Why is paradox ignoring years of calls for changes to peace conferences? (list of threads)

[Delpheus]

I know paradox has to be aware of the worst part of the game - peace conferences. This seems to be one thing players overwhelming agree needs to change, and they have made that known since launch.

I personally posted a peace deal thread recently, and saw a few more near the top of the thread list lately. I got curious, so I searched for forums to get an idea of how many threads on this subject there are, and how far back they go. The search was cut at 10 pages, but I'm sure there must be more prior to 2018, I suspect the search limits results to only 10 pages(???). Anyway, I compiled a list of the highlights for reference, below.

From what i have heard, there has been little to no dev feedback about peace conference changes, despite it being arguably the #1 biggest flaw in the game.

Fix peace treaties please.
"There has always been a need for better peace deals in Hearts of Iron 4 as it's honestly been one of the sole reasons that this game doesn't work as well as it should"
Friday at 13:33

Peace conference desperately need a rework!!!
"Urgently desperately frustratingly needed"
Yesterday at 04:36

Additional Peace Options
"My suggestion is simple and probably quite common but for as much as I love this game I do believe the peace system needs to be revamped."
Jul 22, 2020

Peace deal problems - stealing occupied territory from third party
"The most flawed and game breaking part of the game still has not been touched"
Wednesday at 14:41

Peace Conference
"Could you change the way peace conferences work please."
Apr 27, 2020

Peace Conferences are the worse mechanic imaginable.
Peace conferences have to be the worst designed mechanic in the game.
Aug 2, 2020

This game needs a rework on peace deals.
"I did all the work and got F***** out of my reward."
Aug 10, 2020

Ideas for Improving and Reworking Peace Deals (Now with Pictures!)
"I know this is extremely long winded, but I hope it makes sense and gets seen by someone as it's one of only a few things that I cannot stand in this game."
Sep 9, 2020

Ideas for Improving Peace Deals and making them fun (Now with Pictures!)
Sep 9, 2020

Peace Conference being annoying again.
"Now the peace conference is where I rage quitted." "The peace conference stuff is PURE garbage."
May 27, 2020

Peace conferences are very easy to fix
"After so many years of rage-inducing peace conferences where anyone can demand anything the answer is very simple: A country should only be able to make demands in territorry occupied by it's faction. That's how it happened in real life and it's how it should happen."
May 31, 2020

A Suggest For Peace Conferances
"TODAY A PEACE CONFERENCE RUINED MY 2ND GAME IN A WEEK. Almost 10 hour war for NOTHING.
COUNTRIES CAN INTERVENE AREAS IN PEACE CONFERENCE THAT THEY ARE NOT INVADED"
Apr 12, 2020

Peace deal bullshittery
"but in the peace conference i dont get a single thing!"
Feb 27, 2020

Peace Conference suggestions; losses, claims and guarantees
"to prevent the top 2 of a coalition of having several rounds among each other and take over everything, before number 3 or number 4 gets a chance.
Apr 28, 2020

How to improve peace conference (solution included)
"Correctly apply the 10x cost penalty for puppeting land you do not own. For the most part you should not touch the land your army didnt touch."
Apr 16, 2020

Launch Issues that Still Exist - Supply, Peace Conferences
"Peace conferences, and warscore calculation generally, are broken for a million reasons."
Apr 5, 2020

really??? (really salty by peace deal)
"I just had a peace deal as spain as part of the axis, in where germany and italy took everything."
Feb 25, 2020

War & diplomacy : international tensions, coalitions and peace treaties
"The last problem is peace treaties. The system seems to have no logic and peace treaties give totally incoherent territorial situations."
Mar 25, 2020

Any updates planned for peace conferences ?
"In my opinion this is this game's biggest issue"
Feb 4, 2020

How Could Peace Conferences Be Reworked?
"I don't think it's really much of a secret that, out of all the diplomatic mechanics, peace conferences are the most reviled in their current form."
Jan 23, 2020

This Peace Treaty stuff needs to be fixed
"I shouldn't need a mod to fix this stupid crap."
Feb 26, 2020

Peace Conference Idea
"The Peace Conference system is one of the least popular mechanics in the game and really could use an overhaul."
Oct 23, 2019

List of peace conference comments from customers
The purpose of this thread is to consolidate customer opinions about HoI4's peace conference mechanic.
Jan 5, 2020

Peace Conferances
"I think everyone agrees that the current peace conference system needs an overhaul"
Sep 10, 2019

German Strength & peace conferences
"so all my fighting was for nothing." "broken peace conferences make the game really unfun"
Oct 11, 2019

Will they fix peace conference?
"Britain had already taken everything I had conquered"
Oct 20, 2019

