Dear Paradox

[TheMeInTeam]

I was taking into account the time it takes raising an army as well and shipping it from afar [iirc it takes ~11 months to ship from western Europe to Australia with no canal].
Of course, if the enemy is much closer to then the modifier** should be shorter [distance dependent?].

**and if they are not helping they'll receive a negative modifier with their ally; namely the -50 "R U KIDDING ME?!" modifier

You can make a case that nations that are across the world (such as Australia) joining hands in war to ship their forces there is awkward anyway. I've always found it odd that the Iberian butt buddies will help each other in offensive wars in Africa or Mesoamerica, or that say Portugal can find a purely European ally and bring them into a defensive war against Mali despite that said ally has almost no navy, can't see Africa, and/or is landlocked etc. The game (erroneously) uses "can't reach target" in other places, so there are other mechanics that at least attempt to realize the potential for non-contributors. That could use some expanding.

But IMO this whole shebang is a secondary issue to the "bleeding nation commits suicide" behavior of the AI.

 

[SolSys]

... Iberian butt buddies ...

**
I wasn't aware that was a thing now **

**the things you miss when you spend too much time on the Paradox forums instead of IRL.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

**
I wasn't aware that was a thing now **

**the things you miss when you spend too much time on the Paradox forums instead of IRL.

I am of course referring to the freebie PU + "historical friends" rig there creating what is in many games a unified front of units to fight in order to resist the colonizers. Portugal is the worst because they'll frequently ally England too.

I'm doing a game right now where the wedding didn't fire, but Aragon conquered Castile. Even in early 1600 they are allied to France, Portugal, England, and Commonwealth...so basically any war against a colonizer forces me to fight inverse Spain in addition (Aragon will probably form Spain outright soon, Castile is almost gone).

The Mali screenshot I posted earlier in this thread is not uncommon. In most cases, you get that outcome precisely because nations honor CTA and then do nothing, or they'll land and get stack wiped + rebuild. The end result is that the other side in the war can lose 50,000 to 100,000 soldiers and still have high enthusiasm...only to have length of war eventually let them be kicked out.

 

[Umega]

Is automatic white peace still a thing?

Yeah, I still see it happen with AI only wars.

 

[Wizzington]

Length of War is there for a reason, it's not perfect but I'm not planning to revise it anytime soon because doing so would inevitably spawn a myriad of bugs/balance issues. Live with it or mod it away.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Length of War is there for a reason, it's not perfect but I'm not planning to revise it anytime soon because doing so would inevitably spawn a myriad of bugs/balance issues.

Refusing a 1% demand at -44% war score without penalty IS a balance issue ^_^. I can see what you mean though.

 

[Pyske]

Length of War is there for a reason, it's not perfect but I'm not planning to revise it anytime soon because doing so would inevitably spawn a myriad of bugs/balance issues. Live with it or mod it away.

Is there a way to mod in a value computed at runtime? I assumed the values would have to be static / compile time values for mods.

 

[SolSys]

Is there a way to mod in a value computed at runtime? I assumed the values would have to be static / compile time values for mods.

I was under the impression it was in 'defines'.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was under the impression it was in 'defines'.

It is, but you have to replace it with something or the game gets stupid pretty fast, which is a bit harder to do.

 

[SolSys]

It is, but you have to replace it with something or the game gets stupid pretty fast, which is a bit harder to do.

According to a Reddit post** and to wiki PEACE_TIME_MONTHS is set by default to 60.
Wouldn't 36 months be a reasonable number if you want shorter wars but not too short?

**https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/369xkf/possible_to_decrease_length_of_warmodifier/

 

[radiatoren]

Refusing a 1% demand at -44% war score without penalty IS a balance issue ^_^. I can see what you mean though.

That is not a balance issue. You are just not getting the information you need at the right time to understand the situation.
Warscore is not a good indicater of what you can gain from negotiating.

A revised suggestion: Indicate the willingness to negotiate instead of warscore. Start with "warhungry" and move over something like "rejective", "neutral", "peace-seeker" and "desperate" to indicate their willingness to negotiate (based on war enthusiam). If you give an offer before the war ends, the indication changes to an I/O indication relative to that offer.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That is not a balance issue. You are just not getting the information you need at the right time to understand the situation.
Warscore is not a good indicater of what you can gain from negotiating.

A revised suggestion: Indicate the willingness to negotiate instead of warscore. Start with "warhungry" and move over something like "rejective", "neutral", "peace-seeker" and "desperate" to indicate their willingness to negotiate (based on war enthusiam). If you give an offer before the war ends, the indication changes to an I/O indication relative to that offer.

