Are Coalitions fixed yet?

[Geobog]

Like The Bloke inferred, coalitions need work because they are mostly senseless. Right now they are a catch-all, and it leads to senseless scenarios; if Milan, due to alliances and hard-fought wars, take Savoie and Nice from France, England and Spain get pissed and join a coalition. Why? Simply because provinces were taken, even provinces that are pretty justifiably taken from a powerful rival of the large European nations.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: coalitions are broken because they are senseless, not just because they exist. Say even just France had a temper tantrum that little ol' Milan got away with liberating Savoie and started a "coalition". Wouldn't the rest of Europe just point and laugh? (Hey that's it, maybe a -25 prestige hit for starting/joining a coalition because you are clearly saying you can't handle the other nation) Does France, who is already relatively powerful, NEED a coalition to try to take back Savoie and Nice, and even so, why would any of the rest of Europe want that to happen? In particular, why would Sweden, Bremen, Poland, and Portugal team up to "punish" Milan for something that they would probably view as a good thing?

My example is fictional, though I had very similar experiences while playing Tuscany->Italy when Austria and France would coalition against me when I was smaller than each one, even though they basically spent that whole game fighting each other when they weren't distracted by coalition-warring against me (at least at first). It would take just a discovery of claims fabrication on France for them to start a coalition or join an existing one. And then, what, Bremen joins amongst many other senseless nations? And Bremen declares war on Tuscany for Tuscany taking Piedmont? What? Did they have some strange suspicion that in a few hundred years I would be some sort of threat to them because I conquered Piedmont, because I sure as heck wasn't close to being a threat to them at that point.

Anyway, psychologically, coalitions prevent me (and I'm sure I'm not alone) from getting very excited about ANY war now. There is no winning big (at least in Europe), whether one wants to get territory, force religion, or just weaken the opponent. And coalitions aren't broken because they make the game too hard, they are broken because they then get me into more wars (this time formed of rulers that have completely lost their minds) that I am not excited about with even less glorious victories possible. I almost never declare war now, I only take a province or two in defensive wars... simply to weaken the country so it hopefully won't declare war again. And I'm also choosing to write about coalitions rather than play the game, because the current state of the coalition system is making the game more boring than the game would otherwise be. And I've been an EU player since the first one =P

 

[unmerged(815621)]

Coalitions in EU4, but true for real world history as well, are defensive in nature. And wars themselves are called "Punitive wars", aimed at reducing the aggressor in size, not the other way around. This reflects the fact that the spirit of several minor nations has the moral high ground over a rapid expansionist.

In short, a fix presumes something was broken.

You are forgetting that countries stayed in coalitions because it benefitted them, not just out of defense. When a country steamrolls your country, occupies it, and you have no chance of getting it back any time soon, there is no benefit for you to stay in the war. Likewise, if your WE is high and your peasants are rabbling, theres no benefit for you to stay in a coalition either. In the first example, these countries historically became vassals (as major countries never were fully occupied). If the country ended up losing the war in the end, they would also lose the vassal as well (as they would be liberated). Coalitions wars ended in many different ways, none that I can think of ended with all partners peaking out at the same time. They are closer to super alliances than a single entity and should be modeled as such.

My example is fictional, though I had very similar experiences while playing Tuscany->Italy when Austria and France would coalition against me when I was smaller than each one, even though they basically spent that whole game fighting each other when they weren't distracted by coalition-warring against me (at least at first). It would take just a discovery of claims fabrication on France for them to start a coalition or join an existing one. And then, what, Bremen joins amongst many other senseless nations? And Bremen declares war on Tuscany for Tuscany taking Piedmont? What? Did they have some strange suspicion that in a few hundred years I would be some sort of threat to them because I conquered Piedmont, because I sure as heck wasn't close to being a threat to them at that point.

One thing that is not modeled so well is the economics and politics of the era. Many wars were fought over the status quo. Small to midsized countries would try to expand, and larger countries would get involved to either to maintain the status quo or to shake it up (if they think they can gain from it). A stronger country in Italy lessens both the political and economic power of France and Austria in the region. Both of these countries should try an take you down a notch. Something in between a coalition and a war for status quo, similar to that of Vicky 2, would better model this situation.

The HRE members were notoriously aggressive about expansion and maintaining power, helping lead to their decline (in addition to the Habsburgs poor management). If Tuscany expanded its power, you would be right to think that other HRE members would take notice. A minor becoming even slightly less of a minor disrupts the delicate balance in the region. Bremen should be interested in Tuscany's expansion, even if the game does not fully model they why.