A suggestion for peace deals
"I think most people would agree that peace deals in hoi4 are broken in every aspect, but the thing that irks me the most is the propose peace deal basically being unusable."
Sep 26, 2019

Conditional surrender, involuntary peace, and organic war support
"Conditional surrender: Players and AI should be able to actually sue for peace, rather than fighting to complete capitulation."
Aug 18, 2019

Ping-pong-passing in peace conferences
"I don't really get the idea of the possibility to ping-pong-pass with the second best nation, resulting in both getting nearly infinite warscore and thus most of their demands. My friends were super frustrated about this, because they were close regarding the participation, but being the third and fourth you nearly get nothing from that conference"
Jun 1, 2019

Peace deal craziness
"I must say the most disappointing part of HOI IV is the insanity around peace deals."
Mar 13, 2019

Peace conferences need changes
"If anything needs to be addressed it is the peace conferences and the end of conflicts."
Apr 4, 2019

Please fix horrific peace conferences
"This is a game the player is playing, and they should be able to affect it in some way, otherwise you might as well have Observer mode on permanently."
Apr 13, 2019

Peace Conferences are complete trash
"I did get NOTHING. Like wtf? Is that how this peace conferences are supposed to work?"
Mar 13, 2019

HoI 4 - Peace conferences broken: they have only 1 turn
"if you and the second placed nation ping-pong-pass you will get infinite warscore and no one else will get anything, even if they had a warscore close to the second. "
Jun 1, 2019

Will we ever see limited peace deals in HOI4?
May 20, 2019

When will peace conferences finally be fixed?
"Despite controlling all the territory and holding all the participation score, my war was instantly ended, exiling all my divisions and initiating a truce timer."
Apr 8, 2019

Please Paradox, improve the peace conference mechanics!
"My issue at the moment, having come back to the game after months of absence, is with the peace conference in the game."
Mar 2, 2019

Peace Conference seems strange
"peace conferences have been broken since the game was released. This type of behavior is very common."
"Welcome to HoI4."
Jul 26, 2018



The peace flaws are the main reason I quit playing. There are so many threads with simple solutions that could fix this. It's surprising and sad that so far nothing has been done since launch.

 

[Viktor Hark]

There is no denying that peace conferencess are a mess. But I never understood why it's such a big problem to others. When it's early to mid game, I usually am the only paticipant on my side and I can do whatever I want at the conference. And in the endgame when all those problems appear, for example allies 'contributing' to the war effor by throwing bodies at the enemy, it doesn't really matter because it's the end of the game anyway and I already achieved any goals I planned.

Imho there are things way higher on the priority list like logistics, more fleshed out diplomacy, combat width and it's rammification etc.

 

[Timmysoboy]

I’m pretty sure peace conferences have been published on the ‘to do’ list for at least a year, so they’re definitely not ignoring it...

Also, resistance / spies weren’t up my alley, but I’d take naval rework (MtG) every day of the week over peace conferences...

 

[Delpheus]

There is no denying that peace conferencess are a mess. But I never understood why it's such a big problem to others. When it's early to mid game, I usually am the only paticipant on my side and I can do whatever I want at the conference. And in the endgame when all those problems appear, for example allies 'contributing' to the war effor by throwing bodies at the enemy, it doesn't really matter because it's the end of the game anyway and I already achieved any goals I planned.

Imho there are things way higher on the priority list like logistics, more fleshed out diplomacy, combat width and it's rammification etc.

Try playing something like Japan and it's a total different story...or any nation that wants to take a colonial puppet away from a European power across the world.

It's true that not all players will experience the same issues, but those issues are absolutely there. It depends on what nations you play and what you're trying to do.

One of the most crippling and horrific peace deal flaws is having your land stolen... For example, again as Japan, occupying the DEI but Germany can get to Netherlands but you can't, so they can happily steal the DEI from you despite that Japan is the one occupying it... It's absolute insanity.

 

[Dlin369]

Peace conference reworks have been on their official to do lists, but I imagine it’s not top priority because Hoi4 is built around a few small wars 1936-1939 and then the big one - so peace conferences don’t really impact the core game all that much until the end.

based off the last roadmap

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• Improved naval combat
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• More player control over rules. HOI is played in many different ways and say competitive MP and single player rulesets often clash
• A more robust and expansive mapmode system. Having a player mapmode in MP would be helpful etc
• Spies and espionage
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Improvements to frontline stability
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan, Poland)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
• More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
• Rebalance ministers and ideas to give more interesting choices.
• Improve weather mechanics
• Strategic and tactical AI improvements

(bold ones were added this update. Striked out ones are done)

I’d say Barbarossa will do logistics, defensive warfare, and subideologies. Maybe weather and doctrines. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for an extensive peace conference rework till maybe Italy’s expansion or the one after that

 

[SchwarzKatze]

podcat mentioned it in 1.6.2's DD:

HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.6.2 and Roadmap

Hello everyone! Today we release the 1.6.2 Patch but I also want to talk a bit about the future and give you an updated roadmap. Enjoy! Ironclad 1.6.2 Patch 1.6.2 is now out of open beta and should be updating on steam next time you start up...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

• Improvements to frontline stability
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Spies and espionage
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan, Poland)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
• More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
• Rebalance ministers and ideas to give more interesting choices.

