Consequences for inactive war participants

[Targor]

Right now many players (including me) often answer CtAs from AIs without really helping in the war, because they don't wanna lose the MP/empower the AI. I'd suggest a kind of penalty for this, for example if a Participant doesn't take part in any battles for a time, he automatically leaves the war and gets treated like if he broke the CtA. Would be interesting, of course it would probably be hard to take special cases into consideration like a player not able to reach an enemy.

 

[net.split]

Doesn't cover all the scenarios above, such as BYZ one where Muscovy has already won by the time you can get there, even though you can walk through Muscovy directly or the Austria vs France one where Serbia puts forth a token joke effort, effectively bypassing any relevance the mechanic is supposed to have.

Yes, I considered this later. So this only works as a starting point; it needs a few more rules. For instance, if the enemy is weaker by a certain margin, no penalty (because you aren't needed to help). Or if the enemy is effectively defeated too quickly (in the case of, say, two OPMs battling each other), no penalties. For the token effort, you'd need to have a certain percentage of your forces participate in battles / sieges. That one's still really hard to nail down; wherever you draw the line it's still abusable. But together, that set of rules still kind of works.

But yeah, I also think my counter-suggestion is superior to a punitive model. And may even be the sort of thing Wiz has in mind. Simply saying that he's intending to address an issue doesn't necessarily say how he's going to address it.

 

[chris_dftba]

I can't think of a single cutoff point for evaluating "participation" that won't result in the occasional garbage interpretation of "you didn't help us!".

1. England declares on Tyrone and calls you in, it stack wipes Tyrone and sieges. You didn't help?
2. You declare war on a new world nation and carpet it, but it takes a long time. You call in Spain, but they never sent troops. Penalize the AI here?
3. Austria as HRE calls you into war against France (you're Serbia). You send 2 guys into France and they siege for a moment before getting stack wiped. Legit help?
4. Muscovy calls you in on Uzbek (you're Byzantium). The war lasts a few years but it completely one-sided in their favor, so you can't actually fight units even if you try to get stuff over there. 2 man siege good enough?
5. You're losing a war badly and get a CTA. You have almost no units. Dishonored alliance for non-participation in a 2nd war you honored?

6. You are Aztec. Spain declares on you (or you on Spain), bringing in derpscrub Portugal for the ride (I love how people blather about westernization being ahistorical, but then don't have anything to say about a combined alliance against the Aztec shipping 40k-60k + calling crusade for bonuses by 1530. The game is what it is ffs). Portugal, having just lost its navy to a spat with France v. England + getting its fleet caught, has no active navy but of course still joins the war because it's otherwise in good condition. As a result, Portugal "doesn't participate" as the player Aztec blasts Spain's fleet out of the water and starts taking colonies. Iberian alliance shattered when this is "engineered" to happen a few times?

Pick one or even several criteria that covers all of the above and will consistently penalize non-participants appropriately. It's not going to happen. Short of deliberately making the AI cheat and forgive other AI here (and not penalize it for not helping humans), creating an arbitrary, hard to understand rules framework, this kind of mechanic is going to wind up being a non-starter. You are virtually guaranteed to have situations where the penalty will be applied inappropriately and ruthlessly abused, unless the criteria for participation is so lax that the mechanic is functionally pointless and a CTA just results in a player occasionally attempting to loot a few provinces.

It's a non-functional concept under the current war leader and negotiation rules IMO. I challenge anybody capable of demonstrating a model whereby I'm wrong about this. Maybe I'm missing something. If I am, show me. If not, it's not justifiable to introduce a mechanic whereby players are encouraged to "pretend" they're helping "just enough"...it's not going to resemble anything historical and it's instantly going to sit in the "game around this but not actually participate" category, because if that's impossible you're going to get complete garbage for "non participation".

Per Targor's suggestion, I can force the AI (who can't fight battles) to break an alliance between historical friends so many times that it alters the diplomatic landscape in Europe, and I can do it as a 4 province minor in Asia in the late 1400's. The OP is no suggestion at all.

That's relatively simple. It simply evaluates your ability to participate and how badly the AI really needs assistance.

