Suggestion - Time to Fix your Rotten Attitude Son.

[Vishaing]

Play whatever you want, see how AIs react to you and each other, especially see if small AIs with Strong neighbors are properly setting other Majors as "Benefactors". If you don't mind going whole hog conquest I am particularly interested in what sorts of Coalitions pop up after major land cessions, how far spread they are, how long they last, stuff like that.

 

[unmerged(88013)]

Vishaing, you always come up with well thought out and insightful ideas and commentary. Often within the confines of the current design paradigm. Why hasn't Paradox hired you yet?

/me Tips hat

 

[LordNeidhart]

A very interesting read, although before anything else the absolute priority in instituting such a system is making sure that it doesn't significantly impact game performance and/or overtax the engine, which is something I hear a couple major overhaul mods are guilty of in small amounts. I'm by no means a modder myself [my single attempt at modding a decision for Burgundy to reinstitute the Kingdom of Lotharingia fell flat like a rock], but the amount of necessary added complexity that such a system would bring needs to be weighted against the engine's actual capabilities of handling it.

There are a couple parts I disagree with, namely the fact that a vassal having a stronger military than its overlord should override all attitudes and shift it permanently into hostile, for example, considering that such an example, along with a few others, could leave the game devoid of relevant elements such as political subterfuge or maybe even simple goodwill between nations.

I would like, however, to add a point regarding the current diplomacy system, which I personally feel is slightly stacked against the player, and got a tad worse now in 1.7. Namely the fact that the allied AI is extremely rude and one-sided when it comes to war declarations; if the player declares war and force-call-to-arms an unwilling ally, the AI gets nothing except a trust hit. However, the AI presumes that the player is supposed to be at its beck and call for every single offensive war it starts, lacking even the most basic courtesy of trying to negotiate joint military action before declaring hostilities, which is something even the rudimentary and player-hating AI of Civilization V can handle.

All in all however, it seems to be a relatively simple [if possibly resource-intensive] system that adds quite a layer of much needed depth and player input to diplomatic negotiations, and I'd live to see it implemented in some form. Good to see a nice and peaceful constructive thread amongst the raging storms of scornful balance wars that always build up around the release of new patches.

 

[Vishaing]

So far I have not seen any performance decrease at all. Most of the major mods that have massive performance decreases are caused by massive numbers of new provinces and new tags and, in particular, a massively more complex trade network. My changes are actually very minor compared to M&T or VeF. VeF in particular still has good performance on my machine despite adding a ton of provinces, countries, and probably around 2-3 dozen more attitudes than I added here, because they have a bunch of fancy pants custom attitudes for specific countries to help them pursue historical/sensible goals.

It should be possible but highly unlikely for a vassal to remain loyal while their overlord is severely weakened. It is still possible, I left in some pretty major opinion boosts that make it more likely for it to stay loyal. I'm not going to suggest that the values will not need any balancing however. I'll see what happens.

And yeah, the AI is pretty mean to the player when it comes to Alliances because there's no meaningful communication between the two. I would like to hope that this would be the first step on the path to resolving that issue.

 

[PeterCorless]

+1. Awesome and well-thought out! The main thing I'd want to prevent, as you say, are "false feelings." You might need to make it so that you can't just go from friendly to hostile to DOW without some sort of diplomatic ramification.

I also like the possibility that there could even be events or event chains that would reflect public sentiments. "One People, Two Nations: Our people are separated by an artificial nation border, but we are the same, one in spirit! -- Your people clamor to have friendly relations with nation X. Option 1: Change our attitude to Friendly. Option 2: I rule this nation! We remain on less-than-cordial terms. -10 DIP." Or the like.

And I am always in favor of allowing players to make their own choices.

 

[Latheloi]

+1 this is an excellent use of a current system
Could prevent false feelings by having attitude changes take x amount of time to complete before coming into effect. Would also provide the AI notice that relations were souring, allowing them time to reposition armies/re-arm.

 

[Noctus]

@OP

Well put together. I like the proposal to better communicate with the AI in this way.

 

[Peanutcat]

This man knows what he's talking about, listen to him Wiz!

 

[Ilightmaster]

I think it's a good idea but you said something like, you could manually change human attitude... that completely discredit your suggestion unless you think of a mission like system that involve the player have to wait until changing his attitude if the game automattically set it and when you load a game, it is reset or somthing like that.

 

[e_quality]

I appreciate the idea and certainly the thought which went into it. But having to manage attitude towards every nation this way would be a micromanagament hell. The idea is interesting but needs extensive simplification to be practical.

 

[Korsgaard]

I must say that this threat contains the best constructive criticism I've ever read. I like this compared to all the whining about the game being broke and I shit you not.

Besides that, I really LOVE what's being describe here. This is what the game needs and this is the best addition to the AI I've ever seen. Kudos for that!

 

[crusaderking]

I think the mod is quite CPU-intensive or something. Because speed 4 and 5 are as fast as speed 3. Barely any difference between these three.