Enough with the nonsense, I don't like being told I don't understand something I'm familiar with. It's quite likely I know the underlying modifiers better than you do, and I certainly do for the posted picture since I actually looked at them directly.

When you slaughter tens of thousands of soldiers and hold the war goal, the AI suiciding by refusing even white peace is inane, counter to the advice Wiz himself gave, and imbalanced in that in a player vs player war, this is an *easy* stabhit peace-forcing situation. The only garbage keeping them in this war is "length of war" + "strength of alliances".

But you can't squirm out of a balance issue here. If I tag swapped, the AI could force larger concessions on pain of stability hit, up to ~20% war score (IE demand claims + money until I accept or go -3stab). Even w/o tag swap, staying in this war is costing Castile dearly, much more than the demand being made. It's thoroughly inane behavior and your insistence that it's a mere clarity issue despite what I've been showing to this point is abrasive.

 

[yerm]

Length of War is there for a reason, it's not perfect but I'm not planning to revise it anytime soon because doing so would inevitably spawn a myriad of bugs/balance issues. Live with it or mod it away.

Fine. Can we get SOMETHING modifying AI peace rationale that is impacted by the value I know for dead certain you already calculate, about the individual war potential of a nation?

If I am fighting Provence, and they are allied to Austria, and I have weakened Austria to the point that Venice, then Bavaria, and then even Augsburg decide to unilaterally attack them because they all see that Austria is incredibly weakened and vulnerable... WHY DOES AUSTRIA NOT KNOW THIS? This is what's missing from the picture. OPM Augsburg knows that Austria is a wreck and attacks but Austria does not consider itself a wreck and has length of war and strength of alliance and maybe Austria holds Wien and other modifiers telling them to just tough it out.

Again, this is stuff the AI should already know. The calculation appears already. It's just not being used by the one nation that actually needs to use it, the one that's in a losing war and its aggressive neighbors know it but it will not just make a white peace and get out. This goes for AI that are so thoroughly screwed they do things like suicide their stack into their sieged last province because it's lights out if they lose it - if they know they're so screwed that they have to desperately fling themselves at this final stand and in all likelihood get wiped out, why not actually let them know they're this screwed on the peace deal screen where they can end this war?

Also, separately, there's a modifier for being an ally in the war. I get this modifier, I really do, but can we perhaps have this one scale with the length of war? Or have it be sort of a balancing modifier - it discourages a winning ally from making peace as intended but encourages a losing ally to accept a white peace? It can be matched with things like increasing the "demands exceed warscore" penalty and the minimum warscore to make demands amount for allies to diminish potential abuse and improve allied AI logic.

Finally, very importantly, can you pretty please get rid of the ticking war exhaustion for players who are NOT the negotiating war leader?

 

[JasperClay]

Fine. Can we get SOMETHING modifying AI peace rationale that is impacted by the value I know for dead certain you already calculate, about the individual war potential of a nation?

If I am fighting Provence, and they are allied to Austria, and I have weakened Austria to the point that Venice, then Bavaria, and then even Augsburg decide to unilaterally attack them because they all see that Austria is incredibly weakened and vulnerable... WHY DOES AUSTRIA NOT KNOW THIS? This is what's missing from the picture. OPM Augsburg knows that Austria is a wreck and attacks but Austria does not consider itself a wreck and has length of war and strength of alliance and maybe Austria holds Wien and other modifiers telling them to just tough it out.

Again, this is stuff the AI should already know. The calculation appears already. It's just not being used by the one nation that actually needs to use it, the one that's in a losing war and its aggressive neighbors know it but it will not just make a white peace and get out. This goes for AI that are so thoroughly screwed they do things like suicide their stack into their sieged last province because it's lights out if they lose it - if they know they're so screwed that they have to desperately fling themselves at this final stand and in all likelihood get wiped out, why not actually let them know they're this screwed on the peace deal screen where they can end this war?

Also, separately, there's a modifier for being an ally in the war. I get this modifier, I really do, but can we perhaps have this one scale with the length of war? Or have it be sort of a balancing modifier - it discourages a winning ally from making peace as intended but encourages a losing ally to accept a white peace? It can be matched with things like increasing the "demands exceed warscore" penalty and the minimum warscore to make demands amount for allies to diminish potential abuse and improve allied AI logic.

Finally, very importantly, can you pretty please get rid of the ticking war exhaustion for players who are NOT the negotiating war leader?

Can somebody try what happens by just playing with the size of the modifier? Just start it at a lower amount, and have it tick down more slowly?

 

[yerm]

Can somebody try what happens by just playing with the size of the modifier? Just start it at a lower amount, and have it tick down more slowly?

