Tinto Talks #31 - 2nd of October 2024

[Gurtannon]

I really understand the difficulty of adding two sided peace treaties for ai and I agree that it shouldnt be a thing as it would be broken

But can we have two sided treaties between players only?

 

[20adam20]

1) Can Teutons vassalize Lithuania in one war and take over its vassals?
2) Gostynin have same culture as Teutons? or its their tolerated culture?

 

[Humlepung]

Why not allow two sided peace deals between players? It is quite useful in Civ 5. Just ban the AI with a -1000 modifier to acceptance.

 

[pheonicia]

it depends on the cost of the peace.

Is the minimum still 5 years? Is the maximum still 15?

 

[Bomaxx]

Honestly, as cool as bileteral peace deals are, if the devs consider it exponentially harder to implement then I'd rather them direct their resources elsewhere for now. Of course, given how popular this feature is, it'd be nice if we get it in a future expansion, but currently with how complex this game's mechanics already are, I'd prefer they spread out their efforts to really tune things all across. As a compromise, they could leave it be an option for now only between players in multi.

 

[Eternal Phobia]

it would increase the evaluation complexity

I don't understand why this is an insurmountable problem. The AI already does a calculation of what provinces it wants - why not just allow for those provinces to be traded away? This is absolutely not a NxN problem if you design it thoughtfully.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we spill the secrets of our upcoming game, with the codename Project Caesar.

Last week we talked about wars and wargoals, and today we are going to talk about how wars will end, as we discuss the peace system. If you have played other GSG games for Paradox, some of this may not be news to you though.


Peace Offers
To end a war you need to negotiate a peace with either the leader on the other side, or if you are the leader on your side, you can negotiate a separate peace with a single independent country on the other side.

One thing that is important to notice, is that if you declare war for a war goal to conquer a certain province, then you can not take any other land, UNLESS you take the wargoal.

To be able to take land, you also need to have control over the province capital.

A Peace Offer, will consist of a set of treaties that can have a total value of up to 100 Peace Cost. Of course the other side would have to agree, and they are very likely not to accept anything where the peace cost is higher than the current warscore.

View attachment 1196504
Peace in our time?

Peace Treaties
A peace treaty can be the transfer of a location, province or area. It can also be to force another country to stop sending privateers, or transferring gold to you, or dismantling fortification in a location, humiliating them or any other of the dozens upon dozens of possible peace treaties of Project Caesar.

The cost of each treaty depends on many factors, whether it’s part of the wargoal or not, the population, the type of the treaty and so on.

View attachment 1196506
Numbers are still being tweaked..


Aggressive Expansion
Aggressive Expansion is one of the drawbacks of strengthening your own country ahead of others. Taking territory is one of the easiest ways to increase it. While taking land impacts your own country a fair bit, it also impacts the opinions of other countries near the source of the aggressive expansion a fair bit. If you get your AE high enough, countries with a low enough opinion of you may join a coalition against you. A Coalition is an international organization oriented around severely reducing the power of a single country.

View attachment 1196508
We can probably live with this AE though?


War Enthusiasm
When it comes to how willing a nation is to fight, much comes down to their War Enthusiasm. If this is high then the AI is unlikely to accept a peace that is not favorable to them. This is determined by the state of the country, with war exhaustion, control of capital and military strength are big factors. For the leader of a side in the war the overall military balance is a huge factor as well.


View attachment 1196509
Bohemia really wants to continue this war…


War Participation
Most of the time you bring allies to help you out in a war, but they expect to be rewarded for the part they pull. The War Participation is how much a country has contributed to the progress of the war. This is primarily done through battles, blockades and sieges.

You may sometimes have to convince your allies to join an offensive war that you are starting, and thus you can promise them part of the spoils of the war. If the part that they gain from signing a peace is less than their participation they will get upset.



Stay tuned, as next week, we’ll talk about the conflicts in the world that do not involve declarations of war, and negotiations of peace.

