Let's rethink Diplomatic Relations slots

[durbal]

The current Diplomatic Relations system is a big limiter in terms of effective diplomacy. There are a few core issues with it:

1. Static costs on any diplomatic relation, no matter how strong the relation itself
2. Multiple diplomatic relations with one country cost the same as a single diplomatic relation
3. Fixed costs on a per-tag basis rather than scaleable based on tag strength

Overall the Diplomatic Relations limit should be increased by a lot with different actions and with different tags taking up different numbers of Diplomatic Relations slots.

Regarding point (1) -- Static costs on any diplomatic relation, no matter how strong the relation itself
Military access costs the same currently as an alliance. By increasing the Diplomatic Relations limit, we can instead weight them different so that e.g. military access costs 1 relations slot yet an alliance costs more (with the cost possibly scaling based on who the alliance is with).

This is especially important for guarantees since we'd be able to use guarantees to keep nations in check. Right now guarantees are pretty worthless (and often gimp the AI such as the case with Mamluks and Cyprus or Ragusa and the Ottomans) since they take the same relations slots as alliances. Why guarantee a small nation threatened by a rival when you can just ally a major power and trounce the rival anyway?

My thoughts regarding costs for Diplo Relations slots:
1 -- Military Access, Fleet Access
2 -- Guarantee, Royal Marriage
3+ -- Alliances

The total number of current Diplo Relations should be multiplied fourfold. This would allow for the current 3 or 4 alliances that most Kingdoms have (with associated Royal Marriages) but increase the opportunity for more guarantees, military access that doesn't need to annoyingly be cycled on and off, and royal marriages that are more strategic to ensure non-hostility or increase chances of PUs.

(It would also be great if guarantees against nations threatened by rivals increased Power Projection too but that's another topic).

Regarding point (2) -- Multiple diplomatic relations with one country cost the same as a single diplomatic relation
This makes the PU game stale and makes every alliance into a super-buddy system wherein every diplomatic relation imaginable is stacked onto a single tag (usually the royal marriage and alliance stacked). There's limited ability to simply have a royal marriage and not an alliance (or vice versa) and often little reason not to. By making every type of diplomatic relation -- regardless of any others present with a country -- cost the same across the board it would make stronger diplomatic ties cost more and more but weaker diplomatic ties cost less.

Regarding point (3) -- Fixed costs on a per-tag basis rather than scaleable based on tag strength
Allying a powerful France or Ottomans is the same as allying a Free City. This is largely what leads to superblobs getting out of control and allying other superblobs to create mega-alliances. It also makes things like trade leagues and alliances of small nations pretty pointless. If diplomatic relations costs of alliances scaled with say, development, then nations would be more apt to create alliance webs of small nations -- and in fact, small nations would be able to band together against a larger threatening nation on their borders. Large nations would ally smaller nations of strategic interest and, conversely, smaller nations allying large nations to use them as their attack dogs wouldn't always be as effective as perhaps allying a host of nations that hate your intended target. Finally, things like the Franco-Ottoman alliance that pop up could be challenged by smaller alliances since great powers allying other great powers could cost 5, 6, or even more diplomatic relations slots and therefore be too much of a limitations to be worth it to maintain.

 

[Larva]

Where to sign regarding the guaranteeing option?

 

[Troopperi]

I feel like guarantees becoming too common should be avoided, if they were to cost less, majors would spam them and make the game a huge pain. While a slot or two more for military accesses could improve quality of life, I feel like the current slots are alright, RM's don't really feel reliable non-aggression pacts since they can be easily broken after rivalling the partner. Also, I don't know how the AI works, it might avoid breaking them, but I have heard AI nations don't get any stab hit for breaking RM (I don't really know, it might be false information).

 

[Dominion]

I feel like guarantees becoming too common should be avoided, if they were to cost less, majors would spam them and make the game a huge pain. While a slot or two more for military accesses could improve quality of life, I feel like the current slots are alright, RM's don't really feel reliable non-aggression pacts since they can be easily broken after rivalling the partner. Also, I don't know how the AI works, it might avoid breaking them, but I have heard AI nations don't get any stab hit for breaking RM (I don't really know, it might be false information).

Wouldn't matter since AI nations get the destabilization modifier (-250? -150? sth like that) even when they wouldn't take a stabhit.

Anything from having military access to good relations to RMs gives them a huge negative modifier on any DoW and CtA even if they have diplomatic ideas and wouldn't take a stabhit anyways.

So whether they cheat or not is irrelevant in that regard.

I faintly remember Austria taking a stabhit for breaking their RM because I was watching their setup to check the new priority system though. But I might err. Wasn't really my focus.

