Countries should be allowed to interfere in their neighbors' wars

[Nekoluve]

Suppose I am a small country and I have some conflicts with my neighbor. If another small country suddenly occupies some fortresses on my neighbor's border, I may not care about it. But if it mobilizes its troops to try to completely annex my neighbor, I may choose to help my neighbor because I am afraid that the country will become powerful and threaten my security. This is the main reason why it is difficult to expand in a region full of small countries, because when you expand, you can't only consider the allies of the enemy country, but also the possible interference of other countries. This would prevent a rapid unification of Ireland by small Irish tribes.

This kind of help should end when the forces of both sides are basically balanced, otherwise the country being helped may completely defeat and annex the invader.

Of course, correspondingly, it should be easier to annex already occupied areas, instead of having to occupy the entire country before taking a small area like in EU4.

I believe that after a war of aggression has begun for some time the surrounding countries should be allowed to take the initiative to maintain regional balance and form an intervention alliance. Whether to join the alliance depends on the interests of each country. Every time the invader occupies a location, it will generate a tendency for countries to join the alliance based on the distance between the location and the surrounding countries and its strategy. The relationship between the country and the two parties in the war will also affect this tendency. Once the alliance is formed, it can intervene in the war. Once the members of the alliance believe that they have achieved their goals, they can withdraw from the war and even change their positions to support the invader.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

Agreed, I think the fixation PDX currently has on fixing the sides in wars at the start of conflicts is bad both for historicity and gameplay. While it does make the game more predictable, it also makes it easier for the player to expand militarily, since you can reliably predict the outcome of a war from its outset.

 

[Cephei80]

probably something like imperator's privileged decisions that big powers can make .
i dont see small nations intervening but a big country can make that happen so maybe it should be tied to rank of the country

 

[Arizal]

Paradox games always had the problem of being quite unresponsive when it comes to geopolitics.

While I get the need for the game to be predictable to some extent, some kind of warning system that could enter in to play if a war stretch too long and the initial CB will likely not be the only thing asked to the beaten country sounds like an interesting mechanic to me. I made such a proposal some time ago.

At least, EUV looks to have more peace options, but it will be a far cry from a game where you have to watch your back while occupying another country.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

probably something like imperator's privileged decisions that big powers can make .
i dont see small nations intervening but a big country can make that happen so maybe it should be tied to rank of the country

Historically individual small nations would be reluctant to intervene in large wars, but it's not uncommon for large coalitions of small and medium sized countries to form and intervene after a war has already gone hot.

 

[Cephei80]

Historically individual small nations would be reluctant to intervene in large wars, but it's not uncommon for large coalitions of small and medium sized countries to form and intervene after a war has already gone hot.

i know that , but how would that work mechanically ?
the only solution i see is the imperator model . super powers get decisions that lesser powers cant.
also giving that sort of power to a bunch of chihuahuas states doesnt sound like a brilliant idea gamewise . long gone are the days where athens or syracuse or carthage city alone can field 40k men and 300 warships

 

[KirikoNyan]

This does historically make sense, but I don't see any way they could implement this without it being extremely exploitable, and making it easier for the player to expand

 

[Shayrin2]

They need to pump up antagonism and make coalitions more common. Any country that becomes a local hegemon should have the remaining local power coalition against them (defensively at first, offensively if possible).

And then scale it up. Bohemia conquers Bavaria and Austria ? Basically all of Germany, and many some neighboring countries should now be in a coalition against them. A coalition that will basically never dissolve. It makes no sense for powers to expand continuously "but it’s been 30 years so it's fine now". No.

This is my understanding of what Antagonism was supposed to be. An AE that doesn’t just go back down to 0 after a couple of years but instead remains high and gradually gets lower the further or least interested you are from the area.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

i know that , but how would that work mechanically ?
the only solution i see is the imperator model . super powers get decisions that lesser powers cant.
also giving that sort of power to a bunch of chihuahuas states doesnt sound like a brilliant idea gamewise . long gone are the days where athens or syracuse or carthage city alone can field 40k men and 300 warships

In think it needs to be a collective action sort of thing, where the idea gets floated and it creates a coalition, which can intervene if they feel they are strong enough. Basically allow coalitions to form in response to the expected outcome of a war, and intervene in those wars. IMO hegemonic breakouts should almost always end in a war of containment, which either succeeds and checks the would-be hegemon, or fails and results in a breakout.

 

[pitmichaelvol]

If attacker has enough warscore for wargoal (and defender is ready to accept peace) but continues the war it should unlock the ability for other countries to join the war to restore the status quo. At start only direct neighbours can join, but the bigger difference between the warscore and wargoal is, the more countries can join (and from further away). This can still allow to take more than wargoal, if you time it right, but if you get too greedy you can get punished. Also makes choosing right CBs more important, as it`s makes harder to just annex everything with insult or trade war CB.

 

[Dewit]

This does historically make sense, but I don't see any way they could implement this without it being extremely exploitable, and making it easier for the player to expand

Maybe if the interfering country can only take money, military access, trade etc, but never land, subjugation etc.

 

[titan.bevel]

The military helping power could maybe be lending troops for a given duration ? So you'd need a kind of "intervening to help X", that would allow limited involvement in the war, eventually to be negotiated with the country, and that could scale up to a true war, eventually.

