Border Fiction leads to Europa World War 1?

[Chopain]

My short little rant.

I'm France in the 15 century. I have a border friction CB vs Sicily from my Naples holding. I declare war. Sicily's one ally joins in. One month later all of Italy joins in. Then Bavaria and Austria dow's me. Then the Netherlands. Within one year I am at war vs 19 countries. I have since vassalize 5 of my enemies. I now have to sit back and let my enemies take half of my country to wait for their manpower to dwindle then buy 2000 ducats of mercenaries and go back and regain everything and then vassalize about 10 more countries or go for some white peace deals.

Do I have a point here? Not really besides why does every war in this game lead to a world war? It really bugs me. If Eurpa IV does this I am so getting rid of it.

 

[SerialCereal]

Cascading alliances are the reason that I don't play and will never properly play Divine Wind. They are game breaking concept and are frustrating to no end. In other words, I feel your pain.

 

[n0thin]

It is really easy to foresee cascading alliances. It can be very annoying, thats for sure, but I don't get how all people get surprised by it.

 

[Kinghillard]

It is really easy to foresee cascading alliances. It can be very annoying, thats for sure, but I don't get how all people get surprised by it.

thats the thing, DOWing is like a minefield, and while should always have to watch where you thread it shouldn't be like this. it sucks that austria can guarantee 20 countries making that forbidden land.

 

[LightsShadows]

There is a trick to seeing who gets called in a cascading alliance. First, look at all the allies of the person you are DOWing. More than likely, all of them will get pulled into the war. Then, find the strongest ally, and look at that countries' allies. Likely, all of them will DOW you too when the first ally becomes the war leader. If there is a stronger ally than the war leader, that person will likely become war leader, so you need to look at that person's allies. The process continues until the war leader stops changing. The only exception is if a country that is called has a vassal or PU. Then, it doesn't matter if they are the war leader or not, their subject will be called into the war.

 

[Ruanek]

Usually the war leader jumping won't take too many steps. I've rarely seen it jump more than twice, and often only once. Often it will also settle on one of the larger nations (France, Austria, someone like that).

It helps a lot to have allies of your own. And if your allies are in their cascading alliance chain, but you can call them first, then that can make things a lot less dangerous.

It's the worst as a smaller country, because then it's hard to have strong allies. Or as a non-Catholic country, because then you always fight massive wars even when you're only attacking some OPM Catholic country.

 

[n0thin]

thats the thing, DOWing is like a minefield, and while should always have to watch where you thread it shouldn't be like this. it sucks that austria can guarantee 20 countries making that forbidden land.

It's not a minefield. You can say just from pausing and viewing over the country tabs which countries might join. If you aren't aware, that a country is guaranteed by some country you can't handle it's your fault.
And of course it should be like this. Don't you think a good historical ruler would be thinking about which countries might join a war? And it was even way harder than, since you don't have secret alliances and stuff in EU3 (SP).
What might be too much is the amount of guarantees and spherelings. But I don't think it's bad that you have to think before declaring war (unless you're so big you don't even care).

 

[hitchens]

Cascading alliences is not a problem. Start offering white peace to the smaller nations, use concede defeat or offer a small payment and have them accept. That way the warscore goes down and more nations would be willing to accept. Also, stay away from larger nations and send your troops to attack small AI stacks.

 

[LightsShadows]

Cascading alliences is not a problem. Start offering white peace to the smaller nations, use concede defeat or offer a small payment and have them accept. That way the warscore goes down and more nations would be willing to accept. Also, stay away from larger nations and send your troops to attack small AI stacks.

Won't conceding defeat to a bunch of small nations tank your prestige and legitimacy?

 

[hitchens]

Won't conceding defeat to a bunch of small nations tank your prestige and legitimacy?

Yes but that has never been a problem for me. It doesnt affect my WC plans. Also, lots of royal marriages and skirmishes raise it.
edit : Raiding the middle east is also a good way to raise prestige, holding the holy land would add a nice prestige bonus.
edit : Also they will often accept just white peace so no bribes are needed.

