Two-Way Negotiations

[Ispil]

As far as I can tell, the negotiations for peace after war are all one-way; you either win, or lose. You either take land or force them to give up claims, or you do the same. There's no balance to the actual peace offers- you can't sacrifice a few claims while taking other provinces, among other things. As a result, war tends to go for total conquest instead of simply exhausting the opponent. Obviously, two-way negotiations would allow peace agreements that would result in a zero warscore despite having a war in the first place, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It's not like the AI would agree to do it if still eager to fight the war, so it wouldn't be particularly abusable. Furthermore, two-way negotiations would add a new dynamic to war, both in singleplayer and multiplayer. The mechanic wouldn't even be that difficult to implement, since most of the actions don't overlap- the only thing in need of blocking is giving up claims on provinces that you are annexing, but that wouldn't be too hard to do. It certainly would add a new dynamic to conquest in the game, and might make war less predictable overall.

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

Isn't this already kind of in the game? With the whole thumb up thumb down system when you are making peace?

 

[Gaussia]

You havn't really defined what you mean with 2-way negotiation, but I suspect you mean that you can both give and gain in a war.

If so then I think it is in principle a good idea (happened in history and would add depth), but would not think it's a good idea to just implement as it is. For a starter you would need a much smarter AI when it comes to calculating what's adventageous in a war and what is not (which also would make it much harder for a player to predict when you can make a peace and when not, I imagine a lot of frustrated players even if it is implemented well.

If you just add 2-way with the current system and no other suggestions of modification I could see a lot of strange things happening, like:
-Me (super rich merchant republic) declaring war on France and give them a vast chunck of money for Paris (quite common the AI accept gold). This would also make it strange: why should we need to declare a 1-day war for me to exchange a province for money, you'd probably need to include peace-time negotiations in the same war.
-I also imagine fabricating claims on a lot of random nations, and then gaining an additional 20% warscore in each war by renouncing claims on various nations. Giving up trade power can also yield a 60% extra war score in a few war.

Basically I can see a lot of situations were things could be abused or lead to strange situations don't add something else as well.

 

[grommile]

This would be a wonderful feature. In practice, it runs into an implementation problem of the following form:

• The AI handling of such deals must not be unreasonably demanding.
  
• The AI handling of such deals must not be unreasonably generous.

So I ask the OP the same thing I ask anyone else who I notice making this suggestion: show me an existing strategy game of complexity comparable to EU4 which supports give-and-take peace deals and consistently fulfills both of the above-stated conditions at once.

 

[bzflater]

Counter-suggestion: only allow that in peace deals between two players so there's no need to tweak the AI.

 

[Ispil]

And this is why I shouldn't make suggestions at 2 AM.

 

[Heinrikr]

This would be a wonderful feature. In practice, it runs into an implementation problem of the following form:

• The AI handling of such deals must not be unreasonably demanding.
  
• The AI handling of such deals must not be unreasonably generous.

So I ask the OP the same thing I ask anyone else who I notice making this suggestion: show me an existing strategy game of complexity comparable to EU4 which supports give-and-take peace deals and consistently fulfills both of the above-stated conditions at once.

An unreasonably demanding or generous AI is not something which would only be a problem to give-and-take peace deals. It affects one sided peace deals just as much. The way the AI weighs things in one sided deals could be carried over to a give and take system. Is the AI, in the current one sided deals, unreasonable? If it is, there's no reason for why it couldn't be just as unreasonable in a give and take system instead. And if not, there's no problem to begin with. Or are there special problems with a give-and-take system for the AI?

 

[Ispil]

Also, the war enthusiasm of the AI makes it so that declaring war in order to abuse give-and-take peace deals to, say, steal Paris with money doesn't actually work.

 

[grommile]

Or are there special problems with a give-and-take system for the AI?

In a "I take, you lose" system, the AI just has to evaluate the absolute value of what it's taking. (We can, I dare say, argue the toss about how well it does that until the cows come home.)

In a "exchange of stuff" system, the AI has to evaluate the relative value of what it's getting vs. what it's giving up - and that's going to be a considerably harder task, since to write a good deal you need to properly assess things like the strategic value of the provinces, which is not necessarily captured by their value as abstract provinces.

 

[Leo_Boon]

In a "I take, you lose" system, the AI just has to evaluate the absolute value of what it's taking. (We can, I dare say, argue the toss about how well it does that until the cows come home.).

But in that system the AI still has to evaluate relative values: the value of the provinces you want to take vs the value of the war exhaustion, the value of the length of war, and the "x making gains" modifier, for example. The peace value of a province already changes whether it's occupied or not, whether you have a claim on it or not, and so on, so there isn't really an "absolute" value. The issue would be to make these value changes fair to avoid loopholes.

 

[joe9594]

I agree with one of the earlier comments that this would be a nice thing to add for multiplayer games (i.e. only between players, not between players and AI in multiplayer games). I imagine people already do stuff like this but by selling provinces. This would make it a lot easier. Seems like it is just a quality of life thing in that case.

 

[Mattius]

I haven't read about many wars where the treaty wasn't two-sided. You got to give in order to get.

 

[Tacticalenforce]

When i played the game for the first time, i wondered, why this wasn't already in the game. This would be a good idea, although some things like admit defeat (i'm not entirely sure that this is what it's called in english) should not be available in two-way-negotiations, as they would make no sense.