everybody is "outraged." Then the Ming, Peng, Mali, the Swahili, the Creek and the Mayans all join against me. Which is totally silly since most of these countries don't even know that the others exist let alone have any way of entering into diplomatic relations with them when they're 12,000 miles away from each other and neither side has a navy. What? Did they have satellite phone service in 1625?

BORING.

 

[hauptman]

And to the OP...

Move the merchant in constantinople out, he isnt at all required all it does is give a +10%. And when you are already getting +80% from techs and such, another 10 doesnt add much. If you have any venician node provinces, plop a merch there. Also I'd suggest collecting in tunis, it wont be worth much, but stopping the spaniards from stealing even more money cant hurt.

For big trade money, you want to ignore 'historical borders' and expand in the direction all those arrows come from. Having control of aden, indus, timbuktu, ivory coast would make you filthy rich and starve out europe.

To random poster; Yes sabotage reputation is a real PITA. It's been hampering a few of my games something fierce. It only takes one jerkoff to throw everyone's alliances into a mess. The least you can do is build the buildings (even special) designed to stop it in your capital. Now putting the spy defense buildings in constantinople is a bit of a waste, but it may be neccesary if a capitol movement is out of the question.


To Jonini; Those great big walls of text need to be cut down. And Not started with random assumptions of incoherance. Both of those things put me off and I missed the point that we were arguing the same exact stance.


...Which of course is.... Coalitions need to be made more powerful.

 

[hauptman]

Exactly! "A touch I must confess!"

It's not that it's impossible to beat a coalition. It's usually fairly easy. It just gets boring because there's no real payoff. And you have to repeat the exercise every 10 years.

And as for the players who never see the same coalition. I've seen it over and over again in my last game. Same countries. I kick their ass every time. They never learn. I get 2-3 provinces each time and everybody is "outraged." Then the Ming, Peng, Mali, the Swahili, the Creek and the Mayans all join against me. Which is totally silly since most of these countries don't even know that the others exist let alone have any way of entering into diplomatic relations with them when they're 12,000 miles away from each other and neither side has a navy. What? Did they have satellite phone service in 1625?

BORING.

OMG!

You see the same coalition every 5 years BECAUSE YOU KEEP TAKING LAND AND ADDING MORE AE. The correct way to fight a coalition war, is win a few battles, besiege the warleaders capital, then demand 5 ducats. Coalition then breaks up and things go back to normal.

 

[Chamboozer]

To Jonini; Those great big walls of text need to be cut down. And Not started with random assumptions of incoherance. Both of those things put me off and I missed the point that we were arguing the same exact stance.

Hey Jomini, did you hear that? Extended analysis is not allowed on the Paradox forums, you can't argue something unless you keep it short and simple for people.

OMG!

You see the same coalition every 5 years BECAUSE YOU KEEP TAKING LAND AND ADDING MORE AE. The correct way to fight a coalition war, is win a few battles, besiege the warleaders capital, then demand 5 ducats. Coalition then breaks up and things go back to normal.

Yeah until you take another province from someone else and the whole planet decides they need to stop what they're doing to focus on you. The AI is not caring about the balance of power or their own interests, they're just being forced by AE to care about other countries' expansion. Look at the screenshot in the OP - what do the French or the Scandinavian countries have to gain by fighting the Ottoman Empire? The Ottomans aren't expanding in any way that could threaten them. Even when the Ottomans besieged Vienna historically it was looked upon favorably by the French. The OP's Ottomans are nowhere near that deep into Europe. It makes sense for Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and Italy to worry about Ottoman expansion into Serbia, but England? Denmark? Brandenburg?

I don't think a meme has ever been more appropriate.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

@Jomini: What I gather from your posts is that you are more annoyed at coalitions being toothless tigers, because their attacks will never do anything to a country that is already as big as to cause coalitions from one single province.

As far as I can tell, coalitions should be a purely defensive construct, protecting small countries against aggression from larger warmongering nations. At the moment though, the AI seems to not understand just how big a country has gotten until it is too late, which in my opinion is the real problem.

Coalitions should form sooner and defend instead of attacking and practically giving the target country an easy way to grow even further.

