Wouldn't it make more sense to just add the fortress army to an attacking army trying to lift the siege rather than making the fortresses into instant armies?
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Michael, I think I agree with you that looting is way too powerful and should be seriously reined in... but, not for a 1.10. Looting, for good or ill, is a game feature that has been in there forever and thus removing will change the game significantly. So my proposed changes basically make synced looting w/ minting impossible beyond the start of a war, but they don't do anything about hyperteching using loot. I guess I feel the latter to be less abusive than the former. Basically EU2 can be seen as an investment game where the player manages an exponential economic growth curve. Getting lots of gold, early in the game, allows a player to quickly raise the base of his exponential, thus getting a huge advantage. Hyperteching is a sort of second order effect: no matter how high your tech is, you still need scads of cash to build colonies, buy city upgrades, buy armies, fund religious conversions, place merchants worldwide, etc.
Also, I still think that city looting was a serious motivation for war, at least for the soldiers if not higher-ups, and it paid pretty well. Whether or not kings usually ended up controlling much of this loot, I don't know.
I guess I could support something like making looting provinces only boost army morale and pay maintenance for a month. But I still think capturing cities should get something. (Though I'd be curious to hear peoples' opinions on this as a historical matter.)
Also, I still think that city looting was a serious motivation for war, at least for the soldiers if not higher-ups, and it paid pretty well. Whether or not kings usually ended up controlling much of this loot, I don't know.
I guess I could support something like making looting provinces only boost army morale and pay maintenance for a month. But I still think capturing cities should get something. (Though I'd be curious to hear peoples' opinions on this as a historical matter.)
On the other stuff... yes, I had forgotten about the exploit of using MA to tweak natives. (Although, tiny armies are also good for tweaking natives even in unsettled provinces, for initial colonization. Which is its own minor silly-MM topic; later.)
I don't like your fix, though, for this reason: any natives except those with zero aggression can eventually be tweaked just via movement. So, disallowing the player from intentionally tweaking natives just causes even more MM; it does not really prevent the same exploit.
My suggestion is to keep track of the country which causes a native rising, and if a rising caused by a non-owner succeeds in damaging or destroying a settlement or TP, make it drop relations by -50, and create a short temporary CB by the owner of the colony on the transgressor, and also automatically cancel military access from the one to the other. Thus, at the very least a player will have to pay money to keep up relations, and use diplomats to continually re-acquire MA.
BTW, one more suggestion on this line is to allow the cancellation of MA between countries at any time, and in this situation place all armies that are now not allowed to be where they are into noncombatant mode.
( http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Noncombattant )
I'd also like to add some reforms for noncombatant troops, to cut off white flag tourism ( http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/White_flag_tourism ) and the related exploit (given the new rules above) of moving many armies into a large number of foreign colonies/TPs before a mass native-tweaking. Noncombatant troops are currently far too controllable by the player. So, noncombatant troops should act kind of like fleets do when they are low on supply:
* if retreat is available into a neighboring fleet (with enough passenger space), plot that (and as a retreat)
* otherwise, automatically plot a course to some owned province, where the current country is allowed (just like currently)
* otherwise, if not in a coastal province, but a coastal province is adjacent, plot a retreat to it
* if none of the possibilities above is available, only then does a noncombatant act like it does now (i.e., it allows the player to control it). In this case only, impose some more restrictions:
** no moves into terra incognita are allowed, period, for noncombatants
** supply is lowered: supply in all disallowed provinces should be 0 (zero). You don't get to live off the land when you are noncombatant.
** noncombatants are not allowed to intentionally tweak natives (their movement can still cause risings, but this should be hard to exploit and will still cause international incidents, as above).
* if an automatically plotted move has been chosen:
** allow the player to select a different destination (must be an allowed province), but not different waypoints (similar to how fleets work)
** do not allow the player to split or recombine noncombatants, other than maybe merging them
** when the move is down to exactly one province, make it into a retreat (so that it can no longer even be redirected)
I don't like your fix, though, for this reason: any natives except those with zero aggression can eventually be tweaked just via movement. So, disallowing the player from intentionally tweaking natives just causes even more MM; it does not really prevent the same exploit.
