Give us solutions soon, because right now its impossible to play. I ended up being isolated from the world, none wanted an alliance
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Trust system makes balance of power politics impossible
- Thread starter Jaol
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I agree with this. I am currently trying to do the Riga achievement. My plan was to use Poland to punch my way through the Livonian Order and snack some of the eastern land before turning on Poland. But now Lituania got free from Poland and hates me because he's my neighbor. And pretty much everybody else nearby also hates me because i have been at war with them at some point.
Wiz, I think we can leverage the current Diplo-feedback system to address this..
Simply put a checkbox -- "Attempt to raise trust"; Only available when Trust < 55/60.
Which open's up a couple of events between the player and the target like:
MTTH 120 Months:
- Spend 150 ADM, DIP, or MIL Mana to increase trust by 3-5 points
Triggered if Target goes to War
- Spend MP, Ducats, or Mana to "Support their war effort" buys 3-5 Trust.
Triggered if Target's Ruler dies
- Spend Prestige + Mana to "Reset relations" buys 2-4 Trust
So it should be able to shift from a distrust to a trust position in about 20-30 years that'away.
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I violently despise the idea of using Monarch Points for diplomacy beyond what its current uses are. Make it about more tangible resources, manpower, money, prestige, perhaps legitimacy, but in the name of all that is holy NOT monarch points, because those things are tied to the tech system and tying to more strongly to Diplomacy as well does nothing but cause endless trouble and abstract the game even more than it currently is.
A thousand times no, please, please, please, anything but that.
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Glad it's being addressed.
FWIW, when I first noticed the problem in that Novgorod game, I assumed that trust would "decay" back up to 50, and I'd also be able to raise trust with Denmark via a guarantee and returning cores, etc.. I was also surprised that trust was such a big modifier compared to common rivals, etc.
So an "intuitive" solution might be:
- Low trust decays back up to 50
- Guarantees (and alliances with join offensive ticked off, since they are effectively the same thing) raise trust at, say, 1/2 the speed of an alliance
- Honoring a call to arms from a guarantee gives +10 trust (same as from an alliance) [this may already be the case?]
- Enforcing peace for a nation gives +10 trust (same as honoring a call to arms)
- Returning cores to a non-allied nation in a peace treaty raises trust same as if that nation were an ally
- The impact of low trust on the AI accepting an alliance scales linearly. I.e. every point below 50 trust gives -2 malus to accepting an alliance, so 45 trust = -10, 30 trust = -40. (As opposed to the current system where there is a point around 30 where the malus jumps to -1000 making alliances effectively impossible.)
I feel like the resting point for Trust should depend on your ruler's diplomacy skill.
I.E. trust should gradually approach 50 for a ruler with Dip 2, but maybe lower if 0-1 or higher if 3-6
I.E. trust should gradually approach 50 for a ruler with Dip 2, but maybe lower if 0-1 or higher if 3-6
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A few suggestions off the top of my head. I am sure you will get more and, maybe, better ones:
-positive actions give trust/make trust go back to 50 faster if the current trust is negative. Guaranteeing, royal marriage, returning cores etc
-Fighting alongside you because of common allies ncreases trust if you don't get a seperate peace deal.
-Low trust shouldn't be a hard limit on alliances but, instead, a softer limit with each trust point giving a -1 so countries with low trust won't ally easily but can still ally under the correct situation (like the screenshot) where 30 trust would give a -20 reasons in alliance so it could still happen simply due to how good that alliance would be.
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I think 1.15 is supposed to come out sometime this month... don't quote me on that.
Hopefully with Evangelical Majors...
Oh! and btw, dont make this Cossacks exclusive (I mean, the fix), because I dont have Cossacks and I'm suffering this bug (because its a bug) heavely
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How about an option to actively "switch sides"? For example, I've been a long-time ally of Poland, but then I decide to jump ships and join their rival Russia (if they would have me), which would reset Russian trust of me to 50 despite previous wars but instantly tank Poland's trust to zero making sure I could practically never go back to them? Do that a few times, and you're out of options. Could even give a small relations boost with the new ally.
On a similar note, if a country suddenly decides to break an alliance with us, we should get a small boost to the possibility of getting an alliance with their enemies. It shouldn't make it too easy to get a new great power alliance any time you wish, but I have several times found myself in a situation "France dumped me, but everyone else hates me too".
I understand it would have to be balanced very carefully, but I think something like that would benefit the game and make alliances and rivalries more dynamic and interesting.
