Militaristic Rulers Make Trust Useless

[pedrito_elcabra]

I have to agree with atwix. History is full of agressive rulers who ruined everything because they couldn't resist the call of conquest.

Were their neighbours happy about it? Certainly not. In most cases they just dealt with it.

 

[Satumba]

I remember writing in my 1.9.2 ryukyu aar

quote:

Don't ever ley your nation or your vassal border a nation with a large militaristic ruler nation. BAAAAD IDEA. Nations that have HIGH chance for militaristic ruler (like ottomans or burgundy) are worthless allies once you border them in any way.

In your case? I would have sold the bordering province to anyone who was willing to buy and keep abusing their help.

The ruler personalities are underestimated by players.

But to say they got to be NERFED?

Nope, please don't. Its realistic that militaristic kings want to expand, even if its means dissolving an alliance that his diplomatic forefathers held for decades...

It adds spice to the game.

Austria with a few militaristic rulers is funny, then they start eating entire HRE with imperial liberation cb... The irony.

I know this will probably not be agreed to, but militaristic rulers should be what they are. if you nerf them, then make the nation get events like "advisors disagree to war", "trade plummets", "imports blockaded" or god knows what to keep him in line...

But please don't alter ruler personalities.

If you do, you will gimp Burgundy, Ottomans and allthe other militaristic bogeyman nations on the map.

And to be honest, players should learn to deal with sudden changes in political landscape..

It adds spice to a campaign

I tend to agree to this idea, but the fact that this massive sudden "distrust" was built in the fact that Poland can paint the entire world red whenever it wants makes it a little "lunatic leader" and not a militaristic one. Strategic thinking skill needed for the job imo. Sry bad english, peace!

 

[208]

Well except for the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, the French-Ottoman Alliance, the French and Scottish alliance, which all lasted for 200+ years, heck one of them is still in effect. I imagine there are more, those are just the ones I could think of on the top of my head. Heck Anglo-Portuguese alliance is still standing.

And those three alliances are examples of allies who don't have conflicting territorial ambitions. Such alliances will last a long time in-game, too.

 

[gaius valerius]

Both permanent alliances and arbitrary breakups don't necessarily feel right. The main issue to me is that the AI doesn't have a sense of logic behind those actions. Then again, human logic is quite different from what the AI defines as such I guess What doest the AI take into account and such? As a human I'd think, 'hey if I'm a land-based France facing British, why not ally the naval-based Dutch?' and I would keep that alliance yet if you have a colony that happens to border one of theirs the AI lets it go straight down the drain...

I don't know how accurate is the Wikipedia article, but it sounds like a long standing alliance with very limited joint operations to me.

Definitely the city of Toulon was given over to the Turks (eg. Military + Port access) before a campaign that never really took off and some operations
were carried out together.

The city of Toulon was allowed to be used as a base of operations for the Turkish fleet on 1 occassion iirc in the entire "supposed" 200 years people speak of in the above... It is blatant historical nonsense to call that an alliance. In reality that alliance, and we must be careful not to confuse the simplified game version for the infinite intricacies of real diplomacy, didn't amount to much more than an unspoken agreement that 'we both don't like the Habsburgs... so we urge each other to attack them'. That is not the same as we officially decree for all the world to know that we are bound in arms and will together wage wretched war on the Habsburgs. For the French it was generally embarassing whenever their cooperation with the Ottomans was to open.

 

[Ternega]

I actually like that alliances break more often now days, however my problem is with rivalries. We used to have (fairly) stable alliances and stable rivalries, so basically a couple coalitions on the map aimed at each other. Now we have stable rivalries and rampant alliance breaking, meaning that if your former ally turns on you you cant patch up relations with your former enemy. Thus ensuring everyone being basically rivaled to everyone among major powers in any given region. Which is fine from balance stand point, but feels a bit bland from diplomatic one.

 

[Beagá]

Curious but did Poland have any mission for land you have or claims on you?

Also IMO the REALLY big issue... is the situation Austria has now. The nerf for coalition value makes it go way, WAY more trigger happy and blobs at alarming rate.

 

[cemacmillan]

...
The city of Toulon was allowed to be used as a base of operations for the Turkish fleet on 1 occassion iirc in the entire "supposed" 200 years people speak of in the above... It is blatant historical nonsense to call that an alliance. In reality that alliance, and we must be careful not to confuse the simplified game version for the infinite intricacies of real diplomacy, didn't amount to much more than an unspoken agreement that 'we both don't like the Habsburgs... so we urge each other to attack them'. That is not the same as we officially decree for all the world to know that we are bound in arms and will together wage wretched war on the Habsburgs. For the French it was generally embarassing whenever their cooperation with the Ottomans was to open.

This is why I noted that I was referring to the Wikipedia article. I didn't claim to speak from any personal knowledge, seeing as all these events happened a while before I was born.

