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.
) they mean it in the sense of "the map looking like it could have realistically looked had history gone differently". A plausible alternate history is one that could have actually happened, which the game produces exactly zero percent of the time. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to the player, but that's how it is, and I certainly believe it's impossible for it to be otherwise. Paradox can approach plausibility, but never possibly arrive there.
