Marshal Villars
Posts: 976
Joined: 8/21/2009
Status: offline
|
Kingmaker, I agree. I am totally on your side about the gamey surrenders. We need a solution. Believe me, I have brought it up several times other threads and a few emails to Eric and Co..
I really do think it needs to be worked out. Most humans are rational beings and they will take the best out presented to them. Right now, the quick surrender (although I did fight a longer war than anyone else has in the game!) is a very rewarding option. Rational people take rewarding options. As Kingmaker points out, it is a way to keep you from getting your guns dirty before the next enemy trounces you.
I feel that a game theory specialist might look at this model of surrender and rather plainly state the following fact: since this person knows he stands to be beaten and the longer he fights the amount of punishment inflicted on him will only go up, what is the point of fighting if he feels he has a good chance of losing? The system, as it currently is, rewards quick surrenders. Especially the first one, since for that you get a juicy 300 experience points. With the second surrender the temptation drops as experience gained drops to 100.
However, in this case, I did not surrender to Britain for fear of losing, because I knew that I would have a 250,000-300,000 man army in front of Paris the following turn. I honestly felt that I could easily prevent French defeat in the face of a two pronged advance through my territory with Russians coming at the Prussian rear. In this case, I surrendered for one reason alone. I surrendered to make an overwhelming point to Frederick II, King of Prussia (not Timurlain, whom I respect with high regard, and with whom I most certainly have no problem! It is all rhetoric!!! Indeed it is all rhetoric designed to win the game! So it is skewed!). In fact, I am rather disappointed I surrendered when I consider the damage I could have done to the British army in Baden with that newly formed army.
However, quick surrenders are still tempting in and of themselves in situations which seem slightly more dangerous than the one I (France) was in.
There are any number of ways to reduce the temptation of the "quick surrender".
From my "My Thoughts On Treaties Thread":
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2224986
You've probably all seen it in multi player. A player who is surrounded and outnumbered and outgunned by multiple enemies in a sudden DoW quickly takes the surrender option because he knows that he will probably lose anyway and the costs of the loss will only climb as the enemies rack up wins and take territory. I have no problem with surrendering and I have no problem with players taking the best out, but this should be changed and there should be costs to it (and there were). I would strongly recommend that players immediately surrendering in conflicts (turn 1), take 2x normal glory loss and 2x normal national morale loss. There is no doubt that surrendering like this would tarnish reputation even more than an outright loss. Who would take such a power seriously after this? It reminds me of the state of affairs of the Ottoman Empire in the mid and late 1700s. Without putting up a fight, there would very likely been major resistance to the government/monarchy for having sold out the country/estates/people. Rebellions, political instability and unrest weren't unusual following harsh treaties and treaties in which the government gave too much away (see, just for instance the major rebellion in Istanbul after the signing of the treaty of Karlowitz) and the collapse of order in parts of France in reaction to the treaty which would have concluded the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, with the people feeling they had been "betrayed" by their rulers. Letting people just walk all over you and take things could split the country in my opinion. This 2x Glory and 2x NM penalty would slowly drop to regular values as some kind of algorithm decided that they had at least put up some kind of a fight/or a predetermined amount of time had lapsed (perhaps six months?) There should be the possibility of rebellion and even of losing your government IMHO.
In addition to the additional penalties mentioned above, the quick surrender strategy will also be less of an option once the liberation of protectorates and liberation of conquered provinces becomes cheaper in terms of treaty points as mentioned above. Even 1000 point treaties imposed on you by other powers could lead to the loss of protectorates or recently conquered minors which you had overrun in the months before the surrender.
Mus has also proposed that a way to reduce the temptation for a quick surrender might be to simply reduce or eliminate the variable nature of the surrender penalty (or at least the portion which depends on how many losses have been inflicted/regions taken/NM loss, etc). He may have a point there, and one which I have considered myself. You will note below that I am a fan of randomizing the treaty points somewhat, but this is independent of the losses/regions taken/NM loss. Perhaps it WOULD be a good idea to have surrenders ALWAYS gain the victor a (5D6+N)*100 points (where N is any constant which brings the average total of points close to what they are now).
Note that the link to this text was included in my recent email to Eric and Co. entitled "Emergency Fixes for CoG:EE".
An additional point which Montesaurus brought up to me was that perhaps the temptation could be reduced even more by giving fewer experience points to a losing nation if they didn't even fight. Though I feel that 100 experience points are what are needed, and that a player who decides to fight it out a little will gain experience points from his battles.
Additional reasons the "quick surrender" is so popular compared to what we might expect from history:
1. Because of the extremely high 1000 point bonus the attacking armies get for EACH region occupied when the treaty is signed! I think perhaps the base value of treaties should be increased and this number reduced.
2. Because in CoG:EE, unlike in real life, everything is quantified. Players know the morale of their troops to the hundredth of a decimal point. We know exactly that our troops have a 10%+10% fire attack bonus and a .1 march initiative, while their army has a 33% cavalry charge bonus and a .5 morale bonus when defending in their home country. In a few discussions with Eric, he has pointed out--and I believe rightfully so--that players do not like the fuzziness of real life. However, when a game tells us our army is a 5 and theirs is a 12, who will fight? Lots of leaders in history might have, because they didn't know that!