My suggestion is to keep track of the country which causes a native rising, and if a rising caused by a non-owner succeeds in damaging or destroying a settlement or TP, make it drop relations by -50, and create a short temporary CB by the owner of the colony on the transgressor, and also automatically cancel military access from the one to the other. Thus, at the very least a player will have to pay money to keep up relations, and use diplomats to continually re-acquire MA.
BTW, one more suggestion on this line is to allow the cancellation of MA between countries at any time, and in this situation place all armies that are now not allowed to be where they are into noncombatant mode.
( http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Noncombattant )
I'd also like to add some reforms for noncombatant troops, to cut off white flag tourism ( http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/White_flag_tourism ) and the related exploit (given the new rules above) of moving many armies into a large number of foreign colonies/TPs before a mass native-tweaking. Noncombatant troops are currently far too controllable by the player. So, noncombatant troops should act kind of like fleets do when they are low on supply:
* if retreat is available into a neighboring fleet (with enough passenger space), plot that (and as a retreat)
* otherwise, automatically plot a course to some owned province, where the current country is allowed (just like currently)
* otherwise, if not in a coastal province, but a coastal province is adjacent, plot a retreat to it
* if none of the possibilities above is available, only then does a noncombatant act like it does now (i.e., it allows the player to control it). In this case only, impose some more restrictions:
** no moves into terra incognita are allowed, period, for noncombatants
** supply is lowered: supply in all disallowed provinces should be 0 (zero). You don't get to live off the land when you are noncombatant.
** noncombatants are not allowed to intentionally tweak natives (their movement can still cause risings, but this should be hard to exploit and will still cause international incidents, as above).
* if an automatically plotted move has been chosen:
** allow the player to select a different destination (must be an allowed province), but not different waypoints (similar to how fleets work)
** do not allow the player to split or recombine noncombatants, other than maybe merging them
** when the move is down to exactly one province, make it into a retreat (so that it can no longer even be redirected)
Michael, a few other comments on your comments (#458):
Exploring:
I think exploring terra incognita is one of the few really valid uses for tiny armies. I mean, how many guys were with Marco Polo? By suicide explorers I assume you are referring to the instant transport of information from explorer to king? Well, we're not changing that in 1.10, anyway.
Unfortified settlements and TPs:
On capturing unfortified stuff, I don't like the idea of requiring any set level of men to do it -- this seems too arbitrary for me, and bound to cause confusion. "I moved my army in but I didn't take the province" from newbies, that sort of thing.
Rather, let me suggest adding a rule for "raising the militia", in terms of the current game. Whenever any army takes over an unfortified province with a higher pop than men in the militia, do as follows:
* mark the capture (this makes the province controlled by the enemy)
* do a check for rebels, with a special, one-off increase in RR based on the proportion of militia vs invaders. Basically it should be very unlikely that militias will rise until they at least outnumber the aggressors, and the chances should still be fairly small until they outnumber them, say, 5 to 1. So, make 5:1 translate into perhaps a 50% chance to get rebels -- or a +600 RR. So let's call it this:
This makes the militia guaranteed to rise if the pop of the province is more than 12x the #invaders. I am assuming that in that case the rebels would win the battle, and then they would automatically retake the city and disappear. Obviously, if the rebels are beaten, then the aggressor keeps control of the city and can keep going.
* boost RR for occupied unfortified provinces considerably, maybe +10, and allow them to revolt just like other stuff.
Retreats:
On forcing retreats, all I meant there was you can force allied units in battle to retreat, by moving to the battle then retreating. The player's voluntary retreat forces retreat of all allied units. I suppose we should just eliminate this rule.
