AI should accept peace deals that it cannot contest.

[Blk82]

You should be able to get 88% warscore if my math is right, or 89% if you wait for their war exhaustion to tick up another point. That is 88% of what you would can take if you siege down the entirety of England, England's allies, stackwipe the entire English army, and destroy the entire British fleet. Considering that you pose no threat to England proper or English trade, this is not unreasonable within the context of the game's mechanics.

Looking at the issue from the opposite perspective, even if you could land in England, the game prevents you from taking all of the English possessions on the continent. In relative terms, the warscore you can take seems fair, and arguably generous.

 

[Eruth]

Looking at the issue from the opposite perspective, even if you could land in England, the game prevents you from taking all of the English possessions on the continent. In relative terms, the warscore you can take seems fair, and arguably generous.

How? I should just be able to say, "I don't care if England thinks they still own this land, I'm goign to set it up as part of France now and there's nothing they can do about it."

 

[cetvrtak]

How? I should just be able to say, "I don't care if England thinks they still own this land, I'm goign to set it up as part of France now and there's nothing they can do about it."

Warscore is designed to prevent annexing entire countries in a single war (warscore and some other mechanics). Various CBs decrease the province warscore cost, especially in later years. So it is not surprising that in Surrender of Maine you cannot annex everything you want.

However, it may be viable adding a custom CB to allow it, since the war itself start via an event.

 

[RobbieAB]

The problem with the proposal is that the game isn't balanced around it, and would be incredibly hard to balance with it against a competent player. I am also dubious about the argument that England should be force to de jure accept the de facto reality.

Now we could argue in this case what is missing is the fact that England, as in the nobility and people, didn't really care much about. In reality Normandy and Gascony were not considered part of the Kingdom of England and the English didn't care much about the King of England's claim to the throne of France. Sadly the game pretty badly butchers the reality of the complexity of the English crown and its associated possessions at the start date. I assume most of the rest of the world has similar issues.

 

[Me_]

@ OP

Here's your problem:
AI should accept peace deals that it cannot contest.

It's not at all easy to define that state. It's like the old problem of an APP that tells you where you saw a bird and and APP that tell you its species. The first can be clearly defined in unquestionable way (via GPS), the other is full of variables and uncertainty.

If the devs were to introduce any simple rule of when "AI cannot contest a peace" then I can assure you, we would have dozens of threads complaining that the AI gives up too easily.

In an ideal world, the game would have some ways to differentiate those situations, but they are not clear in real life either. Should the Spanish have given up the eigthy years war because "they could not contest that". A number of nations still haven't signed formal peace after WW2, because they cannot agree on what the objective facts of politics are (Kuriles, I'm looking at you). Not being able to contest it has not made European monarch give up on the claim to Jerusalem, and there were times when nations used long abandoned deals (because of the inability to enforce them) when they would finally get around to being able to challenge them.

Bottom line is, as annoying as it is, it is a) very complex on AI side and b) dubious from the perspective of a historical game.

 

[RobbieAB]

@Me_ The AI already can't work out these situations. Watch how often the AI will declare war on a naval power with little to no army, but an unbeatable navy, with no way to actually prosecute the war. Watch how long it takes the AI to agree a peace deal in such a war.

We have another active thread on the forum where a player England has basically keptva war with France going for 150 years. Why would England make peace here?

 

[Blk82]

How? I should just be able to say, "I don't care if England thinks they still own this land, I'm goign to set it up as part of France now and there's nothing they can do about it."

But, even with 100% warscore, France has to leave England with Calais by the game's rules. In the context of the game's rules, leaving England with two provinces instead of one on the continent is perfectly reasonable. This is only a problem if you want to get rid of the warscore limit itself, which is not going to happen as it would totally change the nature of the game.

 

[Xetfield]

But, even with 100% warscore, France has to leave England with Calais by the game's rules. In the context of the game's rules, leaving England with two provinces instead of one on the continent is perfectly reasonable. This is only a problem if you want to get rid of the warscore limit itself, which is not going to happen as it would totally change the nature of the game.

Not really, as I said earlier this thread, if you attack England first, you can grab Calais at 82-83% warscore when War of the Roses is starting to come. If you have some dedication and time to waste, the AI can even give you Mann.

 

[csward53]

So any war on a OPM by a great power the OPM should immediately surrender?

This is what happens in CK2 if the OPM has no chance...

 

[holyvigil]

This is what happens in CK2...

No it doesn't. You do not start with 100% in ck2 for any war.

 

[Eruth]

This is what happens in CK2 if the OPM has no chance...

No, only if you siege them down completely. I have 700+ hours in CK2 and no one ever just surrender to me without me having to siege them out.

