Theory-Crafting with Paul and Boblet: A simply complicated way of fixing the scum England.

[Boblet]

I will point out as to remind everyone that the issue isn't the inability to stab hit, more so the inability to capture land that someone plain cannot hold on to. Stability hitting is the way paradox tried to make multiplayer peace deals smoother but it did lead to grey areas like this one where people can with a tiny bit of changes (in this case removing the forts which in single player usually give you enough war score to take the land in the 100 years war) leads to the issue above. Just adding something like @bbqftw a straight to Kent or what @MiniaAr addressed, having a lower war score solves this problem but makes more grey areas. My solution in the in the post was meant to avoid more grey areas like this one by making a unique mechanic separate from other systems to avoid unintentional loop holes that end up hurting the game and Paul's is more of a base idea that solves the problem in a simple and effective way but *does* end with a bit of issue if you dig into the details more, which we love to do.

-As a side note removing the Kent straight seems a bit more realistic and like i said having it does allow you to take care of English mainland if you can actually beat their navy and doesn't require any more coding than just adding it back in to fix the England problem, except, it doesn't fix the problem. It doesn't stop England from hiding on their island preventing you from crossing and doesn't stop any nation from losing territory overseas that they cannot hold on to since it only applies to England. England was the topic of the post but keep in mind the meaning goes much deeper. Imagine someone from India holding all of the Iberian Peninsula but with no forts and, if declared war on, could be easily beat by someone like France. A straight in Kent doesn't stop that Indian nation from holding out for as long as he wants without worrying a thing about losing land when at most it could probably end up being at most 40% war score after ticking all the way and having a few lost battles in the Indian side. All it comes down to in that situation is no 50%, no stab hit, no problem. That's why it should be more oriented on the war goal and claims for stability hitting instead of getting 50% war score.

 

[Dell19]

Just on your side note, what scenario allowed Delhi* to conquer Iberia in the first place? If they were able to transport their armies around the world to get it then it seems reasonably fair for them to not lose it all in one war if France cannot reach India bearing in mind that they may be able to gain military access anyway.

* to pick one.

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

Would there be an issue with allowing you to seize land that has been occupied for a certain amount of time (like 10 years or so), has all connected provinces occupied and positive warscore?

 

[chegitz guevara]

MIEOU has a better solution. After a certain amount of time occupying territory, it's yours.

 

[bradles0]

I've always felt that the separatist rebels system could be used to reclaim land quite nicely. Details below.

So for instance if you're France attacking England to reclaim your continental cores, the second you occupy Normandy it spawns "french separatist" rebels with no units that are allied to France, and "occupy" the same land that France does. Wait 5 years, the french lands defect back to France just as if rebels had been occupying them.

for cores of a different culture or claims in your culture you wait 3 years -unrest*2 months for the timer to start (so in places with high unrest it just automatically starts)
for claims in a different culture you wait 5years -unrest*3 months.

Something would have to be done with AE here.

 

[Sharples88]

simplest solution to solving AI England issues is Calais Kent strait

Would you like to see France/Burgundy smash England everytime in the British Isles when the navy AI wanders away from the channel?

 

[Quaade]

Or... make minor and major CB where allies doesn´t called in unless they have something to gain... And make wars score be easier first 40, easier to sign at 40... So shorter wars

 

[GizahNL]

I would think the simplest solution is to have a few events specifically written for this edge case. Let the provinces defect to france after X years of occupation.

Or indeed give similar warscore as fortified provinces for occupied provinces that have no connected forts.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

Well, A.I. France manages to take all their cores from ENG after usually about 2 wars... 4 times out of 5, probably. The other time, France just totally screws up diplomatically, and gets taken down (in stages) by a series of opportunistic rivals. I don't really see any problem here, with France.

