Tinto Talks #31 - 2nd of October 2024

[L0rd]

I feel like like you got influenced to much by eu4 here. Maybe think about fully remaking the truce System, you showed in other parts, how you are able to rethink old structures, but this feels uninspired, kinda lazy. I can think of a dozend things more exiting things than this ancient System with 100 points.

Also the AE-System with a threshhold feals very akward, i hated this system in eu4, it is very unflexible and feels very undynamic. You could do better.
Make coalitions an international organisations, where countries are more likeley to join, if they control a lot of foreign Population or lots of non-integrated locations, the dominance they have in a certain region and personal relations or something. This would mirror how it worked in History. Dont reuse the old System. Make it dynamic! Make of engaging, make it fun and dont make it as a big stop-sign.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

So why is there no bilateral peaces?

For games with peace-negotiations, about 20%+ of all AI development tend to goes to understanding situation of war and negotiate peace. Its a super complicated thing to work on, to make sure that

1) the AI is able to play the game and keep somewhat of a progress.
2) not frustrate the player and make him quit.

Making it support "treaties" going multiple ways for a peace would not just double the complexity, but instead of N, its a NxN problem at least.

Victoria 3 has this system already. Why not reuse part of the logic behind it, since it has already been though out and had years of user experience returns

 

[Frostcreep]

The problem that England doesn't know that literally any province they have on the British Isles is worth more gold than a belligirent France could ever hope to pay them due to giving the latter an easy staging ground for an invasion. Among other things.

The AI can calculate the production value of a province. It can make every kind of calculation for culture, religion, AE impact, everything. It cannot, however, calculate for an abstract value like "strategic importance", because that is not static or inherent to the province, but entirely contextual based on who owns it and what the geopolitical situation is around it. A poorly developed mountain pass in the middle of a nation? Barely worth the space it occupies on the map. But if that same province is suddenly between two countries at war? Invaluable.

This has nothing to do with Bilateral peace deals though. If the AI is incapable of determining the "true" strategic value of a province it causes the same issues in a one-way peace deal system and can be exploited there as well.

I also disagree that these things cannot be calculated. The England example seems especially trivial to solve due to the nature of the British isles having no land-connection to the European mainland. Any province that suddenly gives a previously sea-isolated region direct land-access can have a massive "strategic value" penalty, and this is no different then any other penalty for culture, core, etc. The mountain province example also has a clear direct measurable change with countries previously not bordering each other, suddenly bordering if that province switches ownership. Will there be edge cases? Of course, but that's not a good argument to not try implementing it as best as possible.

Gold buying provinces "exploits" can be solved in a variety of ways. Easiest would be to disallow direct gold for provinces incentives, but this is a crutch for a badly implemented value of gold in the first place. If gold enables a functional "tall playstyle", where gold invested into provinces can be as or more valuable than conquering new provinces, it can make sense to exchange gold for provinces in peace deals without having any part be trivially exploited. If gold becomes a worthless stockpiling resource once you've exhausted all your internal investment opportunities, this is a clear failing of the economic model in where the exploits in peace deals is a syndrome and not the cause.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I can understand the wish for war score to have a soft cap, and it would be cool, but that's something that also needs careful thought. In the early versions of Victoria 3 it was possible for France to launch a diplomatic play to vassalize all of Spain, and while this functionally gave them infinite infamy, the power boost was easily worth it. A situation where Tibet can just grab all of Yuan and no longer care about having friends if they micro right is probably something to avoid.

 

[Lindaegan]

Someone may have commented already, but I feel an AI ally should *always* want something in return for their participation, even if they were promised nothing when joining the war.

As it is now in EU4, you can make your allies fight and win your war while doing nothing yourself, then give them nothing in the peace deal... and they continue to be your best friend ever. No real country will act like this. This is also kind of exploitable because AI will always bleed for their own war even when they have stronger allies.

So an AI ally with some participation score should *always* want something, maybe gold in most cases, and if they're not given that they should break alliance or less willing to help in the future. I hope this isn't too difficult to code?