The problem is there is a loophole in the system which encourages quick surrender, and it hasn't been plugged. And since most players don't play to be nice guys but play to win, people will use it (and should be expected to use it, since they are in all likelihood rational).
Actually, what I consider to be the weakest point about the surrender which just happened in the game which Kingmaker is referring to is the following: I, France, was at war with Britain, who appeared to have buddied up to Prussia. I am a player who believes in concentrating all force against one objective instead of multiple objectives, so I took the logical choice and surrendered to Britain before I found myself at war with British and Prussian allies so that I could inflict the maximum amount of damage to the army of one nation for what I felt had been "dubious" dealing (I have nothing against the player--it IS a game!  ). So, having been at war with Britain for over a year, and feeling that the weak link would be Prussia, I surrendered to Britain purely to isolate Prussia and take advantage of the fact that their ploy to hide their relationship by not using an alliance could be turned against them rather easily.
They simply waited to declare their alliance too long. After my surrender, Britain would be cut out of the conflict with me for 18 months while I would be able to deal a two or three sided blow to Prussia. Note: I am not positive if Prussia and Britain had a strategy, however, the amount of double dealing I was picking up on, especially after I went to the mat to defend Prussia when another player discovered it, lead me to not believe anything I heard coming from Berlin anymore. IF Berlin and London had a strategy, its mistake was not to ally sooner, and seeing they weren't allied, I decided to take advantage of it before it happened...I did not surrender to take a quick surrender, as I was prepared to fight on against Britain--alone. What I did was designed to take advantage of a loophole for which another suggestion I made to WCS is a fix...
From my "My Thoughts On Treaties Thread":
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2224986
Fix DoW on Ally/Friend Loophole
It is a serious concern of mine that after the defeat of an enemy, that the enforced peace will prevent me from coming to the aid of a nation/ally which I feel NEEDS to be defended. For instance, if I am Russia and have defeated Austria in a war and have achieved an 18 month rock solid enforced peace, Austria MAY in the next several months go to war with a power which has become my ally or may attack a minor neutral along our border which is a major national security interest of mine. It is my opinion--and strong opinion--that the enforced peace should not be so enforced at this point. I suggest that:
a) If Austria were to go to war with anyone who had (at any point) declared themselves to be an ally of Russia (before the DoW), that the enforced peace be liquidated.
b) If Austria were to go to war with any minor which would attempt to become my protectorate, that the enforced peace should be liquidated IF Russia has an "aggressive" policy set in PBEM policies.
Another way to take care of this would be to void an enforced peace ANYTIME a nation which has lost a war declares war on ANY state...major or minor. The winning power could declare war on the losing power, but not the other way around.
On top of all of this, I strongly recommend that the rock solid enforced peace period be randomized to be a period of 3D6+8 months. No one knows exactly when it will end. OR, ideally, that there IS no rock solid enforced peace, but merely a glory penalty/national morale penalty of going to war with someone in the months after the war has been concluded again. This glory penalty (say, 500 points on turn 1 following surrender) slowly falls to zero over the course of 24 months. There is more than one example of a conquering nation threatening to go back to war after a surrender because treaty conditions were not being fulfilled--or risked not being fulfilled. So, it is possible. Again, I feel that the current 18 month limit is in effect, the "regulation of war and human behavior" by WCS (said with all due respect for the people who have put together my favorite gunpowder era game of all time) --instead of a psychological model. The same principle would be used for dropping the national morale penalty of going to war "early".
Yes, my mistake on my advance on Munich was my supply and lack of total mobilization (but I learned a hell of a lot). The mistake of the British-Prusso friendship was the lack of an alliance and subsequent declaration of war on France which would have prevented me from surrendering to JUST one of them. So, we both made massive mistakes within the framework of the rules we knew about--mine operational and their strategic. Hopefully from it all springs this thread which will hopefully finally give the quick surrender loophole some much needed notoriety.
However, with all of this discussion about "quick surrenders", we need to remember that in 1795 this is still not the era of Napoleon and that land transfers of long held home territories on the scale made possible by "fighting it out" in CoG:EE were virtually unheard of in the 18th century--especially to people without legitimate claims to those lands. Prussia's annexation of Silesia from Austria is probably the single greatest anomaly of the 18th century in these regards. If people are forced to fight, the cost for annexing long held provinces after a surrender should be greatly increased.
Note to Self (Add thoughts on new treaty term needed after new turn is received)
And by the way Kingmaker, that was a great piece you wrote up there!
P.S. By the way, does a conditional surrender work in PBEM?
< Message edited by Marshal Villars -- 9/10/2009 3:57:43 PM >
|
Printable Version
PBEM Surrenders thougths for the Devs - 
) Drama the names have been changed in order to protect the innocent . 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread