Please allow default "friendly" attitude without needing to manually set

[Vokasak]

Solution: Remove manually setting attitudes.

Friendly blocking CTA makes sense. Why should the AI help you fight people they like? They like those people. The exploit comes because the AI is always truthful and forthcoming with its attitudes, and has zero ability to detect when a player is not truthful (like setting the world to friendly). Removing the ability for the player to manually set attitudes puts everyone on an even playing field again.

Congrats, you spent your exploit and all it gained you was a removed feature.

 

[Rikissa]

It's an expansion feature, you have to pay to use it. And there are exactly two attitudes I set manually, Threatened and Friendly. It's a feature, not a bug and they sell it for you for $$$ just like other features.

 

[Sharples88]

I'm struggling to see what the OP is asking here. To either have friendly as a default to stop manually setting every single nation to friendly, or to exploit not getting CTA. It's hilarious how this is still not fixed. The human player should have a mechanic to prevent this from happening.

But whatever, I'm cool with consistently reporting these types of things and them never getting fixed in sequential patches. I swear this has already been reported before months ago. Personally, I disagree with the player being allowed to set all nations to friendly, that just seems extremely bizarre, especially in this time frame. Why should you be friendly to a wrong religion and far away nation that is threatened by your ally? The only reason I see is for a free exploit. If you have no business with any nations, I.E you're not interacting with them, then you have no interest, hence neutral.

If you're removing the ability for an AI to use offense CTA's using a friendly default mechanic, this essentially means you will never get an offensive CTA's from anybody other than to face rivals. Meanwhile, the AI, being as it is, will go into your offensive wars for favors. Do we see a problem here? Sure they might be friendly to a couple of nations that you want to attack, but literally not everybody you're bordering. If you don't want to join offensive CTA's, turn the favors off for that nation. Isn't that it's purpose...? Oh you want to stop your ally from expanding? Well maybe try guaranteeing the threatened nation.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

Inb4 Paradox "fixes" this by making manually changing attitudes cost 50 DIP MP. But then they forget to fix the AI so it couldn't cope and is constantly low on DIP MP.

 

[ahyangyi]

I'm struggling to see what the OP is asking here. To either have friendly as a default to stop manually setting every single nation to friendly, or to exploit not getting CTA. It's hilarious how this is still not fixed. The human player should have a mechanic to prevent this from happening.

The OP is only asking for one thing, and that one things makes sense: the optimal strategy should not be so tedious. This is not even micromanagement where you click click click but at least you think and react to situations. It could be fixed by providing a shortcut to do it, or by fixing it so that blindly setting friendly to everyone except rivals is no longer the optimal strategy. But the core problem is the same.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I am pretty sure Paradox just didn't think people could do that when implementing. Not everything can be foreseen.
On the other hand someone pointed our that it was discussed on forums before, so I might be completely wrong here.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I don't think removing the players ability to set attitudes is the way to go in this situation. You may want some flexibility in certain circumstances, some strategic, some RP.

I would prefer an overhaul to the system. Off the top of my head:

1:There are now 'Opinion floors/ceilings' that allow/disallow certain attitudes to be set. Friendly at roughly +50 and hostile when below 0.

2:You can use a diplomat to improve/lower your nations opinion of another nation. That honestly seems like something that would have been done at the time. You want to sell your people on your allies, and convince them that they have a common foe in whoever it is you don't like.

3:There would need to be some kind of penalty(In addition to the stab hit from positive relations if applicable) for declaring war on a nation that you have set as friendly, as well as a cooldown on attitude change(Sort of like changing a rival) and a loss of diplomatic rep for sending an insult to a nation with whom you have a friendly attitude.

Now you can only be friendly with nations your nation likes, there is a way to influence it, and a system to insure some level sincerity(or a punishment for lack thereof.) There is also more to do with your diplomats besides set them to automatically 'improve with all outraged countries' once you have gotten into the meat of the game. I could also see this helping with diplo vassalization.

It would also be nice if there was a function to gain additional improved relations through a spynetwork...

I don't know if my idea is worth a crap, probably not. I do however know that the current system makes favor acquisition a joke. There should be some effort required, and improving the diplomatic game would do just that even if it's not my hastily thrown together idea. There should be a way to play things just right to insure that you are in just the right spot to avoid conflict you find unappealing, it just shouldn't be setting every nation to friendly at the start of a campaign, that's cheesy and tedious.

