+1 on your suggestions, that was a good read.
Great to see the devs seeking feedback on diplomacy, I submitted my answers yesterday. Yea, it’s a long form but remember that all questions are optional.
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+1 on your suggestions, that was a good read.
Great to see the devs seeking feedback on diplomacy, I submitted my answers yesterday. Yea, it’s a long form but remember that all questions are optional.
I look at all the feedback so I can assure you it's recorded
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Sorry for the double post here - but there's just so many possibilities that this allows for support tie ins:
- Freedom of speech laws can directly tie in here with a flat +20% war support for censorship and 0% for protected speech
- Citizenship laws like Ethno state can help where any wars you're fighting against a Primary culture that is Tier 1 acceptance gets a bonus to War Support
- War support can easily tie into combat performance with a stacked column chart graphic 0-25 is "disheartened army" - "75-100" Motivated army. These can be maxed at +/-25% combat across the board.'
- Supercharge the importance of claims journal entries where things like manifest destiny or claims on Alcase Lorraine become huge as they can give flat +20% war support bonuses.
- Legitimacy directly impacting war-support with illegitimate governments negatively impacting war support
- Generate war support could be a flat use of +200 authority that builds overtime to +20% - this way if you want to pre-meditate a war you could slot this edict in early to build support.
- It could tie into a diplomatic and peace deals play re-work very well:
- Imagine you declare a war goal for Alcase Lorraine as Germany, both you and France have maximum war support because you have claims on the territory through JE's.
- Germany(you) captures Alcase Lorraine, this immediately negatively impacts France's war support as they've lost the stated war goal. France offers peace and gives in to your war goal. However you the player are greedy and offer peace but also ask for Lorraine and War reparations which weren't included in the original war goals. France declines.
- In this above scenario it would be great if you had the option to ask for more than your war goals but if the offer is denied it negatively impacts your war score. The war goals re-calculate and two things happen:
- 1) the new requested war goals are added so France no longer is losing war support from having its defensive war goals occupied.
- 2) Germany gets -20% war support for asking for more at the peace table a scuttling the talks, France gets "Smited" which is +20% war support.
- Germany also takes on more Infamy
- This added infamy makes it more likely that a player like GB or Russia might join the on-going war.
Chatting through this - maybe one of the tweaks we can make is have diplomatic plays become "floating". So you start the diplo play for Alsace as time moves on war support begins to build - however at any point you can declare the actual war, in fact you could start the play and immediately go straight to war, doing so would be a unfortunate choice however as it would give them more war support and it would not allow yours to build fully.
Think of the diplo play like building the final casus belli - the longer the play is active the more war support the player launching it gets. A war launched in the first 0-20 of the diplo timer would be considered a "surprise attack". War support should build fully by 90%
Once a diplo-play continues to war it stays open, and frozen on the last tick before war. This way mechanically players could join and leave the wars and peace could be negotiated through the same diplo play screen.
In the last 90-100 of a diplo play a war must be declared manually, if it is not declared by 100 the war doesn't happen and the player who launched the war gets an automatic "Humiliated" War goal enforced upon them.
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I filled it out yesterday, but more generally:
Diplomatic actions and subject interactions are in a great place. They work, they're intuitive, they're impactful. Adding more options is always welcome, but it's generally great as-is.
I have a few quibbles with power blocs and global rankings (there's space for more depth or rebalancing, but they're not urgent). They work, they're generally fun.
Diplo plays, and to a lesser extent war goals, are the big issues: they're too rigid, and they're not predictable enough. When I am frustrated in the game, 9 times out of 10 it's a result of diplo plays: great powers randomly interfering in conflicts they shouldn't care about, inability to negotiate conflicts, and similar issues.
Diplomatic actions and subject interactions are in a great place. They work, they're intuitive, they're impactful. Adding more options is always welcome, but it's generally great as-is.
I have a few quibbles with power blocs and global rankings (there's space for more depth or rebalancing, but they're not urgent). They work, they're generally fun.
Diplo plays, and to a lesser extent war goals, are the big issues: they're too rigid, and they're not predictable enough. When I am frustrated in the game, 9 times out of 10 it's a result of diplo plays: great powers randomly interfering in conflicts they shouldn't care about, inability to negotiate conflicts, and similar issues.