Does war leader require help?
-Measure enemy alliances units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth
-Measure war leader units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth

Do you have the ability to help?
-Is it possible to get troops to the enemies, IE via Navy, access through another country, or direct access to the country
-How is the players (or whatever countries) manpower, force limit, and wealth vs the enemy countries


1. England doesn't need assistance, it's force limit and provincial wealth are significantly higher than Tyrone's and England obviously doesn't need help.
2. Again, aid never needed, and Spain may not have access to that new world, limiting it's ability to participate
3. Your ability to help is limited, you, a weaker power, stand no chance against the mighty power of France
4. Muscovy doesn't require help. Though it does take awhile getting access is a problem, and they are more powerful than you. But as you said it is completely one sided
5. Your ability to help is limited, your provinces are beseiged and in all likelyhood your manpower is in the pooper. Even if they do call you in you lack the ability to help.
6. Portugal doesn't have any way to access the country

However this is assuming that this is all just a relations hit so that it can be scaled, sometimes you'll go above and beyond the call of duty, sometimes you won't do a damn thing while your ally desperately needs you.


But as Josh127 it just seems way too big a pain in the butt to implement for a feature that really isn't that big of a deal. Sometimes realism simply needs to take a backseat to game play

 

[Karnak]

On my todo.

Introduce personal warscore beyond participant self-occupied/enemy-occupied provinces.
Apply all other warscore sources by contribution to allies, but take the same share in it yourself as warleader.
Like battles that can be won by individuals.

Divide general non-personal warscore by contribution, such as wargoal. If an ally wins 40% of the warscore from battles and sieges, give them 40% of the wargoal score as well.
Warleader: 60% of contribution, Ally a: 40% of contribution, Ally b: 0% of contribution

50% win, warleader 50%(allies+.6*50), ally a 20%(.4*50), ally b 0%.
Ally b cannot ask for a single point of warscore.

Apply negative warscore by inverse contribution. --> negwar=50, l=.6,a=.4,b=0. (l+a+b) = 1. ((l-x)+(a-x)+(b-x))*negwar = -100.
positive: (l+a+b) = 1, negative: (l-x)+(a-x)+(b-x) = -1 --> l=-0.067, a=-0.267, b=-0.667

50% loss, warleader -50%(allies+-0.067*50), ally a -13.33%(-0.267*50), ally b -33.33(-0.667*50)%
Ally b cannot complain if they lose up to 33.33 worth' of warscore in the war.

It would be nice for the allied war leader to fine allied AIs in cash, trade power, war reparations to fully make use of this feature.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

clearly when I'm looting France 20 times over whenever I get called in by Austria in an HRE defense war, I'm helping. Look at those 400 sieges I started!

To be fair, that's a substantial income hit to France too.

 

[Freudia]

To be fair, that's a substantial income hit to France too.

Ironically, that's more helpful than actually trying to siege a province before getting wiped, as well.

 

[bbqftw]

That's relatively simple. It simply evaluates your ability to participate and how badly the AI really needs assistance.

Does war leader require help?
-Measure enemy alliances units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth
-Measure war leader units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth

Do you have the ability to help?

I think the fact that Muscovy and Denmark often declare war on Japan using the expansion CB, despite having no practical way to reach them, tells you enough about how well the AI can gauge access to the countries they are fighting.

 

[BaZERGer]

Earlier i had a situation where it literally wasn't possible for me to help my ally, despite being it's neighbor. Burgundy vs England, reconquest of Calais, 1 province, 1 siege, no combat, couldn't have helped even if i wanted to. Doesn't help that it called me into an offensive war while i had 24 loans, and depleted manpower with an army less than half the size of what it's supposed to be.

I'm actualy not sure a malus for inaction is a good idea, rather i would prefer more in the way of rewarding participation than punishing inaction.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's relatively simple. It simply evaluates your ability to participate and how badly the AI really needs assistance.

If it were so simple, you wouldn't have avoided doing it. "Evaluate whether you helped and how well you can" is useless, unless you come up with a finite, *exact* numerical means to do it that blocks both the obvious and instantly-comes-to-mind exploits while still functioning as a decent "evaluation".

Does war leader require help?
-Measure enemy alliances units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth
-Measure war leader units, force limit, manpower, and province wealth

Do you have the ability to help?
-Is it possible to get troops to the enemies, IE via Navy, access through another country, or direct access to the country
-How is the players (or whatever countries) manpower, force limit, and wealth vs the enemy countries

Numbers. Exact cutoff points. It's not a person on the other end, it's an AI making decisions vs on numerically observable criteria. What you post here is an exercise in showing exactly why I'm right wrt the punitive model.