 

[vanzlmalc]

Coalitions are there to slow us down and they do that just fine. Enable

But! They annoy me to no end because there is no way to punish coalition members.

Losing a coalition war should have some major penalties, something like -100 prestige, -1 stab and -10 army tradition. (I know it's too harsh but hey, i'm no game designer) Joining a coalition should have some risk involved.

Edit: forgot to say, separate peace should still not be possible, it's the one thing that makes coalitions successful in slowing us down.

 

[zodium]

When provinces change owners, they change governments and rulers, not indigenous population. Which is accurate for 99.9% of historical events in the given time period. When you "win a siege" over a province, or the whole war for that matter, you win against the government - nobles, kings, courts. Not the people. As you can tell by reinforcement caps, only a fraction of actual population serves in the armies.

When provinces change hands, it's the administration that's gone, not the people. Basically, someone tells them "you're ours now". And the reaction is either "oh, okay" or "no way, we rebel".

A warscore of 100% means that the government, not the people, decided they capitulated and have no more diplomatic or military manoeuvres they can pull. In case of coalitions, its the political will of the whole coalition.

Coalitions in EU4, but true for real world history as well, are defensive in nature. And wars themselves are called "Punitive wars", aimed at reducing the aggressor in size, not the other way around. This reflects the fact that the spirit of several minor nations has the moral high ground over a rapid expansionist.

It's only natural that the warscore mechanism works more in favour of the coalition than it does for the target.

Now, almost 580 hours spent in EU4 taught me that in the 400 years timeframe, you can easily, by diplomacy and by war (with very minor vassal feeding) gain from 50 to 200 provinces throughout the timespan, depending on your starting position, without even joining the colonisation game. Considering the limits of infrastructure in that time period, that's a pretty accurate picture of possible events.

Now, before you say, "but Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Alexander", consider, again, that it was kings and princes that were defeated, not populations themselves. Napoleon didn't conquer whole Europe, he liberated it, in his own way, by sweeping away old customs and rule where he went. Ultimately, he wasn't very successful, but he did plant the seed for the future.

In short, a fix presumes something was broken.

Sorry, but something is broken, and if you'd bothered to read many of the substantive replies on the issue, you'd know exactly how it is broken by your own standard: coalitions are not actually effective at reducing an aggressor in size once snowballing sets in, the exact mechanic coalitions were introduced to combat. Worse, the mechanics that previously worked to introduce a fun increase in risk through the early game does a 180 and introduces a complete dissolution of risk-reward structure in the late game.

And honestly, if you played EU4 for 580 hours without encountering the problem with coalitions, all I can say is: see signature.

 

[Dr. B]

I read someone say that coalitions dont represent a serious challenge to the player.
So I thought about it. A coalition should ideally be something to fear, right? Payback for Napoleon-style conquest.
If you have reached a level of power where a big coalition doesn't give a challenge, then what is it in the game that does?
I think nothing, you are invincible. So the only issue to be fixed is the overall difficulty level of the game, it should be harder.

 

[Bibor]

And honestly, if you played EU4 for 580 hours without encountering the problem with coalitions, all I can say is: see signature.

Coalitions are not meant to force you stop getting provinces. They exist to slow you down. They exist to deplete your manpower, possibly inciting revolts throughout the empire.

I never had any issues with coalitions that I couldn't handle. In my current game as France I had Spain, (big) Brandenburg HRE allied w/russia, half a dozen german states, Bohemia, almost all italian states and Ottomans in a coalition against me.

Really, the only trick to make Coalitions disassemble is to - gasp - win wars with 0 AE. That's all. Any longer war with or without the coalition that you win with 0 AE will make 1-2 members to leave.

 

[beckermt]

You can try to mod out coalitions by making coalition=no in all ai altitudes,

Oh. Neat! I can do play EU4 again!! Score. To the mod-mobile Batman!

 

[zodium]

I never had any issues with coalitions that I couldn't handle.

Glad you decided to join the periphery of the discussion. To bring you up to speed on the past two months' worth of responses to that line of argument, the problem with coalitions is not the degree to which they slow expansion, as you seem to think, but the means by which they do so. In particular, the problem is that the means of slowing you down (which it does successfully) is to simply disable risk-reward (since you do not stand to lose any substantial amount of power even under 100% all-province loss), without actually representing a credible threat (the broken part). There's simply no conceivable scenario in which an AI alliance can drive me, or any good player, to a 100% defeat, nor any way in which they could get me to cede 100% WS worth of provinces even if they did. Coalitions are not doing their job, full stop.

