Unrewarding play - insight wanted

[DystopianAlphaOmega]

Another thing about peace conferences is that in mp, the top two countries can repeatedly pass between each other for essentially infinite points. So if, for example, after a fairly historic WWII factions wise, the USA and UK are the top two in score, with the USSR third, Churchill and Truman can infinitely pass between each other and ensure that the fate of all of Europe is dictated by the Western Allies (areas like Poland and Romania which are occupied by Comintern may take much more warscore/peace conference contribution points, but this hardly matters when your contribution points are infinite).

Now, to be fair, in real history, most of the peace treaty was indeed dictated by the two largest contributors (USA and USSR). The UK's position had been considerably weakened and countries which had capitulated during the war (France, Benelux, Denmark/Norway, Poland, etc.) had little to no say. Thinking about say alternate history, if Germany defeated the Soviets, the Romanians might have felt shafted if they received no territorial compensation whatsoever, but they also wouldn't have been able to do much about it.

Ideally, I would argue that the AI should behave rather more restrained in peace deals, with a few changes to how things currently work:

- AI subjects (including dominions) should automatically transfer all score to their overlord (perhaps automatically granting some autonomy gain)
- AI nations which capitulated during the war should have massively reduced warscore (since they are only still around thanks to allied powers)
- AI minors should be very reluctant to take territory that isn't either claimed or core. If they have nothing to take they should exit the conference, leaving their score to allied countries still in
- Countries should be allowed to offer territory from defeated nations to third party noncombatants (especially if it is claimed/cored by them, but perhaps even if it is not under certain circumstances, like so long as it is bordering - think of France and Britain crushing Germany by themselves at Rhineland and wanting to really dismantle Germany - giving say East Prussia to Poland, East Friesland to the Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, etc.). Ideally the prospective beneficiary would have the option to refuse (although at the moment participants can't refuse land you give to them, so this may not be a huge concern)
- Only certain countries should be interested in acquiring overseas territories or puppets (mainly the historic majors, could help prevent bordergore)
- Peace conference turns should go in a loop instead of bouncing between the top two participants (to prevent top two countries abusing passing to prevent anyone else from getting anything)
- territory held/captured should have more of an impact on warscore (how far west the red army was mattered much more than pre-peace deals with the Western Allies in determining final borders)
- casualties taken should have less of an impact on warscore (arguing for land for the blood of your people may make somewhat of a moral argument, but doesn't necessarily give you much leverage at the negotiation table)
- military size should somewhat influence warscore (political strength comes from the long arm of a barrel)

 

[Vampiresoap]

The amount of enemies you killed should count towards your warscore, not the amount of casualties suffered at the enemies hands'. It's common sense, Paradox...Please fix this already.

 

[DystopianAlphaOmega]

The amount of enemies you killed should count towards your warscore, not the amount of casualties suffered at the enemies hands'. It's common sense, Paradox...Please fix this already.

I was thinking about this too, but, while casualties inflicted should matter more than casualties taken, arguably both should matter far less than territory occupied. China and the Soviet Union tied down and presumably killed far more Axis forces than the Western Allies. I don't think that this necessarily gave either a much greater negotiating position at the end of the war.

 

[Ninaran]

I sure love to hat war score cost of states held by another nation got increased tenfold without fixing the broken occupation system beforehand.
Gotta love the Netherlands holding Germany when they should be glad they're still around, but then not giving you the German provinces, wasting all the resources and factories to navally invade Somalia from Sri Lanka without a single boot on the ground in Europe.

 

[philjd]

Interesting discussion, if heated at times

A couple of points from my end:-
1) Control of occupied territory - passes to the state that was in control of the entry area of the invading force(s), nothing mystical about it. If they come in from 2 or more nations provinces, then whichever force is the first to occupy 50% (?) of the province gets control of the whole province.
2) Minor nations in peace conferences - remain exactly that, even if they, in theory, control all of the territory of the USSR. It would still be the major powers that control the peace conference. Player choice to play a minor, player choice to join a faction: in effect, deal with it

 

[Lorehead]

The peace-conference code could still be refined. An attempt at some constructive ideas how:

