Improved diplomatic relations cap for overseas countries

[Lord_Baltimore]

When playing as a European power setting up colonies or trade companies, I often find myself in a situation where I can't conduct normal diplomacy with the new nations I encounter because I've maxed out my diplomatic relations with countries in Europe. So instead of making allies and vassals, and getting involved in the local politics, I just send a doom stack halfway around the world to stomp everyone because that costs less mana in the long run. I realize the map painters out there don't a problem here, but as someone who prefers role play this bothers me.

I'd like to propose that in addition to the normal diplomatic relations cap, you add a separate "overseas" diplomatic relations cap. This cap would start at zero. Each time you form a new trade company or colonial nation the cap will increase by two. Countries will fall under your overseas cap if they meet the following criteria:
- Capital in a region where you have a colonial nation or trade company
- Lower diplomatic technology level than you
- Less than one hundred dev
This way you'll have more options for engaging smaller countries overseas. This will be useful with all the new countries in the next patch. What does everyone think?

 

[Arizal]

Kind of like you get new merchants. I like it. I would favor a complete overhaul of the diplo cap mechanic, but this seems like a consistent idea that allows international politics.

If I understand clearly, that “overseas” diplo cap would only be in effect for overseas territories and small polities, so there would be no way to abuse it by allying even more people back in your homeland.

 

[BalticM]

50 vassals.
Or 50 allies.
Sorry, but no..

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

If I understand clearly, that “overseas” diplo cap would only be in effect for overseas territories and small polities, so there would be no way to abuse it by allying even more people back in your homeland.

Correct. If you're playing as England and you make Scotland a subject, that falls under your normal diplo cap because you don't have a trade company in the North Sea.
If you establish a colonial subject in the Thirteen Colonies you will be able to ally the Iroquois under the overseas cap because they're a smallish country in your colonial region.
On the other hand, if you set up a trade company in India, you'll likely have to use your normal diplo cap to ally the Mughals (or whoever the major power is by the time you get there) because they will be over 100 dev.
So this is a tool for interacting with small and medium size countries far from home. And maybe for balance you could add something that subjects and allies you keep under your overseas cap won't respond to calls to arms outside their home region.

 

[Arizal]

I understand your point. I cannot help but to find your system "rigid", though. The alternative I was thinking about was that the diplomatic cap would be converted into a diplomatic "strenght" cap, meaning that your relationships would depend on the strenght of the countries you interact with. You couldn't have more than two big allies before going above your diplomatic cap, for example, but you could ally many minors in the HRE if you so choose. Similarly, with such a system, you could have a few friends in Europe and a lot of small friends in the New World.

To take a historical example, the United Kingdom in the middle of the XVIIIth century could be allied to Prussia, have Hannover as a personal union, be allied with the Iroquois and do other stuff in India and elsewhere without having much difficulties with their diplo cap.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

I understand your point. I cannot help but to find your system "rigid", though. The alternative I was thinking about was that the diplomatic cap would be converted into a diplomatic "strenght" cap, meaning that your relationships would depend on the strenght of the countries you interact with. You couldn't have more than two big allies before going above your diplomatic cap, for example, but you could ally many minors in the HRE if you so choose. Similarly, with such a system, you could have a few friends in Europe and a lot of small friends in the New World.

To take a historical example, the United Kingdom in the middle of the XVIIIth century could be allied to Prussia, have Hannover as a personal union, be allied with the Iroquois and do other stuff in India and elsewhere without having much difficulties with their diplo cap.

So something like governing capacity but with diplomatic relations? I like that.

 

[MatthewP]

I think it’s too abusable for the base game but it could be a good mod.

The only way it would work without being unbalanced is if you introduced the concept of regional wars and made ai allies/subjects not fight outside their region, but that would be a major change with unpredictable results and just isn’t going to happen at this point.

 

[Arizal]

So something like governing capacity but with diplomatic relations? I like that.

Yes! To elaborate, I would imagine something like : you can have, as a diplomatic capacity, up to 1,5 times your own strenght. That way you can have a big ally and a medium sized ally, a reasonable number of medium allies or a bunch of small allies. Of course you can also fill that with royal marriages and any kind of relations. You could probably also make an argument that a royal marriage or a vassal could cost less in diplomatic capacity than a full alliance. Of course, going above the soft limit would mean you would be losing diplo points, just as it happens now.

Later in the game, if you become enormous, you could also argue that there should be diminishing returns, so that you aren't allied (or have as vassals) the whole world. But I think this would represent better how a big power can have multiple small relationships.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

Yes! To elaborate, I would imagine something like : you can have, as a diplomatic capacity, up to 1,5 times your own strenght. That way you can have a big ally and a medium sized ally, a reasonable number of medium allies or a bunch of small allies. Of course you can also fill that with royal marriages and any kind of relations. You could probably also make an argument that a royal marriage or a vassal could cost less in diplomatic capacity than a full alliance. Of course, going above the soft limit would mean you would be losing diplo points, just as it happens now.

