War compensation

[unmerged(815621)]

The changes that remove the added chance of a player being war leader should have been replaced by a willingness for an AI to compensate a human ally for fighting in the war. I understand that the player will screw over AI allies in war no matter what (this should be taken as a given at this point). However, the player can still do this in wars started by their allies. There is often no benefit for a player to fight in an AI lead war (except in the case where you get HRE bonuses as a result of winning).

Lets say Burgundy draws me (Austria) into a war against France. I can do my usual exploit southern France mountains as a leapfrog for taking all of southern France and their capital and get nothing in the end. Or I can sit back in Austria, uncheck the box where the war leader can negotiate for me, and let France decimate Burgundy's manpower.

If I fight, I lose manpower that is precious in the beginning years. If I do not send my armies to help burgundy, I lose nothing. If I fight, I can also try and peace out early, at the risk of the chance that my carpet sieging will cause the AI to peace out for what they want, with the downfall that I now have a negative separate peace modifier and a hostile ally.

I understand the idea of not helping a player blob, and also not feeding into the exploitive nature people have to AI allies. However, the game should be fun for the player first. Fight a war with little to no hope of benefitting in the end is not fun. While I generally appreciate AI behavior mimicking player behavior, this is one case that eliminates an entire part of the game for many people (and why some people refuse to even take allies).

What I am essentially asking for is an acceptance that many humans (including myself), will treat the AI as disposable, but the AI should not treat the human and other AIs in such blatant disregard. At the very least, compensation for the human works as a benefit to the AI. Instead of losing all their manpower and being in a possible worse off position from the war, they will have a better chance of getting their war goal. The AI allied to the human benefits in addition to human.

This could be a simple preference given by the human, such as a desire for provinces, a desire for money, or a desire to break apart the enemy. The AI would first take into account their war goal when making peace, followed by compensation to the player (based upon both battle and siege score they contributed), followed by any other gains they can make. This way the AI still gets what they wanted and the player gets rewarded for actually vein a benefit to their allies and not just a drain.

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

War goals for joining wars have already been asked for since 1.2; whether it'll be implemented however, there's been no word from the Devs yet.

 

[unmerged(815621)]

War goals for joining wars have already been asked for since 1.2; whether it'll be implemented however, there's been no word from the Devs yet.

The attitude of the developers seems to be that since humans treat the AI as disposable, the AI should treat the player as disposable, without taking into account the ability/desire of the player to accept the CTA and just not fight (something the AI will not do; admittedly, this behavior is already to prevalent with vassals that seeing it in the AI would just be terrible).

This is just pointing out (hopefully), that their is some benefit to the AI to compensate the player, and as a friendly reminder from all the other posts people have made (as reposts in a certain extent show a desire among multiple users rather than a one off meh).

 

[londoner247]

The attitude of the developers seems to be that since humans treat the AI as disposable, the AI should treat the player as disposable, without taking into account the ability/desire of the player to accept the CTA and just not fight (something the AI will not do; admittedly, this behavior is already to prevalent with vassals that seeing it in the AI would just be terrible).

This is just pointing out (hopefully), that their is some benefit to the AI to compensate the player, and as a friendly reminder from all the other posts people have made (as reposts in a certain extent show a desire among multiple users rather than a one off meh).

If the assumption in your first paragraph is correct then there is something of a chicken and egg problem here. The AI behaves in a way which makes the human treat them badly because there is no benefit to doing otherwise. However, if the AI behaviour were more collaborative and the human player got tangible benefits from working with the AI then maybe the human behaviour would change.

That said, I'm not sure your underlying assumption is fair. I suspect that the Devs would like to see better AI in this area of the game but it isn't that easy to do. If you are playing as Russia and I am England looking to go to war with France who I suspect will call in their ally in Scandinavia, it is easy for me to say to you that I will handle the Viking fleets if you can keep their armies busy whilst I take on the French armies. Agreeing that with the AI is trickier to code and to put in a simple interface. Take it one step further and discuss your war goals as well as mine or have me agree that you should agree a peace deal first but only once I have France fully besieged is more complex.