Also, coalitions seem to be a bit out of hand. As Austria, I was caught fabricating a claim on Moravia. And immediately, I had around 8-10 HRE minors entering into a coalition against me (but strangely, Bohemia did not join the coalition). And the AE that was generated from this fabrication was a mere -14. I'm sure HRE members wont like it when I'm expanding inside the HRE. But I hope this is not the case with every tiny increase in AE.

 

[sr999]

The OP's post is literally awesome - an otherwise cliche word I try to avoid.

As a last thing, what is way more important than my agreements and disagreements with your post about AI attitudes, is that your attitude is commendable.

Agreed. That's my only issue. Not a single person in this entire thread has personally abused anyone. Come on guys, you're nerfing my forum entertainment...

 

[net.split]

Great stuff in here.

Only thing I would note: I skipped over this thread for quite awhile because of the title. I actually thought this was a thread complaining about people's attitudes on the forums.

You might get a bit more attention with a more straightforward thread title

 

[Peanutcat]

So the mod you linked will it still work with 1.7?

 

[dstarsboy]

I like the ideas proposed here but I agree that there's some additional micromanagement involved in swapping attitudes to help the AI determine how you view them.

Instead, the AI can perform actions to adjust the player's attitude a bit and the AI and make assumptions based on those actions. The player just needs to be made aware of those actions, that's all.

Even something basic like a popup when so-and-so country has maxed diplo relations with you (their diplomat in your country) will lay a seed in the player's mind that says "hey, so-and-so country is not bad, maybe I should consider helping them in the future". Currently an AI country putting the effort into maxing relations with you is something you rarely know about.

A popup when a country supports rebels in a rival province to defect to you or changes religion to yours. Countries giving you gifts and subsidiaries more. Things like this will go a long way to swaying a player's attitude towards the AI and likely alter the decisions they make throughout the game.

 

[solidprice]

my eyes went glazed, but i got the ghist of it. i really hope the devs take a look at it.

it would help SP A LOT.

 

[Vishaing]

Thanks all.

@Peanutcat: I have not tested this with 1.7 yet, I'm at work, don't tell anyone, but it should not crash the game or anything. Cordial may not work or look right, that should be the extent of the problems it causes. I'll take a closer look and update it when I get home in around 4-5 hours.

@crusaderking: Really, I hadn't noticed that, but I tend to play on speed 2-3 anyways. That's frustrating. Have you tried deleting the common\ai_attidues\00_JC_Attitudes.txt file? This file has my Benefactor and Enemy of my Enemy attitudes, which are the ones with major 3rd-Party checks and should be the ones that slow the game down the most.

Also, HRE states are EXTREMELY wary once The Emperor starts expanding. That is by design, but may need a bit of balance. I will probably reduce it as they should be forming Coalitions once you actually start expanding, only some very close minors such as Bavaria/Wurttemburg should be getting antsy over just a forged claim. And Bohemia should, at game start, be strong enough that they are confident they can take you without a Coalition of Minors to back them up. That might not actually be true, but it is how they should feel. Again this is by design, Coalitions should be mostly weaker stats ganging up to take down a stronger state.

But still, let me know if you see any other Coalitions that strike you as off.

@PeterCorless: I had been thinking about events like those. A Cooldown to how often you can change an Attitude would be interesting and could also help keep the AI Consistent as well.

As for the Micromanagement concern, that is something I was thinking about, especially since I almost always play in the HRE. I guess I didn't include it in the post, but I was figuring that this system would not fully disable the AI Attitude selector for Players. When you click on the pull-down menu to select an Attitude, one of the options will be "Leave AI in Charge" or something similar, or perhaps a Checkbox could be added labeled "AI". This would put the normal diplomacy AI in charge of your attitude towards that country and, in most cases, it should choose an appropriate thing.

However if you manually select an Attitude, or uncheck that box, or do something to indicate you want to control that Attitude, then the AI will be switched off for that country and you will manage it from now, unless you check/uncheck that box, or whatever.

@dstarsboy: There are always places where we could use some more popups or notifications, that I will not argue at all, and you've got some good suggestions for ones.

@net.split: Straight Forward? Dude, you're talking to the guy who once released an update to a mod of his and conveyed the changelog via a Sea Shanty.

@sr999: Well Screw you Too Pal! Why don't you go back to Call of Doody? Filthy casual.
Does that help you get some fun out of this thread?

 

[Vishaing]

So the mod was compatible with 1.7, the only changes PI made to the Attitude code was adding Checks for Trust to the Friendly Attitude, which I have adopted. If a country's trust of you is too low they will not be friendly, so think before you backstab.

I also slightly reduced the likelihood of Coalitions in The Empire, but only slightly. HRE states are intended to react strongly to expansion in the Empire, especially against countries larger than them, foreign, or The Emperor.

I also simplified some of the checks, and fixed a few that weren't what I intended. Hopefully this improves performance.

Download is in the first post! I also left the 1.6 version for anyone who doesn't want 1.7 yet.

 

[lucaluca]

wow I like this idea a lot