Later in the game, if you become enormous, you could also argue that there should be diminishing returns, so that you aren't allied (or have as vassals) the whole world. But I think this would represent better how a big power can have multiple small relationships.

You'd have to be careful how you balance everything so that a small country won't bust it's diplomatic capacity by allying a single big country, but I think the idea has a lot of potential.

I think it’s too abusable for the base game but it could be a good mod.

The only way it would work without being unbalanced is if you introduced the concept of regional wars and made ai allies/subjects not fight outside their region, but that would be a major change with unpredictable results and just isn’t going to happen at this point.

Admittedly, the ai's preference for long running world wars is a problem here. As I mentioned in my response to Arizal above; one solution would be that allies and subjects you keep under your overseas cap would not get called into wars outside their capital region and wouldn't figure into the ai's calculations of alliance strength.

 

[Arizal]

You'd have to be careful how you balance everything so that a small country won't bust it's diplomatic capacity by allying a single big country, but I think the idea has a lot of potential.

I suppose you could combine this with a hard inferior limit, like you can still have a minimum of 2 or 3 relations even though they go above the soft cap. Still, a very big country woud probably not even want to ally you so that problem seems marginal to me. You would still be able to ally at least one country even without the minimum cap.

 

[AirikrStrife]

I have long thought about instead of having diplomatic relations have diplomatic capacity, there each kind of relationship have a cost, (hypithetical 25 for alliance, 15 for guarantee etc)
Would make diplomacy a more varied game

 

[MatthewP]

I like the diplomatic capacity idea, but not so much tying it to country size. Two reasons:

1) It adds a lot of complexity to balancing. For example, big countries are now able to ally lots of small countries. Great, that was the original goal. But who will they ally? All the small countries can't ally them without crippling their other diplomatic opportunities. There are probably ways to improve this (e.g. add a hard minimum as Arizal suggested). But it just creates a much trickier problem to balance everything in a way that preserves fun/good play for all sizes of countries. It also makes things much trickier for the AI; instead of reasoning about constant values it's reasoning about multiple intertwined values that fluctuate unpredictably. I will make a not-so-bold prediction that the AI will fall flat trying to do this.

2) Ignoring complexity, it makes strong countries stronger and weak countries weaker. Strong countries are already very strong in EU4. One thing that greatly increased the difficulty many patches ago was they got the AI to start making more alliances. Removing or weakening that would be a bad thing.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

I like the diplomatic capacity idea, but not so much tying it to country size. Two reasons:

1) It adds a lot of complexity to balancing. For example, big countries are now able to ally lots of small countries. Great, that was the original goal. But who will they ally? All the small countries can't ally them without crippling their other diplomatic opportunities. There are probably ways to improve this (e.g. add a hard minimum as Arizal suggested). But it just creates a much trickier problem to balance everything in a way that preserves fun/good play for all sizes of countries. It also makes things much trickier for the AI; instead of reasoning about constant values it's reasoning about multiple intertwined values that fluctuate unpredictably. I will make a not-so-bold prediction that the AI will fall flat trying to do this.

2) Ignoring complexity, it makes strong countries stronger and weak countries weaker. Strong countries are already very strong in EU4. One thing that greatly increased the difficulty many patches ago was they got the AI to start making more alliances. Removing or weakening that would be a bad thing.

Going back to my original post, I was trying to come up with a feature specifically for strong countries (or countries that have expanded over a large area) so they have an incentive to do something other than conquer all of the small countries they meet. Just fabricate claim, stomp in quick war, repeat isn't much fun.

One thing I considered was giving each trade company diplomatic relations that the home country manages and you could form alliances between another nation and your trade company, assign them subjects and so on. However, this would probably be too much stuff for the player to keep track of. You could also give colonial nations more freedom to conduct diplomacy on their own which would make it more fun to play as a colonial nation or American native. But I suspect this would also lead to AI colonial nations getting into trouble and players getting mad.

Creating a separate class of diplomatic relations was the best solution I could come up with. Obviously it also has potential problems and I'm open to whatever suggestions other people have. I think you do need some kind of system where larger countries that expand across more of the globe get more diplomatic relations. Otherwise you'll always be using up most of your relations slots in your home region.

I found a thread on Diplomatic Capacity by @JCommander (sorry I missed it back in September) that has a detailed suggestion for a diplomatic capacity system that is worth a look. I like the idea of this because it is a unified system although it is a lot more complicated than either my proposal or the current system.