More reasonable diplomacy mini-mod (using taw's research into the territorial expansion problem, v10, May 16, 2015)

[BraselC5048]

Honestly, I made a mod doing basically the same thing since you posted this one, Here. It's a good idea, my problem is it's not radical enough. Territorial expansion penalties are greatly increased by a faction's proximity to territory captured; it's the worst when you took it from them. It was a while ago, but I used something like -3?, decreasing at +7? per turn. Turns out you actually need it to decease by more than the penalty each turn, and they'll still hate you for capturing their empires decades later. It 'does' have the problem that I can't seem to declare war without getting "dishonoring treaties;" I don't even know what it was I did! This might be true normally though. I made other penalties go away faster too. But I think I still need to reduce the penalty. Liberating Austria via Croatia caused an otherwise friendly Venice to declare war on me! Sweden; I liberated the dutch from them something like 25 years ago, but they requested a trade agreement, and after 25 years of peaceful trade, coupled with a 9 star head of state and a 6 star queen (no, really, I got lucky on both of those), they're kinda-freiendly. Except whenever I take a polish territory that's next to their conquests in Russia, even though it's to give to Russia or Austria to enhance their power, they declare war on me every damn time.

Honestly, perhaps the single biggest failing in the Ai overall is that (other than Martha/Moguls) is that that major powers try to capture the capital of other major powers in the first place. Historically, other than Poland, nobody even thought in terms of doing that. After all, their justification for their power in the first place was their divine right as kings; the king of Austria had just as much right to Austria has the King of Prussia had to his lands, in the eyes of both of them. "Kings don't kill kings." Sure, steal most of their territory that's near yours, gladly, but it would undermine their own government to destroy theirs.

Combining with the campaign AI mod sounds interesting; I'm sorta getting back into empires after being away for a while, and is certainly something I can do and try out. I'm just not sure I actually will have enough interest to do it anytime soon. (I happened to see this thread being at the top only because I came here to type stuff for something else; I don't have a word-style program with spell check on this computer, but firefox does, and this forum nicely has the "you must select a type" feature to prevent accidental posting of stuff that's VARY off-topic.

[Akarios]

Been starting to revisit this a bit. One thing I'd really like to figure out would be to apply the -30 permanent penalty for breaking an alliance deliberately (not when deciding not to side with an ally for a war) for all the allies a nation that's destroyed by another nation.

E.g. You wipe out Prussia which is currently allied with Great Britain and The Netherlands. You earn a permanent -30 modifier to your diplomacy with them.

The rationale behind this is that in real life if a nation were eliminated, it's government wouldn't just disappear. The elements of that government would emigrate to all the nations currently allied with the destroyed nation. This rule would apply more to those nations with Absolute Monarchies than Constitutional Monarchies or Republics, but an overall rule should start creating coalitions against the offending power.

[Leonardo]

This mini-mod is probably not compatible with any AI mod (such as Bran's Empire Campaign AI or PikeStance's Campaign Overhaul for Imperial Splendour) or a mod which includes improved AI (such as Darthmod, Empire Realism, Empire Total Factions or Imperial Destroyer).

I think this mod could be compatible with ETF, unless you start a new early campaign and click on the Early Campaign by Vae Victis option via the More Content menu in the ETF launcher.

[Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf]

Does this mod effect savegames and does anyone know if it works with Imperial Destroyer Mod? At least it launches with it, but does it effect AI campaign behavior?

[Alwyn]

Thanks for commenting, 890765738, BraselC5048, Akarios, Leonardo and Hjalnar_Feuerwolf.

890765738, thanks for reporting your experience.

BraselC5048, as you said, in this time period it was not normal for major powers to capture the capitals of other major powers. Of course, when Napoleon actually behaved like a player in a Total War game, other European countries formed coalitions against him. As I see it, the territorial expansion penalty (which mods like this reduce) is simulating this process of other countries turning against an aggressive, expansionist power. As you know, Empire does not have a late-campaign challenge like Realm Divide (Shogun II) or civil war (Rome II), so the process of other countries declaring war on the player's empire is the equivalent later-game challenge. That is why I am reluctant to make the changes even more radical - of course, this is something which reasonable people can disagree about and there is nothing wrong with other modders making more radical changes if you prefer them.

Akarios, your idea of a permanent -30 penalty is an interesting one, I hope you can find a way to try that out.

Leanordo, that's helpful to know, thank you.

Hjalnar_Feuerwolf, I normally prefer to start a new campaign with one set of mods and to avoid changing mods when a campaign is in progress. (I worry that changing mods during a campaign might cause saved game corruption), so I don't know whether it affects savegames. I have not tried this mod with Imperial Destroyer, I can only suggest observing the behaviour of AI factions to see whether the changes apply. Of course, Imperial Destroyer might make its own changes to the territorial expansion penalty. I'm sorry for not being able to answer your questions.