 

[Grubnessul]

Meh, this is easily foreseeable. Just pump up your relations with their major allies to +200 and declare war, or wait until they are elsewhere occupied.

 

[Bakenellan]

Cascading Alliances are annoying, sure, but otherwise conquests are too easy and straightforward. It was worse before, when you could DOW some OPM in alliance with your real target so that your target could not bring his own allies.

 

[unmerged(540854)]

It's not a minefield. You can say just from pausing and viewing over the country tabs which countries might join. If you aren't aware, that a country is guaranteed by some country you can't handle you shouldn't declare war.
And of course it should be like this. Don't you think a good historical ruler would be thinking about which countries might join a war? And it was even way harder than, since you don't have secret alliances and stuff in EU3 (SP).
What might be too much is the amount of guarantees and spherelings. But I don't think it's bad that you have to think before declaring war (unless you're so big you don't even care).

The problem is, is that its annoying even if you are so big that you should not care. It gets annoying to have to fight France or Spain and its allies in every war you declare because either one is always DoTF in a game as a 100+ province Germany for example. Ofcourse its dealable, sometimes historic, but the game takes a good concept and then takes it a 100 miles past the point were it was a good idea.

A fix I would hope they put in in EU4 is that if I attack a nation which is allied to a nation who is allied to someone I have a thruce with. The second party can not call in the third party because it would be breaking thruce and I did not attack the ally of the party I have a thruce with. This would prevent the constant war against the same nation time and time again while you should still be forced at peace. It would be different if I attacked a direct ally of someone I had a thruce with ofcourse.

 

[Enewald]

My short little rant.

I'm France in the 15 century. I have a border friction CB vs Sicily from my Naples holding. I declare war. Sicily's one ally joins in. One month later all of Italy joins in. Then Bavaria and Austria dow's me. Then the Netherlands. Within one year I am at war vs 19 countries. I have since vassalize 5 of my enemies. I now have to sit back and let my enemies take half of my country to wait for their manpower to dwindle then buy 2000 ducats of mercenaries and go back and regain everything and then vassalize about 10 more countries or go for some white peace deals.

Do I have a point here? Not really besides why does every war in this game lead to a world war? It really bugs me. If Eurpa IV does this I am so getting rid of it.

So you decided you are a strong bully nation that wants to kill smaller states. Welcome to Eu3 vanilla. Enjoy your blobbing.

Then Paradox made the game better.
When the weak and fragile states unite, they take down the bully with their combined forces. Welcome to European Diplomacy, or How We Learned To Prevent The Big Blue Blob From Eating Most Of Europe.

You have human brains, you can see how the AI is coded to react. You just find the weak spot, the lone fishes, and proceed to eat them.
Then you wait for the right time to join some ongoing war, wait for right backstabbing time, and proceed with the kill.
Vanilla is truly boring compared to how well Paradox has improved EU over the years!

 

[n0thin]

The problem is, is that its annoying even if you are so big that you should not care. It gets annoying to have to fight France or Spain and its allies in every war you declare because either one is always DoTF in a game as a 100+ province Germany for example. Ofcourse its dealable, sometimes historic, but the game takes a good concept and then takes it a 100 miles past the point were it was a good idea.

A fix I would hope they put in in EU4 is that if I attack a nation which is allied to a nation who is allied to someone I have a thruce with. The second party can not call in the third party because it would be breaking thruce and I did not attack the ally of the party I have a thruce with. This would prevent the constant war against the same nation time and time again while you should still be forced at peace. It would be different if I attacked a direct ally of someone I had a thruce with ofcourse.

While I agree that the DotF doesn't work really good and there should be a limit to spherelings and guarantees, the concept you are proposing is far too abusable. What would be way better is fixing the remove contract option. It is kinda silly that when I just won a war with nation x and demanded they dissolve their alliance with nation y, they can renew that alliance in a month.
While there maybe some extreme cases of cascading alliances, the system itself isn't too bad, as it prevents the player from abusing game mechanics to get what he wants the very easy way.