 

[durbal]

I feel like guarantees becoming too common should be avoided, if they were to cost less, majors would spam them and make the game a huge pain. While a slot or two more for military accesses could improve quality of life, I feel like the current slots are alright, RM's don't really feel reliable non-aggression pacts since they can be easily broken after rivalling the partner. Also, I don't know how the AI works, it might avoid breaking them, but I have heard AI nations don't get any stab hit for breaking RM (I don't really know, it might be false information).

If a major spammed guarantees they'd probably easily be taken down by an alliance. The opposite problem exists now and is even worse -- majors allying all your rivals so you can't even attack the major since they have a million allies. With majors spamming guarantees the major would be called in alone and have to face what could be a much bigger and stronger alliance of smaller nations. Possibly a few at once and get dogpiled if they guarantee many tags willy-nilly.

 

[Dominion]

If a major spammed guarantees they'd probably easily be taken down by an alliance. The opposite problem exists now and is even worse -- majors allying all your rivals so you can't even attack the major since they have a million allies. With majors spamming guarantees the major would be called in alone and have to face what could be a much bigger and stronger alliance of smaller nations. Possibly a few at once even if they guarantee many tags willy-nilly.

Implying you're already in a position to take said major.
But if you're already strong enough to take one of the majors on their own you can just expand elsewhere in the meantime.

What if you're not strong enough to take a major? Screw OPM starts?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What if you're not strong enough to take a major? Screw OPM starts?

No, that's why the game has warnings .

 

[durbal]

Implying you're already in a position to take said major.
But if you're already strong enough to take one of the majors on their own you can just expand elsewhere in the meantime.

What if you're not strong enough to take a major? Screw OPM starts?

If you're strong enough to take down a major on their own why not just do it anyway? I don't see how any of these changes would affect that.

If you're not strong enough to take a major you can get many smaller allies and possibly even receive guarantees from other majors in this proposed system. In the current one you're basically SOL diplomatically, which is what these changes precisely intend to fix.

And yeah, as TheMeInTeam said below, majors just warn every neighbor as it is anyway.

 

[Dominion]

"The situation is already screwed up partially, so why not do x to make it worse?" is not an argument.

Great powers warning everyone has become this board's winter trend it seems. No, you are not always getting warned by everyone and their grandmothers.
I'm not saying it's not annoying, but to joke around as if you enter the game with everyone from Calais to Beijing warning you is no base for an actual discussion.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

"The situation is already screwed up partially, so why not do x to make it worse?" is not an argument.

Great powers warning everyone has become this board's winter trend it seems. No, you are not always getting warned by everyone and their grandmothers.
I'm not saying it's not annoying, but to joke around as if you enter the game with everyone from Calais to Beijing warning you is no base for an actual discussion.

Guarantees aren't like that either and likely would cost more than MA and such under his proposed model.

The more annoying thing about guarantees is that AI nations use them to self-harm (guarantee things they want to conquer, thus they must at some point endure a truce during which they'll be incapable of attacking as an AI). With some exceptions, the AI should usually be attacking these nations ASAP instead.

 

[Dominion]

Still doesn't mean that majors guaranteeing someone and making themselves more vulnerable in the process is making sense all of a sudden.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Still doesn't mean that majors guaranteeing someone and making themselves more vulnerable in the process is making sense all of a sudden.

That's not an issue with guarantees so much as it is with AI's usage of them.

 

[Dominion]

Still doesn't mean it makes sense all of a sudden.

The AI is horrible at managing edicts. Imagine if I would create a thread and suggest to buff all underused edicts' effectivity by 200% and their price by 100%.
Sounds fair, but your only reaction would be "yey, now my colonies and vassals can go bankrupt even faster!"

If something doesn't work it doesn't work. No need to theorycraft something for the year 3000.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Still doesn't mean it makes sense all of a sudden.

The AI is horrible at managing edicts. Imagine if I would create a thread and suggest to buff all underused edicts' effectivity by 200% and their price by 100%.
Sounds fair, but your only reaction would be "yey, now my colonies and vassals can go bankrupt even faster!"

If something doesn't work it doesn't work. No need to theorycraft something for the year 3000.

There are cases the player can make use of guarantees. These are not the cases where AI uses guarantees, but the mechanic itself isn't bad in principle because the AI sucks. The AI could simply not use guarantees, similarly to how it interacts with sorties.

That is in contrast to edicts, where the cost:utility is so dismal that most of them should never be used in practical scenarios, yet the AI uses them anyway.

You might as well be making a case that sorties don't work since the AI doesn't use them.

Building mechanics based on AI usage of them is a non-starter. The mechanical incentives and tradeoffs should work from a player/competitive MP perspective, then the AI tuned around those as its role as a competitive agent in the game.

