ENFORCED PEACE DISCUSSION THREAD (Full Version)

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Marshal Villars -> ENFORCED PEACE DISCUSSION THREAD (9/9/2009 4:33:16 PM)

Just as the "Quick Surrender Discussion Thread" I have just put up, this is the "Enforced Peace Discussion Thread". Its purpose is to discuss all of the advantages and disadvantages of the enforced peace following wars in CoG:EE and perhaps develop "better" solutions, recognizing that CoG:EE has already managed to spark the imagination and fascination of all the people who have posted in this forum for the last year, while working to develop an option/options which reduce room for any abuse in PBEM mode or single player mode.

Having said that, I believe one loophole/problem with the current 18 month SOLID enforced peace in CoG:EE in which the model dramatically departed from reality was graphically demonstrated in a PBEM in which I am currently playing France. Britain had been at war with France for over a year, and as it seemed that Prussia was contemplating a declaration of war on France which would embroil me in a war against two powers, I decided to surrender to Britain before Prussia had a chance to declare war on me and ally with Britain--in the process making it impossible to surrender to just one of the two. I submitted my turn, hoping I could beat the Prussian alliance to Britain and the declaration of war to the punch. When the turn's results came back, I discovered that I had everything had gone as planned and that Prussia now stood between France, and her powerful Russian ally. British troops would not be able to fight me for 18 months, but they would be available against other nations allied to me. Additionally, in the mean time I would have access through British German protectorates by violating their neutrality so I could potentially launch my campaign against Prussia.

Just to let you know, it is my basic design philosophy that in any psychological model, there be no "hard limits". That is, there is nothing magical about 18 months which makes people not declare war in month 17, but they can feel free to plunge in on day one of 18 months. However, please note that many games which model the era use such methods (such as the famous Empires in Arms), so it is not a weakness of the WCS model I am calling out here. What I am doing is saying it is time for somewhat of a revolution in computer games dealing with grand strategy, and CoG:EE seems to be the perfect system to do it with. The fact that the German army was reconsidering remobilizing against France after the war of 1870/71 when it appeared that France might not comply with some of the terms of the treaty imposed on it struck me as very interesting--though it is also interesting that Bismark allowed the French to increase army numbers over those agreed to in the treaty after Prussia realized that without an army, France was at risk of collapsing into revolution as a people who had felt they had been let down by the government took to the streets and almost toppled the government.

Just recently, I had foreseen such issues as developed between France, Prussia, Great Britain, and Russia, and had started to develop the notion that nations should be able to go to war again whenever they like...not when they get a green light.

In the example above, Britain, though it had not declared an alliance with Prussia, may feel that Prussia is a key element in their foreign policy and must be saved at all costs in the face of a combined French and Russian attack which could have taken place at any time. Other examples include the

OPTION A: Currently players can mouse over the relations strip above the control panel where they are told PRECISELY how many game turns of enforced peace remain before they can go to war again. I recommend that instead of displaying how many months remain that the display now show how many glory and national morale points a new declaration of war will cost if war is declared anew that turn. On the turn immediately following the surrender, this may be 500 glory points with a 150 cost in national morale. The following turn the cost could drop to 450 glory and 130 national morale. These costs would continue to drop each turn, until by turn 18, they would be zero. This would allow the player to decide on the risk/reward analysis. If the losing power violated the neutrality of the power dictating the peace, these costs would immediately go to zero.

OPTION B: There is an enforced peace as there currently is. The enforced peace is cancelled, allowing the winning power to declare war on the losing power again IF any one of the following conditions are met:
1. If the losing power violates the neutrality of the winning power(s) or their protectorates (however, another variation may allow for violation of protectorate neutrality)
2. If the losing power declares war on any major nation or on any minor nation.

OPTION C: A mix of Options A and B

I would be interested in hearing player's thoughts on this issue.




Marshal Villars -> CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/9/2009 4:34:02 PM)

I will post summaries and key quotes of ideas on this concept from various player here.