Also, I would make AE dependent on the strength and size difference between the attacker and the AE acquiring country. If you are a large colonial empire Britain with more than 300 provinces, it should rather only amuse you that the scrawny Ottoman with his meager 200 provinces has conquered anything.

 

[hauptman]

Hey I can concied that how this game works isnt perfect, but I dont expect perfect. What I expect, to be honest, is most game companies to ignore any semblance of AI rational and make Total War ai's. So getting what I have here is just fantastic. It isnt perfect, and could use a little fine tuning but it's a damn sight better than any other game iv'e played, other than civ 4 diplomacy. One could only wish Paradox would hire Blake to give the different nations some 'personality'. Blake was genious on that note.

You have to realize everything in this game is simply numbers. There is only so much you can do with numbers. And it will always be a little wonky. But Paradox is doing well with what they have and I'm enjoying it.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

There is only so much you can do with numbers.

I disagree, everything and anything is numbers. The constraining resource is computing power.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

Hey I can concied that how this game works isnt perfect, but I dont expect perfect. What I expect, to be honest, is most game companies to ignore any semblance of AI rational and make Total War ai's. So getting what I have here is just fantastic. It isnt perfect, and could use a little fine tuning but it's a damn sight better than any other game iv'e played, other than civ 4 diplomacy. One could only wish Paradox would hire Blake to give the different nations some 'personality'. Blake was genious on that note.

You have to realize everything in this game is simply numbers. There is only so much you can do with numbers. And it will always be a little wonky. But Paradox is doing well with what they have and I'm enjoying it.

This. The system is raw, but is by no means broken. The numbers nee to be adjusted, and how it effects certain powers need to be adjusted. The system needs to be fleshed out, but not tossed out, which is what many seem to imply in their posts.

The behavior isn't completely irrational, but a bit unrefined. Japan is relatively inexplicable, and seems bugged. England, France and Scandinavia are a bit premature but not unreasonable. If I were them I'd probably sit it out and wait until the Ottomans threaten Europe a bit more, like Vienna. The issue

 

[hauptman]

I disagree, everything and anything is numbers. The constraining resource is computing power.

Actually with what computers can do today, I'd say it's more constrained by man hours.

Adding a different relations modifiers list for each nation would be pretty hard work in this game when you have 400 individual nations, but wouldnt add much in the way of resource requirements. civ4 had 25 nations, so a different relations modifier list for each was a bit easier to manage.


Edit; Actually thinking about it all Paradox would have to do is tie modifiers to idea sets... say along the lines of -25% ae hits against nations with defensive. +10% relations hit with different religion on aristocratic, etc. That could give the different nations personality with little effort, as there are few idea sets.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

Actually with what computers can do today, I'd say it's more constrained by man hours.

Adding a different relations modifiers list for each nation would be pretty hard work in this game when you have 400 individual nations, but wouldnt add much in the way of resource requirements. civ4 had 25 nations, so a different relations modifier list for each was a bit easier to manage.

What I was saying is, that you can make infinitely complex algorithms to model diplomacy, making them uncannily realistic. The problem is, NASA alone as a customer probably doesn't fill Paradox's coffers enough.

 

[raw]

It doesn't make any sense that nations that have been at each others throat for centuries throw away all their hostilities and join coalition because someone took some piece of land on the balkans.

As I said in another thread already, choices & consequences. Coalitions are way too whimsical and fleeting. They should not be able to be created on the fly, or if they can they should incure positive consequences the longer they run.

 

[raw]

Actually with what computers can do today, I'd say it's more constrained by man hours.

Man hour constraint is the only major constraint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_crisis

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

It doesn't make any sense that nations that have been at each others throat for centuries throw away all their hostilities and join coalition because someone took some piece of land on the balkans.

As I said in another thread already, choices & consequences. Coalitions are way too whimsical and fleeting. They should not be able to be created on the fly, or if they can they should incure positive consequences the longer they run.

Oh, there are quite a few examples of exactly that happening.