 

[Rikissa]

The OP is only asking for one thing, and that one things makes sense: the optimal strategy should not be so tedious. This is not even micromanagement where you click click click but at least you think and react to situations. It could be fixed by providing a shortcut to do it, or by fixing it so that blindly setting friendly to everyone except rivals is no longer the optimal strategy. But the core problem is the same.

I think what bbq was actually asking for was that the mechanic be nerfed. If you for example do an Asian WC, at some point you might want to ally the Ottomans, but they might set most of your Sunni targets between yourself and them as Friendly. They might also set Ming to Friendly if both Ottomans and Ming are rivals of Russia. Which means you cannot realistically call them to war against most targets in your vicinity.

 

[bbqftw]

Solution: Remove manually setting attitudes.

Friendly blocking CTA makes sense. Why should the AI help you fight people they like? They like those people. The exploit comes because the AI is always truthful and forthcoming with its attitudes, and has zero ability to detect when a player is not truthful (like setting the world to friendly). Removing the ability for the player to manually set attitudes puts everyone on an even playing field again.

Congrats, you spent your exploit and all it gained you was a removed feature.

I haven't revealed any exploit yet.

As I have stated before I don't think friendly attitude should be factored for *offensive* CTAs. This is the ideal solution.

 

[Vokasak]

As I have stated before I don't think friendly attitude should be factored for *offensive* CTAs. This is the ideal solution.

Why?

"No, we won't assist you, our ally, defend against our friend nation of... oh what's that? We're not defending, you want to annex half of them? Yeah whatever we'll throw them under the bus"

??? ???

 

[Vulkandrache]

Why should the AI help you fight people they like? They like those people.

Why?

Im England, pretty big by now, 60 year long Ally to Castille with double PU.
I want to attack the Ottomans because reasons.
Can i call in Castille? No.
Why? Because they have the Ottomans set to friendly attitude. Makes perfect sense.

In its current form "friendly attitude" has nothing to do with who likes who.
AI nations will set everything slighty bigger as friendly, you can to the same but its takes several hundred clicks to do so.

And objectively speaking spending that time is strictly better than not doing it.
So there is no reason not to have a bulk setting or expect some change to the underlying mechanic.

 

[Badesumofu]

I am pretty sure Paradox just didn't think people could do that when implementing. Not everything can be foreseen.
On the other hand someone pointed our that it was discussed on forums before, so I might be completely wrong here.

So you think they implemented the ability to set your attitude towards other nations, put almost no restrictions on using the 'friendly' attitude, set it up so that you basically can't offensive CTA people against their friends, but it never occurred to them that we could set people friendly?

That's actually one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen posted on this forum, unless maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Maybe you just think they couldn't generalise from the ability to set individual nations friendly that we could also set multiple nations as friendly, and from there set everyone except our rivals friendly? I'm really trying to find a coherent position here but I just can't.

 

[Rabid]

Why?

"No, we won't assist you, our ally, defend against our friend nation of... oh what's that? We're not defending, you want to annex half of them? Yeah whatever we'll throw them under the bus"

??? ???

Being allied should be better than just being flagged friendly, if you don't favour your ally any more than other states that you've marked as 'friendly' then you shouldn't be allied to them. What's the point in having favours if you can't actually cash them in because your ally apparently loves everyone too much to go to war with them under any circumstances?

The OP's suggestion is obviously intentionally absurd but he's right, if the game is structured in this way then it should be made less UI-cumbersome for the player to also make full use of it. The better solution would be for AI alliances to not be effectively rendered useless by the AI setting various states as 'friendly'.

 

[Piotrzeci]

So you think they implemented the ability to set your attitude towards other nations, put almost no restrictions on using the 'friendly' attitude, set it up so that you basically can't offensive CTA people against their friends, but it never occurred to them that we could set people friendly?

That's actually one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen posted on this forum, unless maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Maybe you just think they couldn't generalise from the ability to set individual nations friendly that we could also set multiple nations as friendly, and from there set everyone except our rivals friendly? I'm really trying to find a coherent position here but I just can't.

I just say they probably didn't consider the possibility of setting the whole world as friendly to prevent any call to arms. Is it ridiculous? I think they just didn't think someone would come up with the idea to do that, when they released this mechanic.

 

[bly08]

I just say they probably didn't consider the possibility of setting the whole world as friendly to prevent any call to arms. Is it ridiculous? I think they just didn't think someone would come up with the idea to do that, when they released this mechanic.

