This is going too far now. Paradox fix the god-damn game already!!

[Hecastomp]

So, as has been seen hundreds of other posts, the AI behavior towards the player is rigged, and extremely aggressive. Some people say that no, its just fine and player should expand with care and worry about the AE. To those, here is my tale....

I start a new game with Brandenburg, with the sole objective of forming Germany for the achievement on steam (yes, im currently trying to get as many achievements done as i can). Game starts, and i immediately allied with Poland, Bohemia and Austria. None of these countries have provinces that are required to form Germany, and therefore since my objective of this play-through is just get the achievement, they were the perfect candidates for allies.

So as my 1st mission, i picked the one to get neumark back from the teutonic order. Mind you that neumark is a core of Brandenburg and not just a claim, and therefore a rightful part of my kingdom. Its also in the hands of someone not belonging to the HRE, so me getting it back, is good for the empire, right?

Well so far so good.. I won the war, and my good pal Bohemia that helped me in the war and with which i have a royal marriage, an alliance and same dynasty, right after the war ended, insulted me, and got outraged, and then next month they became hostile towards me.

So, because i took 1 single province that was rightful mine and outside the HRE, and took it back to me, my fellow HRE buddy got outraged and insulted me?? I got 2AE from getting neumark, and even tho my relation with them is 100+ positive, they got outraged for 2 AE??? I mean, seriously????

If anyone else needed proof how broken the diplomacy in the game is right now, here it is...

Here is the proof for those more skeptical.....

 

[ck2plusdlacc]

Their "attitude" has little to do with your overall relation score with them.

 

[unmerged(329270)]

So? No one will get hurt unless Bohemia magically declares war on you.
Just wait a little and they will give up their hostility.

 

[Victor_Yuzo]

You know that you can turn down the difficulty if you're having problems. You seem to be upset that the AI does anything other than sit there and ignore you until you conquer them.

 

[highsis]

lol so you think every nation should be your good friends just because you are doing nothing too crazy.

please think before posting.

Well i've had this one instance where i've helped my ally in a defensive war twice in a row and during the war my ally's attitude towards me turned to hostile from friendly and it broke off the alliance as soon as the war ended although I didn't aggregate any AE. That was a bit weird.

 

[jonman122]

lol so you think every nation should be your good friends just because you are doing nothing too crazy.

please think before posting.

Well i've had this one instance where i've helped my ally in a defensive war twice in a row and during the war my ally's attitude towards me turned to hostile from friendly and it broke off the alliance as soon as the war ended although I didn't aggregate any AE. That was a bit weird.

You people are making me ill, the point is that Bohemia is currently ALLIED with him, which probably means that moments before they had a green heart towards him and then suddenly became enraged at his presence. This is a very stupid mechanic and whatever is causing it's behaviour should be removed.

 

[Dragoon.x]

You said you're trying to get the forming Germany achivement so you have to play Ironman and well, guess you have to be Ironman.
However if you're willing to drop the achievement hunt you can modify the AI difficulty to accommodate the game to your taste.
On easy it reacts less harshly to player aggression and vulnerability. On normal you get treated the same way as AI nations, on hard however it will not pass to jump on if your vulnerable. It's pretty human in that it will DOW you even when you have fair relations. Low on manpower, high war exhausting already in multiple wars anything that makes you an easy target.

 

[WeissRaben]

That "hostile" attitude, and empirical knowledge, tells me that Bohemia was interested in Neumark for itself. You got Neumark, fat chance, you now are the target.

(Empirical as in "Bohemia gets Neumark every single time".)

 

[Aldun]

When they agreed to become your ally, you did not have any conflicting interests with them.
Now your interests conflict with theirs, so they hate you for it.
That is exactly the way a player would react in this situation. I'd call it good AI-Behaviour. The Allies in EU4 aren't just dumb horses that you can leash to your bandwagon and let them pull you to world domination. They are just as mean and vicious as you are.

Granted, I understand your basic complaint and I agree that the Ally-System needs work (for example, Allies who fought in the war with you getting AE for you winning the war.) But in this particular example it is very obvious what happened: You expanded too far into their comfort zone. Don't ally with people in your close neighbourhood or future close-neighbourhood. Especially not if they are more powerful than you. Poland is the ideal starting Ally for Brandenburg, since you have absolutely no overlapping areas of interest for 90% of the game.

 

[geckoman1011]

Yeah, I dont mind the AI reacting, but it has a tendency to over-react to players aggression.

 

[Dragoon.x]

There should be two different level of allies. Modified by the trust value which grows over time and by deeds. There are alliances grown out of opportunity, where you don't actually cares for your ally, he is just means to an end. Like the enemy of my enemy stuff and forcing your enemy to fight war on two fronts. In these cases you probably don't want that you ally gain anything, because he may be tomorrows enemy.
Then there are historic or cultural friendship alliances where you care and trust your ally and his gain is your gain.
The longer some is allied to you the less he cares about your expansion. The trust variable should modify the AE variable.