 

[Travis_Bickle]

When you're trying to peace a war out quick (because of various reasons) and have to spend ages with your men occupying a level 2 fort in Frankfurt when the entire alliance on the other size has 0 men, it's very annoying. OPM's should be way more open to a white peace when they face no chance of winning.

In general, the AI is genuinely a disaster when it comes to judging the strength of opponents. See how suicidal Charles of Burgundy is.

On top of this, there are probably times the AI could win a war vs the player because their alliance could attack from multiple corners but refuses to because of numerical advantage.

 

[cetvrtak]

@Me_ The AI already can't work out these situations. Watch how often the AI will declare war on a naval power with little to no army, but an unbeatable navy, with no way to actually prosecute the war. Watch how long it takes the AI to agree a peace deal in such a war.

We have another active thread on the forum where a player England has basically keptva war with France going for 150 years. Why would England make peace here?

The AI already has though time evaluating country strenght using land numbers, let alone factor in navies.

When you're trying to peace a war out quick (because of various reasons) and have to spend ages with your men occupying a level 2 fort in Frankfurt when the entire alliance on the other size has 0 men, it's very annoying. OPM's should be way more open to a white peace when they face no chance of winning.

In general, the AI is genuinely a disaster when it comes to judging the strength of opponents. See how suicidal Charles of Burgundy is.

On top of this, there are probably times the AI could win a war vs the player because their alliance could attack from multiple corners but refuses to because of numerical advantage.

The AI is plain incapable of doing what you suggest. It just compares numbers. It can't even do that properly. Not without some beyond-the-scope complex algorithm.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Cue Churchill's famous speech about fighting to the end in WW2


I agree with OP, but I'm not sure how to fix such a thing and it really doesn't happen that often.

We could start by fixing stabhit peace offers to how it worked early in EU 4 and making them transparent, rather than the nonsense state stabhit offers are in now.

 

[sekelsenmat]

If we're bringing Napoleon into it, the complaint of the OP might almost have been written by him. Britain getting thrashed on the continent but refusing to come to terms because they are safe across the channel is a recurring theme in European history,

Indeed it might have been written by Hitler as well, isn't it?

 

[sekelsenmat]

We could start by fixing stabhit peace offers to how it worked early in EU 4 and making them transparent, rather than the nonsense state stabhit offers are in now.

Stab hit peace still exists? Can you stab hit the AI?

 

[Eruth]

If we're bringing Napoleon into it, the complaint of the OP might almost have been written by him. Britain getting thrashed on the continent but refusing to come to terms because they are safe across the channel is a recurring theme in European history,

England didn't officially surrender, but Napoleon still enforced his will on all the places he conquered until Britain was actually able to get an army on the continent to do something about it.

 

[RobbieAB]

England didn't officially surrender, but Napoleon still enforced his will on all the places he conquered until Britain was actually able to get an army on the continent to do something about it.

So your argument is that England didn't officially surrender to Napoleon (nor, out of period, did they surrender when presented with a similar situation in 1940) but they should officially surrender "because they can't do anything about it"?

Within the game mechanics, there is no way of modelling "England asserts a claim to this land, but we rule it" at all. Forcing the AI to accept a horribly one-sided peace deal just because it "can't do anything about it" is concerning. As multiple people have pointed out, there is an English strategy that revolves around holding France in a "forever war" because England really isn't losing that much compared to a country that needs a lot of diplomatic activity just to get started.

 

[Eruth]

So your argument is that England didn't officially surrender to Napoleon (nor, out of period, did they surrender when presented with a similar situation in 1940) but they should officially surrender "because they can't do anything about it"?

Within the game mechanics, there is no way of modelling "England asserts a claim to this land, but we rule it" at all. Forcing the AI to accept a horribly one-sided peace deal just because it "can't do anything about it" is concerning. As multiple people have pointed out, there is an English strategy that revolves around holding France in a "forever war" because England really isn't losing that much compared to a country that needs a lot of diplomatic activity just to get started.

My argument is that France would not care if England hasn't signed the document; they would just make the land part of their country anyway. I think that the best way to model, "Can't do anything about it" would be that if you hold some land in a war and the war goes on for 36 months without any battles or sieges, or at least without the other side winning any of them, they will accept that you control that land but won't give you anything else.

 

[RobbieAB]

@Eruth I look forward to the howls of rage from everyone when players promptly figure out how to abuse that. The game isn't structured or balanced around status quo peaces Stellaris style. Even worse, your proposal, I suspect, effectively neutralises "protracted" attritional war strategies where you try to defeat a stronger opponent (Ottomans!) as various of their geographically larger neighbours by precisely avoiding battle and slowly bleeding them out in high attrition low value provinces.