Do cascading alliances ruin Divine Wind?

[unmerged(205148)]

Anyway, it all clear now:

 

[evilknight]

i did this was a war i couldnt win..... was very messy and i lost alot of land and money getting it to end. what was wierd is ME(spain), england and portugal against everyone else and some how england ended up with northern france, england lost ireland and some scotish proviences. i lost my northafrican foothold about 5 proviences, plus france got some of my mainland stuff and I had to release aragon. Portugal has like 3 proviences left it was carved up by the lesser states. clean up was a mess needless to say i gave up soon afterwards.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Anyway, it all clear now:

Some Players uses the casdading aliances like svip did in his aar... ;P

 

[unmerged(200028)]

I would say that it decreases historical accuracy, and the incessant wars can sometimes be really annoying. I wouldn't be surprized if they got a lot of this fixed in an upcoming patch, however I think the concept will stay. I have no idea though, I still love EU3 and one good thing is always being able to run War Taxes!

 

[alexti]

But that isn't how it worked in real life, either. Can you name any equivalent of OPM countries that just merrily ate other small countries without resistance from bigger powers in the 1400-1600 time period? Not just once, mind, which you can easily do in DW with luck (many, arguably most, wars do not end up with cascading alliances), but several times over?

I think there's a very interesting example in real world history. Muscovy starts at around 1300 with what amounts to less than a poor province in EU3 terms. By using every trick in a book it manages to become a major power by 1500 (and proceeds to blob further). Amusingly, the history reads almost like AAR by an expert player - using its position as vassal, opportunistic diplomacy and wars, annexation via royal marriages and vassalization. In DW Muscovy starts as a medium nation, but it's possible to get very similar results (and through the similar means) by starting as Yaroslavl. It seems DW is pretty good at producing realistic results

However, it seems to be the only example. Perhaps it was just a combination of fortunate circumstances and a lucky chain of an expert leaders.

I think it's good that the game makes it difficult (but possible) to grow OPM into a superpower while also forcing the player to act in historical manner.

The difference as I see it is that now, as an OPM, you are effectively constrained to either expand as a real OPM would (by building up allies and your own economic power until the perfect situation for you to take a healthy chunk of land in someone else's war comes along) or you have to, if you want to do it the old way, gamble on an incredibly risky opportunistic war that will only work if nobody bothers to step in to squash you, which has a good chance of ending in you being annexed. I like this and find it realistic to what an OPM's situation should be - you will NOT be a major power by 1450 barring near-divine levels of luck, but you can pretty reliably become one in a couple of centuries if you make sure you've always got someone big and tough at your back and pick safe expansion opportunities (or non-war related ones - PUs and spies don't get you hit by any alliances). The realism of that is easily worth the occasional Spanish baltic territory (which isn't even that unrealistic, as has been argued before... and more to the point, stuff like that happened in HTTT as well) to me. To you, it isn't, and that's fine - but it doesn't mean you "can't REALLY" play as a OPM. It means you can't play them anything like you could in HTTT, and you can't play them like you can play a larger power.

I totally agree. DW has made playing OPM much more realistic - before DW playing OPM was essentially like playing medium power with 1420 start.

 

[alexti]

Everything has been said for the most part. There isn't much left to contribute. That said, I don't -hate- the new system. It's very reminiscent of the escalating wars in Europe in the later periods of the era this game takes place in. Historical accuracy aside, the call to arms in its current state was a feature requested by many players who wanted wars to be riskier and allow for more interventionist play.

The problem is less with the system itself and more with its implementation. The AI is often caught with its hat off -- exposing the deviant hive mind bulging out of its scalp, and always asking itself the question, "How can I screw the player over today?" The cascading alliances only exacerbated that particular issue. Even this I can forgive, but if the development team doesn't want to go through the tedious task of tweaking AI behavior, may I suggest a new page in the ledger? Give us an interface screen that streamlines the view of the web of alliances and their alliances of the faction in question so we can properly gauge the risk of a DoW.

AI has its problems, in particular when it chooses whom to ally. It is interesting that often it does very rational choices about what alliances to enter, but other times it ends up in a bizarre alliance. I have feeling that there's some logic somewhere that goes like:
- can we form another alliance (<3 alliances)? - yes
- what are our rational options? - use one of them
- no rational options and still <3 alliances? - let's form alliance with random country

But at the same time, AI in DW is much better than in HttT.

I also like an idea of a new interface to examine the web of alliances and guarantees.