 

[Myxach]

Agreed, I think the fixation PDX currently has on fixing the sides in wars at the start of conflicts is bad both for historicity and gameplay. While it does make the game more predictable, it also makes it easier for the player to expand militarily, since you can reliably predict the outcome of a war from its outset.

I remember EU3, where a war against a opm could lead to a world war._. Opm calls Russia->Russia calls Prussia->Prussia calls Venice-> Venice calls China.....etc.

 

[Dewit]

The military helping power could maybe be lending troops for a given duration ? So you'd need a kind of "intervening to help X", that would allow limited involvement in the war, eventually to be negotiated with the country, and that could scale up to a true war, eventually.

maybe you can lend out condottieri for free/at cost

 

[PuffyClouds]

Maybe something like defensive leagues from Imperator. It's not the same as intervening in a war, but it would make it more difficult for someone in Ireland within or outside the league to unify Ireland early. Or intervention could be culture based so not everyone can intervene in a war willynilly like in Vic3.

 

[Ispil]

"Offer to join war"? Seems simple enough to script up, with AI willingness to allow being based on the extent that they fear that they might lose and the amount they don't wish to share the spoils. Toss in some extra conditionality based on whether you have a truce with any of the belligerents.

Only issue I can think is, if I recall from the EU4 scripting effect of joining a war, you can only ever join all of someone's wars rather than a single, specific war. Which seems reasonable?

You avoid the stability hit of a no-CB war declaration at the downside of joining someone else's war rather than starting your own, and joining all of their wars rather than just the one.

 

[DeusVult十]

Agreement

 

[LiquidIExtasy]

They need to pump up antagonism and make coalitions more common. Any country that becomes a local hegemon should have the remaining local power coalition against them (defensively at first, offensively if possible).

And then scale it up. Bohemia conquers Bavaria and Austria ? Basically all of Germany, and many some neighboring countries should now be in a coalition against them. A coalition that will basically never dissolve. It makes no sense for powers to expand continuously "but it’s been 30 years so it's fine now". No.

This is my understanding of what Antagonism was supposed to be. An AE that doesn’t just go back down to 0 after a couple of years but instead remains high and gradually gets lower the further or least interested you are from the area.

Its a game. If you want make even local expansion unachievable then there would be no point in a grand strategy game.

And even in reality there is absolutely no proof about big coalitions over decades from 14-17th century. Thats nonsense.

Otherwise France, Russia and many other historical countries would have never existed.

Yes, AE needs to be more dynamic as in EU4. But building and forming big nations should still be possible.

 

[mwc12]

No thanks. Having enemies regularly join/switch sides midway through wars will just end up being extremely frustrating. This is the kind of thing that seems nice from a realism perspective, but will imo lead to bad gameplay.

It also seems like it would be a nightmare to code the AI, which will result in frustrating nonsense as war participants become much more random. How threatened does the regional balance have to be before other countries can intervene? How often should the AI check to see if they want to intervene in any nearby wars? The intervention alliance should end once the forces are balanced, and countries could even switch sides - how often should the AI check for that, and under what criteria? What if they leave the war and then the aggressor regains the advantage? Can they rejoin?

Defensive leagues, coalitions - sure. But telling all AI nations to consider regular mid-war interventions might sound nice on paper, but I think it would mainly result in a ton of furious players and stressed-out devs.

 

[Bisonmask]

Its a game. If you want make even local expansion unachievable then there would be no point in a grand strategy game.

And even in reality there is absolutely no proof about big coalitions over decades from 14-17th century. Thats nonsense.

Otherwise France, Russia and many other historical countries would have never existed.

Yes, AE needs to be more dynamic as in EU4. But building and forming big nations should still be possible.

There's much more to do in peacetime now and even a game that is basically just about expansion, downtime is a critical part of ensuring strategic gameplay

As for coalitions that just isn't true. For one some of that absence is because no country performed actions that would obviously be suicidal but which gameplay systems tend to not mediate well (fx conquering the lands of the Burgundian duchy instead of inheriting them would not have been possible). Even without that we reliably see coalitions forming, reforming, and shifting over the course of conflicts like the Italian Wars, 100 Years War, 30 Years War, and the various wars of expansion between Muscovy, Poland, and Lithuania over the disintegrating Golden Horde

These coalitions were cultural and religious but also reliably maintained a level of geopolitical reasoning that's almost entirely absent from gameplay. Even the Swiss Confederation is arguably just one such coalition against the expansionist desires of Austrian and Bavarian emperors that lasted long enough to become the basis for state formation

Building big nations should take time, and lots of it in most cases. Even voraciously expansionist states like the Ottomans and Delhi took one or two centuries to completely clear the small states in their orbit and both were the culmination of centuries more spent developing the political and military capacity to expand in that matter by their predecessors.

Spoiler: Brandenburg and England Examples

Brandenburg didn't just become an expansionist state one day, it spent several generations developing economically, militarily, and diplomatically to the point where it could contest the great powers of its region. That process also involved losing to and learning from said great powers as well. There is no 17th C Prussia without Imperial Sweden and the Habsburgs. Or look at England: it first became suzerain over Wales in the 1000s but Wales was still somewhat independent and rebellious four centuries later, a pattern you see repeat in Ireland. In a pdx game, silencing both regions takes maybe 100 years total.

Doing it this way helps make every start feel different and produces the kind of actual rivalries and challenges that make you remember playthroughs