What's going wrong with the diplo play/war system that's leading to constant world wars?

[Desseabar]

We know that the diplo play/war system has an ongoing issue combining trigger-happiness and overzealousness to deploy troops: this results in eg Britain sending its entire army and colonial force to a 2-mile wide front in Benin for irrelevant war goals, causing massive world wars.

So: what are the issues that aren't being modeled properly in game that are leading to these issues? I'm not trying to propose solutions but more to identify where things aren't fully working. Some of these are already publicly on the roadmap, but I think more broadly this is looking at some of the war/diplo system's shortcomings today.

Political:

• Internal politics do not determine foreign policy. There is no mechanism where parliaments/congresses vote whether or not to declare war.
• Internal politics/legitimacy are not affected by war outcomes or starts.
• Internal politics do not weight war goal value vs cost in manpower and gold: e.g., your people should be upset if you send 50k troops to die of malaria in the congo for a protectorate.
• War support starts at the same level and declines at the same rate for all conflicts; the people of a country should care more about losing their core territory or being annexed than they care about a minor war goal overseas.

Diplomatic:

• All war goals are all-in, and pre-determined. This means that the AI doesn't really distinguish the value of sending troops for regime change vs. something else.
• The RNG of diplomacy + war goals means that the AI has to be hard-coded to know what it cares about; e.g., the US doesn't balance the pros and cons of buying/conquering Cuba, or Britain doesn't have a geopolitical understanding why they would care about protecting the Ottoman market besides being coded to be friendly.
• There is no "limited support" option, where a GP can lend their prestige or military support to a given conflict. This is very visible in the Ottoman-Egyptian War, which devolves into a world war every time because Britain and Russia have no way to treat it as a proxy war.
• There is no "casus belli" or "war justification." This means any war can be declared anywhere, at any time: during the Victorian era, most wars had a nominal, legalistic cause (e.g., accusing the enemy side of firing on your troops, intervening in a succession crisis, diplomatic insults, etc). Making wars more 'opportunistic' could reduce the misc wars and allow countries more options to deescalate.
• Diplo plays are very long and travel times very short: this means you can never stage a surprise war or surprise with a new front (e.g., during the Crimean War, Russia had to station large numbers of troops along the Prussian/Austrian borders in case they joined the conflict).
• War goals and sides-joining are very rigid and there is no form of negotiation.
• The new default humiliation war goal is a massive improvement, but we still have no way to negotiate backing down from a war.
• There's no way to "sweeten the pot" to accelerate war acceptance (e.g., the US paid Spain for its territories at the end of the Spanish-American War)

Logistical:

• Supply is not a sufficient concern in overseas battles nor overground (eg, it frankly should not be possible to maintain a supply line through Sikkim to Beijing)
• Troop movement, especially early game, is very quick, so there is no strategy of placing your troops. This means eg Britain doesn't have to worry about stationing troops in Africa, because they can move troops from HK or London to Nigeria faster than a diplo play can end.
• There is no concept of trained or semi-trained "reserve" troops between standing armies and conscripts, despite this being the backbone of most major wars especially in Europe. This throws off the soldier:workforce balance (e.g., semi-trained reserves who are working the fields/factories) and helps make the different army models feel samey.

Warfare/battle:

• The player has little transparency on terrain, because it's province-level while the player interacts at a state-level. E.g., for Afghanistan, a player cannot optimize around chokepoints or defending in the mountains.
• Combat width tends towards being very wide; eg, a 50k vs 50k battalion battle in isolated jungles or mountains.
• Occupation is set to a cap of 4 battles for 100% occupation. This means that smaller guerrilla wars (eg Rif War, Circassian War, Chinese uprisings in the hinterlands, colonial uprisings) that lasted decades are always resolved quickly and easily. Allowing these small wars to take longer would make these wars more impactful. (The Circassian War is the worst offender here imo; it's telling that it requires a 20 year truce to avoid Circassia being captured immediately).
  • More broadly: wars with tiny powers are too quick and easy. Wars in mountains, jungles, and deserts should be a slog to win, even with superior technology.
• There is no concept of occupation/garrisoning as a cost: e.g., it should take thousands of troops to successfully garrison an entire state.
• There is no distinction between 'types' of occupation, either; e.g., the British occupation of key strategic forts in the first Opium War was very different from the Union capture of key Confederate cities like New Orleans, Richmond, and Nashville.
  • As a sub-bullet: love the direction of new occupation/devastation impacts even if it needs more balance. Another issue is that all states are "the same" with a level 1-3 textile mill, tooling workshop, and furniture factory. For the Union, cutting off Richmond was devastating because it cut off most of the Confederate industry, especially including munitions: greater state specialization would tie in well with the new military strategic objectives.
• There is no strategy about soldier location outside of frontlines: the combination of long diplo plays, rapid travel, and soldiers having nothing to do in peacetime means that you don't have to think about troop stationing. Whereas eg Britain had to keep a contingent of troops in its territories around the world to defend them in case of attack, or eg Prussia infamously being defeated by Napoleon because they had all their troops in Poland to guard against an uprising there.