This is a very good point. It is funny that this feature has been allowed to pass by without edit - almost as if an exploitable mechanic is fine if it was in a previous game, but adding new ones would be an affront to the very gods. If bilateral peace treaties are vetoed on account of their inherent exploitability, then the favors system must go.

 

[L0rd]

I can understand the wish for war score to have a soft cap, and it would be cool, but that's something that also needs careful thought. In the early versions of Victoria 3 it was possible for France to launch a diplomatic play to vassalize all of Spain, and while this functionally gave them infinite infamy, the power boost was easily worth it. A situation where Tibet can just grab all of Yuan and no longer care about having friends if they micro right is probably something to avoid.

The penalties should not be diplomatic, as it doesnt matter for any third party, if you anex 40% or 60% of a country after a point they dont get any more upset. The thing is, it should have internal Problems, as your country is not build to manage such uge intake of land and people. Just let them Rebell and rejoin there former overlord, dont make me stop trying to integrate it. A cap here is a excuse for poor mechanics considering integration and overextention. As well as aggressiv expansion impact.

 

[Kabutsk]

It would need to do the calculation to determine if it wants to propose a peace deal, so yes that would be every x time while at war. Even if they could limit it to check when things change, since things could be changing on the tick it very like happen every tick. This would also be occurring for every active war for every AI capable of sending a peace deal in it (i.e. minor parties that could peace out of the war too).

That's not really how things work afaik. The AI does peace deals based on how exhausted they are first and foremost. Or at least thats how it should be. If they occupied what they wanted, but they have still more kick in them, they'd continue. The increased complexity should mainly be when sending and receiving peace deals, and even then, in all other fields; like trade, province amounts, etc etc, everything so far has seemed to be way more complex than the predecessor.

There's probably a lot that will go behind redesigning a system like this (probably because they've already balanced the current one fairly well) but it is what the players want. This forum is here for players to give feedback before the game is released, and for the devs to be able to listen to the players.

Just alone looking from a game-dev perspective i would seriously look at the failed launches of several games; Vic3 (which luckily got better over time), CS2 and Imperator: Rome.. And think twice before releasing a part of the game that you now know people will dislike. I genuinely don't want it for them, Europa is the flagship of paradox and i don't know what'll happen to the studio if this one releases below expectations. Not saying it 100% will just because of this but.. I know they want it to be the biggest banger they've ever released. So, make it that.

 

[gulaschkoenig]

This feels bad.... There are myriad examples were wars ended with territories exchanged that were not the initial wargoal

 

[i_m_hawk]

hi @Johan is there a system to stop allies randomly breaking up there alliance.
Like i am friend with otto bros for 5 decades with full favor and trust. Suddenly one morning they come and say i want all your border province else not alliance and u will hate you more than anyone.

 

[GeneralUrist]

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

Is that why you made an entire Tinto Talks for something that's effectively unchanged from EU4? To pat yourselves on the back for your "masterful success"?

 

[Kazakk]

i like the simplicity of this system, i am a minority on this

 

[Palfouri]

This has nothing to do with Bilateral peace deals though. If the AI is incapable of determining the "true" strategic value of a province it causes the same issues in a one-way peace deal system and can be exploited there as well.

The problems in one way peace deals are at least tempered by the fact that you actually have to score a big enough victory to be to able to take those provinces, which means in this example you probably landed on England anyway and it's at least sensible to assume you could demand those locations in peace. It becomes a lot worse when you can functionally just buy warscore (which is what this system centers around, let's not pretend otherwise) and exploit the AI by trading them junk for provinces they don't understand the true value of.

This is a very good point. It is funny that this feature has been allowed to pass by without edit - almost as if an exploitable mechanic is fine if it was in a previous game, but adding new ones would be an affront to the very gods. If bilateral peace treaties are vetoed on account of their inherent exploitability, then the favors system must go.