1. (From Montesaurus): I don't think a "glory" point penalty would suffice, for some players. There are always those loose cannons who do not care whether they win or not, but how much illogical damage they can cause! I like the enforced peace aspects of the game, but then there should be certain causes that would give a playar a "cassus belli". I prefer a system that enforces peace, with the exception that when someone violates your neutrality it would give you a cassus belli against that party. I think that might be an easier change for the designer to incorporte also!
(http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2139858&mpage=20&key=�)
2. (from Mus): What we need is the ability to lay out clauses inside the surrender document (enforced peace with X, respect neutrality of Y, etc.) that if violated immediately result in the canceling of the 18 month enforced peace and a CB for the offended victor. Perhaps the VPs should even automatically allocated so that a certain amount of the VPs go towards these kinds of specific clauses, with only a fraction going toward the more traditional demands, give me money, territory, reduce military readiness, raise feudal level, yada yada yada.
(http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2139858&mpage=20&key=�)



Anthropoid -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/10/2009 12:03:38 AM)

Mus Idea #2 seems the most "realistic" but also probably the most complicated to implement in terms of game engine?

As it stands the "clause" system is a huge improvement on what most games have. But 18 months of enforced peace does seem kinda artificial.



Marshal Villars -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/10/2009 8:18:10 PM)

This thread may not be as interesting to people as the "quick surrender thread", but as Mus pointed out, one reason people do take quick surrenders is to get breathing room to reorganize and rebuild their armies and isolate others. So, these problems are actually intertwined.

What if CoG:EE were using Option A above, with the following twist: IF you surrendered to someone and they chose to go to war with you again before the 18 month period expired, there would be a chance (growing the more quickly they re-declared war) that you would gain all of the benefits of being in a state of total war? (However, the problem with that would be then they might as well declare total war on you! Unless you only got SOME of the benefits of "total war")



Mus -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/10/2009 11:42:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

What if CoG:EE were using Option A above, with the following twist: IF you surrendered to someone and they chose to go to war with you again before the 18 month period expired, there would be a chance (growing the more quickly they re-declared war) that you would gain all of the benefits of being in a state of total war? (However, the problem with that would be then they might as well declare total war on you! Unless you only got SOME of the benefits of "total war")


If the defender was receiving the total war benefits but still had the possibility of surrendering (unlike in an actual total war), there would still be a point to this kind of aggression versus declaring actual total war, because actual total war requires you to take every single province of the target nation in order to win.

Aggression above a certain threshold should probably provide total war benefits as well. If the quick surrender situation is fixed such that crippling damage will result from 3-4 nations declaring war on a country simultaneously the attack represents nearly the same kind of existential threat and some similar benefit should be gained by the defender

Benefits from the manual:

A nation targeted
by Total War:
»»does not pay Upkeep costs for units
»»loses only 1/3x the normal National Morale for losing a battle
»»gains 2x the normal National Morale for winning a battle
»»receives additional guerilla support from its populace, and
»»has improving Attitude with AI-controlled nations (see the Attitude
section below).

IF this kind of boost to "put upon" countries proved too overpowered maybe half benefits like 1/2 upkeep, lose only 2/3 NM for losing battle, gains 1.5x NM for winning, etc., would work.

The big danger with "Option A" is that you would see a LOT more of instances of large nations and coalitions of nations grind down adversaries to nothing in ceaseless wars that is completely inappropriate.



Marshal Villars -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/11/2009 8:30:18 PM)

Thinking about this problem a lot today, I think perhaps a simple solution would be to simply make it so that any nation which surrenders to other nations voids the enforced peace if it (the surrendering nation) declares war on ANY nation after the defeat--large or small. That would allow a player to not be mauled by others if he decided to behave himself during the peace. And it would allow a nation to redeclare war if a nation it just defeated started gobbling up minor neutrals between them.