Very disappointing. 1. Nothing new, no double sided deals. 2. Coalitions for AE are a bad old idea.

 

[Dzogli]

Can we negotiate with an ally that wants to peace out and give them money/promise more land to stay in the war? Also will we be able to have a peace confrence with later tech kinda like hoi4's system, I want this mainly so I don't have to pray ai war leader doesn't give me land I don't want or release a nation I don't want released, unless they have enough participation or are much more powerful then me since that should paly a part in the peace confrence if they are a thing in the game.

 

[Azgabeth]

Would it really add that much if the only “counter offer” option was money? Because that was a fairly common “bilateral” concession and since its just a single item of equal value to everyone in all instances (i.e. its value ain’t situational/subjective like provinces or treaties), surely it could just be subtracted from the war score value without any additional ai thought?

plus you could probably scale int by age as well.

So in age of renaissance 10 warscore is equivalent to 100 gold but in the age of revolutions 10 warscore is equivalent to 10,000 gold.

 

[Ru8bin]

Honestly this TT is pretty underwhelming and nothing new or innovative is added .Well they haved added a new term peace cost (which is nothing different from warscore serving the save function). There is no bilateral peace (which is understandle due to complexity).But the hard limit on peace limit could have been replace by a soft limit.AE could have been improved by something new. I wont go into detail since others have more or less already commented about it.

 

[Tissaia]

Sorry if these 'colorblindness reviews' are becoming boring, but the dark red in the UI is reaaally straining my eyes.

Perhaps a sightly brighter/lighter shade of red (e.g. #bd8483) could do the trick? (2nd column).
What do regular sighted people think about this color suggestion? Yae or nae?

(I do hope red on green will not appear anywhere in game though...)

This went a little too neon-y, but if you take it down a notch, it will be perfectly fine.

 

[Eluchil404]

While there is alot to like in EUIV's peace treaty system, I think that Stellaris, Vicky 3, and Imperator also have good features that should be considered.

For example, both Stellaris and Imperator have (unlockable) total war CB's that allow unlimited conquest in certain circumstances. In some cases, it probably makes sense for PC too.

Others have spoken in general about iterating the peace deal system. I'll mention some specific features that I think work in other games that should be considered for Project Ceasar.

1. War Exaustion. Stellaris tracks war exhaustion rather than war score. While calculating war score is necessary to allow for flexible, EUIV style peace deals, a robust, separate war exhaustion mechanic would be another way to make war costly and interesting for both players and AI. Forcing a country to abandon an advantageous tactical position to avoid rebellion or bankruptcy at home is strategic and historical.

2. Multi-goal wars. The Vicky 3 Diplomatic Play mechanic is specific to its time period and subject to cheeseing the AI. But two aspects that I think could work in PC are pressing multiple valid CB's in one war and offering specific rewards to allies to join an attack. If I have multiple claims on my neighbors provinces picking just one as the war goal and treating the others as bonuses feels gamey and wrong. I went to war to recover all my land. Similarly, if I (as France) want to take the Prussian Rhineland surely I should be able to gain the support of Austria by offering them the (re)conquest of Silesia.


Overall the game looks great. Thanks to Johan and all at Paradox Tinto for your hard work!

 

[Dsingis]

I may be a minority, but I don't really mind, that we get EU4's peace system. It's simple, it works well and is easy to understand and use. Let's be honest here and ask ourselves, if that "bilateral peace treaty" system in Victoria 3 works that well to begin with, and how many players actually use it. I say it's not worth it. If Johan says they tried and it added too much complexity, and player frustration, I believe him. Especially having seen the one in Victoria 3. Imagine that with EU5's complexity. I shudder at the mere thought.

 

[Gerulus Sum]

I dislike how aggressive expansion works in EU4, and I'm not happy to see it work in much the same way here. The problem with AE is that it solely functions as a "time-out" mechanic to discourage rapid expansion, while not reflecting the actual reasons why countries would choose not to grab all the land they possibly could. Basically, it breaks immersion and bogs down the late game while not providing any meaningful challenge to a decently skilled player.

