An alternative to infamy?

[brantodb01]

The best thing I've come up with is to have a world tension gauge that fluctuates asked on GP actions and the infamy cap is 100 - world tension.

So of it's at 75% world tension you have 25 (but not 25 as we know it) infamy capacity to deal with.

So if WT reaches 100% then it's more likely for something, that might be small normally, to cause a world war. Which would wipe the tension as people want to avoid another war

 

[Gurkhal]

Its and interesting idea but should be moved to the thread for suggestions for Victoria III so they are all collected in one place.

Anyway I think that something like world tension could be a cool idea. But that it would need to be connected with how interdependent the world has become so that actions that in 1836 might not cause much effect will cause a lot more trouble in 1914.

Its stricky question though on how to reflect that the world was growing smaller during the Victorian Age and how that has effects that, to my understanding, builds on each other.

 

[Telcharinogrod]

I very much support the goal of replacing infamy by something a bit more... flexible and interesting. I'm afraid I don't quite follow what your proposal is exactly, though. Would all nations be tied to the same world tension system? For example, if Equador invades Peru and breaks the world tension meter, does that result in a world-wide free-for-all war? Who declares war on who then? Or, if it doesn't work that way but tracks each nation individually, how is that meaningfully different from infamy?

At any rate, I'm not sure it's even possible to mod out infamy? (My modding skills don't even reach to knowing how to open the right files)

 

[Kovax]

World Tension is one thing, Infamy is another, and neither alone is an adequate means of calculating threat and response. I like the idea of raising the global expectation of war, and making it easier to begin preparing one's self for the seemingly inevitable, but it needs to be coupled with individual Infamy for specific "bad actors", so actions in one part of the world don't have the same impact in other parts of the world as they would in close proximity to those "bad actors".

Infamy was mostly a good idea, but its implementation had a few flaws in practically every game. For instance, in HOI3, excessive early war-mongering by Italy or some other non-democratic regime could tip the UK over the edge, causing them to declare war....on Germany. WT would make a good secondary effect, but the main effect should still be assigned to the country causing the disturbance, so the repercussions are primarily centered on them, not some neutral third party who the RNG happens to target once WT drops sufficiently.

 

[Telcharinogrod]

I mostly like the EU4 badboy mechanic - Agressive Expansion. Basically, you get negative relations with countries close to countries you attack, scaling with things like how close the attacked and affected country are both geographically and diplomatically, how big you are, how much land you are taking off them, etc. Then if you go over a certain limit, they start forming coalitions to go after you, and if they're strong enough, they attack.

It has the following advantages:

1) Reaction to your actions follow believable patterns. No more Britain attacking Equador because they are so intensely concerned about its illegitimate invasion of Peru whilst all of South America looks on uncaring.
2) It remains a factor until you've blobbed to the level where you can take the entire rest of the world at a time.
3) It's much more flexible than a hard limit, and thus a bit harder to game (though you can of course still game it like hell)

It's not always applied perfectly (sometimes you could take half of Russia with less effect than annexing a one-city minor in the HRE), but it's sound in principle, I feel.

 

[Vohen]

I mostly like the EU4 badboy mechanic - Agressive Expansion. Basically, you get negative relations with countries close to countries you attack, scaling with things like how close the attacked and affected country are both geographically and diplomatically, how big you are, how much land you are taking off them, etc. Then if you go over a certain limit, they start forming coalitions to go after you, and if they're strong enough, they attack.

It has the following advantages:

1) Reaction to your actions follow believable patterns. No more Britain attacking Equador because they are so intensely concerned about its illegitimate invasion of Peru whilst all of South America looks on uncaring.
2) It remains a factor until you've blobbed to the level where you can take the entire rest of the world at a time.
3) It's much more flexible than a hard limit, and thus a bit harder to game (though you can of course still game it like hell)

It's not always applied perfectly (sometimes you could take half of Russia with less effect than annexing a one-city minor in the HRE), but it's sound in principle, I feel.

It works well for EU4's timeframe, but less so in Vic2's, where you had stuff like Austria-Hungary intervening in a Chinese war.
There, I really feel that it makes more sense for every GP to be concerned about events all around the world.
Far more so if they have stakes in the region of course, but if any GP intervenes, every GP should have an interest there, to keep the balance of power and such.

 

[Telcharinogrod]

Of course, you'd have to adapt it to Vicky's timeframe, which I think would work best by prioritising diplomatic relationships as the kind of tie you need to pay attention to. The more influence a GP has, the less they're going to like you interfering in a certain nation. If two countries have been sitting at 200 opinion for a decade, they're not going to appreciate your going to war with the other.

At the same time, geographical location remains a major factor in these things to this day, just compare the reaction to Russia's annexation of the Crimea in the Baltic states with that in western Europe, for example.

 

[General WVPM]

If you want something historically accurate, you have to realize that there were several systems.
In the Americas the USA actively guaranteed to intervene if the Europeans tried to recolonize (looking at you Spain and South America).
In Europe, you had the concert of Europe, went something like this.
The Seventh Coalition (1815) turned into the Quadruple alliance:

• Austria
• Prussia
• Russia
• United Kingdom

Added

France in 1818, thus creating the Quintuple Alliance .
These states could decide everything in Europe and would create the concert of Europe to keep the peace.
In 1826 this failed due to disagreements about the Greek revolt.
The alliance split more and more into separate factions. The more conservative members joined the Holy alliance (1815-1854, 1871-1880):

• Austria
• Prussia
• Russia

Starting with the 1848 revolution, France left the alliance, followed complete dissolution of the alliance with the Crimean war.
New alliances formed, like France and Britain teaming up against Russia during the Crimean war, Austria and Prussia against Denmark in the Second Schleswig War.
A big change occurred when Italy became united with the help of France and Prussia.

In 1882 Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy united in the Triple Alliance (1882-1914), which led to France and Russia creating their own alliance (1892-1917).
The United Kingdom also allied France, creating the Entente Cordiale. In 1907 France, Russia and the United Kingdom formed the Triple Entente. The stage was set for WWI.

I won't go into detail about post WWI great power influence and system (basically just the victors of WWI controlling everything).
Throughout the 19th century Europe, Africa and Asia were controlled by the members of the Quintuple Alliance. They could straight out invade a country whenever they felt like it, as they did in Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Ottoman Empire, Hungary and other places. But when the members did not agree on a course of action, it could mean war or an intervention at the peace conference, as they did 1878 in with the Treaty of San Stefano.

Conquering a whole continent was fine, redrawing the map of Europe was also fine. As long as they agreed it was fine, which usually meant that they all had to benefit. In game, I think this would translate into some sort of complex trade system where you can annex Morocco, but Germany gets a colony for example.
If no agreement could be reached, you could force your way through and risk war or maintain the status quo.

Perhaps it can be represented with a comparison of relative powers. When one member gets too powerful, the others will oppose him more, unless they are closely allied.

 

[Telcharinogrod]

That would be ideal, of course, if you could also find a way to adapt it to all the strange situations that can arise in Victoria's alternative timelines (what do you do if Scandinavia forms and colonises half of Africa -it would completely redraw all the balance of power considerations at the heart of these systems of limitations). But is that possible?

 

[Kovax]

Any such system would need to allow for changes to the list of GPs. Beyond that, I suppose it's possible, but probably no easy feat of programming.

 

[Quantum_AI]

At the very least, infamy should scale with population of the province demanded. You should not get the same infamy for asking for Paris as asking for the Kerguelen Islands.