Where I do see a problem, is with the English A.I. Man, it's really bad. Not just in fighting France, but everything. Seriously.
I remember the good ol' days in EU3 where the English navy had about 45 Carracks and 28 transports (still early game), and went where ever it pleased. Ravaging the Ottomans, even. If you weren't a big power, finding yourself at war w/ ENG was a scary situation. 'Cause you knew they were going to show up & make an appearance, to put it mildly.

Those days are long gone. I'm no history expert, but did ENG suffer a major naval defeat between 1399 and 1444? 'Cause there's a big difference in their starting force, relative to other powers. They don't start w/ many ships, and they don't build many ships. They don't even know how to "vassalize Scotland". They use the CB, but rarely actually DO it, even w/ max war score. Instead they get war reps, and some ducats. Not even unjustified land!

Then there's global conflict. Have you ever... allied ENG and watched how they fight wars? Against rivals in the New World, among other places. Dude, I've watched 'em... and I seriously just don't have the words to describe how bad they are at warfighting.

Basically the ENG A.I. doesn't know how to play the game... really. I don't have any reservation about saying that.
I don't want to be some... crazy conspiracy theorist. But, the idea that DDRJake is from Scotland, and well, maybe he just wants England to SUCK... yeah, that has crossed my mind.

Now SURELY that can't really be true. That's just my mind working, in occasionally paranoid ways.
But yeah, that thought has crossed my mind. Probably because I can't figure what else it could be!

 

[Boblet]

Just on your side note, what scenario allowed Delhi* to conquer Iberia in the first place? If they were able to transport their armies around the world to get it then it seems reasonably fair for them to not lose it all in one war if France cannot reach India bearing in mind that they may be able to gain military access anyway.

* to pick one.

You missed the point there Dell by a long shot but i'll go ahead and answer it the best i can.

1) Q. What scenario allowed Delhi to conquer Iberia in the first place?
A. Well, to be honest i wasn't trying to make a realistic scenario but if you want one lets say France in the 1600's was invading Iberia and an Indian player who had been hopping up and down Africa for trade ports decided to attack whatever split up weakened nation happened to be there, Portugal or for example and used a claim on a African province to start the war. Then the Indian player proceeds to take a Seville trade province like Lisbon and uses it to stage 2 or 3 more wars to capture the last bits the French didn't grab due to truces. (If you really don't want to think about someone from India then think about someone like Sweden getting into England because the Danes gave them land in a war when the English lost but after becoming free had a bunch of galleys to prevent the English from coming into the Baltic but no way of protecting their holdings on the Isles from the English heavy ships.)

2) Q. If they were able to transport their armies around the world to get it then it seems reasonably fair for them to not lose it all in one war
A. They don't lose it all in one war presumably unless the French somehow manage to get claims on all the land in Iberia that the Indians hold, and its very likely that any Indian idea sets would crumble to the French Elan, discipline and manpower bonuses. The problem is that after defeating the Indians, you wont have actually beaten the Indians since they can just jump ship all the way back to India and you have to find a way over there as France (Read next answer) to take land across the world that they were clearly not able to stop you from occupying.

3) Q. if France cannot reach India bearing in mind that they may be able to gain military access
A. This is really the part where you missed the point, in any across seas nation like England, Japan or basically any New World country you cant ask the water for military access to get your armies from one place to another. You are obviously going to need better boats then the nations who know that they can keep whatever land they please as long as they have enough boats to stop you from getting to their mainland regardless of if they can actually control it or not, and can sit there until one of you gets sick and tired and they make you take a peace deal that is favorable to them just because you cant get to their mainland and they get to keep all the land you had sieged down for years. If they are in the same landmass as you, in the case of France versus India it probably isn't worth your time to ask 15 countries for military access to walk though low supply land (which you may or may not be cut off by the ottomans if you rival them making it mostly redundant) instead of having a system like the ones suggested in the original post to make everything a lot less of a pain.

**If anyone has any other direct questions ill answer them as well, and me and Paul should have another theory crafting thread up sometime soon. More details on that in a bit.