 

[Jomini]

How AE/coalitions should work:

A power is becoming a big threat (OE takes out Albania, Serbia, and Wallachia)- this is function of their size (I'd use manpower, but basetax can work in a pinch), their rate of expansion (something like AE), and their past behavior/relations - so the AI's look at each other and begin to damp their mutual hostilities as you get stronger. So the first step is that your warmongering tells Poland that maybe it should ignore the border friction with Hungary and not make a play for Carpathia. So now Poland and Hungary aren't best buds, but Poland starts looking less at the OE as the enemy of my enemy and more as a potential threat so it will let Hungary deal with it unmolested.

This isn't enough (OE takes out Athens, Morea, Naxos, and Corfu), so Poland and Hungary get a free alliance (no slot cost) that is strictly defensive against the OE, Austria begins to lose border friction and other maluses.

Now the OE takes Dalmatia, Croatia, and Moldavia (beating up Hungary & Poland) so now Austria slips into the free alliance with Hungary (thanks to the new border) while Lithuania jumps to a free alliance with Poland. Poland and Hungary form a full coalition that drags all the members in in any defensive war. Joining them are any states who has an average positive relation who think the OE is a major threat - i.e. Trebizond, Georgia, Venice, and Naples; states that have negative relations on average with the coalition (e.g. the Mamelukes, Sheep, and Persia) form their own coalition.

Now we have another war. The OE fights the coalition and alliances. It wins. It now faces a choice, it can make individual peaces - at double (treble or something) warscore AE for territory or it can make a coalition wide peace - that only allows for vassalization, core return (?), cash indemnity, and coalition disruption (e.g. Naples is locked out of anti-OE coalition mechanics for 20 years). The OE chooses to take Hungarian land. So now the coalition grows, but the most threatened states start getting boosts to manpower regeneration (rally the peasants against the destroyer of civilization), tech rate (aggressive OE expansion brings their technology to the victims, victims share ideas and better organizational ideas among themselves) until they equal OE tech, and morale (when fighting on cores of the coalition, protect the fatherland). These mechanisms continue - if you are a big expanding blob the enemies like each other ever more, they become stronger foes both per country, and in aggregate.

So the next war, now Hungary is a OPM with elite soldiers (it is a essentially a garrison state), Poland has been pruned back but is also strong, the coalition also includes Georgia, the Mamelukes (the AI has improved relations & aggressive OE expansion has dampened maluses), Austria, Naples, the Pope, Venice, Genoa, Milan, Tuscany (e.g. all of Italy), Lithuania, and Muscovy. Now the OE loses. Each country faces a choice - make a separate peace (and be evicted from anti-OE coalition mechanics for say 10 years) for full gains ... or hold out until the end. After total collapse of the OE, each state gets to take full gains with full access to coalition mechanics. So say the OE loses and coalition forces overrun the Balkans. Hungary peaces out early for 4 cores. Poland holds on for its cores and release of Moldavia, Naples takes Corfu and Morea. The remnant coalition takes Albania, Ragusa, Dalmatia, Adana, and forces the release of Bosnia, Serbia, Karamon, and Bulgaria as each member makes demands at the end (some just take cash). During a coalition war, after a certain length of war (e.g. 18 months), refusing to make separate peaces results in the offending just taking any of their cores they occupy. Prolonged refusal of strong peace offers (each state has a ticking timer for occupying your land) gives rise to chances that the enemy will just be given your land in spite of your refusal (e.g. hold out through 4 reasonable peace offers and there is a 20% chance the fifth refusal will just hand over occupied territory without ending the war).

Now the coalition is recalced. The OE is much defanged, so the peripheral states (places like Switzerland, Bavaria, and Savoy) stop caring about the OE entirely - they start worrying again about Austria. Places that stayed in the coalition to the end - like say Venice and Austria - recalc the Ottomans. Austria is less threatened and drops the coalition voluntarily. Venice stays in, put loses bonuses to tech, manpower, and morale. The Mamelukes see the OE weakened and immediately drop all the Christian states as they lose modifiers making them like the Christians enough to enter the coalition.