If guarantees "don't work", it should be possible to demonstrate this without referencing the AI whatsoever. Otherwise, you're demonstrating that the AI doesn't work, not that the mechanic doesn't work. The latter is possible in the case of edicts since a good number of them are false choices.

 

[durbal]

"The situation is already screwed up partially, so why not do x to make it worse?" is not an argument.

Great powers warning everyone has become this board's winter trend it seems. No, you are not always getting warned by everyone and their grandmothers.
I'm not saying it's not annoying, but to joke around as if you enter the game with everyone from Calais to Beijing warning you is no base for an actual discussion.

That's not my argument anyway.

You're assuming that every major is just going to guarantee everyone by making guarantees actually usable. I don't know why you'd think that since I already showed by doing so would be pretty dumb by an AI.

These changes would HELP smaller nations. That's kinda the entire point of them. At the moment there's little you can do to constrain other majors from expanding endlessly because guarantees are useless and it makes no sense to ally anyone but the biggest nations around (and this usually occurs on a first come, first-served basis on November 11 1444). I don't see how you can possibly think those changes would somehow screw over OPMs.

 

[Virupaksha]

Seems an odd thread as surely the vast majority of relations slots are used for vassals.

You need allies early game but by 1500 I'm often down to one and by 1600 would hope not to need them any more. Using five slots for vassals is normal for most of the game. Only times I ever used a guarantee was to prevent shadow kingdom firing.

 

[evilcat]

And... how it would improve anything?

Militarry Access is not big deal. Paying 100 diplo for access in war is exacly what diplo points are for.
In the same way paying 100diplo for chance for PU, that is how it works.

More real issue:
"Too many relations" AI great powers tend to block good relation ship slots with some crappy allies (mmm... Saltzburg), so they are unwilling to form extra relation with someone with right rivalry.

 

[Dominion]

The issue of too many relations with AI nations /at least during the early game) is because the priority is screwed up for the fifth time.
I don't even know if it's consecutive patches or if it did work inbetween. Either way it keeps coming up for no reasons and they should stop doing it.

Later on it's because religious leagues create weird scenarios. That too can easily be fixed.

 

[Arizal]

I agree with the diagnostic. An alliance isn't the same as a military access. It doesn't have the same usefulness nor the same threshold in relations to obtain it. I would like it if we were less limited in our diplomatic options. That way, the game could be more a diplomatic game. Still, as you say, only flatly increasing the number of relationships we can have wouldn't do it, because then you would have gigantic alliances encompassing all GPs.

My take on this is the following :

As you say convincingly, we should decouple each type of relationship from the unique slot by country they take right now. We should also make them cost different values.

Now, how to make it so that feeble countries could have more diplomatic capacity whereas strong countries would be less likely to be allied to everyone? It has to do with development, but my way of solving this situation would be to add a modifier based on rivals (and threatening countries). Each country which

1. you set as a rival
2. set you as a rival or
3. has a casus belli or a core on you (and isn't already in a relationship with you)

Would give you more diplomatic "strenght" based on how much more development they have compared to you.

That way, an hypothetical non-threatened country which has no stronger rival (say France or the Ottoman Empire) would be limited diplomatically. You could say this would be because people would be wary of them, whereas a country like Bohemia, surrounded by a strong Commonwealth, a strong Austria and a strong Brandenburg/Prussia would have far more diplomatic strenght available. That wouldn't mean people would ally them, but at least they wouldn't lose precious ressources because they are trying to have more allies.

And the magic of soft cap would still be there. France or the Ottomans could still be allied to half the world, but they would have a penalty in diplomatic power. This penalty, we don't want the weak countries to have it so quickly, though.

 

[gia257]

There are cases the player can make use of guarantees. These are not the cases where AI uses guarantees, but the mechanic itself isn't bad in principle because the AI sucks. The AI could simply not use guarantees, similarly to how it interacts with sorties.

That is in contrast to edicts, where the cost:utility is so dismal that most of them should never be used in practical scenarios, yet the AI uses them anyway.

You might as well be making a case that sorties don't work since the AI doesn't use them.

Building mechanics based on AI usage of them is a non-starter. The mechanical incentives and tradeoffs should work from a player/competitive MP perspective, then the AI tuned around those as its role as a competitive agent in the game.

If guarantees "don't work", it should be possible to demonstrate this without referencing the AI whatsoever. Otherwise, you're demonstrating that the AI doesn't work, not that the mechanic doesn't work. The latter is possible in the case of edicts since a good number of them are false choices.

the ai uses guarantees to block, the player uses guarantees to block too, they may or may not be smart about it, but throw a wrench in your plan with them. I feel they are fine as is. The only guarantee I believe sucks is ragusas, since the ottomans never remove it nor do anything with it, nor do you care about it most of the time.