Tinto Talks #31 - 2nd of October 2024

[WhiskyGlen]

I think this is strange. I have no doubt that there are historical examples of wars that were declared for one goal, only for a peace deal to happen where something else is agreed upon. No doubt often done as a compromise, or when the goal changes.

I agree. I can understand needing to capture a nearby fort if there is one (or can I?). Maybe as Norway, Nordjylland seems like a better goal to start with, but if I accidentally capture København then cannot reach Nordjylland due to a blockade (maybe my ships accidentally got lost as was prone to happen in EUIV), why not let me have København?

Looks... about as frustrating as the EU4 system, frankly. Still a fixed 100-point cap, still the same AE effect as it always was with no level of nuance.

I'm disappointed.

Yeah, I agree. I get they don't want you blobbing without consequences, but there has to be a better system than "oops, you took one province too many. Here's three coalitions to take 100 warscore back each."

 

[ItsMorkino]

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.

If a two-way peace deal isnt possible bc of ai, functionality for it should at least be added ONLY as an option in player-player peace deals in MP. Its when it would make the most sense anyway and could add the most realism/role playing potential.

 

[Idle America]

Why are people so against this? I don't see what the problem is.

Because it's exactly the same as EU4. Almost nothing's changed or improved.

 

[Fish4me]

Doesn't matter. It's a completely essential component to the reality of "grand strategy". It will ALWAYS be incomplete without this feature. Personally, I would trade every improvement for just that one. I'm sure paradox, a billion dollar company, has the resources to locate some highly talented software engineers to solve the problem in a novel way. The peace deal experience can be enough to kill the entire experience (see: CK3, which is unimaginative, unrealistic, and frustrating). Without this feature I really don't understand how you can hope to give the kind of depth every other feature is trying to achieve...

I don't see how wasting dev time on a half-baked, easily exploited, feature that the AI will never be able to make use of is "essential" to a grand strategy game. Though I guess convincing England to give me Oxford in exchange for Greenland and some other random garbage does qualify as a "grand strategy".

 

[TesaVonAtti]

Will we be able to give land to allies in treaties ?

Will we be able to do this in peacetime without losing prestige or anything like in EU4 ?

Would it be possible to use warscore to ask for a longer truce ?

Will there be specific wars for colonies in America without the nations actually being at war ? At the time there were a lot of raids by some countries on other countries colonies without them formally declaring war.

 

[Fish4me]

Because it's exactly the same as EU4. Almost nothing's changed or improved.

Well, no, there are a decent number of key details that are different. How warscore cost is calculated has some huge differences for example (control has a massive impact, which will completely change how peacing out large decentralized empires works). The handling of war goals has been changed too.

The overall functionality is the same, but unless you have a real alternative (i.e. not a half-baked concept that wouldn't actually work out with more scrutiny) I don't see why anyone would choose to move further away from the most successful iteration of this system. But maybe having well thought out mechanics is tOo GaMeY.

 

[dbruser]

I understand that reasoning to some extend for the two-way peace treaties as there might be technical limitations regarding AI behavior (which, however, does not explain why that option doesn't exist in MP). But AE does not really do well what it is supposed to do (prevent blobbing), which is why I am so disappointed that there is literally just a copy + paste from other Paradox GSG (EU4, I:R).

From what it sounds like, AE does other things in this game than it did in EU4. One of the devs mentioned it applied both internal and diplomatic penalties to your empire. I believe for example, having decent AE makes it almost impossible for your spies to do anything such as fabricate claims.
As long as AE does other things than just opinion malus (or there are other systems in place alongside it), having AE itself is fine (it's not like infamy in Vic2 was a horrible design for example)

 

[Enkidou51]

There are many parameters that will be taken into account, I hope, such as :

- Bring in any country with promises of land, that country can claim several provinces and if the promise is not kept in the end there may be consequences.
- Demand the departure of a country into a colony and the transfer of its colonial charter in the treaty with a ban on rebuilding a colony there for X years.
- Being able to exchange territories between belligerents and even between allies, for example France exchanges a piece of Florida territory with the English who give them a piece of Texas.
- The possibility in the event of total victory of putting a friendly ally on the throne, for example Louis XIV defeats William of Orange and allows Charles II to regain control of Great Britain.
- Being able to increase one's territorial claims during conflict, for example threatening to demand more if the proposed treaty is not accepted, To do this, the personality trait of the leader would be important.
- Request colonial maps during the treaty, boats, commercial treaties, transfer know-how.
- Impose a marriage on the vanquished with a territorial dowry.

 

[dbruser]

Will we be able to give land to allies in treaties ?

Will we be able to do this in peacetime without losing prestige or anything like in EU4 ?

Would it be possible to use warscore to ask for a longer truce ?

Will there be specific wars for colonies in America without the nations actually being at war ? At the time there were a lot of raids by some countries on other countries colonies without them formally declaring war.

1) They said yes (in fact they will be upset if you don't give them something if they are a major contributor)

2) Not sure the question

4) I think we are going to have to wait for the conquistador tinto talk for that one, sounds like they are cooking up something.

 

[SebasR]

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.