There is a bug in EU2, or was (not sure if it was fixed) which I noticed a while back, the siege/run bug, where all-cavalry AI armies could never complete sieges because they would automatically retreat. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of? But this does not cause you, the player, to retreat, unless maybe their dogpile attrited your army down to the point where it was too small to cover.
Sieges:
I'm not sure about stealing sieges -- I thought that was true when I wrote that page, but now not so sure. Checking is easy enough...
[update:] OK, not really a problem. Doesn't work. I've also updated the wiki.
Exploring:
I think exploring terra incognita is one of the few really valid uses for tiny armies. I mean, how many guys were with Marco Polo? By suicide explorers I assume you are referring to the instant transport of information from explorer to king? Well, we're not changing that in 1.10, anyway.
Unfortified settlements and TPs:
On capturing unfortified stuff, I don't like the idea of requiring any set level of men to do it -- this seems too arbitrary for me, and bound to cause confusion. "I moved my army in but I didn't take the province" from newbies, that sort of thing.
Rather, let me suggest adding a rule for "raising the militia", in terms of the current game. Whenever any army takes over an unfortified province with a higher pop than men in the militia, do as follows:
* mark the capture (this makes the province controlled by the enemy)
* do a check for rebels, with a special, one-off increase in RR based on the proportion of militia vs invaders. Basically it should be very unlikely that militias will rise until they at least outnumber the aggressors, and the chances should still be fairly small until they outnumber them, say, 5 to 1. So, make 5:1 translate into perhaps a 50% chance to get rebels -- or a +600 RR. So let's call it this:
Code:
revolt risk = (normal RR for that province) + 100*(population / #invaders)* boost RR for occupied unfortified provinces considerably, maybe +10, and allow them to revolt just like other stuff.
Retreats:
On forcing retreats, all I meant there was you can force allied units in battle to retreat, by moving to the battle then retreating. The player's voluntary retreat forces retreat of all allied units. I suppose we should just eliminate this rule.
There is a bug in EU2, or was (not sure if it was fixed) which I noticed a while back, the siege/run bug, where all-cavalry AI armies could never complete sieges because they would automatically retreat. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of? But this does not cause you, the player, to retreat, unless maybe their dogpile attrited your army down to the point where it was too small to cover.
Sieges:
I'm not sure about stealing sieges -- I thought that was true when I wrote that page, but now not so sure. Checking is easy enough...
[update:] OK, not really a problem. Doesn't work. I've also updated the wiki.
Last edited:
IMO, when nations at war do not fight and an auto peace is triggered, I think the triggering should be activated after 1 year and not 3 years
Toio said:
On that issue, can you please create a fix for bug #312. Where if two nations cannot reach each other but one nation occupies one of the other's provinces then white peace will not occur and the war will go on forever.
The Swert said:
i agree, do you think the outcome of your issue should end with a status quo, seems the easiest outcome.
That doesn't seem entirely right. The "losing" country should at least get some punishment for letting his province be occupied like that for so long. Like a stab hit or losing some money or something.Toio said:
I'm thinking of a different way to break deadlocks like that... there are two parts of the problem. One is that white peace requires no occupations either way. The other part is that the normal peace route cannot work until an AI has at least +10 warscore. But with only a little bit of occupation, the AI does not have that, and so its peace offers won't be accepted.
So, change the rule that only the loser can offer tribute in a peace deal. Instead, winners should be able to offer cash too. Then program winning AIs w/ low warscore to make peace deals more attractive by offering cash. Since they get free money for being at war (at least on higher levels of difficulty), they'll eventually save up enough to offer enough to get the other AI to accept.
One other approach that might help would be to impose some rules making AIs unlikely or even unable to accept isolated provinces in peace.
Another would be to make isolated provinces likely to rebel. (Isolated for this purpose defined as single provinces with no land or sea route to any other province of the owner, including use of current war allies, vassals and military access.)
Of course, even with all that, I think there is still a need for a forced-peace rule of general applicability, so that there is no possibility that any war "falls through the cracks". For this case, I'd prefer YodaMaster's original suggestion -- if a country cannot reach a province, it seems very strange that it would ever be able to resume ruling it. So, give it to the occupier; seems right to me.
