Do cascading alliances ruin Divine Wind?

[El Jojo]

The AI not being able to set priorities is not the same problem as cascading alliances.
Taking 2 provinces in Anatolia, just because it can afford the infamy at this specific point is a poor choice. But some Christian countries trying to help the knights against Ottomans is not that stupid (just an example I've seen a lot). Problem is they should be happy with a white peace against Ottos. The same with isolated bits of land everywhere. Far away alliances are not a problem per se, it's the over-involvement of the IA in such wars which is ridiculous sometimes. (Like the fact that the IA sometimes sends 100% of its troops to a far away theater, leaving no home defense...)

 

[DanubianCossak]

I dont have a problem with England coming to Knights aid, if thats the strategic choice: ally with Knights or guarantee them (for whatever reason). Thats not the problem with cascading alliances.

The thing thats problematic is, for example, Ottomans attacking Byzantines, who are allied with Naples, who joins their defensive war (as they should, thats the point of alliance) BUT then Naples is allied to Austria, who is allied to Burgundy, who is allied to Aragon who is allied to England and all of them then get dragged to this war (or something along those lines). Thats what the problem is. Then separated from that issue, comes AI's over eagerness to participate in wars (which you described) treating every war like its a total war of annihilation, sending 70%+ of its troops to over seas conflict, specially in those conflicts where said countries have no interest at all.

In this case all that cascading alliances do, is over complicate local political relations, preventing countries from expanding in areas where they should expand historically. I like the dynamism and all that, but Ottomans attacking Byzantines in 1399. or 1400s should NOT cascade to a conflict between Ottomans and entire western Europe, every time. Thats just stupid, IMO at least. (and same applies elsewhere, for example England attacking Irish minors, Russian minors attacking eachother etc)

 

[bubell]

I admit, I too was concerned about cascade of alliances when it was first introduced. In your example, Cossack, Byzantines are attacked and summon their ally, Naples. Naples is probably more powerful than Byz. and they become war leader and summon their allies including Austria. Austria is more powerful than Naples so they become the new war leader and summon their remaining allies. Since only the war leader can summon new allies to the fray, once the most powerful nation is involved, no more switching of the war leader will occur and the cascade ends. If all these alliances were in place when the war began, the cascade could be predicted with a reasonable degree of certainty.
My only small gripe about alliance cascades is when alliances occur AFTER the war has begun and the newly-allied country enters the ongoing war and immediately becomes war leader and calls in all of its allies. There is no way to predict or prevent this.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Honestly i wouldnt even mind if all alliances (bar mine) were hidden away from me, and i had no idea (or knew only very little) of who is allied to whom before i declare war, thats not the major issue here.

My problem with the whole system of cascading alliances (no matter what stage) is that it causes countries (AI) to be at the state of war for too much of the time. Thats essentially the biggest issue. Looking at my recent games, major powers, who should be focused on their own consolidation/nation building (CAS > SPA, ENG > GBR, MOS > RUS etc) spend more time fighting wars where they are second or third party participants, and to make matters worse, they spend crapload of resources fighting these wars (committing large stacks to overseas invasion of Ottomans from my screenshot can only lead to them being wiped, which gets you WE) instead of doing things that would make them strong in the long run. For instance, how many human players, playing as Ottomans, would turn minting to 50% and commit large portion of their army to invading England in early 1400s, just because someone 1000 km away declared war on someone else 1000 km away dragging both countries in this war? I know i would much rather focus on gobbling up the Turkish minors around me (specially in Vanilla where you have cores IIRC), which will in the long run bring me 100X more benefit than fighting some stupid war i didnt start.

Add to this the AI's reluctance to colonize while at war, and you actually can see why in many games historical colonizers have a hard job doing that. Its all due to too many wars all the time.

 

[bubell]

Cossak, I see your point and I understand it very well. I just don't see it as that big a problem. The number of times I've seen the AI doing things I thought were stupid are too numerous to count. Also, I'm not sure the AI stupidity you mention is a direct result of cascading alliances. AI has been kinda dumb for quite some time.

 

[unmerged(200028)]

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).

Yes, I feel your pain. Although, I must say that Death and Taxes has tweaked the AI to be more focused on its historical conquests, and while there are lots of exceptions to this, by and large it honestly does behave that way.