Each case you then cite also have no assumptions of numbers in-practice against the theoretical cutoff points. You didn't give those numbers, and I will go so far as to claim that unless you alter the way wars are fought or negotiated right now, you can't pick any criteria along the spectrum and consistently avoid BS scenarios where someone tries to help and gets penalized OR where experienced players can easily feign participation.

Karnak's suggestion has potential issues, but is a much better example of something whereby this doesn't devolve into unworkable junk...at least conceptually. In practice, you run afoul of separate peace deals and shifting score ratios etc, but at least it's a suggestion on how his proposed mechanic works.

 

[Me_]

I think that the penalty should be applied in cases where you do not participate and your ally is losing the war. If your ally can win on his own then the diplomatic effects of joining a war would seem like sufficient contribution.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I think that the penalty should be applied in cases where you do not participate and your ally is losing the war. If your ally can win on his own then the diplomatic effects of joining a war would seem like sufficient contribution.

I think the best system would be that you're only penalized if:

1) Your ally loses the war.
2) You can reach the war.
3) Your nation is in a state in which you can fight a war (manpower is at least x% or armies are fully reinforced).
4) None of your provinces are occupied, your ports aren't being blockaded, and your war contribution score is under 20% or so.

 

[Freudia]

4) None of your provinces are occupied, your ports aren't being blockaded, and your war contribution score is under 20% or so.

If your ally is losing the war, your contribution being under 20% is actually a good thing. If you have all that negative warscore for the war and you're partially (or majorly) to blame for it (ie you gave up a ton of warscore in battles by repeatedly losing stacks to the enemy), then you're helping your ally even less than if you stayed out of the war period.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

If your ally is losing the war, your contribution being under 20% is actually a good thing. If you have all that negative warscore for the war and you're partially (or majorly) to blame for it (ie you gave up a ton of warscore in battles by repeatedly losing stacks to the enemy), then you're helping your ally even less than if you stayed out of the war period.

Choosing not to join in a war at all that you could have joined in, even if you wouldn't have accomplished anything, is what should be punished, I feel.

 

[Freudia]

Choosing not to join in a war at all that you could have joined in, even if you wouldn't have accomplished anything, is what should be punished, I feel.

At its core this is a strategy game, though, and throwing resources at a lost cause is typically frowned upon in a strategy game and seen as bad play. Rewarding bad play or punishing good play is asinine, I feel, but if you need to do one or the other, I would prefer rewarding bad play so there's at least incentives to make said bad play. You shouldn't have to go out of your way and waste resources on a lost cause just to avoid penalties.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

At its core this is a strategy game, though, and throwing resources at a lost cause is typically frowned upon in a strategy game and seen as bad play. Rewarding bad play or punishing good play is asinine, I feel, but if you need to do one or the other, I would prefer rewarding bad play so there's at least incentives to make said bad play. You shouldn't have to go out of your way and waste resources on a lost cause just to avoid penalties.

I think the penalty should be the same as if you simply hadn't joined the war in the first place (prestige and a broken alliance). So, by agreeing to join the war, you're agreeing to actually send resources to help your ally, even if that only delays the loss by a month.

 

[victimizer]

If non-participation in allies wars should have negative effects, it should also mean that you wouldn't get those "sword is stronger than pen" or "warriors dont read no books" events, because you're not really fighting a war.

 

[Nassau]

On the other side I would also like to be more rewarded if I rescue another nation from certain doom. Like when I liberate half their country and then wipe the enemy from the earth I deserve more than 10 to 30 extra relation. More like a full 100.


Plus that when you and your ally have the same culture, but it is you who liberates their province, the population in that province should rather be with you than in their current country.

 

[josh127]

Earlier i had a situation where it literally wasn't possible for me to help my ally, despite being it's neighbor. Burgundy vs England, reconquest of Calais, 1 province, 1 siege, no combat, couldn't have helped even if i wanted to. Doesn't help that it called me into an offensive war while i had 24 loans, and depleted manpower with an army less than half the size of what it's supposed to be.

I'm actualy not sure a malus for inaction is a good idea, rather i would prefer more in the way of rewarding participation than punishing inaction.