At any point in time, you can try to induce a coalition member out. You give it gold (or provinces) and expend monarch points while assuring it of independence for a set amount of time. You may also delay coalitions by helping out the locals. E.g. the OE returns cores to Hungary from Venice - great Hungary is less worried about the OE menace. You enforce a peace preserving Georgia and guaranteeing it after - great Georgia takes a lot more AE to go coalitionary. High relations from improvement - that also might slow progression down the coalition road.

This is a pretty straight forward system that isn't all or nothing. You have many options to abort - win a war and use WS to reverse the process instead of taking land or vassals, buy people out of coalitions, or actually help them attain their goals - and once in a coalition - the stakes escalate. Yes you can enforce a 100% peace against every coalition member, but yee gods that will be a lot of AE to suck down and the next round will be a bigger badder war where the AIs can each take a 100% peace and holding out till the bitter end can result in massive losses. Coalitions make it easier to rapidly expand when you beat them ... but only by making any remaining opposition stronger.

Coalition warfare should be the most challenging and exciting prospect of an expansionist EUIV game. Yeah you can more efficiently expand by avoiding giving your enemies huge free bonuses ... but if you want to do it the quick & hard way - enjoy the ride.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

Well, the big flaw in your description is that most peasants couldn't give two damns who was their overlord. Hungary was in the situation you described, there was no fortified garrison state. Even disregarding the blatant ahistorical development, this mechanic would reward players for being bad, which is incredibly bad game design.

 

[Jomini]

Well, the big flaw in your description is that most peasants couldn't give two damns who was their overlord. Hungary was in the situation you described, there was no fortified garrison state. Even disregarding the blatant ahistorical development, this mechanic would reward players for being bad, which is incredibly bad game design.

Most peasants actually cared a great deal. At the Siege of Belgrade peasants came to fight off the Turks en mass. Further, a large number of said peasants up and relocated when the land was taken (e.g. 200,000 Serbs are said to have fled with Patriarch Carnojevic). In any event, when was Hungary a OPM? It was partitioned between Royal Hungary (under the the Habsburgs), Eastern Hungary (under the Zapolya, which in turn became an Ottoman vassal rather being ground under), and Southern Hungary (taken by the Ottomans). Rather than face an endless coalition war, the Ottomans allowed Transylvania to become a buffer state - much like I allow states to do.

Now sure, perhaps we should have some costs for coalition so poor player performance in MP doesn't result in coalitions becoming dominant or making it too easy to start coalition for player benefit ... but right now is just a boring snooze fest. The AI does nothing to check the player. The only real constraint is how many times can the player bash the coalition for another 4 provinces. This makes the Napoleonic wars wildly ahistorical and unfun. It makes the Turkish conquests (e.g. 1453-1463) give rise to crazy ahistorical coalitions and generally utterly nerfs history.

I'd far, far rather give coalitions enough bite to actually check the player for more than four years than the current status quo lock.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

Ok, maybe they cared when "heathens" were concerned, that's about it. About Hungary: well, you said it, the only free Hungary was pretty much 1 province (or let's say 2 in EU4 terms at least) which afterwards became a vassal. I wasn't making a 1:1 comparison

I am not saying coalitions are a great mechanic. Their initial role (at least that's what I imagine) was to protect small countries from being conquered while it's allies are still at war, which is a very good idea, but it backfires just as fast when you see how this can be exploited to conquer without needing CBs (as a coalition target), and abusing the coalition members to make personal gains (as a member).

There have been numerous discussions about how this can be improved, and some nice idea have been thrown around, no need to rehash it here. The point is, there is some work to be done, but I cannot say I have ever encountered the staggering amount of AI crazyness most people seem to get. So either I am way more peaceful that most other people, or I am being more diplomatically active?

GET IT DONE PARADOX!

 

[Vishaing]

Hmmmm. Sounds interesting. Should be pretty easy to implement some of the simpler changes. The better relations for instance. We already have the "Enemy of my Enemy" opinion modifier, just copy that, and have it add one point per shared AE. So if Hungary has 30 AE against the Ottomans, Poland has 24, and Austria has 10, then Poland and Hungary get a 24 boost to Relations, Austria gets +10 with both Poland and Hungary.