 

[Delpheus]

Peace conference reworks have been on their official to do lists, but I imagine it’s not top priority because Hoi4 is built around a few small wars 1936-1939 and then the big one - so peace conferences don’t really impact the core game all that much until the end.

based off the last roadmap


I’d say Barbarossa will do logistics, defensive warfare, and subideologies. Maybe weather and doctrines. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for an extensive peace conference rework till maybe Italy’s expansion or the one after that

So by the time they are ready release HOI5 they might maybe possibly make some minor charge to peace conferences once HOI4 is dead

 

[Dlin369]

So by the time they are ready release HOI5 they might maybe possibly make some minor charge to peace conferences once HOI4 is dead

HOI5 I feel is a while away - HOI4 can be easily milked for several years more just for country packs alone, which gives plenty of time for HOI4 to add mechanics as they go along

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Peace conference reworks have been on their official to do lists, but I imagine it’s not top priority because Hoi4 is built around a few small wars 1936-1939 and then the big one - so peace conferences don’t really impact the core game all that much until the end.

based off the last roadmap


I’d say Barbarossa will do logistics, defensive warfare, and subideologies. Maybe weather and doctrines. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for an extensive peace conference rework till maybe Italy’s expansion or the one after that

They don't until they do, such as player executing successful sea lion as someone other than Germany in historical, or pretty much any game with non-historical focuses. Then you can be the only nation to land and take territory in UK and get literally nothing in the war due to top 2 score passing (Italy/Germany)...unless you abuse the broken occupations logic to offset the broken design of war participation and get into the top 2 before capitulating them.

 

[bitmode]

As a private company, PDX will avoid negative publicity as much as possible. You'll only hear them talk about a problem at length once they have a solution almost ready. And with hoi4's business model this also includes reframing and justifying the development in the context of a DLC, which only partially aligns with the needs of the core game.
And you better hope this solution actually solves the problems while introducing few new ones. Judging from previous reworks, I'm expecting little. Is naval combat still frustrating after MtG? Yes, in different ways. Is it better? Yes, somewhat.
When something is put off for a few years, it's usually not because they have a clean, elegant solution up their sleeve.

 

[Emperor_Napoleon]

It's not as if Paradox have to come up with new ideas from scratch, either. EU4 has a really good peace system that actually addresses many problems that people have with the HoI4 one, and that game came out three years before HoI4. Not sure why they don't draw some inspiration from EU4.

 

[Dlin369]

It's not as if Paradox have to come up with new ideas from scratch, either. EU4 has a really good peace system that actually addresses many problems that people have with the HoI4 one, and that game came out three years before HoI4. Not sure why they don't draw some inspiration from EU4.

Thing is EU4 spans several centuries, while Hoi4 spans just slightly more than a decade. Asking for money at a peace conference or reparations are fairly useless for a game like Hoi4, as is annulling treaties. Limiting peace options to 100% warscore is also not viable for a war that was a total war and ended in total annihilation of major powers.

Not to mention EU4 really doesn’t do a good job representing multiple powers at a peace conference - only 1 gets to make demands and 1 gets to accept or reject them at once.

Honestly Hoi4 needs to figure out their own unique system that can capture the feeling of WW2’s peace negotiations, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do that and still have good dynamic peace systems for limited wars as well

 

[Delpheus]

Thing is EU4 spans several centuries, while Hoi4 spans just slightly more than a decade. Asking for money at a peace conference or reparations are fairly useless for a game like Hoi4, as is annulling treaties. Limiting peace options to 100% warscore is also not viable for a war that was a total war and ended in total annihilation of major powers.

Not to mention EU4 really doesn’t do a good job representing multiple powers at a peace conference - only 1 gets to make demands and 1 gets to accept or reject them at once.

Honestly Hoi4 needs to figure out their own unique system that can capture the feeling of WW2’s peace negotiations, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do that and still have good dynamic peace systems for limited wars as well

At least in EU4 you can't steal territory occupied by someone else. Unless they are in the same war and voluntarily transfer it to you before the peace deal is submitted.

Overlapping wars, such as the Japan vs DEI and the entirely separate Germany vs Netherlands I keep talking about is the perfect example of this.