 

[Snap Hook]

YES. Unfortunately, the AI in this regard is totally hosed and unrealistic.

This is a real case scenario from the game. As Byzantium I don't have a lot of income and am surrounded by Muslims and Christians, Byzantium is Orthodox. The Knights have most of Asia Minor so I bide my time. Eventually The Mamluks make their way up there and go to war with them. Also fighting The Mamluks are the Georgians and Injuids. OK, a Muslim nation fighting The Knights, Christian, and only two other small allies, so I declare war on The Knights to reconquer the Asia Minor coastline figuring The Knights' allies have all yawned and said, "You're on your own." WRONG, as soon as I declare war, Bulgaria, The Ottomans, England, Milan and Naples pile on, immediately. Yeah, as if word of war has reached England with Internet speeds. My Prestige is over 50 and infamy under 3.

So why didn't they react to the war with The Mamluks and how can diplomats run so freakin' fast?

 

[cywang86]

1. woah thread necromancy

2. Because you're weak. Go for the easy nations like Karaman, Candar, Ramazan, and Epirus (when Naples dow on him)

 

[unmerged(96425)]

I personally love cascading alliances. Its made the game more interesting, challenging, realistic and dynamic for me.

I would hate to lose cascading alliances now.

Divine Wind rules!

 

[Kurblius]

I like them too. I like the dynamism, though I admit it greatly increased the learning curve of the game, at least for me. Still, I think even the most experienced players will be surprised sometimes by the outcome, and that's a good thing.

 

[DanubianCossak]

I on the other hand hate it.

It tends to create situations where AI countries are almost constantly at war, leading to too much random land grab (since they always get some war score and they wont peace out until they grab something for it), which in turn leads to even more chaos - either countries losing randomly grabbed land to rebels within couple of years, or them scoring too much BB, or them having to waste resources in order to control land that they should not be interested in at all while completely ignoring land that they should conquer (for example Ottomans annexing land in Finland while ignoring Turkish minors that they can easily gobble up etc).

Right beside defender of the faith and hordes, cascading alliances is one of my 3 least liked EU3 features. It does nothing but artificially create the illusion of higher difficulty while in reality all it does is destabilize big AI countries (that have problems staying stable as it is) and although its fun to see big countries fall apart sometimes***, its not fun to see them fail all the time (like England, France, Castille, Ottomans and other major powers do in almost every single game i play).

 

[unmerged(448676)]

I like the game and all but still... Playing as England I was annoyed to have to fight a war against Poland,Lithuania,Hungary and a small german state near Poland cause I invaded Sctoland. And even when I vasallised Scotland those fks kept on spamming me to concede defeate and pay them 100 gold when they cant even invade me. What does DOW mean?

 

[Felicity]

I like the game and all but still... Playing as England I was annoyed to have to fight a war against Poland,Lithuania,Hungary and a small german state near Poland cause I invaded Sctoland. And even when I vasallised Scotland those fks kept on spamming me to concede defeate and pay them 100 gold when they cant even invade me. What does DOW mean?

Declaration of War.

You get those peace treaties because of the AIs way of figuring out if they're winning the war, which is the same as not losing the war to them. If their army is intact and no provinces are occupied, they consider it 'winning'.

If they can't threaten you (Hungary can get nowhere near England.) then having them in the war is no issue. They'll white peace out eventually.

 

[Camtheman]

Every game has its flaw, this is the only one I can see with EU3.

Along with that thing when an AI has less units in a region that you just moved a mega stack to, and a couple days after you set it to move, the AI sets its stack to move out of the province, and their arrival date to escape is 1 day before you're stacks arrival date to the province. Really dumb, annoying.

 

[unmerged(448676)]

Declaration of War.

You get those peace treaties because of the AIs way of figuring out if they're winning the war, which is the same as not losing the war to them. If their army is intact and no provinces are occupied, they consider it 'winning'.

If they can't threaten you (Hungary can get nowhere near England.) then having them in the war is no issue. They'll white peace out eventually.

Well it still wont make sence why Poland would ever have an alliance with Scotland or even get in war with England.Don't get me wrong I like my PI games the way they are Fun and Sand Box but something are retarted,like a african nation I have not found yet declares war,da fk?

 

[DanubianCossak]

Alot of problems would be solved if only we had the option to turn cascading alliances on/off.