[BraselC5048]

I've noticed that how close the territory you capture is to a faction greatly changes how big the penalty is. Or to put it another way, there's other coding at work behind the scenes to translate the "territorial expansion" penalty in the table to what it actually is in the game. Taking regions adjacent to a country may well result in them declaring war on you, even if you didn't have any designs on their territory. To put it another way, expanding in central Europe will piss off Austria, Purasia, and Poland-Lithuania, but the Mougals won't care much, and Britain only mildly. Again, you can easily result in territorial expansion penalties high enough for other countries to declare war, even with the penalty in the table being only -3. I found I had to go to at least -7 going away per turn to get the much higher values actually in-game to go down reasonably. Trust me on this one, the "-3" can easily turn into -15 to -20 actual penalty once the game's coding is done with it.

Also, has anyone figured out how to create a lasting peace using the empire save editor? There's plenty of unlabeled entries, but even trying values from other relationships STILL won't keep them from immediately declaring war on each other. I don't regard it as cheating at all, I envision it as acting as an intermediary for diplomats.

[Leonardo]

I'm gonna to test the strongest version of this mod without using other mods, just to make sure it's stable (we know the Warscape engine are far being stable due to the bugs ) as it can be.

It's gonna to take a while before I post my observations in this thread.

I also notice that the strongest version shouldn't been used with the other versions as both versions, regardless what other version one is using in combination with the strongest version, edits at least one thing.

[Leonardo]

(3) territorial_expansion_reduce: this mod changes the territorial expansion penalty. You get a -30 diplomatic penalty for taking a territory. This penalty now reduces by 10 per turn, rather than 1 per turn (as in vanilla). This mod does not affect the diplomatic penalty for going to war.

I'm playing Prussia with this version and only after 3 years Portugal was destroyed.

So. I wonder does this version also affect the relation between Portugal and Spain?

I reason I ask is because after 2-3 turns the Netherlands went to war with Spain, as a direct cause of the Flanders region, and France is an ally to Spain and Portugal is an ally to Great Britain at the same time the Netherlands is an ally to Great Britain.

I don't think Spain should have a diplomatic penalty towards Portugal due for being an ally to Great Britain, instead the relation between Portgual and Spain had suffered, but not as much for declaring war.


Also, if it matters I simple couldn't start a new campaign without using ETF, so after a 1-2 turns I continue playing with ETF by reloading a gamesave.

[Alwyn]

Hi Leonardo, thanks for the comments, I'm sorry for taking so long to reply.

You're right, only one of the 'More reasonable' diplomacy files should be used at a time.

Yes, I think this version does affect the relations between AI factions. I think that is why the Ottoman turn bug happened when I tried the strongest version. The strongest version makes it easier for factions at war to make peace. If the factions can be at peace more often, then they will tend to have more money. If they have more money, then the Ottoman Empire has more money and can recruit huge numbers of tiny armies - and the Ottoman turn bug happens.

As I understand it, the game simply has a 'diplomatic penalty for going to war' number, which a mod can increase or decrease. I don't have the ability to add conditions, for example to remove the penalty if a country goes to war only due to being an ally of Britain.

I noticed that you made a Skill Restoration mod for Morrowind and that there's a link to your mod in your signature. Congratulations on the release of your new mod!

[Leonardo]

You're right, only one of the 'More reasonable' diplomacy files should be used at a time.

Yes, I think this version does affect the relations between AI factions. I think that is why the Ottoman turn bug happened when I tried the strongest version. The strongest version makes it easier for factions at war to make peace. If the factions can be at peace more often, then they will tend to have more money. If they have more money, then the Ottoman Empire has more money and can recruit huge numbers of tiny armies - and the Ottoman turn bug happens.

As I understand it, the game simply has a 'diplomatic penalty for going to war' number, which a mod can increase or decrease. I don't have the ability to add conditions, for example to remove the penalty if a country goes to war only due to being an ally of Britain.

Which I have been using for quite some time and this time around I got a very intersting campaign going on.

But first, regarding the Ottoman turn bug, I think that's an engine bug and why the Ottoman turn bug gets triggered is that the Ottomans have the largest territory with starting armies that isn't equal for the territory the Ottomans have.

Now, based on my observations in my current campaign, the Warscape engine often tends to move tiny armies across the campaign map for any nation, which I have seen for Austria, Hannover (not often though), Poland, Saxony (not often but it does happen), Sweden (after capturing Denmark).

All these nations doesn't have a large territory as the Ottomans has in the early campaign, but I do not know how it is in the late campaign as I never started a late campaign before.