On a similar note, if a country suddenly decides to break an alliance with us, we should get a small boost to the possibility of getting an alliance with their enemies. It shouldn't make it too easy to get a new great power alliance any time you wish, but I have several times found myself in a situation "France dumped me, but everyone else hates me too".
I understand it would have to be balanced very carefully, but I think something like that would benefit the game and make alliances and rivalries more dynamic and interesting.
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it also makes super alliances that don't break over conflicts on interest (gonna get worse now that the ai wont rival above 80 trust)
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got to love lead developers that read and agree to 'faults' in the programming they did.
One of the reasons why I keep returning to eu4, after every major bugfix patch after a dlc patch.
One of the reasons why I keep returning to eu4, after every major bugfix patch after a dlc patch.
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Trust should decay to 50 from lower and higher value. You gain favour by allying and doing absolutely nothing, allowing you to use your ally every 10 or 20 years. You should be forced to spend to favour to maintain high trust level. You should only be able to raise trust via being actually helpful as much as aids you receive.
In addition there should be more ways to gain trust; enforced peace, guarantee, send gifts, finantial aid, etc.
In addition there should be more ways to gain trust; enforced peace, guarantee, send gifts, finantial aid, etc.
Which would completely and utterly screw republics.
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Why not use a diplomat, instead of a checkbox? They can improve relations, why not trust? Would have to be pretty slow though, like 1-2 per year.
Events are also a good idea, but I agree they should use other resources except MP.
And Theocracies. And hell, even monarchies, since it can take you decades if not centuries to raise trust, especially if the other guy is larger.
Also, my 2 cents: while this is a problem, another problem is trust causing super-alliances that are never broken, or around for far longer than they should be. I once played a Spain game where Austria and Spain were best of friends for nearly 200 years (don't know after that, because I stopped playing after that), meaning that western/central Europe was pretty much locked down and impossible to intrude in, this despite France and Austria having borders against one another (Inheritance firing and all that). A France-Austria alliance should be rare enough as it is (in the current build, it isn't, happening in almost every game I've played in Europe), which itself is ridiculous enough since it essentially makes them untouchable, and it really makes no sense that the two biggest candidates for European hegemony (at least in Western Europe) would not be at odds.
I think to address this we need something along the lines of a hegemony/bandwaggoning/balance of power system, wherein a country that grows large (or maybe disproportionately large) will find itself having a very hard time finding large allies who will team up with it in the same area (e.g. France for much of history, who's only real long-term ally were the Ottomans who joined them in hating Austria, Scotland, which was hardly a power and joined them in hating England, and, for a period, Spain, during the period when both France and Spain had Bourbon kings).
A balance of power system would work something like: you have multiple nations vying for supremacy. These nations can ally with each other, and balance out so that no one alliance grows too strong to beat by another alliance. Small nations will try to ally up as normal. As time progresses if one nations grows too powerful (measured by development) then people are less likely to ally it, but we see a mix of bandgwagonning and counter-alliances by local smaller nations who want to avoid being gobbled up.
Now, balancing it would be difficult, but it would certainly make for a more interesting game if done correctly. And it would certainly avoid having the ridiculous Austria-Hungary-France-Burgundy/Aragon/Spain alliances I've seen going on even in the early game. Or the even more ungodly France-Austria (with gobbled up Hungary)-Ottomans alliance I once saw, the stuff of nightmares, that was.
making trust soemwhat normalise on ruler death would make some sort of sense though. look at the miracle of house brandenburg earlier in the thread - prussian-tussian relations were entirely reversed by the death of the russian ruler. it would go both ways - having really high trust with a nation shouldnt decay outright, but when the reason to trust/distrust you happened a century ago people will look at the present a whole lot more strongly.
trust really hsoudlnt drop as fast for allies. it makes sense that someone distrusts me if i attack them a few times, but if i'm the ally of austria, austria get's into a war with france, then france's allies shoudl get a much reduced trust hit.
in other words, less trust loss for happeneing to get into a war with someone, rather than startign it yourself, and a better ability to recover trust over time. a way to coax nations over to your side would go a long way too.
trust really hsoudlnt drop as fast for allies. it makes sense that someone distrusts me if i attack them a few times, but if i'm the ally of austria, austria get's into a war with france, then france's allies shoudl get a much reduced trust hit.
in other words, less trust loss for happeneing to get into a war with someone, rather than startign it yourself, and a better ability to recover trust over time. a way to coax nations over to your side would go a long way too.
