Ideas on how to limit great wars over nothing

[bizkit]

Great powers actually don't give a shit about the conflict in question wherever it is in the distant world. They just wanna be dick to the other great power and look for an excuse to fight them. Like Britain and France hate each other no matter what, and Britain will jump into the fight with France who's targeted by an African tribe, Britain doesn't care about the tribe itself, they just wanna smash France.

War needs to be more costly
War losses need to cause crazy number of radicals, especially if it's not a defensive war
AI needs to learn and adapt these while deciding to go to war

 

[FranklyJustNess]

As some people mentioned - the problem isn't, that wars are not costly enough, they absolutely are, as they kill your pops, cost a ton, and are a huge risk with joining a conflict letting enemy side add wargoals to you, and occupy your land. AI already doesn't care. They will bleed and bleed just so Ionian Isles adopts State Religion. You can stack more and more costs onto war, and they will just eat it all.

What I am thinking is getting a proper system of wargoals, as even now the Devs have in their list of things to do, and to introduce some kind of escalation value to each AI. They could look at the wargoals and decide how much they care - return Alscae-Loraine would probably be a high value wargoal, defending yourself against conquest of an incorporated state too, but taking some colonial thing? Not really much of a much.

This value would then determine how much of their force they are willing to commit, and if they see themselves losing or the enemy mobilizing heavier, the value will go up. So maybe you could see a major war between France and GB over a small colonial thing, but it would start with relatively few troops.

 

[Metz]

As some people mentioned - the problem isn't, that wars are not costly enough, they absolutely are, as they kill your pops, cost a ton, and are a huge risk with joining a conflict letting enemy side add wargoals to you, and occupy your land. AI already doesn't care. They will bleed and bleed just so Ionian Isles adopts State Religion. You can stack more and more costs onto war, and they will just eat it all.

What I am thinking is getting a proper system of wargoals, as even now the Devs have in their list of things to do, and to introduce some kind of escalation value to each AI. They could look at the wargoals and decide how much they care - return Alscae-Loraine would probably be a high value wargoal, defending yourself against conquest of an incorporated state too, but taking some colonial thing? Not really much of a much.

This value would then determine how much of their force they are willing to commit, and if they see themselves losing or the enemy mobilizing heavier, the value will go up. So maybe you could see a major war between France and GB over a small colonial thing, but it would start with relatively few troops.

Also a way to prevent over commitment to a small distant war. Maybe some sort of war goal value calculation whereby if you exceed it in terms of costs, your war score starts ticking down? So sending 100,000 soldiers to get stuck naval invading Madagascar would decrease your war score by a lot if the war goal is to get France to give you parts of Ivory Coast. Fighting over the objective within that strategic region should be the emphasis. Countries should also know when its a lost cause rather than wait for the war score to tick to -100. Failed naval invasions should reduce a lot of war score.

 

[Desseabar]

Maybe wars should be limited to fighting in the strategic region(s) where the wargoals are. There could be an extra infamy cost when adding a wargoal in a different strategic region. Naval combat would either be always enabled or count as a region for this.
Adding a new region could also allow countries with an interest there to join the play, giving more incentives not to add more than necessary. And declaring a war on the region with the capital should propably mean a total war and cost more imfamy.
There are problems with edge cases, what happens if a front reaches the border of the region the war is in? But it would limit colonial wars to the colonies and maybe the seas.

I don't think that's really addressing the actual issues, though:

The Crimean War is the clearest example: in addition to Crimea, there were two land borders with the Ottomans, a naval blockade in the Baltic, and even fights on Russian forts in Hawaii. Once war is declared, the entire world becomes a battlefield.

The big issues are the propensity towards mega-war instead of diplomacy, and the lack of mechanisms/AI understanding for war prioritization.

E.g., Russia should garrison troops in St. Petersburg to prevent a British naval invasion, and at the same time the British should see the garrison and decide not to naval invade.

 

[Jamey]

The Crimean War is the clearest example: in addition to Crimea, there were two land borders with the Ottomans, a naval blockade in the Baltic, and even fights on Russian forts in Hawaii. Once war is declared, the entire world becomes a battlefield.

The problem is that everything turns into the Crimean War or bigger.

The clash of the titans Great Power war should be the exception, not the rule.

In my most recent game, every conflict in the last 50 years or so turned into Britain, Germany, and USA (me) versus France, Austria, and Russia. That’s all 6 GPs in a 3v3 world war. It got tiresome, especially because virtually every war was provoked by the France/Austria/Russia coalition with zero chance of them being able to win (they were inferior in both quantity and quality).

Really, if France wants to try to take an African Protectorate from GB, they should have a limited skirmish in Africa and it shouldn’t be a world war.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

For the second point, I'd argue that's actually a big part of the issue. If we're going hands-off with moving men around on the map, we should get depth elsewhere. Plenty of prime ministers or kings were ousted thanks to unpopular wars. There should be more depth around maintaining your both domestic and international political support, as well as keeping your economy running. Getting a million men in uniforms necessarily means some crops are going to wilt in the fields and some factories will have labor shortages.

Yeah, I want more to do on the "home front" during war than we have, like rationing changing how much pops are even allowed to buy of certain goods and probably for mobilizing the army (especially conscripts) to have a much harsher impact on prices for basic things like food, silk, liquor, etc.