Alright, enough about the Ottoman turn bug for the moment. There is one thing I would like to know if there is a factor for being an ally with another nation that was forced to go to war against another nation, a mutual enemy, and the ally is constantly fighting. Why I mention this is because Hungary emerged as independent nation, and soon after Poland captured Austria and Hungary, Poland became an ally to Hungary with indefinitely military access I think.

So, right now Austria only have one region left and that's Transylvania. Maybe, I was too passive for not attacking Saxony (Poland is the protector of Saxony) sooner I dunno, but I think there should be a penalty for an alliance not honoured and the people back home started to get weary of being at war, every turn, for too long.

I noticed that you made a Skill Restoration mod for Morrowind and that there's a link to your mod in your signature. Congratulations on the release of your new mod!

Thanks, Alwyn.

[newt]

I installed the first file, and tested it, and it doesn't seem to be working. I check the Barbary States relations with me on turn 2 and it goes to -142, when it should be -138. I even modified the pack to +10 just to test, and it still went down. Can anyone else check to see if it does the same for them?

I also tried changing pack type to 'mod' and adding it to my userscript and it still works the same

[Alwyn]

I installed the first file, and tested it, and it doesn't seem to be working. I check the Barbary States relations with me on turn 2 and it goes to -142, when it should be -138. I even modified the pack to +10 just to test, and it still went down. Can anyone else check to see if it does the same for them?

I also tried changing pack type to 'mod' and adding it to my userscript and it still works the same

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work for you. I don't know why it isn't working for you (unless you're using a Mac? Some mods made on Windows PCs don't work on Macs). Maybe you could try creating your own version of the mod (it's not a complicated mod, as you can see)?

[newt]

Actually, it IS working. It just doesn't affect Barbary States. My relations with Iroquois are improving since we haven't been actually fighting. I guess Barbary has some hidden game mechanic, much like Ottomans not caring if you take regions from someone else.

[SagezTW]

Hi Alwyn,

I wanted to say ''thanks'' for this mod that I always use! So thank you very much for this great little mod. I also have some ideas and questions too:

I guess there isn't a diplomatic penalty for completely destroying a faction? Because that in my opinion seems reasonable - it's a big thing to destroy someone's independence, wiping them off the map.

Does this mod change ''War Weariness'' factor? I'm a great fan of this factor and I'd love to see it more represented and impactful. From what wiki says, it doesn't even matter if your loss/victory was very good, just ok, heroic or disastrous, it just adds another point. Is it possible to modify war weariness so heroic victories could give +10 boost to happiness for entire population, with - 10 penalty from cathastrophic losses? I don't like that war weariness works only in capital, it's rather nonsensical. Max - 15 penalty doesn't seem like much, but in reality a string of defeats could overthrow government. I guess that blocked ports could also affect war weariness for obvious reasons.

Or maybe I am wrong and there isn't much to change for the better.

[Alwyn]

Thanks, SagezTW, for the kind comment!

I'm afraid that it's been a long since I looked at this mod. I don't remember a diplomatic penalty for wiping out a faction and I don't know how to add one. The diplomatic penalties for territorial expansion have a similar effect, if you don't use this mod (or if you use a version which only has a small effect). As far as I can remember, this mod only changes the things indicated in the OP, so it doesn't mke a difference to War Weariness. I see what you mean about the political effects of a string of defeats or blocked ports.

[Markmilan]

Hi Alwyn,

Can I use two of these mods at the same time or just one?

Was thinking of using the following in my data folder:-
Reasonable diplomacy reduce
Territorial Expansion reduce

Thanks

[Alwyn]

Players can use just one file at a time (they edit the same database table).

The reasonable_diplomacy_reduce mod includes the the effect of territorial_expansion_reduce, so you don't need to use both files.

I hope you enjoy your campaign!

[rohan97]

Hello Alwyn i unfortunetly havent had the chance to play your diplomacy mod but i do have some questions.
Some time ago i looked at your file and noticed it was db instead of in the startpos itself my question would be is this method more stable.
Also in my 1812 campaign for example im trying to make uk and spain like each other as they have common enemy but If i edit something those diplomacy values i get issues later on.
Do you think this method could help

Thanks for this amazing mod.

[Alwyn]

Hello rohan97, congratulations on the release of v1.2 of your War of 1812 mod!

Yes, in my experience, editing the database file to change the way that diplomacy works is stable. I'm sorry to hear that you've had problems with editing diplomacy in the startpos, I hope you can find a wayto achieve the result you'd like.

[rohan97]

Hello rohan97, congratulations on the release of v1.2 of your War of 1812 mod!

Yes, in my experience, editing the database file to change the way that diplomacy works is stable. I'm sorry to hear that you've had problems with editing diplomacy in the startpos, I hope you can find a wayto achieve the result you'd like.

thank you Alwin do you mind if i experiement with your mod credits will be given fair and square