 

[Bibor]

Glad you decided to join the periphery of the discussion. To bring you up to speed on the past two months' worth of responses to that line of argument,
/snip
There's simply no conceivable scenario in which an AI alliance can drive me, or any good player, to a 100% defeat, nor any way in which they could get me to cede 100% WS worth of provinces even if they did. Coalitions are not doing their job, full stop.

Please stop being so hostile. Nothing can stop a good player from doing what he/she wants. The only two limitations to human player's expansion are province coring costs (and times) and province % costs in peace deals. That's all.

 

[zodium]

Please stop being so hostile. Nothing can stop a good player from doing what he/she wants. The only two limitations to human player's expansion are province coring costs (and times) and province % costs in peace deals. That's all.

First of all, there are numerous constraints beyond the two you listed. Overextension, diplomatic relations, just to quickly double the list size with the obvious ones. Then there are more behind the scenes constraints discovered by extensive testing, such as the province count scaling factor in the AE equation. These exist for one reason: because snowballing is boring. Like all game mechanics, their goal is to make the game system they are part of fun.

Second, there have been numerous proposals for replacement mechanics that would not suffer the undesirable consequences of the current coalition mechanics brought up over the past months, including scaling war-related bonuses to coalition members, increased rebellion and instability, various total redesigns of internal politics, and many more. The fact that you aren't capable of coming up with a way to stop humans from snowballing does not imply that such a way does not exist.

You're welcome to join the discussion in its full context, if you like, but I don't see why one would expect to be met with anything other than hostility when one casually strolls into a complex discussion with bombastic claims of how everyone except oneself is wrong because [hand wave].

 

[wolfing]

Their doing their job perfectly well. Maybe I'm a lousy player, but I do respect coalitions against me. In my current Poland/Lithuania/Hungary game , I'm target of a coalition from Muscovy+Austria. I made the mistake of attacking a country in the HRE that wasn't part of the coalition, but Austria came in to help, which made Muscovy come too. It is not looking good at all, I'll be lucky to negotiate a white peace.

 

[LemonMonk]

Their doing their job perfectly well. Maybe I'm a lousy player, but I do respect coalitions against me.

I too respect coalitions, I find that if you treat them right they'll leave the coalition and you can take them or others down. Never had a problem expanding, even in the HRE. My Gelre > Netherlands game a coalition including Austria scared me, so I focused on non-aggressive stuff for a while. They left [even thought they're my Rival] and I continued my expansion.

Also, dat Bosnia!

 

[Bibor]

First of all, there are numerous constraints beyond the two you listed. Overextension, diplomatic relations, just to quickly double the list size with the obvious ones. Then there are more behind the scenes constraints discovered by extensive testing, such as the province count scaling factor in the AE equation. These exist for one reason: because snowballing is boring. Like all game mechanics, their goal is to make the game system they are part of fun.
.

So, by my statements, you figure that I haven't thought about all that before posting? I though it obvious that successful campaign so far are an indicator I got a firm grasp on how to handle the things you listed.

Overextension and, by extension, AMP expenditure are overblown issues. If your ruler is not in the 0-1 AMP range, you can core 1 province every 5 years, except, perhaps, Polish Danzig. Considering the timeframe of 400 years, that's over 70 cored provinces.

Such pace will also negate any diplo penalties you might get for annexation, except for really irritated countries that go into the -60 per province taken range.

Which brings me to the Aggressive Expansion penalties, which are easily mitigated by the simple fact that Allies suffer only minor AE penalties. The idea is that you ally with big/adjacent countries before the war, to mitigate the AE damage. Smaller countries are irrelevant, because you're going to vassalize them anyway.

The idea that every Ally should also be married is a grave mistake. Alliances should be more flexible than marriages.

It really takes around a 100 years of constant warfare for first coalition to start forming, and when that moment comes you can afford a 20-30 year gap in your expansions, investing into infrastructure, tech and ideas during this period.

On average, with diplo annexations, military annexations and conquests, you can gain 3-6 provinces per decade, without triggering coalitions.

That's 60-100 provinces in 200 years.

If that's not enough, well...

 

[zodium]

So, by my statements, you figure that I haven't thought about all that before posting? I though it obvious that successful campaign so far are an indicator I got a firm grasp on how to handle the things you listed.

Overextension and, by extension, AMP expenditure are overblown issues. If your ruler is not in the 0-1 AMP range, you can core 1 province every 5 years, except, perhaps, Polish Danzig. Considering the timeframe of 400 years, that's over 70 cored provinces.

Such pace will also negate any diplo penalties you might get for annexation, except for really irritated countries that go into the -60 per province taken range.