Example: France and Prussia face off across neutral Germany in a 1792 scenario. For whatever reason Britain is not terribly active in Germany. Seeing danger to his German aspirations when Prussia declares war on and defeats Hesse, France declares war on Prussia to stop the Prussian expansion. The way CoG:EE is now, it might not be a bad strategy for Prussia to take a quick surrender knowing that they can happily go on snatching up territories in Germany (except for perhaps the ONE which France can protect with an overly expensive "guarantee neutrality" clause) and the French can do nothing but engage in a race to take the most. I have no problem believing that in a situation where Prussia simply went on rolling through Germany that it could lead to war again. There is no hard, fast rule of international law which prevents a nation which won a war from going to war again. And even if there were a "law", when was the last time that international "law" was unbreakable. Though the wars of the late 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries did have "rules", the rules were--on occasion broken. Believe me. All of the reading I did in the last 4 months showed me that many of my assumptions had been wrong.

NOTE: THIS KIND OF RULE WOULD ALSO REDUCE THE TEMPTATION FOR QUICK SURRENDERS!!!! Because you would be forced to sit out 18 months of war. You couldn't surrender to someone just to isolate another opponent and go to war with him (possibly a friend of the people who defeated you--even if not an open ally!)



Anthropoid -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/11/2009 9:38:16 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

Thinking about this problem a lot today, I think perhaps a simple solution would be to simply make it so that any nation which surrenders to other nations voids the enforced peace if it (the surrendering nation) declares war on ANY nation after the defeat--large or small. That would allow a player to not be mauled by others if he decided to behave himself during the peace. And it would allow a nation to redeclare war if a nation it just defeated started gobbling up minor neutrals between them.

Example: France and Prussia face off across neutral Germany in a 1792 scenario. For whatever reason Britain is not terribly active in Germany. Seeing danger to his German aspirations when Prussia declares war on and defeats Hesse, France declares war on Prussia to stop the Prussian expansion. The way CoG:EE is now, it might not be a bad strategy for Prussia to take a quick surrender knowing that they can happily go on snatching up territories in Germany (except for perhaps the ONE which France can protect with an overly expensive "guarantee neutrality" clause) and the French can do nothing but engage in a race to take the most. I have no problem believing that in a situation where Prussia simply went on rolling through Germany that it could lead to war again. There is no hard, fast rule of international law which prevents a nation which won a war from going to war again. And even if there were a "law", when was the last time that international "law" was unbreakable. Though the wars of the late 17th, 18th, and early 20th centuries did have "rules", the rules were--on occasion broken. Believe me. All of the reading I did in the last 4 months showed me that many of my assumptions had been wrong.

NOTE: THIS KIND OF RULE WOULD ALSO REDUCE THE TEMPTATION FOR QUICK SURRENDERS!!!! Because you would be forced to sit out 18 months of war. You couldn't surrender to someone just to isolate another opponent and go to war with him (possibly a friend of the people who defeated you--even if not an open ally!


This does sound like it would be an improvement on the existing system in that surrendering would not afford the freedom to continue wars on minor nations. But it would still buy you 18 months of more or less total "safety" from the nation to whom you surrendered, no matter what else transpires (e.g., subsequent insurrections provocated by the surrenderer against the victor), and it would also still prevent the "worst case" consequences that can occur if you fight it out and lose big (as Mus has pointed out).

My guess is that in actual history the benefit to the victor, and the negative consequences to the defeated varied a great deal, and were as much a function of internal political or social wrangling as they were battlefield results and relative military strength.

Assuming that I am correct in this guess, ideally the game would model these kinds of factors in the cost/benefits of surrendering but doing so may well be beyond the scope or capacity of the engine. Example: if your Nat morale is 1000, surrendering should be less constraining than if it is 750 than if it is 500. If you are surrendering to someone who has been a long-time "ally" and who just by surprise DoWed you (e.g., my "Russian Pig" attack on Prussia recently) then that should perhaps have different costs and benefits to the surrenderer than if the 'victor' has not been an ally, or has in fact been an aggressor. It would be neat if things like the past actions of diplomats, trade embargoes, etc. could all figure in to it. Maybe it does this already?