And maybe a few specific outcomes in the game that I think should be "guideposts" in the game:

• It should be very difficult for Russia to conquer Circassia and should be a decades-long war.
• Russia turns Persia into a protectorate nearly every game, which should be extremely difficult (given supply lines through the Caucasus and the difficulty of subjugating an enormous country)
• Egyptian-Ottoman War should not break out into multiple world wars every game, and the Ottomans should be able to retake the levant+Hedjaz+Crete in one single war.
• Unreformed Qing should not take protectorates in the Americas or Europe. If that is feasible, something is going wrong.

 

[Metz]

War should probably be split into two:

Declare War - like in other games where you instantly are at war, but this should give you twice the infamy. Other countries can intervene in the war depending if its unbalanced (like in EU4) or if they were already looking for a reason to attack you.

Threaten War - works like declaring war currently, where you are pressing demands hoping to get them without a war and giving time to others to intervene.

Regarding occupation, there could be a reserve pool which is where troops are drawn to replenish casualties or to occupy states. You could probably give barracks an additional PM regarding reserve sizes.

 

[Ajax1k]

And maybe a few specific outcomes in the game that I think should be "guideposts" in the game:

• It should be very difficult for Russia to conquer Circassia and should be a decades-long war.
• Russia turns Persia into a protectorate nearly every game, which should be extremely difficult (given supply lines through the Caucasus and the difficulty of subjugating an enormous country)
• Egyptian-Ottoman War should not break out into multiple world wars every game, and the Ottomans should be able to retake the levant+Hedjaz+Crete in one single war.
• Unreformed Qing should not take protectorates in the Americas or Europe. If that is feasible, something is going wrong.

You wrote everything very well, and I completely agree with you. I would also add that Brazil’s war against the rebellious provinces of Rio Grande and Grão-Pará should be much longer and more difficult — in reality, these uprisings lasted until 1840.

 

[Falrinn]

Paradox do make mention of limited wars being something they are interested in implimenting which could resolve a lot of the big bullet points.

I would probably suggest two main changes.

The first is that wars would be limited to relevant strategic regions by default. Expanding a war beyond those regions would be possible, but trigger a diplomatic incident.

The second is that there would be multiple levels of involvement. Financial Aide, Material Shipments, Military Involvement, and Full Commitment. The AI would very readily provide financial aide for no other reason than to annoy their rivals, while full commitment would generally only happen due to treaty obligations.

Also of note, Military Involvement would cap mobilization at 50% and disallow expanding the conflict to new strategic regions entirely. Support Independence treaties would normally use this level of involvement.

 

[strattonthebard]

I think making war goals cost more infamy and maneuvers the more strategic regions away from the original incident they are would be a big help. It shouldn't be impossible to push for a war goal on the other side of the world but it should definitely be more frowned upon and diplomatically difficult. But it would be real annoying when dealing with a state that say, straddles two strategic regions, so I think having the cost increase be relatively low for adjacent strategic regions and then increase as you get further away would be best.

 

[Falrinn]

My thinking is that "relevant" strategic regions would be defined fairly generously. A war of independence from an Overlord for example would include every strategic region the rebelling subject occupies AND every strategic region adjacent to one of those regions.

The goal would be to prevent say, Britain from invading France because they are backing opposite sides of a war in South America.

 

[Kabian]

We know that the diplo play/war system has an ongoing issue combining trigger-happiness and overzealousness to deploy troops: this results in eg Britain sending its entire army and colonial force to a 2-mile wide front in Benin for irrelevant war goals, causing massive world wars.

So: what are the issues that aren't being modeled properly in game that are leading to these issues? I'm not trying to propose solutions but more to identify where things aren't fully working. Some of these are already publicly on the roadmap, but I think more broadly this is looking at some of the war/diplo system's shortcomings today.