It, uh, depends on how you adjust it. Length of war is not the problem though. Length of war is a crutch that props up the actual problem. If the AI is making peace too quickly, the problem is that the AI's motivations either for going to war in the first place or for making peace are not adequately calculated. The AI is not recognizing "I am way stronger" or "I am being steamrolled" properly and accepting peace terms not in its favor.

That's kind of my point. I don't think length of war is inherently bad or broken itself; the problem is the various other factors that are often miscalculated (strength of alliances when allies aren't helping) or left out (so screwed OPMs attack me solo) when calculating peace deal acceptance. Length of war is simply delaying the bad decisions; it's not the real cause.

 

[happymix91]

It seems that there are many great programers. You guys say proudly about how bad EU4 peace system is, and then how about making greater one instead of waiting for PDS? Well PDS is recruiting now, join there can be a great solution.

Oh you don't have enough talent and just have a good mouth(or fingers)? Then go to work instead of infinitely whining, earn more money, and pay more and more and more for EU4, then someday PDS recruits more programers and update peace system.



PDS has their own QA team and devs also play their game. Do you think that developers can't recognize the problems of current peace system which even you can know about? Whining about known issues can't be a help for devs, or can't make devs do a thing which you want. Only something creative can be a help.

 

[SolSys]

1. It seems that there are many great programmers. You guys say proudly about how bad EU4 peace system is, and then how about making greater one instead of waiting for PDS? Well PDS is recruiting now, join there can be a great solution.

2. Oh, you don't have enough talent and just have a good mouth (or fingers)? Then go to work instead of infinitely whining, earn more money, and pay more and more and more for EU4, then someday PDS recruits more programmers and update peace system.

3. PDS has their own QA team and devs also play their game. Do you think that developers can't recognize the problems of current peace system which even you can know about? Whining about known issues can't be a help for devs, or can't make devs do a thing which you want. Only something creative can be a help.

I tried to answer you a point by point [which was a bit hard cause you mixed them a bit]:

1. Actually, some of us are programmers. Moreover, in the short time since I became active on the forums I managed to speak with other programmers as well. Guess what? We are all kinda happily employed [well, happily is an over-exaggeration, let's say mildly content instead].

2. We do recognize how hard it is to program. Not everyone likes to develop non-stop all day [What?! But they're just typing stuff into computers how hard can it be? A LOT. And ANNOYING]. In more then one occasion I called out when people asked for ridiculous changes expecting them soon.

3. In my work, we decide what features to develop and improve based on two ways. The first one is to predict what the client needs [or will need] and just doesn't know it yet. The second way, and here's the kicker, the CLIENT asks as specifically for a set of features he wants and we work together to ensure it will be done to his satisfaction.

I myself keep my suggestions to QoL issues [unless asked for] because I know the underline work is already done and it just needs to be presented differently. You should look at the suggestion sub-forum. I think you'll be positively surprised.

All this is relevant of course if you bothered to read the thread at all and not just the first post [which was, admittedly, plastered with capital letters].


Have a day,
SolSys

 

[JasperClay]

It, uh, depends on how you adjust it. Length of war is not the problem though. Length of war is a crutch that props up the actual problem. If the AI is making peace too quickly, the problem is that the AI's motivations either for going to war in the first place or for making peace are not adequately calculated. The AI is not recognizing "I am way stronger" or "I am being steamrolled" properly and accepting peace terms not in its favor.

That's kind of my point. I don't think length of war is inherently bad or broken itself; the problem is the various other factors that are often miscalculated (strength of alliances when allies aren't helping) or left out (so screwed OPMs attack me solo) when calculating peace deal acceptance. Length of war is simply delaying the bad decisions; it's not the real cause.

We totally agree: the biggest challenge of the AI is getting it to dynamically adjust to the calculus of other AI, and include that in it's own calculations. I don't really know how to fix that: I've never even seen the AI code, of course. It's important to note, as you did, that the root of the problem is AI shortcuts leading it astray.

At the same time, I've never seen the AI make peace too quickly. I've often seen it stay in a war too long. So, the shortcut should probably be adjusted, in the meanwhile.

My immediate suggestion would be to make it a -30 modifier, ticking down at 1 point every 3 months.

 

[SolSys]

...
At the same time, I've never seen the AI make peace too quickly. I've often seen it stay in a war too long. So, the shortcut should probably be adjusted, in the meanwhile.
My immediate suggestion would be to make it a -30 modifier, ticking down at 1 point every 3 months.

You kinda lost me. By 'shortcut' you mean 'length-of-war'?

 

[Fiend13]

Do you think maybe the game isn't worth the stress you're feeling? Maybe you should take a break.