In real life, wars tend to be fought over specific issues: trade rights, political maneuvers, acts of symbolic friendship or antipathy (e.g., royal marriages), espionage, and the whole range of specific cassus belli. I seem to recall something about the AI being able to declare war at a reduced Glory penalty for certain 'provocative' actions (e.g., parking troops in a province adjacent to a border), but I'm not certain the extent to which the engine models the salience of cassus belli into the costs and benefits of DoWs and surrenders. Obviously DoW costs more in glory with certain pre-existing conditions like royal marriages so perhaps many other things are modeled as well? If the costs of DoWing are tied to things like relation value, existing trade routes, history of past subsidies (as well as royal marriages), etc., then it would seem that perhaps enforced peace constraints might also be linked to such pre-existing values.



Mus -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/12/2009 1:07:40 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

Thinking about this problem a lot today, I think perhaps a simple solution would be to simply make it so that any nation which surrenders to other nations voids the enforced peace if it (the surrendering nation) declares war on ANY nation after the defeat--large or small.


I don't see that as a fix, as that kind of mechanic is even more prone to abuse.

The potential for abuse of an enforced peace gained in a quick surrender as you laid out in your example goes away very quickly if the VPs awarded were in the amount the manual states (4000 minimum for a surrender). You would just use your points to dictate that Prussia was going to respect the neutrality of a certain number of the closest countries for as long as it would take you to get around to them and beat them to the punch on the rest.

Under what conditions enforced peace clauses resulting from surrenders should be violable and what penalties should be involved shouldn't be looked at seperately. It would need to be part of comprehensive and balanced changes in related rules and the implications of the changes discovered in playtesting, because there is a great danger you get into these scenarios with countries just ground down to nothing in a very unrealistic fashion.



Anthropoid -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/12/2009 4:11:16 PM)

I think Mus is overall correct. Increasing the min Treaty Points that can be accrued by the victor is likely to be the simplest fix that can be the most readily tested after it is done in a subsequent patch. A lot of the other ideas that we are tossing around are perhaps a bit too complicated.



Marshal Villars -> RE: CURRENT NOTES ON TOPIC (9/16/2009 12:48:29 AM)

1. I think that if a nation is forced to sit out declaring war on any nation (large or small) for 18 months to keep victorious powers from war on it again it is a good incentive to not take a quick surrender.
2. I think that there are a million things that a losing nation can do which could threaten the security of the victorious nations, and I don't think that any aspect of the game should allow for "loophole" searching to allow you to do something outrageous while the victors stand by helplessly--stuff which no treaty system can account for. For instance, when Napoleon was deposed by his generals and abdicated in April of 1814, he was gone for just 11 months after removal and came back. According to the current CoG:EE system, the allies could not have declared war on France for another 7 months! I doubt the return of Napoleon was anywhere in their plans.
3. In my opinion, the 100% enforced peace should be replaced with a semi-randomly descending glory and national morale cost for re-declaring war, which hits zero (or the regular glory cost for a DoW) after an average of around 24 months (allowing for declarations of war at 18 months at reasonable costs). That way if ANYTHING totally bizarre happened, a nation could decide if the glory cost were worth going back to war. Certain events, such as the losing nation violating your neutrality after 3 months after their defeat, their declaration of war on ANY power (major or minor), and perhaps a couple of other things would immediately give the winning nations a casus belli and the glory cost would drop back to zero during the turn the event occurred and perhaps for 3 months afterwards. Perhaps, just perhaps, the system could work with a rock solid enforced peace for 6 months (cancelled with any casus belli--and especially if the losing nation declares war on any other power) and a falling glory penalty thereafter.

Fixing a period of 100% enforced neutrality simply opens up loopholes and other funny anomalies (War Plan Vanilla Epic Ultra) and is not a psychological model of any sorts. Nations did on occasion remobilize for war after matters appeared to be settled on more than one occasion from 1648-1871. I believe one incident like this occurred between Sweden and Denmark in the 1670s. There is nothing magical about the 18 months in a game like CoG:EE, and it allows for all kinds of odd, and non-historical planning to take place--often calculated down to the month.



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