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A system along these lines would also be good for simulating border tension.
E.g., as the Ottomans, you can't allocate all your troops to fighting Egypt because you have an active diplo play with Russia and have to keep your troops mobilized at the border.
It could even be extended more generally into hot/cold conflicts: e.g., if France takes the decision to expand north into the Rhine, that's not just a decision but rather a diplo play that can be stretched out for years to reflect tension between France and Belgium.
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That’s a very cool idea. If a nation backs down like this there should be a notification or popup about it for other nations too.that brings to mind a point I wish I’d made in the survey. In general it would enhance flavor a lot to have more traceability of actions or war goals (e.g. instead of France just getting a claim on Alsace after losing it, the tooltip would say “Claim after losing this state in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war).
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It all feeds in to peace deals and how the AI handles them. None of this matters too much if the AI continues to pile on war goals it never even tries to fulfill, then settles for a white peace at the end of the war, even though the war was incredibly costly.
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One thing I forgot to add in the survey: it would be really nice to have a war goal to transfer a claim to colonizable territory; in general, obtaining claims should be something that could be achieved outside scripted events, I feel (although not particularly easy, and probably tied to some sort of partition/international agreement system)
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The survey was lengthy, but ended quite abruptly. I expected it to end with some broad open questions on
1) what is missing or wrong in the interconnection between diplomacy and other systems?
My answer: lobbies absolutely don't cut it as the answer to "pops should care about foreign politics". We need government attempts to placate the masses with overseas endeavours, and we need the mechanics that make this placating possible
2) what is not done within the diplomacy itself? (There was a similar question on page one, but I didn't realise that was it, I thought it was for a more compact opinion on current mechanics, not for some big ideas)
My answer: late-game supranational organisations, like the League of Nations but not necessarily disfunctional, would be great. Perhaps even early game (as "concert of Europe" or "Monroe doctrine countries" can be interpreted this way much better than as blocs or with just infamy)
1) what is missing or wrong in the interconnection between diplomacy and other systems?
My answer: lobbies absolutely don't cut it as the answer to "pops should care about foreign politics". We need government attempts to placate the masses with overseas endeavours, and we need the mechanics that make this placating possible
2) what is not done within the diplomacy itself? (There was a similar question on page one, but I didn't realise that was it, I thought it was for a more compact opinion on current mechanics, not for some big ideas)
My answer: late-game supranational organisations, like the League of Nations but not necessarily disfunctional, would be great. Perhaps even early game (as "concert of Europe" or "Monroe doctrine countries" can be interpreted this way much better than as blocs or with just infamy)
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Feedback: The diplomacy mechanic should be much more than just "increase relations" and "decrease relations" with associated options for the maximum of each option. Start from there and see what happens!
When will this survey form be retired? I feel bad for not having played Vic3's latest couple versions so my feedback would be off. Over on Stellaris I was putting in hours every week filling each survey.
One small point on the survey: there were no questions on political lobbies, I don't believe?
I think these are a great system that should still be expanded upon in future updates.
Overall I think we have a lot of great tools and interfaces for diplomacy already; we don't need any fundamental reworks (except probably diplo plays) or major new additions. Besides, I think the ledger on the right side of the screen is already at a breaking point.
I'd much rather see improvements and content for existing mechanisms in diplomacy rather than new systems.
I think these are a great system that should still be expanded upon in future updates.
Overall I think we have a lot of great tools and interfaces for diplomacy already; we don't need any fundamental reworks (except probably diplo plays) or major new additions. Besides, I think the ledger on the right side of the screen is already at a breaking point.
I'd much rather see improvements and content for existing mechanisms in diplomacy rather than new systems.
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Filled it in but I skipped most of the written response sections because I don't have any great ideas. But, I noticed I gave a lot of answers in the more neutral-positive range (6's and 7's). Mostly because I don't have an issue with a lot of the systems mentioned, but because it generally does what it needs to do without evoking strong feelings from me.
Just saw this survey, thanks for making an effort to collect opinions about diplomacy! I appreciate that this aspect of the game is getting its due; I personally find it to be the most frustrating aspect of it and often feel like it is being neglected in community conversations in favour of more hotly debated topics like the military system.