They could release a simple balance patch, not a complete overhaul, just to fix one thing at a time. If they just removed the ability of an outside power to claim land that you occupy that would be simple enough and make a huge impact to game balance and fun.

That simple change alone would improve the peace conferences in HOI4 significantly.

 

[Dlin369]

At least in EU4 you can't steal territory occupied by someone else. Unless they are in the same war and voluntarily transfer it to you before the peace deal is submitted.

Overlapping wars, such as the Japan vs DEI and the entirely separate Germany vs Netherlands I keep talking about is the perfect example of this.

They could release a simple balance patch, not a complete overhaul, just to fix one thing at a time. If they just removed the ability of an outside power to claim land that you occupy that would be simple enough and make a huge impact to game balance and fun.

That simple change alone would improve the peace conferences in HOI4 significantly.

with the way occupation and control of states works right now (which is a related and severe problem right now in Hoi4 due to its opaqueness) I think being able to take land occupied by other powers is a necessary thing. The Japan-DEI thing is bad, but sounds more like an issue with the wars not merging correctly - if the wars merge taking land from another faction is exponentially expensive

 

[Áurum]

I’m pretty sure peace conferences have been published on the ‘to do’ list for at least a year, so they’re definitely not ignoring it...

Also, resistance / spies weren’t up my alley, but I’d take naval rework (MtG) every day of the week over peace conferences...

The problem is that we are left for years with that "to do" when they could at least give us a partial fix while we wait. For example, copying Kaiserreich's solution in the form of annexation decisions, while not being a full solution, would fix most of issues while they develop a new system. If a developer knows a very needed feature is going to take for very long, at least tries to develop a little fix that takes little time but buys time for the feature.

I have shared Kaiserreich screenshots with vanilla players and their reaction was "hey, these borders look human!".

 

[TheMeInTeam]

with the way occupation and control of states works right now (which is a related and severe problem right now in Hoi4 due to its opaqueness) I think being able to take land occupied by other powers is a necessary thing. The Japan-DEI thing is bad, but sounds more like an issue with the wars not merging correctly - if the wars merge taking land from another faction is exponentially expensive

If you're in a 3 way war you might not even be IN the peace conference. And making a puppet --> feeding it gets to ignore the 10x cost for different modifier because reasons in HOI 4.

There are some obvious fixes Pdox could do, short of a rework, to make the interactions less bad right now:

1. War participation should reflect contribution to the war with a better algorithm. This includes casualties inflicted, OR removal of casualties as a factor. Whatever gets used to score participation, what is needed for improvement is internal consistency, which it lacks right now. Losing 50% of your land (before even considering own casualties, which results in a form of double counting right now) should not be worth more than inflicting 10M in casualties on the enemy.
2. No more passing back and forth between top two in peace deal. Each "turn" in conference rotates through everyone who was in the war, and no matter what anybody else's score, there is a minimum score you get to take based on % of contribution. This prevents nations that had 25% participation from never getting a single turn to demand anything.

Fixing peace deals w/o fixing contribution and occupation is more or less impossible, since most sensible models will factor those to at least some degree.

 

[VashTheStampede]

We're not ignoring it, it's just a complex system that touches a lot of different things. It is on the ToDo list, but until we have time to give it proper attention it unfortunately won't get done. There's no sense in hacking together a temporary solution.

 

[Vlad123]

The system of hoi2, similar to that of hoi4 ... is fantastic, it allowed you to make separate peaces even in the same faction (no, there was no faction leader like in hoi4) so if I am Italy and I fight against france in the axis and this capitola, I Italy can decide to make a personal peace against France. That is, in Hoi2 in the peace screen there was:
Propose peace on behalf of all alliance / staff
the recipient has peace in the name of his entire covenant / only for him.
So theoretically you can make the following peaces:
Axis / allies
Axis / France
Italy / France
Italy / allies.
AND IT WAS USED ON HOI2! But I wonder why dammit PDX always wants to try NEW THINGS! In Italy we have a saying: Those who change their way know what they are leaving but do not know what they find!

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

But I wonder why dammit PDX always wants to try NEW THINGS!

You're kidding right? Technology advances.

 

[GSP Jr]

There really is a lot to consider in Peace Conferences.
Read up on the Treaty of Versailles and the Potsdam Agreement, there is more to it than 'My army took it, I'm staying', although that was Stalin's approach.

For my own enjoyment and peace of mind, I use a mod called "Player-Led Peace Conferences" which lets you do pretty much whatever you want in conferences you are involved in. With over 380,000 (yes, three hundred eighty thousand) subscribers, you know it works.

Should PDX fix/update Peace Conferences? Yes, they clearly suck.

That said, until they do, try the above mentioned mod.
It ain't perfect either, sometime you have to click 'pass' a lot, but it's better than rage quiting a game.