 

[Valynor]

It does not happen so often. Becoming allies is very easy and can't become a guarantee. Green heart isn't forever and change works in the other direction too. And by the way, being friend with Bohemia and Austria at the same time needs some work and it can be very hard.
Anyway OP was smart enough to have more friends so it shouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[Beefpiston]

OP, it looks like they're still Allied with you so what is the issue? You took a province that is rightfully yours but something they want, most likely. Try taking Danzig from the Teutonic Order and see how pissed off Poland gets! Just put a diplomat on Improve Relations and you should be fine.

 

[Pinpinolo]

I've also had a weird experience with the diplo AI, for example in my Poland -> Commonwealth game I allied with Hungary after modding them to be historical friends, for the first 100 years I did mostly nothing except PU'ing Lithuania and vassalizing the Teutons.

Then, a decade or so after the vassalization of the Teutons, out of the blue, Hungary gets "Hostile" (Note that they didn't even get "Outraged" before) and breaks the alliance. I then allied with Bohemia, and after a while, Hungary gets the little dove icon attitude and wants to be friends again. Then Bohemia breaks the alliance, and after a few years Hungary does the same. Now HUN is switching back-and-forth between hostility and friendliness, and honestly I kinda want to DOW them just to knock some sense into their little crap AI brain. Note that I literally did nothing for this period except diplo-annex TEU and form the Commonwealth.

 

[Beefpiston]

I've also had a weird experience with the diplo AI, for example in my Poland -> Commonwealth game I allied with Hungary after modding them to be historical friends, for the first 100 years I did mostly nothing except PU'ing Lithuania and vassalizing the Teutons.

Then, a decade or so after the vassalization of the Teutons, out of the blue, Hungary gets "Hostile" (Note that they didn't even get "Outraged" before) and breaks the alliance. I then allied with Bohemia, and after a while, Hungary gets the little dove icon attitude and wants to be friends again. Then Bohemia breaks the alliance, and after a few years Hungary does the same. Now HUN is switching back-and-forth between hostility and friendliness, and honestly I kinda want to DOW them just to knock some sense into their little crap AI brain. Note that I literally did nothing for this period except diplo-annex TEU and form the Commonwealth.

I think fundamentally what is wrong with a lot of this stuff is that it's all very opaque and black box right. It'd be nice if when an AI is friendly/cordial/threatened/hostile/outraged it would give you a little description of why. Like in the OP's scenario it would be nice if the tooltip said "We wanted control of Neumark ourselves!" or something like that rather than just wondering WTF is going on.

The AI isn't necessarily making bad decisions. I get awfully irritated with allies if they take a province I was eyeballing. In the case of Bohemia they're now stuck expanding through Poland or Austria which are both very tough cookies (and typically best buds as well). It'd just be nice to understand why the AI is doing certain things, at a high level.

Here's a RL example of my Brandenburg getting "Hostile" at a human ally (Denmark). We went to war with the Teutonic Order for the same reason as OP - retaking Neumark. As we beat him up, Denmark sued for peace and took Ostpreussen because, hey, it's a nice province. It wasn't even near by borders, but I wanted it so I could form Prussia if for no other reason than their flag is awesome. So now I have a little burning flag above my head every time I see Ostpreussen in Denmark colors. Bastard.

 

[KevinG]

So, as has been seen hundreds of other posts, the AI behavior towards the player is rigged, and extremely aggressive. Some people say that no, its just fine and player should expand with care and worry about the AE. To those, here is my tale....

Unless you're playing on a higher difficulty than normal the AI treats human players the same as other AI nations.

Well so far so good.. I won the war, and my good pal Bohemia that helped me in the war and with which i have a royal marriage, an alliance and same dynasty, right after the war ended, insulted me, and got outraged, and then next month they became hostile towards me.

Even though I know you won't read this, if you wait awhile without increasing your AE their opinion goes back to normal. Also their opinion of you has nothing to do with their relation to you.


Really though you just suck at the game if you can't form Germany as Branderburg. Its ridiculously easy to form Germany by mid 1500s without any exploits whatsoever. I hope paradox doesn't dumb the game down to the point where players expect to be able to form Germany by 1460 as a 3PM or OPM german minor.

 

[Pinpinolo]

I think fundamentally what is wrong with a lot of this stuff is that it's all very opaque and black box right. (Text)

Good point. I would not be as pissed/annoyed at Hungary's behaviour if there was an breakdown for it.

 

[mcmanusaur]

Well, I'm not going to claim that AI attitudes aren't fairly broken (attitudes and opinion are far too independent, and reasons for attitudes should be transparent to the player), but does this really have much effect in the long run?

 

[Bibor]

I just love it when someone writes a rant and doesn't even bother to comment on replies

 

[Thracian]

does bohemia have a claim on neumark?
the other possibility is maybe ai neighbour behaviour is also shaped by your strength