The miracle of the House of Brandenburgh (I'm assuming your are talking about the Second Miracle of the House of Brandenburg, and not the first one, which was the Austrians and Russians choosing not to risk a push into Prussia territory) had less to do with trust and alliances and the balance of power and history than it did with the new Russian Emperor really, really, really liking Prussia. It can be modeled perfectly well with the white peace mechanic.
Trust, as implemented in the game, doesn't have anything to do with country X being a country Y-phobe as was the case in the Second Miracle of the House of Brandeburg, but the historical trust and motivation a country has to work with you. In short, it's like an emergent version of the "Historical Friends" bonus.
...No. If anything, that is less true now more than ever. Ever since Cossacks the game has become more about realpolitik and power plays, and not emotions. The trust mechanic itself is a major overhaul: you choose which allies are allies of convenience (use your favors to just jump into wars for your gain) or keep around for the long term (use favors to buy up trust).
Furthermore, the ability to view and assign points of interests essentially allows you to define a "soft" SoI. You can choose it so that it doesn't conflict with your allies', and you can use it to specifically designates areas of strategic interest which is a big deal, especially when you are in a war and want to be given a specific province.
Some spontaneous suggestions to make the game less predictable
:Those already don't exist. The trust and historical friends modifiers have nothing to do with "friendship", they have to do with your nations' historical bonds, and these are things that really did influence politics in the real world. This is why Portugal and Spain more often than not met eye-to-eye and not musket-to-musket, despite sharing the borders and colonial ambitions.
No. That's a bad idea. It would kill the pace of the game, wreck balance, and make absolutely no realistic sense. WIthout some larger, overarching, balance-of-power or hegemonic system, using coalitions a-la the Anti-France (pre-Revolution), Anti-Spain, Anti-England, and Anti-Revolutionary France (pre-Napoleon) makes no sense.
To balance things out, make separate peace deals with coalition members possible and remove the ahistorical nonsense limitations (
Coalitions should have separate peace, but it should require absolute domination, like at least 80% over the specific country and like 50% or so total.
No. That would not work well with the AI, that would be a pain to code, if even possible, and given the game, as deep as it is, is simply too shallow to reflect that adequately enough that it wouldn't be frustrating.
When and where? I can't recall any "secret alliances" between any nations, and for good reasons: they would have made no sense.
Too exploitable, too hard for the AI, and makes no real sense. The only cases it would really make sense is in some huge coalition war too. Generally this didn't happen. Sometimes countries joined in later in wars, but this can be reflected by being able to call in new allies or starting new wars on the side.
How and why would the AI want to contain a coalition? Coalitions are always beneificial to every nation but the nation that is being coalitioned against, because it keeps them from getting too strong and saves more stuff for the others to get. Indirectly, it can even be more beneficial for the allies of the coalitioned nation for htem to fall apart.
You can already do that all indirectly.
That already exists in an abstracted form.
Dear god, no. Just...no. The last thing the game needs is arbitrary restrictions like that. Also, "promises of lands" for estates already exist - it's the minimum land requirement necessary.[/QUOTE]
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yes, but it still supports my point - just becaus eking X hates the polish doesn't mean his heir will too. if poland doesn't hate them just because they can there's nor eaosn they can't repair thsat trust. miracle of hosue brandenburg was extreme - goign from anti-prussia to pro-prussia. it's not unreasonable to assume that, say, a french king makes some headway into italy pissing off italian states, but his heir reverses those bad relations to normal ones again. just liek how a ruler can go form millitaristic to diplomatic completly changing how aggresive a country behaves.
First of all, you aren't talking about trust, but diplomatic opinion modifiers. Trust is something else entirely.
The problem is you are applying this to a person and not a nation-state. In EUIV, largely speaking, things do not work at the level of a king. A king is just an administrator. It works at the level of a nation. Thus the hatred is not of the king, but of the nation and what that nation has done in the past. So even if you have a king who is friendly to Poles, if your nation spent the last 100 years torturing and killing Poles, the Poles aren't going to like you very much - hence you have a historical rival modifier. And not to mention that unless the nation is a rival, this won't really be a problem. Those penalties decay and normalize over time unless you or your vassals directly own land that are their cores
Trust isn't really a problem with your enemies - I make allies of my old enemies all the time, even if I've taken chunks of land from them in the past - this doesn't affect trust much, if at all. it does affect diplomatic opinion, which is a completely different system.
Most simple shifts can be represented really easily: change allies, white peace an existing war (MoHoB), etc. You can even white peace and, IIRC, join the other guy and maybe even get called into his war (never had that happen though).