That is the only way a change would make sense, and for a situation like you described. There's many good reasons you might not have participated in a war. and no, the AI can't evaluate them well or they wouldn't call you into stupid wars you can't help in to begin with. As was said before, "it's relatively simple", the evidence is in every game you play today when you get called into a war you're not needed in or you can't help in. The AI can't evaluate all the things needed to figure this out, or you wouldn't be called into silly wars today.

heck, if the AI was smart enough to call you into only the right wars we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

[Camarada78]

We already got some realationship bonuses:

- Honored Alliance
- Defended our territory
- Liberated occupied province
- Fought till the end

***
We could have options to answer to Call to Arms, as someone pointed. Simple stuff:

1. Join War (how it works now) - Mantain Alliance (+25 bonus in relations as it is now)
2. Support War (give money monthly instead of troops)- Mantain alliance (+10 bonus). Same rules as give subsidies (no deficit or loan). But not enter the war and get -25 penalty from the enemy.
3. Diplomaticly Decline (if you have a leader with 3 or more DIP or a level +2 diplomat): Diplo Hit -25 (instead of -50 of breaking), certain chance to break alliance, but not always.
4. Decline offer (how it works now) - Break Alliance (-50 diplo hit).


We could add some other bonus:

- "Sent full force" (when at least 75% of our troops got in the provinces disputed for at least a month).
- "Significant War Contribution" (relation bonus per base tax you successfully sieged or troops died)

 

[Ravaj]

We already got some realationship bonuses:

- Honored Alliance
- Defended our territory
- Liberated occupied province
- Fought till the end

***
We could have options to answer to Call to Arms, as someone pointed. Simple stuff:

1. Join War (how it works now) - Mantain Alliance (+25 bonus in relations as it is now)
2. Support War (give money monthly instead of troops)- Mantain alliance (+10 bonus). Same rules as give subsidies (no deficit or loan). But not enter the war and get -25 penalty from the enemy.
3. Diplomaticly Decline (if you have a leader with 3 or more DIP or a level +2 diplomat): Diplo Hit -25 (instead of -50 of breaking), certain chance to break alliance, but not always.
4. Decline offer (how it works now) - Break Alliance (-50 diplo hit).

Actually, this doesn't solve the problem as there is no way of compelling the player/nation to fulfill its commitment in the war.

We could add some other bonus:

- "Sent full force" (when at least 75% of our troops got in the provinces disputed for at least a month).
- "Significant War Contribution" (relation bonus per base tax you successfully sieged or troops died)

That's more like it

Regarding the war contribution, it's clear reading previous posts that a binary "Contribute/not Contribute" can be easily cheated.
I guess a simple way to do is to consider war score contribution.

War Score contribution:
-> Siege: If province is lost and retaken afterward, then only 60/30/5/5/0 % of the warscore should be taken into account each time the province is conquered again.
-> Blockade: To get 100% of the blockade related warscore, let say that you should maintain it 6 months and then job is done (and 6 more months would not add up).
-> Battles: 50% of warscore to battle leader & 50% split on % of troop committed. For one battle it won't be much but it can add up during a long war.

To solve the issue of distant wars, and not-a-good-time-France! wars, there are other parameters that can be used for contribution:

Non War Score contribution:
-> Supporting Rebels, Giving war leader subsidies: Based on your base tax, should allow some distant countries to "contribute" a little
-> Providing support capability: if war leader takes your ships to move, then a flat one-time-only contribution bonus is due.
-> Transferring manpower: Based on your MP limit, it doesn't exist at the moment, but sure could be useful if you don't have money and really crave for friendship.
-> "Transferring manpower" by war casualties: to be considered in case of defeat, the amount of national blood spilled at the hand of your ally's enemy.
(@EUIV team: good luck balancing WarScore against money against MP )

Based on this merged contribution (WarScore/Non-WarScore), we can have a minimum below which you are considered inactive (based on BaseTax?), and reward the top 3 or 5 contributor with increased relationship & opinion improvement & part of the prestige also. And switch opinion to outrage if your ally get crushed and you are "inactive".

That would definitely add good mechanics to the game, compelling the players to actively commit in some wars, to change the diplomatic landscape. If the AI can be prioritized on these parameters as well, it can be nice too.