How Could Peace Conferences Be Reworked?

[Grand Historian]

I don't think it's really much of a secret that, out of all the diplomatic mechanics, peace conferences are the most reviled in their current form. They're inadequate to such an extent that larger mods like Kaiserreich prefer to use decisions to simulate what to do with a conquered nation (something that actually can allow for a sensible partition of Germany), though even that system is being stretched to its limits when it comes to assigning individual states in the balkans. And, of course, they were designed only with capitulation in mind, since I can't recall anytime I've ever seen or heard of a side offering peace that was actually taken, nevermind that warscore still doesn't factor in casualties inflicted, only casualties received.

It's not coming in this update, but it needs to come soon; how could peace conferences be reworked?

 

[Calle]

The same way everything else can be improved: Stop developing this burning bag of poo and start from scratch on HoI5.

 

[Sayd]

See EU4 rules, they look simple.

Current Peace Conf is too simple too. Now PDX did simple work: each country demands by score, BUT another country can't demand the same positions.
IMHO, PDX could make Peace Conf better by simulating real diplomatic games.
Or they could do just a simple role dice over same positions in demands for each country. That would give Peace conf some random results.

 

[DystopianAlphaOmega]

To begin, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. For all it’s flaws, the system works pretty decent, all things considered (or at least far ahead of what we had in HOI III). For example, it allows you to take some territory and puppet the rest of the country, which the Kaiserreich event-based system doesn’t really allow for unless there are claims/cores. Also it allows for nations with different interests to have influence on the peace, without the "war leader" dictating everything like other Paradox games.

A couple suggestions to improve though:

Nations that capitulated should get no or next to no warscore. If your allies bailed you out, you will have limited say at the negotiating table.

Puppets should get little to no score and should give it to their master if they do. Maybe dominions might try to take claims/cores, but then do the same.

Maybe the player shouldn't be subject to the above two, but it would help reduce the number of nations active in peace conferences.

Turn order should follow a cycle. It shouldn’t be passable amongst the top two contributors (very abusable).

Allow for return of core/claim territory to non-combatants (happened after WWI with Eg. Denmark).

Allow nations of different ideologies to each puppet nations. Thus the first country puppeting wouldn’t get as much of an advantage, and you could see situations of Eg. East/West Germany or North/South Korea. This could also be done for releasing. Basically the Civil War system without the war.

Further refine peace conference AI to reduce border gore and moderate demands for minors and reduce ai penchant to nonsensically puppet. Only certain countries should have an interest in overseas colonies for instance (say majors and Spain/Portugal/Belgium/Netherlands).

Allow minors to refuse to surrender when faction majors do.

Change “untouched by the war” so that Eg. Canada sending troops to Europe/having destroyers fight U-boats doesn’t allow Germany to annex it after a successful Sealion (assuming Canada itself still far out of reach.

Have puppeting in peace conference give the new puppet nation no territory until it is explicitly given it. Allow this to be done on the same turn it is puppeted though.

Ensure all nations at war with the target are in the peace conference (right now if not everyone is at war with everyone separate peace conferences can occur, which often means the second peace conference will have little to nothing left, since everything is taken in the first).

 

[Riftwalker]

i would have it where the peace conference would have rounds of influence where each faction or independent nation has a round where they're just picking over who has influence over what land, then the factions decide what to do with that land in a 2nd more detailed pass.

so first pass, allies grab west germany and soviets get east. then the soviets decide they want a puppet in that area and allies split up west germany into 3 conquered territories, splitting them among the faction majors.

being able to just interrupt land grabs by puppeting a country you're grabbing would be right out removed and i think is the best way to handle that sort of thing.

possibly they could add a 2nd mechanic of spending score to contest a claim allowing you to go into a 2nd first pass where you then use score on contested claims, but i feel this would be really exploitable.

also i think possibly you could have a system where you could use your warscore for stuff other than land acquisitions i don't know what that could be, but it would allow for countries to be more greedy and have less say in the faction conference.

also they could add resource rights as a peace conference and goal.

 

[Question]

They need to fix multi faction wars first. Right now if 3 or more factions are involved in a war, only two factions get invited to the peace conference and it can result in some very nasty bugs.