• It would be easier to make a fair deal with pretty borders if there are a few more peace terms that don’t mess with borders. For example, war reparations that transfer a couple of civilian factories, or an unbreakable trade deal (You get to puppet Persia, but I get to buy ten of their oil, regardless of their trade policy), or better trade relations, or grab more of their stockpile, or a tech bonus from reverse-engineering some of their technology.
• Countries should also place some value on newly-liberated tags being their own ideology and not a puppet of someone else, particularly if they have a reason to care about the liberated country. This might be geography, history or a shared language. So, Britain and America might put some of their warscore into more of Europe being free, not Communist puppets.
• Countries should be scripted to have more historical and sensible demands. Aside from reflecting what particular world leaders historically hoped to gain from the war, countries should in general prioritize getting their cores back, gaining a strategically-located sphere of influence, access to resources they need, and what they historically asked for.
• All countries on the winning side should pick wargoals simultaneously, and then the algorithm shoulld arbitrate any clashing claims by generating a compromise proposal. This could, as now, even use a round-robin algorithm in order of warscore like now. But it could also use some of the other good ideas proposed here: countries get to decide the fate of territory their armies are presently standing on, countries get dibs on their own cores, or things along those lines.
• After the proposal is on the table, a human should be able to propose revisions to it, which should get an up-or-down vote. (Maybe unanimous, maybe countries controlling two-thirds of the warscore.)
• If there’s one human player at the peace conference, that player should be able to propose more or less any division of the spoils that’s proportionate to all their allies’ warscores, and makes some minimum level of common sense (so, no handing allies useless disconnected indefensible landlocked enclaves on another continent, asking them to accept their cores going to someone else with no claim on them, and so on).
• If the winning side multiple human players playing cooperatively, give them the opportunity to negotiate the peace treaty, again proportionate to warscores. But don’t allow a holdout to stall a multiplayer game indefinitely.

 

[bitmode]

1) Control of occupied territory - passes to the state that was in control of the entry area of the invading force(s), nothing mystical about it. If they come in from 2 or more nations provinces, then whichever force is the first to occupy 50% (?) of the province gets control of the whole province.

You're mixing up province, state and country and it's not that simple. There was a thread about it recently.

2) Minor nations in peace conferences - remain exactly that, even if they, in theory, control all of the territory of the USSR

Major status has no bearing in peace conferences. A minor can very well have more war contribution than a major, giving it a leading role in the peace conference.

 

[philjd]

@bitmode - Thank you for that - so the guy who's Belgium took control of German territory had more Industry than either the UK or France nor was he in the Allied faction, but the troops did invade from his territory (3rd picture of post in the middle of page 3 of this thread). Although I suspect that the co-belligerent but not same faction overrode the priorities?
If i invade the USSR as Germany, but include troops that start out in Romania, Romania gets the territory they take, not Germany. Same if I invade from Finland into Russia. So I am not sure that your premise actually works in practice?
[not trying to dispute, just trying to understand]

 

[bitmode]

If i invade the USSR as Germany, but include troops that start out in Romania, Romania gets the territory they take, not Germany. Same if I invade from Finland into Russia. So I am not sure that your premise actually works in practice?
[not trying to dispute, just trying to understand]

No, you are very correct. I checked the code again and I missed a critical clause in the linked post that didn't matter back then as we were discussing a naval landing on a peninsula: Only if the new controller doesn't control an adjacent state can the state be switched to an ally. So if you continuously push from the Romanian border into the Soviet Union there will always be an adjacent Romanian-controlled state and the control won't flip automatically.
The best case scenario is that Romania freely gives you control of one or more captured front line states via diplomacy option. This can be tricky in vanilla depending on your style of play because you need high war contribution for that.
The other option is to use the rules how province control is assigned, so Romania doesn't gain majority control of the states in the first place. One often overlooked feature of that is fabricating claims. If you justified a war goal on Odessa for instance, control will pass to you even when pushing from Romania:

One way or the other, once you have control of a state you should be able to push from there and expand your control if you're careful
I created a stub wiki page for control of territory to collect the knowledge so far and so that anyone can easily add to it. We can also collect any counter-examples or problems on the talk page there.

@bitmode - Thank you for that - so the guy who's Belgium took control of German territory had more Industry than either the UK or France nor was he in the Allied faction, but the troops did invade from his territory (3rd picture of post in the middle of page 3 of this thread). Although I suspect that the co-belligerent but not same faction overrode the priorities?

With above points in mind the likeliest reason that Belgium controls Moselland is that the initial push came from Belgian territory and they keep control due to controlling an adjacent state.
A less like reason is that France might have had slightly less control of Alsac-Lorraine at the moment Moselland was captured (they have exactly 50% in the screenshot). In that case control would stay with Belgium because they are the strongest (stronger than Luxemburg ) adjacent allied controller.
Württemberg is Colombian probably because of a justified claim and military access. I guess people often justify against the first state that comes under their mouse cursor, which is Württemberg when scrolling from South America.