I'm not so sure about getting bonuses to Manpower from being in a Coalition, but other bonuses do make sense. Perhaps a Morale boost? 1% morale per 1 AE against the Coalition target? Still, debatable.
ADDENDUM: That could actually be a relatively good way of implementing how a lot of empires got "Conquest Drunk" and let their armies go to Crap because of it.

There are two major potential problems I see with it. First is that the Coalitions become more Long-Term. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, I've advocated that AE should be gained slower (but at an exponential rate) and lost slower, but it would cause problems with the "Only 1 Coalition at a Time" limit. The simplest solution would just be to remove that limit, which I would advocate. Maybe at a Dip Point cost if you have more than 1 Coalition, like with Diplomatic Relations.

The other potential problem is that the "Coalition Wide" Peace Mechanic is going to require a Peace Conference style thing, where each member can ask for something, and it seems that's something Paradox just doesn't want to try to implement. I understand it might be difficult, but eventually Paradox is going to have to bite the bullet and work on implementing both Peace Conferences and Bilateral Peace Treaties. At this point the later half of the game's period just can not be properly represented, like at all, simply because of the lack of those two things.

Come on Paradox. You have March of the Eagles, what better place to implement it since the AI has pre-defined goals?

 

[Jalex]

Well, I for one, take delight in the OPs QQ and happily drink up the tears. I see nothing wrong with either of his complaints.

Well this was just needlessly rude and offensive.

 

[Jomini]

Hmmmm. Sounds interesting. Should be pretty easy to implement some of the simpler changes. The better relations for instance. We already have the "Enemy of my Enemy" opinion modifier, just copy that, and have it add one point per shared AE. So if Hungary has 30 AE against the Ottomans, Poland has 24, and Austria has 10, then Poland and Hungary get a 24 boost to Relations, Austria gets +10 with both Poland and Hungary.

I'm not so sure about getting bonuses to Manpower from being in a Coalition, but other bonuses do make sense. Perhaps a Morale boost? 1% morale per 1 AE against the Coalition target? Still, debatable.
ADDENDUM: That could actually be a relatively good way of implementing how a lot of empires got "Conquest Drunk" and let their armies go to Crap because of it.

There are two major potential problems I see with it. First is that the Coalitions become more Long-Term. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, I've advocated that AE should be gained slower (but at an exponential rate) and lost slower, but it would cause problems with the "Only 1 Coalition at a Time" limit. The simplest solution would just be to remove that limit, which I would advocate. Maybe at a Dip Point cost if you have more than 1 Coalition, like with Diplomatic Relations.

The other potential problem is that the "Coalition Wide" Peace Mechanic is going to require a Peace Conference style thing, where each member can ask for something, and it seems that's something Paradox just doesn't want to try to implement. I understand it might be difficult, but eventually Paradox is going to have to bite the bullet and work on implementing both Peace Conferences and Bilateral Peace Treaties. At this point the later half of the game's period just can not be properly represented, like at all, simply because of the lack of those two things.

Come on Paradox. You have March of the Eagles, what better place to implement it since the AI has pre-defined goals?

The big problem with not upping the manpower is that the AI sucks at dealing with attrition and will likely always suck with attrition; even professional military attrition modeling is pretty crappy at knowing when to take the assured losses and when to route some other fashion. Unless they fix the move-dance garbage, coalition warfare runs the real problem that the player can attrite away all the coalition's manpower. Worse, because rebellions scale so well with WE and you can't do much without manpower, it is very easy to manpower deplete, drive up WE, and then leave the state easy pickings for round II.

Without bodies on the ground, scaling morale boosts either have to reach auto-win territory or they can be swamped by efficient troop useage. Sieging the March when it has scorched earth takes way too long and you can just avoid battle indefinitely.

The idea is to make each Coalition war stronger on a per nation basis - this way even if you spend WS forcing states out, you aren't just setting up patsies for the next killing.

The big take away I want is that winning a coalition war should give you a chance to make major gains xor disrupt the coalition while losing a coalition war should give the coalition the chance of making gains. These should be high stakes affairs that redefine the map after a few iterations ... not something boring that you repeat 20 times for minimal effect.