I think the alliance issue is a lot less concerning because you as the human can also be "exploited" in the same way even if the AI won't do it nearly as often. I am extremely doubtful the average human player is ever going to give up provinces if the AI proposes the kind of peace deals the people in this thread envision when they want bilateral treaties, so besides lessening whatever improvement to the historical simulation bilateral treaties add (because it still only really goes one way), it just becomes exclusively a tool to try and use the AI.

 

[Meneye]

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

Yes, but that's mostly because the peace systems in the other games were really bad and the bar's been lowered

 

[Jespoke]

I'm curious to see how the favors work. The base system in EU4 is actually quite good; where you gain favors for helping allies in war and for giving them stuff in peaceddeals, that you can then cash in to be able to get allies to join wars they otherwise wouldn't. It is just undermined a little by too high passive generation of favors, and massively undermined by the curry favor action.

In that topic, I would really like to be able to call allies into wars with a promise of a little bit of land. Like promising to give them a single province, as a middle ground between promising them nothing more than favors, and promising them a huge part of the peacedeal if they participate enough.

In cases where the ally ends up with far more participation than their 1 province is worth, you could just end up cashing in your favors or end up owing them favors, instead of the loss of trust from actually promising more and then not giving it.

With the looser alliances this game promises, I also hope that ending up on opposite sides of a war won't instantly void all favors and trust between two countries anymore.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

I can understand the wish for war score to have a soft cap, and it would be cool, but that's something that also needs careful thought. In the early versions of Victoria 3 it was possible for France to launch a diplomatic play to vassalize all of Spain, and while this functionally gave them infinite infamy, the power boost was easily worth it. A situation where Tibet can just grab all of Yuan and no longer care about having friends if they micro right is probably something to avoid.

You could have easily solved that another way without capping the mechanic… infamy already impacts the « attitude » toward the overlord.
Just make it like in HOI4 or EU4 that rebel vassals do not contribute to the war effort, and you end up with France having gained nothing from this vassalization, apart from generating a world coalition against her. Coalition which can make France release all acquired territory in the last years, meaning Spain plus other eventual conquests

Problem solved

 

[gabadur]

Can there be two way peacedeals between players in multiplayer? That way it can be just the functionality without having to code the AI for it?

 

[wowlock]

If you want to do it that way, then you'd use a peace treaty..

However, currently at the start of the game, Egypt has low control, and entire Levant & Syria is less than 50 WS. The challenge here is not "how do I get lots of territory", but "how do I handle lots of territory"

So there is no Eyalet system in the game then?

 

[Brynjar]

What problem are you referring to here?

This:

Yeah, its not really something thats feasible to do, as the AI logic for it would be very very complex, and all our previous negotiate systems like that have been exploitable even when blindfolded.

It would be extremely exploitable. Implementing two way negotiations is easy. Implementing it in a way which works well is extremely difficult.

 

[Krey_Lollipop]

It would be extremely exploitable. Implementing two way negotiations is easy. Implementing it in a way which works well is extremely difficult.

Yeah, and that's specifically why my suggestion isn't a two way negotiation - it's all on the side of the sender. The sender is the one offering compensation and the sender is the one receiving the flat -1% warscore cost for the province. The receiving AI only needs to see the total cost and the provinces being ceded, just like any other peace deal, no mention of the money needed. And this is specifically so it only affects the tiny part of the acceptance calculation that depends on warscore cost. Many stronger parts of the equation, like fort occupation remain untouched.

All this of course assuming an AI like the one in EU4.

So can it be exploited? I'd be stupid to say no, exploits always find a way. But as long as provinces can't be gotten for 0% warscore or less using my suggestion, and you can't pay compensation using the enemies own money, both of which are simple to fix btw, I'm not seeing how you'd exploit this.

And in either case I don't think exploitability is a good argument unless it's concretely backed. Any sufficiently complex system is gonna have exploitability, and PC is built and sold on having a ton of complex systems. So what do you say, should we get rid of international organizations and estates too while we're at it? In what's definitely the words of Voltaire: "Implementing the HRE is easy. Implementing it in a way which works well is extremely difficult.".

 

[Prince Ire]

I'd argue peace cost could be lower, but AE higher.

Ok, so what's your argument?