So, change the rule that only the loser can offer tribute in a peace deal. Instead, winners should be able to offer cash too. Then program winning AIs w/ low warscore to make peace deals more attractive by offering cash. Since they get free money for being at war (at least on higher levels of difficulty), they'll eventually save up enough to offer enough to get the other AI to accept.
One other approach that might help would be to impose some rules making AIs unlikely or even unable to accept isolated provinces in peace.
Another would be to make isolated provinces likely to rebel. (Isolated for this purpose defined as single provinces with no land or sea route to any other province of the owner, including use of current war allies, vassals and military access.)
Of course, even with all that, I think there is still a need for a forced-peace rule of general applicability, so that there is no possibility that any war "falls through the cracks". For this case, I'd prefer YodaMaster's original suggestion -- if a country cannot reach a province, it seems very strange that it would ever be able to resume ruling it. So, give it to the occupier; seems right to me.
Monkii-sama said:
Interesting stuff. Certainly the idea that Christina treated war as a shopping expedition is suggestive of the idea that war booty was motivational for monarchs.
On the other hand, it's not clear from either of those articles (which are really about the same thing), how much total value in loot there was, and how routine it was to Make Money Fast with it. Of course, most booty presumably was not fancy stuff like armor, swords and bibles -- it would be money, and you'd never trace it.
But after reading them I am more inclined to think, than I was previously, that the loot rules (applied only to cities when captured, not provinces), should stay. At least in some form.
Regarding the looting rules, I think we'd better allow moving troops to loot. Otherwise, if you want to run through and waste the countryside, you have to stop in every province--not a lot of fun. Retreating should still keep troops from looting, though.
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Does anyone want to pull all the proposals for troops/attrition/looting together into a nice summary? Because it would be nice to have it all distilled, and I sure don't want to do it.
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Does anyone want to pull all the proposals for troops/attrition/looting together into a nice summary? Because it would be nice to have it all distilled, and I sure don't want to do it.
Yes, well. Here in Sweden a lot of art, swords, books and other assorted goodies in mansions and castles are war loot from the 30 year old war. So, for Sweden, looting was very essential for the upper classes. Being a pisspoor backwater nation with sudden military access to large stacks of german/polish fine art made a very bad combination.Wreck said:
Monkii-sama said:
true, war loot was common, I remember reading the battle of fornovo 1494, when the venetian cavalry took the french baggage train, battle was drawn, but venice and italian allies divided up the loot that the french king amassed from looting naples, florence, genoa etc etc. the estimate was valued in todays dollars as 16 million (US)
Also, armies during the 30 year war had to loot to keep itself afloat financially. Swedish mercenary armies had to continue to loot to pay for themselfs, sweden was poor so they just burned down the next town or taxed it with threats of looting.
Looting was important(at least to us), it should stay that way in the game.
Looting was important(at least to us), it should stay that way in the game.
Vassalage fixes
Since discussion of other stuff has died down, here is what I think we ought to do to fix vassalization.
As I see it, there are two things wrong with vassalization in EU2109. First, that the primary meaning of it in history was as a kind of strong military pact, where the subordinate power supported the stronger power. Second, that as it stands, vassals in core are a problem for the player that is ahistorical. To get them without badboy, you need to arrange an outside country to attack them and take the provinces, then you can attack it. This is, to put it mildly, ahistorical.
So, here's my list of suggested changes:
* remove ability of vassals to be in any military alliance, not even the suzerain's
* change vassals to be an implicit military ally of the suzerain:
** the suzerain would have a separate "vassal call" (like a military alliance call), whenever the suzerain enters any war, defensively or offensively.
** a vassal would have a "suzerain call" whenever it is DOWed upon (i.e. is a defender in a war), to invite the suzerain. An aggressor vassal cannot call the suzerain.