Which brings me to the Aggressive Expansion penalties, which are easily mitigated by the simple fact that Allies suffer only minor AE penalties. The idea is that you ally with big/adjacent countries before the war, to mitigate the AE damage. Smaller countries are irrelevant, because you're going to vassalize them anyway.

The idea that every Ally should also be married is a grave mistake. Alliances should be more flexible than marriages.

It really takes around a 100 years of constant warfare for first coalition to start forming, and when that moment comes you can afford a 20-30 year gap in your expansions, investing into infrastructure, tech and ideas during this period.

On average, with diplo annexations, military annexations and conquests, you can gain 3-6 provinces per decade, without triggering coalitions.

That's 60-100 provinces in 200 years.

If that's not enough, then we have another issue, which is world domination, which is a completely different beast.

Yes, I suppose I did figure that you hadn't thought of this, but to be fair, your statements continue to suggest that you aren't putting a lot of thought into this. I'm not going to give this the full textual criticism treatment since you've obviously made little effort to familiarize yourself with the different sides on the matter here, but suffice it to say that you are, again, mistaking the non-existent problem of the degree to which expansion slows down with the actual problem of the unfun means by which expansion is slowed down.

If you'd like to discuss coalition mechanics, you should stop giving gameplay advice as though the problem is that you're the only person who understands coalitions. It's completely missing the point.

 

[Bibor]

How is fighting coalitions not fun? After the coalition war is over, you can do whatever you wish. Most of them will drop out after the 5-year period anyway, as long as your relations are above -100. You really need to be in the -250 AE range with a country for it to stay "permanently" in the coalition.

And yes, I did read the posts. Who cares about not being able to vassalize/annex in a coalition war? Its just one war. It's over in 1-2 years.

 

[zodium]

How is fighting coalitions not fun? After the coalition war is over, you can do whatever you wish. Most of them will drop out after the 5-year period anyway, as long as your relations are above -100. You really need to be in the -250 AE range with a country for it to stay "permanently" in the coalition.

And yes, I did read the posts. Who cares about not being able to vassalize/annex in a coalition war? Its just one war. It's over in 1-2 years.

Please see the edit about gameplay advice not constituting a relevant argument. I would suggest re-reading the posts, and going through some of the other recent coalition threads, to try to get an understanding of the other sides' positions. Or for a lazier solution, you can look at Jomini's post history, he's got some very elegant explanations of the problems that tend to capture multiple concerns.

 

[tapewormlondon]

Whilst i am not bothered by the current coallition mechanics and have not had a problem with them, how about if you completely conquer a country you can not take provinces from them, but can demand that they instantly leave the coallition and are not allowed to join one for x number of years?

 

[Noctus]

WAD you say? So, coalitions should remain the one diplomatic action that doesn't have a cost of some sort, thus AI has 0 reason to calculate whether to join or not? And far flung tribal and oriental nations that you may not have been even discovered, should always join the coalition against some European power for expanding against other Europeans? And I've never seen the AI form a coalition and start a world war over the AI taking provinces in Morroco, but boy oh boy, if you don't follow the "grand strategies" of vassal feeding, or 1 province wars, you'll be dealing with world war 12 by the time the game is over.

This is exactly what i find bad about the current system of Coalitions. I can handle them relatively easily, but it requires "gamey" behavior, and that is what damages my immersion into the game.

 

[Bibor]

Whilst i am not bothered by the current coallition mechanics and have not had a problem with them, how about if you completely conquer a country you can not take provinces from them, but can demand that they instantly leave the coallition and are not allowed to join one for x number of years?

This is a reasonable suggestion. Getting out of the war early should automatically break coalition membership. I think they already cannot re-join for 5 years.

As about coalitions on multiple continents. The current game limitation is that there can be only one coalition.

 

[TheBloke]

Really, the only trick to make Coalitions disassemble is to - gasp - win wars with 0 AE. That's all. Any longer war with or without the coalition that you win with 0 AE will make 1-2 members to leave.

Are you aware of a specific game mechanic that causes coalition leaving as the result of 0 AE wars?
in other words, is it confirmed that spending 3 years at war with 0 AE at the end is different to spending 3 years at peace doing nothing that increases AE?

My own experience is that ending a war is often followed by nations leaving a coalition. But this is because they cannot leave it when I (or they) are at war. If I was at war when their five year minimum coalition term expired, and if by the end of the war I had done nothing further to antagonise them, they will all leave when I declare peace.

But if I hadn't gone to war at all they would have left earlier. I wasn't aware that the 0 AE war was having any active effect of its own.

Have you find that there is some benefit to 0 AE war specifically? That would be awesome .