 

[Ruanek]

Just think of all the times (most of) Europe worked together to stop France. Or Germany. Man, if those cascading alliances hadn't brought the USA into the war... The Thirty Years War had plenty of this, as well.

Anyways, without cascading alliances wars would be way too easy. And alliances wouldn't be as meaningful. If I want to take out an OPM, it makes sense that some major nation near it wants to protect it. And if that nation is allied to some other major nation, it would be unrealistic to expect them to not ask them to join the war.

 

[unmerged(540854)]

Just think of all the times (most of) Europe worked together to stop France. Or Germany. Man, if those cascading alliances hadn't brought the USA into the war... The Thirty Years War had plenty of this, as well.

Anyways, without cascading alliances wars would be way too easy. And alliances wouldn't be as meaningful. If I want to take out an OPM, it makes sense that some major nation near it wants to protect it. And if that nation is allied to some other major nation, it would be unrealistic to expect them to not ask them to join the war.

Its all logical, as long as it is in their interest. So big nations? sure, you can't just stand by as a large nation watching another large nation become more and more powerfull. Even in the mid 1500's that was already the case. (but then work in the fix like nothing suggested.)

One minor fighting another in a region no-one gives a rats ass about strategicly? should be a different mather. Why in the world would England or Spain be interested in what happens between Pskov and the swedes early game? Sweden is not close enough nor is threatening their strategic interests, why in the world would they get involved? Compare this to Castille invading Portugal and its a different story entirely.

Everything is important to the AI and that makes it cringy, I just hope they improve this in EU4. More logic behind cascading alliances.

 

[Ruanek]

Its all logical, as long as it is in their interest. So big nations? sure, you can't just stand by as a large nation watching another large nation become more and more powerfull. Even in the mid 1500's that was already the case. (but then work in the fix like nothing suggested.)

One minor fighting another in a region no-one gives a rats ass about strategicly? should be a different mather. Why in the world would England or Spain be interested in what happens between Pskov and the swedes early game? Sweden is not close enough nor is threatening their strategic interests, why in the world would they get involved? Compare this to Castille invading Portugal and its a different story entirely.

Everything is important to the AI and that makes it cringy, I just hope they improve this in EU4. More logic behind cascading alliances.

True, it does get odd logically when the aggressor is a minor nation. The major ones really mostly cared about preserving the balance of power, after all, and this generally wouldn't change with a minor nation taking land from another minor nation. Though if the defending nation had some form of ties to a nearby larger nation, it could make sense. Or if they asked for help.

 

[Lord Curlyton]

Cascading alliances are useful and really improved the game. Yes, they are annoying, but you can still plan ahead (especially necessary if you wish to expand in the HRE with a large emperor watching over things) and use some diplomatic sleight of hand to minimize the risk (mutual allies can be CtA into some other way of yours, you can wait until the big problems are exhausted/overextended, multiple wars can be declared at once to limit involvement, etc). Outside of the HRE, its a lot easier to manage, since you generally just look at Spain/France/England (or GB)'s direct allies and see if they are shared by your target AND are obviously more powerful than it.

Hell, sometimes I like to spark a cascading alliance so I can show the other superpowers who's the top dog. Its a great way to keep HRE reforms at a minimum, or balkanize France.

 

[imperium3]

You can also use them to get concessions out of several nations without a CB. I've been doing this as Spain to consolidate my rule over Italy: Get subjugation CB on Tuscany, DoW Tuscany, bunch of small nations in Italy join in, vassalise some of them, vassalise Tuscany, then white peace anyone else (Bavaria/Bohemia) that got involved. At this point I have pretty much the whole of ITaly vassalised/PU'd, including the Papal States (not that that stopped the bastard from excommunicating me!).