I understand and i agree with you, but could it at least be possible to have it for Multiplayer? You can set the AI to never use it, which would also create an opportunity for modders to adjust it until it works. If someone does a good job, you could then consider adding that adjustment to the game.

 

[Lord Lambert]

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

Wild that this was so heavily downvoted when it is so objectively correct.

 

[mcmanusaur]

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.

Sorry man, this sucks.

To me, bilateral peace deals are a must-have for PC. This has been right up there next to overhauling the EU4 trade system among "problems that desperately needed a fix, but suppposedly weren't fixable within the scope of EU4". The previous Tinto Talks have effectively addressed many of EU4's shortcomings, but this is such a mismatch with the insane level of detail for other aspects of the game that it makes no sense.

UX (which you alluded to in a different reply) and balance absolutely important, but I just don't understand why this is such an intractable problem. Other games have this feature. I don't know how you guys are approaching peace negotiation AI currently. but rather than all terms of a given proposal at once, can't you just assign a score to each possible treaty term individually, and then have the AI only accept proposals with a sum of >= 0, or something? Even if it would mean the AI is slightly less rigorous in its strategy, this feature is really that important for historical immersion/realism/roleplaying.

Like 12 years later, we're still stuck with more or less the same diplomacy system, which already hasn't aged super well? That's a massive missed opportunity and a major hit to PC's value proposition IMO.

 

[Ispil]

Wild that this was so heavily downvoted when it is so objectively correct.
View attachment 1196819

I think the disagrees are less over it being "the best" but more that it doesn't justify then refusing to actually iterate on the system.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure enough of this lives in scripting that I can do a big glow-up through modding, but if it wasn't already evident with pretty much every post I make here, I've got a ton of things now on the list of "things for me to mod". I'd rather that list get shorter, not longer.

 

[nadwi]

Wild that this was so heavily downvoted when it is so objectively correct.
View attachment 1196819

Maybe it isn't so objectively correct if it was so heavily downvoted then. There are still ways to improve it.

 

[Ahmadmltft]

Doesn't that encourage carpet sieging?

The provincial capital is just one location.

 

[ShadowNinja909]

I like the peace announcement, gives me nostalgia for the old games!

 

[QuinnMallory]

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.

End war score and replace it with occupation forces. You take what you can get, and get what you can take, but you'll run out of units for garrisons long before you can occupy a large country all at once.

 

[Fish4me]

Maybe it isn't so objectively correct if it was so heavily downvoted then. There are still ways to improve it.

Any substantial improvements you can suggest? I mean real improvements, not poorly thought out ideas that will create more problems than they solve while demanding a disproportionate amount of development resources.

 

[Praetorian44]

Why are people so against this? I don't see what the problem is.

I don't understand why this dev diary has so many dislikes. The peace deal system seems pretty much the same as EU4, which I think is a decent system, probably the best one any PDX game has.

About not allowing the two sided peace deals, it would be cool for sure, but Johan already explained that it would make the AI act poorly. I strongly support that any mechanic the game has it has to be well used by the AI. When a PDX game introduces mechanics, mostly with patches/DLCs, and its just a mechanic for the player that the AI doesn't know how to handle, it sucks very much. So I support sacrifying the two sided peace deals if favor of a good AI. Vicky 3 AI sucks a lot in peace deals (well, in almost everything to be honest), for example.

I mean, we can still give things to the war leader enemy allies individually to pull them out of the war, and take things from the war leader enemy in the final peace deal (like in EU4), right? @Johan

If you really wanted to understand what the problem is fellas, couldn't you just read all the numerous comments where people are clearly stating their issues? The lack of bilateral peace deals most definitely isn't the only problem people have. It might not even be the most discussed one (couldn't say for sure, as it's certainly a popular topic). The other two main issues people have with this system are the return of the Aggressive Expansion and the 100 war score limit for peace demands.

Well, no, there are a decent number of key details that are different. How warscore cost is calculated has some huge differences for example (control has a massive impact, which will completely change how peacing out large decentralized empires works). The handling of war goals has been changed too.

The overall functionality is the same, but unless you have a real alternative (i.e. not a half-baked concept that wouldn't actually work out with more scrutiny) I don't see why anyone would choose to move further away from the most successful iteration of this system. But maybe having well thought out mechanics is tOo GaMeY.

Any substantial improvements you can suggest? I mean real improvements, not poorly thought out ideas that will create more problems than they solve while demanding a disproportionate amount of development resources.

Is it necessary to be so rude? If you were paying attention to the discussion rather than insulting everyone who has issues with this system, you would have seen that many people have posted alternate improvements. For example there is the alternate "threat" system suggested as a replacement to AE, which had an entire thread dedicated to its discussion. And many have also made solid arguments for why the 100 war score limit isn't necessary in PC, with its very different mechanics that weren't present in EU4. There have even been comments suggesting what to do about the bilateral peace deals being impossible for the AI (at least in this game), such as making it a multiplayer only feature or having it be a game rule so that players can use if if they want.

 

[pCWentY]

The Peace Offers is the same as EU4 which cannot exceed one A4 paper for environmental protection