Political:

• Internal politics do not determine foreign policy. There is no mechanism where parliaments/congresses vote whether or not to declare war.
• Internal politics/legitimacy are not affected by war outcomes or starts.
• Internal politics do not weight war goal value vs cost in manpower and gold: e.g., your people should be upset if you send 50k troops to die of malaria in the congo for a protectorate.
• War support starts at the same level and declines at the same rate for all conflicts; the people of a country should care more about losing their core territory or being annexed than they care about a minor war goal overseas.

Diplomatic:

• All war goals are all-in, and pre-determined. This means that the AI doesn't really distinguish the value of sending troops for regime change vs. something else.
• The RNG of diplomacy + war goals means that the AI has to be hard-coded to know what it cares about; e.g., the US doesn't balance the pros and cons of buying/conquering Cuba, or Britain doesn't have a geopolitical understanding why they would care about protecting the Ottoman market besides being coded to be friendly.
• There is no "limited support" option, where a GP can lend their prestige or military support to a given conflict. This is very visible in the Ottoman-Egyptian War, which devolves into a world war every time because Britain and Russia have no way to treat it as a proxy war.
• There is no "casus belli" or "war justification." This means any war can be declared anywhere, at any time: during the Victorian era, most wars had a nominal, legalistic cause (e.g., accusing the enemy side of firing on your troops, intervening in a succession crisis, diplomatic insults, etc). Making wars more 'opportunistic' could reduce the misc wars and allow countries more options to deescalate.
• Diplo plays are very long and travel times very short: this means you can never stage a surprise war or surprise with a new front (e.g., during the Crimean War, Russia had to station large numbers of troops along the Prussian/Austrian borders in case they joined the conflict).
• War goals and sides-joining are very rigid and there is no form of negotiation.
• The new default humiliation war goal is a massive improvement, but we still have no way to negotiate backing down from a war.
• There's no way to "sweeten the pot" to accelerate war acceptance (e.g., the US paid Spain for its territories at the end of the Spanish-American War)

Logistical:

• Supply is not a sufficient concern in overseas battles nor overground (eg, it frankly should not be possible to maintain a supply line through Sikkim to Beijing)
• Troop movement, especially early game, is very quick, so there is no strategy of placing your troops. This means eg Britain doesn't have to worry about stationing troops in Africa, because they can move troops from HK or London to Nigeria faster than a diplo play can end.
• There is no concept of trained or semi-trained "reserve" troops between standing armies and conscripts, despite this being the backbone of most major wars especially in Europe. This throws off the soldier:workforce balance (e.g., semi-trained reserves who are working the fields/factories) and helps make the different army models feel samey.

Warfare/battle:

• The player has little transparency on terrain, because it's province-level while the player interacts at a state-level. E.g., for Afghanistan, a player cannot optimize around chokepoints or defending in the mountains.
• Combat width tends towards being very wide; eg, a 50k vs 50k battalion battle in isolated jungles or mountains.
• Occupation is set to a cap of 4 battles for 100% occupation. This means that smaller guerrilla wars (eg Rif War, Circassian War, Chinese uprisings in the hinterlands, colonial uprisings) that lasted decades are always resolved quickly and easily. Allowing these small wars to take longer would make these wars more impactful. (The Circassian War is the worst offender here imo; it's telling that it requires a 20 year truce to avoid Circassia being captured immediately).
  • More broadly: wars with tiny powers are too quick and easy. Wars in mountains, jungles, and deserts should be a slog to win, even with superior technology.
• There is no concept of occupation/garrisoning as a cost: e.g., it should take thousands of troops to successfully garrison an entire state.
• There is no distinction between 'types' of occupation, either; e.g., the British occupation of key strategic forts in the first Opium War was very different from the Union capture of key Confederate cities like New Orleans, Richmond, and Nashville.
  • As a sub-bullet: love the direction of new occupation/devastation impacts even if it needs more balance. Another issue is that all states are "the same" with a level 1-3 textile mill, tooling workshop, and furniture factory. For the Union, cutting off Richmond was devastating because it cut off most of the Confederate industry, especially including munitions: greater state specialization would tie in well with the new military strategic objectives.
• There is no strategy about soldier location outside of frontlines: the combination of long diplo plays, rapid travel, and soldiers having nothing to do in peacetime means that you don't have to think about troop stationing. Whereas eg Britain had to keep a contingent of troops in its territories around the world to defend them in case of attack, or eg Prussia infamously being defeated by Napoleon because they had all their troops in Poland to guard against an uprising there.

