Giving peace a chance

[Anabasis]

246. After keeping the peace for a long time, our eastern neighbour Armenia invaded Trapezos. I came to their help and took one settlement from Armenia, went to the diplomacy screen and although they were still only neutral (they really didn't like me to start with), they accepted peace with high probability. But now I am wondering whether I should have waited because Trapezos is still at war. I will position some troops to support them in battle if they are attacked.

[Arctic Tyr]

This looks highly interesting! Anticipating great things from you guys!

[Anabasis]

246. Some interesting long-term behaviour is starting to emerge. On the same turn, Macedon and Athens both declared themselves clients of Epirus, and as far as I can determine, this is not due to war. Epirus has been stable since its war with Rome and was marginally the most powerful state in Greece. It has now become the regional power.

I am continuing my covert war with Armenia, mainly by conducting counter-intel in Trapezos, assassinating armenian agents and such. Armenia is was quite weakened by our brief confrontation, and I could walk in there right now and take their remaining two settlements. I will work in some stronger penalties for breaking treaties and if I can, for declaring war. That should constrain the player and make him behave in a way that the AI can handle.

[Anonter]

Really interested in this, keep at it guys! Would be sweet if we actually had a decent diplomacy system in this game.... cough cough ca....

[Leonnidas]

Can I use it with latest version of DIE??

[Anabasis]

242. 90 turns in. This is getting very interesting. The mid-240s saw a bit of a flare up in the balkans where the Ardiaei allied with the Daorsi. The Ardiaei took out the Delmatae and the Daorsi moved inland and captured Singidun. Rome and Carthage are still eyeing each other, but are busy with their other neighbours. The Gaetuli keep attacking Carthage, but this latest time, they are the ones who found themselves with a two front war. While C. Nova was inflicting a defeat in the field on them in the west, Carthage took back Iol. This just happened, so no resoultion yet. Meanwhile, both the Insubres and the Veneti declared war on Rome in the first turn of 242. I am rushing some observers over there to see how that unfolds. It will be interesting if Carthage takes advantage of having secured their western border to attack Rome while they are busy in the North. The big eastern states continue to prosper and to exchange one settlement here and there.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Anabasis]

Leonnidas, I don't think so because I have it set to 3 tpy. For those who know about these things, to make it compatible, do I just remove the startpos from the mod pack? I would love to try it with DeI as well.

[lesterthenerd]

So when will this be released?

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[Anabasis]

You can get it on steam now. I would appreciate any comments. Thanks.

[lesterthenerd]

You can get it on steam now. I would appreciate any comments. Thanks.

Could you put a link in the first post?

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[Anabasis]

New version uploaded to Steam workshop. This is a mininum version compatible with DeI as far as I can tell.

[yukishiro1]

I added in my own diplomacy changes to my mod, in the hopes of getting more people to try using them and see how it works out. For now I am trying including your idea about giving + standing for war events; we'll see if a larger sample pool shows if it seems effective to people or not.

Thanks for the great ideas and I hope you don't mind my riffing off them for my own mod. I've also made peace itself easier in general, to see how that ends up working out.

[Anabasis]

The more we experiment, the better. I am starting a test campaign with DeI and my mini mod. I'll report a bit later.

[crackerjack1348]

If you set war treaty value to zero, does the ai declare war and then peace immediately with no fight? thats the main problem I'm having with my attempted solutions. it's either way too easy to make peace or way too hard, trying to find a nice middle ground. I was wondering what your take on the situation is anabasis...

[yukishiro1]

The AI won't declare war and peace immediately because the AI doesn't offer peace every time it's willing to accept it. I.e. the chance of offering a peace settlement is not 100% even in circumstances where the other party would accept it 100% of the time.

With the player it can definitely turn out though that a power declares war on you and you go to offer a peace treaty and they immediately accept. It is a problem I am trying to work out a solution for.

The real problem from what I can tell is that the algorithim the AI uses to determine war strength is just not very good. It seems very crude. IT doesn't do things like take into account WHERE the enemies' forces are. So even if for example Rome has a bunch of forces tied up fighting Carthage in Sardinia, Macedonia won't use the occasion to go grab back Apollonia because it does the math in absolute terms and sees Rome is too strong. Even though in reality Rome is so stretched that Macedon could easily push it out of Greece and maybe even make a play for getting northern Magna Graecia too.

Similarly, the AI will sometimes offer you peace even in circumstances when it "shouldn't" because it could easily beat you up some more because even though you are stronger, your forces are not in a position to actually defend against their attack.

[Anabasis]

I started a new campaign with the current version of DeI and Give Peace a Chance. I am now at 262. The results are very intresting and suggest that I need to make the bonuses for defeating the enemy decline a bit faster over time. The map is certainly not an implausible one for 262. Outside the Punic/Roman theatre, notable features are that both Egypt and the Seleucid are doing just fine, and the Arverni are emerging as a regional power in southern Gaul.

The region around Italy has been very lively. Early on in the run, Rome suffered a number of defeats against the Etruscan League, Epirus, and Syracuse. This calmed them down considerably, allowing Syracuse to surprise the Carthaginian. Meanwhile the Carthaginians have been doing very well against both the desert tribes and the Spanish ones. They have inflicted huge defeats on them and do not need to worry about them for at least a decade, I would estimate. In the past couple of years, Rome was starting to forget its past troubles with the Etruscans and Epirus (but not the huge early defeat against Syracuse) and tried to invade Etruria again. They were defeated and are now looking toward the Epirote region in Southern Italy. I'll push this one at least to 252 before making any changes, but shorter declines and larger penalties for breaking treaties seem in order.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[crackerjack1348]

well Ive increased ai priority to offer peace when it's getting beat, so thats probably why it happens so much to me. I'm starting to get frustrated with this. I really really wanted to implement a paradox-style warscore type system, which would be so amazing with a total war game but I just can't figure it out. I'm going back to the older system I had which relied more on stances to make peace desirable for a faction getting destroyed with the flipped military actions as a little aside to hopefully end the cycle of war/peace that seems to happen.

Keep us posted on your findings yuki and anabasis, I'll let you guys know if I come up with anything.

[crackerjack1348]

wait.... if losing battles makes a faction like whoever is beating them, and factions don't attack factions they don't like, wouldn't that mean that once a faction starts losing they won't do anything to retaliate?

Because winning battles doesn't make a faction like who they're beating more...

[yukishiro1]

I think to the extent that happens it happens to both sides. So if it does anything it probably cools everyone off.

From how I understand how the system works, it goes both ways. It's not as if Carthage has one value towards Rome and Rome has another towards Carthage I don't think. If one is -50 with the other the other is -50 too. At least as I understand it.

[crackerjack1348]

I just checked and there are definitely 2 values. A's opinion of B, and B's opinion of A. The flipped military actions might still make the faction getting beat up sue for peace and offer money, but I'm not sure how that would work.