While im at it, an option to change the AI's limit of alliances would could do the similar thing as well. If this limit was set to 1 or 2 alliances / country, then the size and severity of cascades could be turned into something more manageable opposed to WW1 i face now every time i declare war somewhere in HRE (as HRE member).

 

[cywang86]

Well it still wont make sence why Poland would ever have an alliance with Scotland or even get in war with England.Don't get me wrong I like my PI games the way they are Fun and Sand Box but something are retarted,like a african nation I have not found yet declares war,da fk?

Creek discovered 1 year into the game, with no QftNW and no access point. Ally declares war on Creek dragging me into it. I went...uhhhh...ok. Auto white peace after a couple of years XD

 

[DanubianCossak]

Creek discovered 1 year into the game, with no QftNW and no access point. Ally declares war on Creek dragging me into it. I went...uhhhh...ok. Auto white peace after a couple of years XD

Delete your map cashe, that sounds like a common problem when you instal a patch or EU3 addon.

 

[unmerged(200028)]

I on the other hand hate it.

It tends to create situations where AI countries are almost constantly at war, leading to too much random land grab (since they always get some war score and they wont peace out until they grab something for it), which in turn leads to even more chaos - either countries losing randomly grabbed land to rebels within couple of years, or them scoring too much BB, or them having to waste resources in order to control land that they should not be interested in at all while completely ignoring land that they should conquer (for example Ottomans annexing land in Finland while ignoring Turkish minors that they can easily gobble up etc).

Right beside defender of the faith and hordes, cascading alliances is one of my 3 least liked EU3 features. It does nothing but artificially create the illusion of higher difficulty while in reality all it does is destabilize big AI countries (that have problems staying stable as it is) and although its fun to see big countries fall apart sometimes***, its not fun to see them fail all the time (like England, France, Castille, Ottomans and other major powers do in almost every single game i play).

I would completely agree with you. The best solution for me; Death and Taxes, AI Aggression (Low).

 

[DanubianCossak]

I would completely agree with you. The best solution for me; Death and Taxes, AI Aggression (Low).

Sadly that (low aggression) helps me only a tiny bit, although i do not play Death and Taxes, but my own thing instead. (and although low aggression somewhat decreases craziness, it also makes AI too passive when it shouldnt be like that)

For example in my current game:


Here you can see England owning random provinces in Sicily, Rhodes, Cyprus and Trebizond of all places.


Here you can see England owning random provinces in Norway and Sweden.


And here you can see the sorry state of England on its island. You might think that its not so bad, but id like to point out that from 1399. until the date this screenshot was taken, England has had (core giving) missions to conquer every single province on the islands. Those few missions that it did complete was actually due to randomness of cascading alliances, for example it had a mission on Irish minor that was allied with France when French dowed England, so it gobbled it up. Meanwhile, England managed to completely fail to conquer Scotland (has had this mission from day 1 i think) and right now as you can see parts of Scotland are owned by Castille, which England completely ignores.

My problem with cascading alliances is that AI is unable to make the difference between random wars and wars it starts with a goal. It spends too much resources conquering retarded stuff that it should never go for (or almost never) while it completely ignores stuff it should conquer. In order to maintain those random provinces in the Med. sea, England needs to send its fleet there all the time, and keep lots of units close by, and same goes for Scandinavia. Meanwhile, France, or Castille for example, are able to use their inferior fleets and simply land in England because ENG is too busy trying to maintain 25 different things, so in the end it will lose every one of those provinces, while achieving 0 of its national goals.

You can see very similar things for other countries as well in that Screenie. For example, via cascading alliances Naples has got crapload of random provinces (for BB) all around Ottomans, provinces that its obviously about to lose, because there is no way it can defend them, as you can see. Same goes for Morocco (!!!) that conquered Candar, Crete and half of Cyprus, not to mention held whole BOSNIA and half of SERBIA at one point. Or ottomans, who as you can see spend their resources fighting Bohemia and Austria (for the last 100 years), while they managed to take Thrace (Constantinople) only 25 years ago from Corsica! (they just ignored Thrace for over 200 years despite it being just there for the conquering, its owner unable to put up any resistance).

I do understand that this is a mod, not the vanilla EU3, and that would be a valid argument. However, the very same things that plague my MPM games happen in Vanilla as well, and furthermore, if AI worked well in vanilla, it would work well in mods as well (in theory) since no mod is able to actually mod the AI behavior, just the resources it has at its disposal (and i assure you both Ottomans and England have much more favorable strategic resources in MPM compared to vanilla).