I really think that instead of AE, or at least in addition to it, Caesar needs a "Balance of Power" mechanic where countries, especially those in Europe, will feel a lot more threatened by a large country's expansionism than a small country's expansionism. Perhaps the single defining characteristic of European diplomacy in the Early Modern Era was a desire of various European states to maintain a balance of power and prevent any one state from becoming so dominant that it could just steamroll all the others. Crucially, this isn't something that should just disappear with a timer, but something that acts as an extremely difficult roadblock to overcome in a WC run. Representing this effect in-game is crucial, both to encourage historically plausible outcomes and provide some level of challenge to a player of a powerful country.

 

[Niptium]

yeah, not forced to take it all.

If you take a few locations in a province, but not the capital, is that province split up in two, and a location is chosen to be the capital on your side? For example, if Zeeland takes Hulst and Sint-Niklaas from Eastern Flanders, does Ghent remain the capital of the province for Flanders, and then Hulst becomes the capital of the same province for Zeeland?

 

[bokorthedust]

I'll elaborate on my own stance here, while not claiming to speak for everyone: If I had to choose between EU4 and literally any other PDX peace system I'd take EU4's without hesitation or doubt. Johan is, as far as I am concerned, correct in his statement that EU4 has the best peace deals in the PDX lineup, and it's not close. I'm disappointed it's seemingly not being iterated on, but my red X here doesn't mean "I hate it, throw it all out."

I DO in fact want something similar, but I was hoping it would be improved upon too.

Same here. My disappointment doesn't come from the lack of bilateral treaties (I can see why they are hard to implement), my problem is that it's basically the same system from EU4 plus some minor changes and added restrictions. And while I also agree that it might be the best out of their GSGs, it does have it's faults. For instance the semi-rigid truces, the valid criticisms others have posted about AE, the whole shtick with war enthusiasm, the 90 day swings of 'making gains' and the length of war modifier to keep the AI (and by extension the player) in wars which for all intents and purposes have already been decided. I would have liked to see at least some of these changed, or if that's not possible, then at least an explanation of how they tired to reiterate on the old system and why it didn't work. But just copying it and keeping it the same does feel a bit of a letdown. And I didn't even downvote the TT.

 

[Thumpster]

Without a wargoal its much harder to enforce a peace though.

Yeah, that was kind of my thought, if its harder to enforce a peace with no CB, that encourages people to fight longer and harder to get what they want. therefore more total wars.

I think the balance between getting a CB and the risk/reward of noCB definitely needs to weigh higher towards it being more proftable for the player to have a CB than not. It almost sounds like the default might be no CB. Obviously you have a much better insight to how true that is than I do though

 

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Sorry if these 'colorblindness reviews' are becoming boring, but the dark red in the UI is reaaally straining my eyes.

Perhaps a sightly brighter/lighter shade of red (e.g. #bd8483) could do the trick? (2nd column).
What do regular sighted people think about this color suggestion? Yae or nae?

View attachment 1196596

(I do hope red on green will not appear anywhere in game though...)
View attachment 1196599

Absolutely. Colorblind or not, value contrast is the most important thing when it comes to clearly conveying visual information. The difference is extra apparent if you lightly squint.

 

[Tibi088]

Some are code generated, like gold, sacrificing nobles, taking locations, making subjects and releasing countries.

Many are 100% from script like these..

View attachment 1196575

For the "abandon colony one": will this prevent them if enforced from establishing new colonies in the same region for the duration of the peace treaty? Also what happens to the pops on the colonies in question? Do they disappear or migrate to somewhere?

 

[Tolomeidb2]

It was the best system we have made for a GSG.

I would respectfully say that the Victoria 3 system, where you get into a diplomatic incident where all countries in the region can intervene, and not just the defenders allies, is the best idea ever done for war in Paradox"s GSG.

It also offers the potential to get a more dynamic system than a coalition targeted against one country such as EU4.