I'll definitely take the time and make the effort to answer as many questions in detail as possible.
I'll definitely take the time and make the effort to answer as many questions in detail as possible.
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Good to know. I was a bit worried when doing the survey. Diplomacy is not soemthing i have given a lot of thought on beyond diplo plays and power blocs so I left a lot of the questions blank
I'd like to see the clustering of our response using a simple ai model, to understand how my vision is correlated with other player "feeling" of this part of the game
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Are the devs actually prepared to make changes here? This seems modeled on what Stellaris did a few weeks back, but with Stellaris we knew that the devs were willing to make massive, sweeping changes to the game, and were asking us what things we would be okay with them attacking with a hacksaw. But I have a hard time believing that, for example, there are going to be significant changes to how Power Blocs work (which is unfortunate since I think they’re the worst mechanic in the game, but such is life).
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I filled out the survey a few days ago but it got me thinking about what really is frustrating about diplomacy and the game in general
What really feels bad is this game has all these amazing systems for political and economic interaction, but at the level of the players interaction it's extremely abstracted and apolitical. Spam construction, change a law if the percentages are decent, wait for a character with a trait to appear.
What I mean by this is there is 0 Policy making. The game does not simulate government even though it could. There is no negotiation diplomatically, there is no negotiation domestically.
I wish I had a cabinet with a foreign minister, who could negotiate foreign policy with other powers over our spheres of influence.
I wish I could set a trade policy, negotiating with domestic IGs and foreign governments
I wish I could negotiate a budget within my government, and create industrial policy with subsidies and trade instead of doing state construction and selling it immediately to the private sector which makes no sense.
The game is a simulator in the sense that it has interlocking numbers creating a virtual economy, but it's not a simulation of government. Giving the entire game a feeling of an interesting mechanical toy, but not a real political and economic simulation.
We need the level of player interaction to be one of political negotiations and tough compromises. Rn it has many mechanics that could easily do that but at the level of the player the mechanics become extremely simple.
Keeping cohesion in your bloc up is one of the worst examples. Instead of actually engaging in an interesting negotiation and settlement of various political interests within the bloc. You just level up bloc tiers and slowly clamp down on autonomy.
A huge fault of this is the commitment to 0 railroading of any kind leading there to be 0 events or characters that are actually interesting. Everything is a generic event or a lazy journal entry. No characters have any "character" and you can make marx or Tubman a fascist because they are just a placeholder with a name for memes.
We need text boxes, we need lore, we need events that give us real political nuance and drama. And we need policy making and government simulation, not just hitting buttons on a calculator
What really feels bad is this game has all these amazing systems for political and economic interaction, but at the level of the players interaction it's extremely abstracted and apolitical. Spam construction, change a law if the percentages are decent, wait for a character with a trait to appear.
What I mean by this is there is 0 Policy making. The game does not simulate government even though it could. There is no negotiation diplomatically, there is no negotiation domestically.
I wish I had a cabinet with a foreign minister, who could negotiate foreign policy with other powers over our spheres of influence.
I wish I could set a trade policy, negotiating with domestic IGs and foreign governments
I wish I could negotiate a budget within my government, and create industrial policy with subsidies and trade instead of doing state construction and selling it immediately to the private sector which makes no sense.
The game is a simulator in the sense that it has interlocking numbers creating a virtual economy, but it's not a simulation of government. Giving the entire game a feeling of an interesting mechanical toy, but not a real political and economic simulation.
We need the level of player interaction to be one of political negotiations and tough compromises. Rn it has many mechanics that could easily do that but at the level of the player the mechanics become extremely simple.
Keeping cohesion in your bloc up is one of the worst examples. Instead of actually engaging in an interesting negotiation and settlement of various political interests within the bloc. You just level up bloc tiers and slowly clamp down on autonomy.
A huge fault of this is the commitment to 0 railroading of any kind leading there to be 0 events or characters that are actually interesting. Everything is a generic event or a lazy journal entry. No characters have any "character" and you can make marx or Tubman a fascist because they are just a placeholder with a name for memes.
We need text boxes, we need lore, we need events that give us real political nuance and drama. And we need policy making and government simulation, not just hitting buttons on a calculator
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