Does the game feel historical to you?

[Wizzington]

That and it's a good opportunity to pot-shot the "explanation" we got for why "length of war" is somehow a necessary factor for the AI in weighting peace deals as-implemented. Supposedly, not having it makes wars not carry enough risk (which, in SP, should come off as something in the neighborhood of a joke to experienced players and is irrelevant in MP where the human is deciding peace deals on both ends). Is length of war in one of the 6-8 ongoing late game wars with full annexation in mind something I'm supposed to view as adding risk? Wasn't the justification of the 15 year truces in part to disincentivize total war as stated by the devs, despite that it and this length of war nonsense make anything other than total war a false choice in an overwhelming #cases?

Jomini crushed that argument pretty effectively from a different angle in that thread and then further discussion on it kind of died, as it usually does when the justification for status quo implementation is complete nonsense (nerfing native colonization, native ships, nerfing hordes, and regency councils have a similar tendency to result in "disappearing devs").

It's an example of making the AI self-harm on purpose with no observable benefit to the AI and claiming that the intention is to make it harder on the human. It's just as nonsensical as the horde nerfs but far more universal in that you will observe it as any nation you pick. If one's sense of immersion is from a "historical" perspective (good luck if that's your source in this game), this would be utterly shattering. Even moving cap to the new world (Portugal did it out of desperation temporarily) has more historical basis than "we have exactly what we want already and/or we're getting crushed, but we don't want to stop bleeding resources because this fight hasn't gone on long enough", which happened in history exactly 0 times.

But yes, regardless of a legit historical context or not, creating a system whereby players will harm themselves/worsen their own long term position to the extent that it lowers the odds of victory for them outright (in contrast with a dogpile on a runaway which has a legit basis) necessarily clamps down on immersion in strategy titles. Having opponents self-harm in a way that creates an active detriment to themselves and the player (while boosting someone else at random, or nobody) is a fast-track to killing immersion without any justification or redeeming value. Creating that system in a way that simultaneously lowers the difficulty and adds tedium and claiming that it adds difficulty though? Yeah, that's worth calling out, just like regency councils in their current implementation are (another immersion-killer from both realism and gameplay perspectives that has no valid justification or historical basis whatsoever).

Mechanics that are both ahistorical AND punish success with tedium (or add tedium at random) have no place in the game and are the most obvious immersion killers.

Sorry but no. Feel free to mod it away (it's in defines) and observe the result though.

 

[Wizzington]

I've said it before and I'll say it again...if one were to replace Length of War with other, smaller, and more logical negatives to peace, it would achieve the same result (preventing insta-peace) while preventing the AI from being so stubborn it destroys itself...

Is the current implementation of length of war the best of all possible implementations? No.

Does it prevent a lot of issues from popping up? Yes.

Is it so fundamental to the way the AI acts that changing it is a major undertaking? Yes.

Is changing it a high priority? No.

I'm not saying I will never change it, but people who think they can just drop something so centric to the AI, throw in a few numbers they pulled out of a hat and call it a day would have a very rude awakening if they actually ever tried working on the EU4 AI, and the people saying 'it's entirely unnecessary and just hurts the AI' should try disabling it for themselves before they presume to school me.

 

[Wizzington]

What about my idea - that when there is at least (for example 30% of war score), that length of war modifier ticks twice as fast (two points per month instead of one etc.).? Could it be a bad tweak, or something that could be considered without changing A lot of things, and be a little tuning?

Not a horrible idea, though I'd rather do it by simply reducing the effect of the modifier rather than having it 'tick' faster since the tick time is synced to a lot of other mechanics @ 5 years. I'll consider it.

If only I had more posts like this, and less people trying to armchair redesign the whole AI.

 

[Wizzington]

You don't have that many people calling for a redesign, though you have some. You have a lot more that are unhappy with it as-implemented, and reasonably so.

And yes, I've tried removing it (or making it small). It doesn't work. I haven't figured out a way to make it do what I proposed (maybe I just missed how to do so, it's been quite a few months since I looked), or I'd have tried that ages ago and just said the result here.

Regardless, assigning weights to existing modifiers differently is all that can reasonably done without reworking how wars function in general (the whole WL centric aspect with allies having no say or influence is a serious, but separate issue for example). I'd imagine it is quite a bit harder to teach the AI how to use forts than to alter existing modifiers for length of war, in no small part because "optimal" play around forts (as it'll be understood in say 6 months) is probably unknown to literally everybody right now.

But you didn't say this in the other thread. You claimed it too easy to get out of wars w/o risk. I don't see how that's a plausible constraint, because I *have* played without length of war as a factor. Having the AI do nothing and having the AI burn resources to accomplish little-to-nothing in return are both undesirable outcomes. Nothing at all is more undesirable, but is that really the best that can be done...even within the constraint of current modifiers?

In the other thread I was explaining the purpose of the modifier. Said thread was calling for its removal. If you want me to consider numbers suggestions from you, maybe you should try posting said numbers suggestion instead of expecting me to wade through ten paragraph ego posts about every thread where you think you won an argument in the last three months.