The relations between countries in all Paradox games so far have been one-dimensional. The countries may like or hate each other and that's it. I believe it would be very good to enhance this aspect a little.
What I propose is to use a triangle instead of linear scale, very much like the triangle found in HoI3. Two of the triangle's corners represent good old "love" and "hatred" found in lots of games. The third corner represents "isolation" or "ignorance". If the relations are completely in this corner, it means that countries don't care about each other. It's not neutrality. Neutrality would be when you know your neighbors well and pay attention to them, but elect to be neutral. Like Switzerland did during WW2 (I know it's not within the timeframe of Vicky, but it's good example) - they certainly had solid contacts with Germany or France and paid much attention to what was happening in these countries, but aimed at remaining neutral.
On the other hand there were countries that really were "isolated". Japan during the Edo period maintained mostly this kind of relations with about anybody else.
If your neighbor is neutral, and you will do something "bad" (like amass Badboy, declare wars, etc.) then your relations may significantly change. But if that neighbor was not neutral, but isolated, then the relations wouldn't change much.
Why: To be honest, the idea occured to me when thinking about EU. I found that sort of weird that playing China, I had most of the europe hate me fervently (-200 relations), when there was no interaction between the countries at all, we barely knew about each other's existence. Yet somehow I became number 1 public enemy in Europe, just because I didn't actively improve relations with them. Would Europe really care much about some empire half world away annexing a country they never heard about (like Makassar) ? This led me to believe there should be something more than linear like-hate scale.
Note: This idea is general enough, so it could be applied to any new Paradox games. I post it here because that's the new upcoming one, where it could work well.
So, what are your thoughts about the matter ? Maybe there are even better solutions than this one to enhance the politics ?
What I propose is to use a triangle instead of linear scale, very much like the triangle found in HoI3. Two of the triangle's corners represent good old "love" and "hatred" found in lots of games. The third corner represents "isolation" or "ignorance". If the relations are completely in this corner, it means that countries don't care about each other. It's not neutrality. Neutrality would be when you know your neighbors well and pay attention to them, but elect to be neutral. Like Switzerland did during WW2 (I know it's not within the timeframe of Vicky, but it's good example) - they certainly had solid contacts with Germany or France and paid much attention to what was happening in these countries, but aimed at remaining neutral.
On the other hand there were countries that really were "isolated". Japan during the Edo period maintained mostly this kind of relations with about anybody else.
If your neighbor is neutral, and you will do something "bad" (like amass Badboy, declare wars, etc.) then your relations may significantly change. But if that neighbor was not neutral, but isolated, then the relations wouldn't change much.
Why: To be honest, the idea occured to me when thinking about EU. I found that sort of weird that playing China, I had most of the europe hate me fervently (-200 relations), when there was no interaction between the countries at all, we barely knew about each other's existence. Yet somehow I became number 1 public enemy in Europe, just because I didn't actively improve relations with them. Would Europe really care much about some empire half world away annexing a country they never heard about (like Makassar) ? This led me to believe there should be something more than linear like-hate scale.
Note: This idea is general enough, so it could be applied to any new Paradox games. I post it here because that's the new upcoming one, where it could work well.
So, what are your thoughts about the matter ? Maybe there are even better solutions than this one to enhance the politics ?