 

[Dell19]

On 1 I picked up on your example as it seemed quite ridiculous and no context had been provided. I get what you are saying about one or two provinces being uncapturable and I would be fine with a tweak to the war score rules so for instance a province gives more war score if there are no forts either connected by land or within the same region and the land isn't overseas. I know over time whilst reading this forum there have been plenty of posts about how navies are useless so in some ways its nice that there are situations like this when a navy actually does something given that the game tends to underplay naval importance (The Portugese wouldn't have made much progress in India without their naval superiority etc).

On 2 it sort of sounds like you are saying the existing system works fine as France would gain territory in the first war. There might be a later war where India have a small number of provinces left and France cannot get enough war score to get them however by that point they will have lost most of Iberia anyway. Plus in that scenario its probably in the best interest of India to cut their losses and cede the provinces rather than risk those provinces repeatedly being occupied.

On 3 you picked the example and in your example it is potentially possible to get military access. If nations have expanded in a favourable way then you might only need military access though 3 or 4 nations. In a recent game Ming sent armies into Greece after getting military access through 3 or 4 nations.

Thanks for being somewhat insulting in the first line btw.

 

[Big Bad France]

I think a better example would be Portugal controlling Goa by event. If an Indian country declares war to take Goa, then that country shouldn't have to leave the continent to take it. Portugal should have to travel to India to defend it.

 

[bbqftw]

If you aren't harming the enemy then why do you think you deserve the land in an MP scenario?

 

[Big Bad France]

If you aren't harming the enemy then why do you think you deserve the land in an MP scenario?

Because you are occupying the land. If the enemy isn't willing to come defend the land you want, then you should be able to take the land without waging total war against him.

 

[Boblet]

If you aren't harming the enemy then why do you think you deserve the land in an MP scenario?

If you put it that way then why do they deserve the land if they aren't able to stop you from sitting all over it?

On 1 I picked up on your example as it seemed quite ridiculous and no context had been provided. I get what you are saying about one or two provinces being uncapturable and I would be fine with a tweak to the war score rules so for instance a province gives more war score if there are no forts either connected by land or within the same region and the land isn't overseas. I know over time whilst reading this forum there have been plenty of posts about how navies are useless so in some ways its nice that there are situations like this when a navy actually does something given that the game tends to underplay naval importance (The Portugese wouldn't have made much progress in India without their naval superiority etc).

On 2 it sort of sounds like you are saying the existing system works fine as France would gain territory in the first war. There might be a later war where India have a small number of provinces left and France cannot get enough war score to get them however by that point they will have lost most of Iberia anyway. Plus in that scenario its probably in the best interest of India to cut their losses and cede the provinces rather than risk those provinces repeatedly being occupied.

On 3 you picked the example and in your example it is potentially possible to get military access. If nations have expanded in a favourable way then you might only need military access though 3 or 4 nations. In a recent game Ming sent armies into Greece after getting military access through 3 or 4 nations.

Thanks for being somewhat insulting in the first line btw.

If you want it to be insulting it will be, but i was really just saying that you may have misunderstood it, not to be rude.
Oh, and i should also mention that Portugal didn't actually make much progress in India, all they got at their peak was 10 or so coastal ports for strictly trade purposes. Whereas the people who eventually ruled India went and allied themselves with Indian nations to get them to conquer India for them to get around the inability of a navy to keep hold of land anywhere besides select coastal cities. However regarding to what you said the role of a navy in real history is spot on with how it is in Europa except on the topic of disrupting economic flow and trade, which in Europa it doesn't do much if you blockade someone for years whereas it should really do a lot more damage to your trade power and possibly stop colonies from sending you tariffs when there are enemy ships on the way to the mother country. That would probably make having a navy much more essential instead of playing a whole game without making more than 50 ships total and never having an issue when being blockaded besides the occasional blockade event.

 

[bradles0]

My favorite strategy as england in MP is to release Normandy as a vassal, feed them all of my french land except maine, enable scutage? (that makes them not join wars with me), and then when surrender of maine triggers france only gets to occupy maine. It screws them over even harder.