I think I have a reasonable argument against the great power alliance penalty.

[Saczva]

Having a really frustrating game as the USA, one of the biggest drawbacks to this arbitrary idea is its global nature, why is a Prussia repeatedly smashed up in wars that utterly loves and adores me totally opposed to allying with me just because they have 1 "GP" ally already? We have literally zero conflicts of interest, we only have mutual enemies that have attacked us both separately so again; why do they prefer for no good reason to be cut down and destroyed over and over rather than ally with me? It makes no sense, this entire idea is frankly poorly thought out and silly and if we're going to have it at all it should be based on regions/continents.

Prussia, Britain, Austria, Denmark and other random nations that become GPs for a month or so (still confused by that) all love me because of our shared rivals/enemies and because I as the USA have only got border issues with 2 Spanish colonies, the others either have no American colonies at all or a bare tiny handful in South America, we all hate Spain because they're insanely godly powerful yet not one of them will ally with me for no reason other than this arbitrary factor which actually makes AI nations look stupid because they essentially choose voluntary suicide despite them and me both being 100% in favour of allying when the GP ally factor is disregarded.

It's also my experience that often the nature of the game pre-determining most great powers and their positions and situations with each other will probably always lead to one or some great powers being locked out of allying with other great powers and other friendly nations.

 

[Morwys]

Having a really frustrating game as the USA, one of the biggest drawbacks to this arbitrary idea is its global nature, why is a Prussia repeatedly smashed up in wars that utterly loves and adores me totally opposed to allying with me just because they have 1 "GP" ally already? We have literally zero conflicts of interest, we only have mutual enemies that have attacked us both separately so again; why do they prefer for no good reason to be cut down and destroyed over and over rather than ally with me? It makes no sense, this entire idea is frankly poorly thought out and silly and if we're going to have it at all it should be based on regions/continents.

Prussia, Britain, Austria, Denmark and other random nations that become GPs for a month or so (still confused by that) all love me because of our shared rivals/enemies and because I as the USA have only got border issues with 2 Spanish colonies, the others either have no American colonies at all or a bare tiny handful in South America, we all hate Spain because they're insanely godly powerful yet not one of them will ally with me for no reason other than this arbitrary factor which actually makes AI nations look stupid because they essentially choose voluntary suicide despite them and me both being 100% in favour of allying when the GP ally factor is disregarded.

It's also my experience that often the nature of the game pre-determining most great powers and their positions and situations with each other will probably always lead to one or some great powers being locked out of allying with other great powers and other friendly nations.

Like I said, this seems to me how alliances should work. The AI has no idea wheter you're going to help them or what; you're on a different continent. Now a same religion neighbour, with common enemies, that's a different matter entirely. So, any GP should choose an ally for the time being and stick with him until that becomes useless. If alliances worked like you want - every nation that hates Spain gets on board in fighting them - that would be called 'coalition' and that's already in the game.

I understand that it's far from ideal - this game is an abstraction, after all - but it's way better than the alternative, in my opinion: alliances that work like coalitions.

 

[Lamahorse]

I've seen France lose pretty bad to Burgundy in at least three wars. Completely dismembered, it languished in a truce with Burgundy as half of Europe chopped up Burgundy in a coalition. In that peace treaty, France got all her cores back then chopped up Burgundy post truce.

France needs a bit of a core nerf perhaps.

 

[Comradebot]

The change to minus 50 seems to have alleviated some of the nastier bits from this penalty. I'd still love to see some clearer definition as to who or what is a Great Power and what made them a Great Power, halving the modifier has allowed for GPs to be able to actually pick more than one GP ally reliably. A third is pushing it, but that's good. It makes for a nice balance where allying one GP doesn't prevent them from allying with other GPs, but you still can't just use your diplomatic slots to try and ally every single superpower and swing their might wherever you please.

 

[Comradebot]

I've seen France lose pretty bad to Burgundy in at least three wars. Completely dismembered, it languished in a truce with Burgundy as half of Europe chopped up Burgundy in a coalition. In that peace treaty, France got all her cores back then chopped up Burgundy post truce.

France needs a bit of a core nerf perhaps.

France is notoriously hard to kill in the EU series. You have to do it early, decisively, and yet cautiously to pull it off (one good coalition and they're back in the running). I remember chopping them to bits pre-CoP as Siena->Italy, and all it took was some other power demanding one of their former vassals return most of their land to France and they were back to trying to gobble up everyone else. Keeping France a non-threat means absolutely wiping them off the map and being ready to snuff them out when/if they arise again. Its either that, or directly hold all of their cores yourself.

I'd also like it if the Occitan culture had a "main" nation, but they do not appear to. As such, sometime in the 1600s the main chunk of France will be free of cores you can free into other nations, making them even harder to deal with. But hey, sometimes Spain just starts overrunning them... and that I love.

 

[gajop]

To further illustrate how stupid the current system is here is a screenie of Lithuania that dwarf's georgia in size and power and Lithuania isn't classed as a GP........trolololol

You are misinterpreting the -100 GP modifier. It's used to denote that a country is already allied to a great power, not that the country itself is a great power. Georgia is allied with Muscovy, and they are a GP.

@OnTopic: The problem with the -100 (or even -50) GP modifier is that because it's either applied or not, it makes alliances unstable as countries fluctuate with a GP on/off status (and their instability causes the awful -50 broke alliance relation modifier). It would've been much better if every country you were allied with gave you a -something to your further alliances, based on their strength (perhaps a number in the range of 0 to 50).

 

[Golladan]

I know it's late but...

Well, here's how things used to play out in my experience:

• Castille and Portugal are allies (historical friend modifier).
• Castille and Burgundy are allies (threatened by France).
• Castille and Austria are allies (threatened by France).
• England and Portugal are allies (can't remember if they're HF or not, but it seems to stick most of the time).
• England and Aragon are allies (threatened by France).
• Aragon and Burgundy/Austria are allies (threatened by France)

So France was in the middle of a web of GP alliances that made expansion more difficult and often led to wars against all their neighbors at once. This is still possible, but with GP the new dynamic seems to be:

• Castille and Portugal are allies (historical friends).
• Castille and Portugal can't ally anybody else because they've already used their one GP alliance on each other.
• Austria and England both hate Burgundy, and Castille has Portugal, so Burgundy must scramble for a GP ally. Sometimes they end up with Aragon, sometimes Aragon allies with England and they can't find anybody.
• Austria might ally with England, but it's a crapshoot and they might end up with Poland or just fill up their alliance slots with HRE minors.

Portugal and Aragon aren't great powers. Not for a long while.

What might be keeping Castile and Burgundy from allying is the change where AI now starts with their rivals set, and Burgundy and Castile now usually start with each other as rival. Though they tend to immediately switch to someone else, Burgundy gets Aragon and Hungary as allies, and use up their other 2 relations to guarantee the independence of some nearby minors.

 

[krelian]

In my games the performance of France and Austria is always closely tied to the Burgundian inheritance. More often than not, it fires and creates an Austria strong enough to give the French trouble.

 

[Viperswhip]

In my games the performance of France and Austria is always closely tied to the Burgundian inheritance. More often than not, it fires and creates an Austria strong enough to give the French trouble.

Yes though it's not guaranteed but the Burgundy King does seem to have a fertility problem, and a death wish, but in my last game Castille inherited Burgundy, that was odd.