In any event, the quasi-pseudo-alliance occassionally reared up into something that looked like cooperation. What the nonsensical wikipedia article seems to be implying is that the Ottomans served the French as a potential threat against Imperial expansion. Considering the theoretical strength of the Ottomans if they managed to hold their army together, there might just be some tiny grain of truth to this. In that case, whether or not the agreement(s) served as an alliance, it had at least some of the functionality of an alliance.

Thus, perhaps we need to have a generally agreed to definition of what is an alliance. For some value of the word, the French and Ottoman states had a kind of alliance. For a different value of the word, we can say that they had a sort of cordial agreement about certain things. In any event, in a world where historically a lot of countries were enemies they look like friends to me.

 

[Senstrae]

I remember writing in my 1.9.2 ryukyu aar

quote:

Don't ever ley your nation or your vassal border a nation with a large militaristic ruler nation. BAAAAD IDEA. Nations that have HIGH chance for militaristic ruler (like ottomans or burgundy) are worthless allies once you border them in any way.

In your case? I would have sold the bordering province to anyone who was willing to buy and keep abusing their help.

The ruler personalities are underestimated by players.

But to say they got to be NERFED?

Nope, please don't. Its realistic that militaristic kings want to expand, even if its means dissolving an alliance that his diplomatic forefathers held for decades...

It adds spice to the game.

Austria with a few militaristic rulers is funny, then they start eating entire HRE with imperial liberation cb... The irony.

I know this will probably not be agreed to, but militaristic rulers should be what they are. if you nerf them, then make the nation get events like "advisors disagree to war", "trade plummets", "imports blockaded" or god knows what to keep him in line...

But please don't alter ruler personalities.

If you do, you will gimp Burgundy, Ottomans and allthe other militaristic bogeyman nations on the map.

And to be honest, players should learn to deal with sudden changes in political landscape..

It adds spice to a campaign

Can we really call cleaning up the militaristic AI a 'nerf'? Because I can easily turn the Poland example against the AIs. If I know Spain and France are allied and Spain currently has a militaristic ruler, it could then become my top prerogative to make them annul even if I take nothing else in a war, because Spain would then automatically paint French territory, and both of them would turn hostile to one another. Bam, one less superpower alliance I have to deal with for the rest of the campaign.

If it's too predictable, then it will also be too easily exploited. Therefore I think my suggestion is not a "nerf" but rather a "fix". To go on a bit of a tangent, if Poland had only painted my 50 development Constantinople, and possibly also painted the coastline leading up to it, that would have made a great deal more sense to me, because it would change the AI's action from 'arbitrarily painting borders of non-allies' to 'actually looking to conquest something they view as valuable'.

I want the AI to act intelligently. This means not burning bridges at inopportune times due to code that's a little too simple in its considerations. In other words, the militaristic AI's own overblown impulsiveness might very well be its weakness.

Going back to my first post I said, "I understand the necessity of a militaristic leader type, it shakes up the game landscape."

I'm actually all for making the game more challenging; I just want to make it more difficult in ways that make sense.

Also, this mostly happens due to annul treaties, it would be good if the AI just doesn't write off a potential ally that it could get the moment the treaty expires and instead tries to save that alliance unless the other nation shows signs of not being interested.

I think annuls should serve to have the AI's reconsider their enemies, and potential allies. If for example an AI only rivaled Russia as a result of their ally setting Russia to rival, maybe that would be the first rivalry they would consider ending. Subsequently if they gained a new alliance with Russia before the end of the annul, that would then alter the diplomacy of their former ally (which might still have Russia as a rival).

I think the AI should be re-designed to mark only a few provinces as "Of Vital Interest" and the rest as "Strategic Utility". Given the way the system is descirbed, it seems like it would make more sense for the AI to have only a few vital interest provinces at a time. Keep it focused on its primary targets.

E.g. a Militarist Poland might decide it Danzig, the other TO provinces and Silesia are vital interest, and mark the rest of what it wants along its borders as strategic utility.

I'm pretty much advocating for something sort of like this. Yellow borders, but paint the things the AI deliberately claims as red (missions or otherwise). Or if they border a rival, they could automatically paint neighboring rival territory as "vital interest".

Curious but did Poland have any mission for land you have or claims on you?

Also IMO the REALLY big issue... is the situation Austria has now. The nerf for coalition value makes it go way, WAY more trigger happy and blobs at alarming rate.

I didn't check if Poland had a mission, but they certainly did not act on it if that was the case. However, I do know that there was eventually a claim down on Constantinople, but I don't know if it was a fabrication or mission.

I assume Austria being trigger happy is a result of it considering all painted territory, then realizing its smallest princes are the weakest, most easy to conquest targets.

I would be so incredibly happy if Austria instead directed all of that aggression towards the Shadow Kingdom. Or the Ottomans. Or Poland. Or overgrown, overambitious electors. Or anyone but the most defenseless princes.

 

[Beagá]

Yeah, I think they should get double the AE from taking ground from non-rival members of HRE, or at least anything that is non OPM.