** Failure to honor either a vassal call or a suzerain call would break vassalage, cause stabhit, etc. Bad stuff. A dishonored suzerain call should also cause a relations hit with any remaining vassals, and they should check to break vassalage.
** I'm still not sure how to deal with the case of vassals attacking other vassals. Anyone know of historical examples of this? Could either party call in the suzerain?
* remove CB for other-core-ownership if owner is your own vassal.
* make relations increase some naturally for vassal-suzerains, and raise the relations limit by maybe +25
* make relations increase naturally for countries w/ same primary culture, and raise the relations limit by maybe +25.
* remove badboy cost for diploannexing a province, if it is a core province.
I'd also like to add a new kind of hardcoded "event", call it a "decentralization check". The point of this would be to model a central state losing substantial control over provincial areas. When one of these happens, every "captive nation" that a country has which does not include the country's capital province, should have a small chance to assert itself and be freed as a vassal. The chance should be increased by several factors, I would think, including:
* no land connection
* no land or sea connection
* weakness of parent country, economical and militarily
* if parent country is in a war
* low stability of parent country
Of course, a large country would usually be able to simply bribe up and annex the vassal, but it would have its 10 years to wait, and many things can happen in 10 years.
There should be a way for scripted events to force a decentralization check, regardless of centralization. Also, one should happen any time that the Centralization DP is lowered when it is already at its minimum.
Note that decentralization checks would not generally happen much, at least not in vanilla, because random events which lower Centralization only happen with Cent >= 1. But there are scripted events for some countries that cause centralization hits regardless of its current setting.
Since discussion of other stuff has died down, here is what I think we ought to do to fix vassalization.
As I see it, there are two things wrong with vassalization in EU2109. First, that the primary meaning of it in history was as a kind of strong military pact, where the subordinate power supported the stronger power. Second, that as it stands, vassals in core are a problem for the player that is ahistorical. To get them without badboy, you need to arrange an outside country to attack them and take the provinces, then you can attack it. This is, to put it mildly, ahistorical.
So, here's my list of suggested changes:
* remove ability of vassals to be in any military alliance, not even the suzerain's
* change vassals to be an implicit military ally of the suzerain:
** the suzerain would have a separate "vassal call" (like a military alliance call), whenever the suzerain enters any war, defensively or offensively.
** a vassal would have a "suzerain call" whenever it is DOWed upon (i.e. is a defender in a war), to invite the suzerain. An aggressor vassal cannot call the suzerain.
** Failure to honor either a vassal call or a suzerain call would break vassalage, cause stabhit, etc. Bad stuff. A dishonored suzerain call should also cause a relations hit with any remaining vassals, and they should check to break vassalage.
** I'm still not sure how to deal with the case of vassals attacking other vassals. Anyone know of historical examples of this? Could either party call in the suzerain?
* remove CB for other-core-ownership if owner is your own vassal.
* make relations increase some naturally for vassal-suzerains, and raise the relations limit by maybe +25
* make relations increase naturally for countries w/ same primary culture, and raise the relations limit by maybe +25.
* remove badboy cost for diploannexing a province, if it is a core province.
I'd also like to add a new kind of hardcoded "event", call it a "decentralization check". The point of this would be to model a central state losing substantial control over provincial areas. When one of these happens, every "captive nation" that a country has which does not include the country's capital province, should have a small chance to assert itself and be freed as a vassal. The chance should be increased by several factors, I would think, including:
* no land connection
* no land or sea connection
* weakness of parent country, economical and militarily
* if parent country is in a war
* low stability of parent country
Of course, a large country would usually be able to simply bribe up and annex the vassal, but it would have its 10 years to wait, and many things can happen in 10 years.
There should be a way for scripted events to force a decentralization check, regardless of centralization. Also, one should happen any time that the Centralization DP is lowered when it is already at its minimum.
Note that decentralization checks would not generally happen much, at least not in vanilla, because random events which lower Centralization only happen with Cent >= 1. But there are scripted events for some countries that cause centralization hits regardless of its current setting.
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