And don't forget, as humans we can discuss all of this before even declaring war making sure that we have all our resources properly positioned before an agreed start date for the hostilities.

Adding all of that to the game is probably impossible and doing part of it would be potentially unsatisfactory because it would feel like an unfinished job so, whilst I wish they would try, I can understand why the Devs might not feel it is the best place to direct their energies.

 

[unmerged(815621)]

If the assumption in your first paragraph is correct then there is something of a chicken and egg problem here. The AI behaves in a way which makes the human treat them badly because there is no benefit to doing otherwise. However, if the AI behaviour were more collaborative and the human player got tangible benefits from working with the AI then maybe the human behaviour would change.

I do not think human behavior will change for all circumstances, just the ones in which they are not the war leader. Programming in benefits to the player when they are not the war leader is fairly simple. This can be done in the form of what Sweet mentioned such as war goals for allies (which the AI will take into account when they make their calculations). This will encourage the player to actually fight in their allies' wars.

However, programming in something in which the player will treat the AI fairly when the player is the war leader is much more difficult. If you let the player exploit the AI to gain more land, more often then not, they will do so. You can do something similar to the war goals idea. If the AI owns their war goal and the player does not offer it to the AI in the peace deal, this can result in some negative modifier against the player. Of course, for many players, once you take an AI blob down a notch, the need for allies diminishes. The main thing I use AI allies for is manpower sponges as they essentially soak up enemy manpower. This is often useful in the beginning of the game as manpower is fairly scarce. Also, there is no real benefit to enhancing a sponge (unless you can easily make them a vassal or PU).

One simple way around the fact that your AI allies will not give you anything in their peace deals is to have vassals instead of allies. They are more dependable and will not draw you in to unnecessary offensive wars (though there is some lag time before this is effective).

 

[xyra]

it is possible to get something from AI led wars.
- if you have a core and conquered the province, ai will probably give it to you.
- you can peace out individually.
- you can weaken a possible enemy without diplo cost (Ottomans attacked lithunia while i was DotF Austria and together we beat ottomans. Lithunia then released several nationand i just dipl/vassalized one of them without the need of spending dipl points for that peacedeal which was quite expensive -> Georgia, syria and 3 OPM)

So if you want to conquer France territory u can use the war between france and burgundy to make france fall apart and diplo vassalize the released nations, just make sure you get a high warscore very fast and don't take Île-de-france to early else you get a CfP.

 

[Lakedaimon]

I have had the AI force the return of cores of mine even when I wasn't in the war. It was a very nice surprise to get a pop-up that suddenly I had gained 2 provinces. Basically if you don't have a core on land the AI will think you do not want any of it, if you do have cores they will/might give it back to you just to weaken their enemy, even if you aren't their ally or even in the same war with them.

So this seems to be a case of the human player never losing any of it's cores due to being superior to AI, therefor never getting any cores returned, therefor thinking the AI will never give them anything they "want".

A seperate system of something along the lines of "desires" might fix this. You'd have provinces with cores, provinces with claims and provinces you desire. This would show the AI ways to reward you for helping them without you needing to have a core or a claim, it should just come with a little extra penalty like normal due to the fact that you're taking claimless provinces. It would also fix a lot of problems people have with reading their allies intentions (allies switching to hostile).

 

[Noctus]

The changes that remove the added chance of a player being war leader should have been replaced by a willingness for an AI to compensate a human ally for fighting in the war. I understand that the player will screw over AI allies in war no matter what (this should be taken as a given at this point). However, the player can still do this in wars started by their allies. There is often no benefit for a player to fight in an AI lead war (except in the case where you get HRE bonuses as a result of winning).

There are many political benefits, besides Provinces & Ducats you get from helping an ally in war.
* Helping your ally grow, making him more useful.
* Prevent an enemy from growing.
* Preventing an ally from getting trashed, so he can stay on being useful.
* Cut down an actual or potential threat.
* RP values.