 

[Metz]

Yeah, I want more to do on the "home front" during war than we have, like rationing changing how much pops are even allowed to buy of certain goods and probably for mobilizing the army (especially conscripts) to have a much harsher impact on prices for basic things like food, silk, liquor, etc.

What is missing is some sort of policy system that are like laws but a lite version. Occupation policies, cultural suppression policies to encourage emigration, consumption policies (promote the consumption or decreased consumption of some goods over others), etc. Similar to lobbies but it’s the government telling the pops it’s preferences instead of IG telling the government.

 

[KopiG]

One issue that has persisted since the game was released is that of great powers getting involved in wars over nothing, especially distant wars. I think there are a few ways this could be solved:

1) Have wars reduce IG opinion of the government, the stronger the opponent the lower the IG opinion. Rivalry halves the decline in opinion. The opinion is restored post war if won and the negative opinion is halved if lost (not factoring in occupation hurting IG opinion).

Just no. Bad idea.

2) Distance needs to be more of a thing in wars. Fighting a war in a strategic region that is not of your interest should further decrease IG opinion if you are involved in a diplomatic issue.

I agree, its weird that even millions of troops can move across easily without extra cost. What is this obsession with IG group opinion? No again.

3) Wars over returning states should not grant a reduction in IG opinion once nationalism is researched.

No

4) Add a decree option to promote war propaganda (mass communication and radio help reduce the IG opinion decrease).

No. Authority is already bloated as hell with now with the companies.

5) Censorship and especially Secret Police help reduce the IG opinion decrease penalty.

As I said I am just completely against this idea.

6) Disproportional over-mobilization (lets say over 300% the size of the enemy army) adds to IG opinion decrease, so you don't end up seeing the AI sending in 100,000 troops to fight an enemy with 10,000 troops. This should help slightly tilt the army focus into quality over quantity.

No, we arent in a democractic modern 21st century.

7) Conscription should also decrease IG opinion, only be used during emergencies such as direct wars with neighboring rivals.

No

8) Besides strategic interest, lets great powers have up to 3 vital interest allocation slots by the end game. These vital interests should take longer to be established than strategic interests. Wars over these vital interests cancel out most of the drop in IG opinion. Only states near your directly controlled states and states with goods you severely lack can have vital interests. Event chains can also grant you vital interests. This should allow Britain to justify war with the Boer republics, France to justify war in Algeria, and Italy to justify war in Tunisia without incurring large drops in IG opinion.

No.

 

[Desseabar]

One reason why the game devolves into so many world wars is that it is far too generous with casus belli and allowing countries to declare war.

In most other PDX games, declaring war requires a buildup: there must be a specific claim, or otherwise you must invest time and money into creating a justification.
Instead, with Vic3, on day one you can declare a war of conquest anywhere in the world, against anybody. At any point, every GP is allowed to declare war on every other GP for a dozen reasons, as well as joining in on wars.

This is somewhat addressed via diplo plays, which strike an unhappy compromise between "too short to represent justifying for a war" and "too long to just be a declaration of war."

Most wars during the Victorian era - even wars of conquest - were careful to justify and create legal reasons. A few examples:

• First Opium War was a reaction to the Qing destroying 'British property' of confiscated opium
• First Anglo-Sikh War was a response to a (perceived) incursion of Sikh troops into Indian territory
• Franco-Prussian War was a response to a perceived diplomatic insult
• 1st Sardinian-Austrian war was triggered by military exercises on the border, with Sardinia refusing to back down and baiting an Austrian attack
• The Spanish-American War was a response to a US ship exploding in a Spanish harbor
• The Mexican-American War was a territorial dispute over Texas
• Succession dispute interventions (Zanzibar, Afghanistan, West Africa and countless other examples)

Put another way: wars of conquest tended to be opportunistic: escalating tensions until something snaps, then declaring war and taking territory/protectorates as the spoils of war.

I think there are two ways that this can be better represented in-game:

• Most offensive diplo demands should be removed, with conquer state and demand protectorate as the worst offenders. Declaring a brazen war of aggression should make you a borderline pariah in nearly every case; exceptions should remain for returning a claimed state or some flavorful CB (e.g., Sokoto should be able to declare a Jihad on their neighbors).
• More wars should be instigated via events: e.g., France gets the notification that Dai Nam persecuted missionaries and therefore gets the choice to declare war (in which they can add their conquest objectives).

 

[47pik]

I don't really think it's fixable until a much broader rework of the diplomatic play and the Concert of Europe and some kind of global tension buildup to WW1. Hopefully next year alongside the naval rework? Navy would have been a large part of this.

 

[numerobis]

Great powers beating each other up over minor slights seems like how it normally worked in reality. I mean WW1 was sparked by an assassination, after which point there wasn't really much to fight over since the victim was quite dead.

 

[strattonthebard]

Great powers beating each other up over minor slights seems like how it normally worked in reality. I mean WW1 was sparked by an assassination, after which point there wasn't really much to fight over since the victim was quite dead.

World War I is quite famous for being an unusual conflict. In the game's timeline there were only a handful of conflicts in which great powers directly opposed each other. Really just the Crimean War, Italian Wars of Independence, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, and then World War I. The whole idea of balance of power politics was to prevent massive, expensive, and destructive wars between the great European powers, and it almost kind of worked.