Designer Corner: Peace Conference

[Arheo]

How does all of this work with the A.I.? And how does puppeting and liberating work in this system?

So far, AI results are significantly less ugly. The AI's primary weighting mechanism is based on discount rather than price, with price only used to break ties. It might sound small, but this allows us to have a lot more control over how the AI performs in conferences.

Glad to see changes coming to this system. I assume having a claim or a wargoal makes certain demands cheaper for that nation? I always found it frustrating when I would justify a war for specific states and then have those states taken before it even hits my turn.

Yes.

Can you detail any of the Peace AI changes? eg is the AI more likely to create a sphere of influence on its borders

No explicit details, but broadly: yes.

Could there ever be a situation where you keep spending your points on a specific state, but eventually get outbid, so you leave the conference with nothing, because all the other claims have gotten too expensive?

Theoretically yes, but then you put yourself in this situation to begin with.

I also wonder how this effects puppeting nations. Would this be done down at the state level now, or can entire nations also be 'contested' for who gets to puppet them? I'm trying to imagine how the partition of Germany might be brought about, for example.

Puppeting, and similar actions, will now be based on state.

Indeed, it would be pretty neat if you could have dynamic splitting of large nations in puppeting, such as Japan divided between the US and the Soviet Union

It would, wouldn't it

2) Can you return territory in this system? (i.e Can a country get a defeated power to return a core of a country via a peace conference)

You can perform actions on behalf of other countries.

3) Is there someway to inform your Allies of desired claims for the peace conference? So that factions can better plan for the conference?

No, although scripted conferences (such as Yalta) are now much easier to represent using the new scripted action modifiers we'll be using.

4) Has the Democratic been toned down on its desire to liberate the world? Balkanized Soviet Union is curse upon our eyes every game.

Not yet, but we'll see

5) Will the AI be more likely to seek to secure their and their allies cores? It felt weird to see the Allies not giving a liberated Alsace-Lorraine back to France.

Yes, though we still have difficulties currently with event-spawned nations like Vichy. We'll be providing more details on this in future.

 

[Arheo]

It looks gorgeous. Do you plan to redesign core/claim system with this like putting some more importance to minorities in certain regions? Or do you plan to make this system less bordergore like its cheaper to contest adjacent/neighbor states?

We have no plans to introduce minorities; therein lies problematic content.

I have two suggestions.

1. If you occupy the territory to make a formable nation, you should be able to puppet the formable nation, even if it hasn't been formed (i.e if you occupy both Poland and Lithuania, you should be able to puppet the PLC). Like wise you should be able to desolve formable nations completely (like splitting the PLC into Poland and Lithuania, instead of giving Lithuania independence but still somehow have the PLC exist).

2. The "offer peace" action is basically useless as you can only offer peace if you're losing, and even then you still can't do it sometimes. I suggest you should be able to offer peace if your winning and occupy the state(s) you justified/have a wargoal on. That way you can just peace out if you have what you need and not have to take out the whole nation for a small piece of land, and it gives a reason to justify on specific states instead of just picking a random state. Also you should be able to manually justify for puppet and topple government wargoals and not just conquer war goals.

1. Would require gamestate knowledge that does not really exist at point of conference, so I see it as unlikely that we'll do this.
2. No current plans to change this, but not ruling it out.

I love the idea of bidding for states. Awesome work
How would point distribution work for 1v1 wars? All of the points would instantly be sent to the winner or there could be no limit on points or bidding at all, just the winner nation free to do whatever?

Conferences with single-participant sides will receive score in full on turn 1.

Since the peace conferences are getting a rework, does that mean that the "Offer Peace" diplomatic option will be also getting some changes? Since ive never seen AI accept the offer and in multiplayer its rare for people to do it if at all (especially since there are already rp mods for it and such).

also love all the changes listed here, keep up the good work!

As above, not planned.

Will there be any system in place to prevent that horrible, horrible map gore? At the moment, you can claim any state you want, claim 2 bits of Germany, Bulgarian shore, Romanian Transylvania and Italian Sicily. Maybe add a "weighted" value to states, the closer to your border or your already claimed states they are, the cheaper to claim they become?

There is an 'influence' system in place to reward spending points based on proximity to borders (we'll detail exactly how this works in future).

 

[Arheo]

A Serious Question / Suggestion, but have you thought to put a "Scripted Peace Deal" for cases where Yalta Conference fires, and Soviets and US Split the Europe in two, so that Poland doesn't stay in allies all the timee and similar such oddities for historical borders.

This has existed, in one form, for some time. It has been updated for the new system, and is now a little more reliable.

Will we still get to choose what happens if we use Player Lead Peace Conferences as a playable mod or will this feature make it broken, because I like it when the AI doesn't make the map look like a CK3 map.

The mod will not be compatible with the new system. The AI is already significantly less inclined towards border-gore under the new system, and will improve further.

 

[Arheo]

Will there be mechanics around nations that were capitulated getting much less warscore? France for instance (let alone European minors) weren’t in much position to be pressing claims at war end (and even had the British effectively force it to release Syria and Lebanon - one of the few edge cases the current system actually allows for).

Yes.

Will compliance be factored in? It feels like a state with maximum compliance should be easier to claim than one with 0.

Possibly.

 

[Arheo]

Would the AI absolutely shitting after WW2 be fixed?

Global war has been known to have a laxative effect.

Positive!

Two questions:

1. Will there be an option for a victorious country to walk away from the peace conference and wage war with its "partners" over disputes, until circumstances are more favourable for that country? (maybe with a cost of decreased war support, or other severe penalties)

2. Any plans for implementation of limited conflicts and their own resolution mechanics / their own peace conferences? No clear victors or losers, just compromises and option to leave the table and keep waging the war?

1. Not planned.

2. Unlikely in this iteration. Conflict over territories is already a part of the main conference system, and limited conflict is an entirely separate issue to the one we're trying to solve here.

So as I understand with the old system nations could skip turns increasing their points and they were always able to conquer all the territory of the defeated nations, with the new system the amount of points is limited and as provinces get more expensive due to bids the defeated alliances will always survive. So with the new system Hitler will always survive and still control a tiny nazi Germany after the war?

It is unlikely for this to happen, but it is currently a possibility. We'll be detailing some future changes that affect this eventually.

 

[Arheo]

I'm slightly worried about this obsoleting Player-led Peace Conferences. The worst possible outcome is we lose that and are left with a new system that is slightly less bad or differently bad than the current vanilla system.

Player Led PCs has a very different goal to the design intention behind peace conferences in either the original, or new design. I understand why it exists, and I expect the new system will be modifiable in similar ways to achieve a similar aim. This said, I don't think our audience would be happy with a vanilla peace conference system in which the player was able to effectively do whatever they want.