And yet here we are, someone is trying to make use of all the resources available. Instead of blaming the mechanic people would rather blame the player for playing the game. Amazing isn't it?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Where is the line between cheesy and exploit? Was infinite mana cheesy or exploit? The devs didn't prevent it when it was possible, does that mean it was intended?

Breaking stated gameplay rules outright is a pretty good candidate for a boundary. It's not the only boundary, but it is one of the only useful objective ones.

The word "cheesy" carries no meaning in gaming whatsoever aside from "tactic that someone happens to perceive as unfair". Even the person calling something cheesy is almost never self-consistent (a pre-req for being rational). Exploit CAN carry meaning, but usually doesn't as people start defining them in ways that would also define core mechanics as exploitative.

Using a DLC-enabled mechanic precisely how it's stated you can use it being labeled as an "exploit" at least once in this thread is a good example of that. Making that case is not and can't be coherent.

Why?

"No, we won't assist you, our ally, defend against our friend nation of... oh what's that? We're not defending, you want to annex half of them? Yeah whatever we'll throw them under the bus"

??? ???

They already join on defensive CtAs.

 

[Piotrzeci]

And yet here we are, someone is trying to make use of all the resources available. Instead of blaming the mechanic people would rather blame the player for playing the game. Amazing isn't it?

I blame the player, because the mechanic was already blamed. Quite a lot of people in this thread criticized this mechanic and even proposed changes.

 

[Vokasak]

Im England, pretty big by now, 60 year long Ally to Castille with double PU.
I want to attack the Ottomans because reasons.
Can i call in Castille? No.
Why? Because they have the Ottomans set to friendly attitude. Makes perfect sense.

You're being sarcastic, but yeah it does make perfect sense.

In its current form "friendly attitude" has nothing to do with who likes who.
AI nations will set everything slighty bigger as friendly, you can to the same but its takes several hundred clicks to do so.

And objectively speaking spending that time is strictly better than not doing it.
So there is no reason not to have a bulk setting or expect some change to the underlying mechanic.

You're thinking of Castile as another player who is abusing attitudes the same way you are. Instead think of AI attitudes as feedback for the state of the game. Castille didn't "have the Ottomans set to" anything. Castille actually is friendly with the Ottomans, and the attitudes are the games way of communicating that to you.

 

[Vulkandrache]

You're being sarcastic, but yeah it does make perfect sense.

Actually no, thats exactly the situation i found myself in just recently.

Castille didn't "have the Ottomans set to" anything. Castille actually is friendly with the Ottomans

The thing the game fails to communicate is WHY Castille would think of the Ottomans as friendly.

They partialy compete over trade, the have a religiously diverse views of the world, maybe the Ottomans are even allied to France which is Castilles rival.
There is no reason for Castille to "like" the Ottomans. At best they would be neutral, maybe cautious due to proximity to Castilles subject Napels.

Yet i have to overcome a "-60 attitude vs enemy" to calling them in which overpowers any modifier i can bring by a factor of 3.
Meanwhile attacking Tunis as the Ottomans ally Castille will jump in like a rabid dog despite leading to almost the same war.

 

[Vokasak]

Actually no, thats exactly the situation i found myself in just recently.

I believe you. I also believe the situation makes sense and is WAD.

The thing the game fails to communicate is WHY Castille would think of the Ottomans as friendly.

They partialy compete over trade, the have a religiously diverse views of the world, maybe the Ottomans are even allied to France which is Castilles rival.
There is no reason for Castille to "like" the Ottomans. At best they would be neutral, maybe cautious due to proximity to Castilles subject Napels.

Yet i have to overcome a "-60 attitude vs enemy" to calling them in which overpowers any modifier i can bring by a factor of 3.
Meanwhile attacking Tunis as the Ottomans ally Castille will jump in like a rabid dog despite leading to almost the same war.

Castille is not Naples. Naples has its own set of opinions and attitudes toward counties. A war against Tunis is a war against a smaller country that they more or less directly compete with (Does Castille want any land in Algeria / Morocco? Does Tunis want any of that same land, or land near it?). The Ottomans are all the way across the Mediterranean. Keep playing until (and if) Naples gets inherited. When it's Castille's interests directly, things may change.

You say "it's almost the same war", but who the primary defender is makes a huge deal, especially if it comes to taking land. You can't exactly promise Tunisian land if you're declaring on the Ottomans, can you?