And maybe a few specific outcomes in the game that I think should be "guideposts" in the game:

• It should be very difficult for Russia to conquer Circassia and should be a decades-long war.
• Russia turns Persia into a protectorate nearly every game, which should be extremely difficult (given supply lines through the Caucasus and the difficulty of subjugating an enormous country)
• Egyptian-Ottoman War should not break out into multiple world wars every game, and the Ottomans should be able to retake the levant+Hedjaz+Crete in one single war.
• Unreformed Qing should not take protectorates in the Americas or Europe. If that is feasible, something is going wrong.

There is also very little disparity between tech, generals, advisors and tactics.

Egypt steamrolled twice the ottomans in the first and second egypt-ottoman war thanks to superior technology, training, generals, and their own french advisors.

Meanwhile, ingame, its practically imposible to create tech disparity (another reason why qing has to have an artificial huge debuff to its military).

 

[Desseabar]

The first is that wars would be limited to relevant strategic regions by default. Expanding a war beyond those regions would be possible, but trigger a diplomatic incident.

I don't really agree with this because once a war is declared between two GPs, it becomes pretty all-in. The Crimean War had 3 land fronts, naval war in the Pacific, and a blockade in the Baltic; if France and the UK went to war, it seems inevitable that it would be a global war across their colonies, which we saw during the Napoleonic Wars. The goal should be preventing war in the first place and making war score tick down more realistically.

The second is that there would be multiple levels of involvement. Financial Aide, Material Shipments, Military Involvement, and Full Commitment. The AI would very readily provide financial aide for no other reason than to annoy their rivals, while full commitment would generally only happen due to treaty obligations.

Also of note, Military Involvement would cap mobilization at 50% and disallow expanding the conflict to new strategic regions entirely. Support Independence treaties would normally use this level of involvement.

Strongly agree. There's already a lot of individual mechanics to represent support (military assistance, bankrolling, etc), but the AI doesn't have a way to tie those mechanics into its support. Formalizing a connection there would be great: maybe upgrading sways to use treaties could help.

E.g., if you're Bukhara and worried about getting gobbled up by Russia, you probably can't convince Britain to send troops, but you can offer a very generous trade deal and in exchange Britain might send a combo of diplomatic pressure and war materiel.

The issue with military involvement might be if you have multiple wars ongoing, since I don't think the game can really distinguish troops mobilized for one or the other? But I like the general idea. Maybe a concept of "domestic support" for a war, and the higher the support, the more men you can send to the meatgrinder. So while Britain probably can't mobilize 100k men in an unpopular annexation of Uruguay without a major radicals hit, Uruguay can mobilize everybody to defend their existence.

 

[elbiotipo]

I think there should be different types of conflict than just "war". There should be colonial conflicts, that should NOT involve the entirety of the nation's military, just a contingent, and then expeditions similar to the the expeditionary forces in HOI4 to intervene in conflicts you don't have a direct stake on, and so on. Of course if your core territory, your allies or other such interests are threatened, the war should be at full scale, but otherwise, you shouldn't be able to commit your entire military and economy towards regime change in the Ionian Islands.

The player should be able to escalation these "expeditions" to bigger war commitments but to a cost. Pretty much all the wars of the era involved a conversation of "should we really spend so much in X war?", total war was really a thing that came much later.

Also, a big part of the army and navy of colonial nations should be involved into "pacification". Colonial institutions should require to have a big chunk of the army assigned to them the stronger they are and the more colonies (and protectorates, subjects, etc.) you have.

Escalation should be the name of the game, basically, and each step of escalation should be harder and with consequences.

There is also very little disparity between tech, generals, advisors and tactics.

Egypt steamrolled twice the ottomans in the first and second egypt-ottoman war thanks to superior technology, training, generals, and their own french advisors.

Meanwhile, ingame, its practically imposible to create tech disparity (another reason why qing has to have an artificial huge debuff to its military).

This too, there is little about the technological and organization disparity between colonial powers and other nations that made much of this era. Even small colonial punitive expeditions should hold their own against numerically superior forces. Similarly, countries that upgraded their tech and military like Japan, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc. should become the big guys in their own neighborhood.

 

[strattonthebard]

The Crimean War had 3 land fronts, naval war in the Pacific, and a blockade in the Baltic; if France and the UK went to war, it seems inevitable that it would be a global war across their colonies, which we saw during the Napoleonic Wars. The goal should be preventing war in the first place and making war score tick down more realistically.

In terms of where it was fought, yes, but the ultimate resolution was limited to the Balkans and adjacent areas where the conflict began