In particular, if faction A and B are at war with C, and C surrenders to A, faction B will still occupy C's territory and it can lead to crashing because the game freaks out when it sees partially occupied territory when there isnt a war going on anymore. Greece partially occupying Russia's territory after the war was causing my game to crash, I had to use the console to annex greece then release them to give Russia back its territory which stopped the crashing.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Ensure all nations at war with the target are in the peace conference (right now if not everyone is at war with everyone separate peace conferences can occur, which often means the second peace conference will have little to nothing left, since everything is taken in the first).

This, I mostly play historical except when I'm going for achievements, but multiple times while going for the Imperial Federation as King Edward, the USA gets a peace deal exclusively with Japan when I conquer it despite the fact that only I played any part at all in capitulating the USA, resulting in me having to capitulate Japan in order to annex the USA.

 

[Ivankovsky]

I would like a "proposition system", where each party makes a proposal for the partition of territory, which then the opposing party could refuse until everyone could find a compromise.
Basically, kind of how they did in real life.

I'm just saying this out loud, I have no idea on how to balance this...
Cores should be easy to take, claims less so but still easier, maybe different kind of claims should be easier to take than others, for example historical claimed territory vs fabrications, occupied territory should count in as well.
However this is harder once you consider the number of minor participants in the war and how they would factor in on this...

 

[Riftwalker]

I would like a "proposition system", where each party makes a proposal for the partition of territory, which then the opposing party could refuse until everyone could find a compromise.
Basically, kind of how they did in real life.

I'm just saying this out loud, I have no idea on how to balance this...
Cores should be easy to take, claims less so but still easier, maybe different kind of claims should be easier to take than others, for example historical claimed territory vs fabrications, occupied territory should count in as well.
However this is harder once you consider the number of minor participants in the war and how they would factor in on this...

hmm, so they could have sort of what they have now, except when someone's turn is over other parties get the ability to try and veto it?

it could work, but i don't know what system should be in place to prevent just never accepting anything. perhaps it would remove score from people who veto it and if someone doesn't have enough score to veto it alone and they're the only one to veto the veto is ignored...

hmm

 

[Ivankovsky]

hmm, so they could have sort of what they have now, except when someone's turn is over other parties get the ability to try and veto it?

it could work, but i don't know what system should be in place to prevent just never accepting anything. perhaps it would remove score from people who veto it and if someone doesn't have enough score to veto it alone and they're the only one to veto the veto is ignored...

hmm

Well, in case of a historical WWII peace deal scenario (which is pretty much were the problems lie) Paradox would need to tweak the AI to accept a historical resolution.
So for example, you play USSR and win, the Allies would not oppose you keeping eastern Europe (more depending on the warscore).
There should also be an indicator stating the willingness of the AI to accept your proposal; "They will accept", "Unlikely to accept", "They will definitely not accept", so that you don't go trough 20 vetoes...

 

[Alspego]

It is worth to ask the question: Do we really need peace conferences? The game is focused around one big war and a very short time range. Smaller conflicts do not need necessarily a peace deal. Without peace deals, nations would still need to pay a cost for occupation. Currently, there is little cost involved with conquering an enemy nation early on (beyond higher world tension). As a side effect, world conquest with small nations would be impossible. Even for larger nations, this might be a fairly big burden, especially with the upcoming changes in the occupation and espionage mechanic. Other nations would have the opportunity to intervene later. Nations can support the resistance to increase the occupation cost and might intervene a few months or years later when they are actually ready.


Some ideas to improve peace conferences:
- Nation and faction should have the option to enforce control over occupied land. If e.g. the Allies are not happy about, that the Sowjet occupies some land belonging to an allied country? Too bad, declare war, if you do not like that. You feel like, some other faction occupied way more territory than they deserve? Then put your money where your mouth is and fight over that. This is a much more organic solution than deciding it based on an arbitrary point system.
- The peace conference could happen in multiple phases, e.g. first between different factions (e.g. Allies and Comintern) and then between different nations inside a faction (e.g. the British, French and American controlled zone).