Too many wars after the patch

[Zuikaku]

Yes, I'm aware that we've been all complaining about lack of non scripted wars. Now we finally got what we have asked for and... it is maybe a bit too much.
1936 game on high volatility level: in May '36 Germany starts declaring wars left and right. Every 2 or 3 days they are at new war and soon USSR follows and Japan is on the rampage and the whole world is at war. OK, high volatility, so I started a new game on normal volatility level. And this resulted with similar results. I don't want to know what happens on very high vol. levels

I feel that something needs to be toned down, since this is just too much. I really do not want to see world war raging after just few months in the game every time.

[Kristijonas]

Things with this patch are definitely better than before the patch! This must be stressed! Before, the world felt dead after the scripted events ran their course... Now it feels not only more alive but it feels plausible, too. Most wars I saw felt very realistic. And I LOVED that some countries went as far as break alliances with countries they did not particularily like.
So while things are definitely better, perhaps a little tone down and/or a system that made the AI decisions rational could be implemented. I know I compare this game with Europa Universalis a lot, but they really got this right. In EU, if you held territory loyal to another country, that other country was far more likely to declare war on you. Would be nice to see this in this game as well. Also could work in extended way - if a country hold territory that is loyal to another country, which is your ally, war chances increase. For example if Russia and Serbia are allied and Kosovo holds Serbian-loyal lands, Russia would be more likely to declare war on Kosovo.
Another good reason for war - differences in government. Democracies could have increasing CB towards dictatorships, dictatorships could have increasing CB towards neighbors and/or weaker countries.
Lots of ways to make the game look less random and more systematical.

[Zuikaku]

I agree. Just needs som toning down a bit.

[amynase]

+1

China and Russia always manage to die in modern Scenarios by declaring too many wars. Please tone it down to one or two wars at a time

[Zuikaku]

+1

China and Russia always manage to die in modern Scenarios by declaring too many wars. Please tone it down to one or two wars at a time

Same as Germany in '36

[YoMomma]

On the other hand, what happened to retaliation and justice? If Russia declare war on Poland you would expect whole europe with US intervene.

Even right now in Ukraine there is help from US, Germany and even Canada.

[Zuikaku]

On the other hand, what happened to retaliation and justice? If Russia declare war on Poland you would expect whole europe with US intervene.

Even right now in Ukraine there is help from US, Germany and even Canada.

Yes, but in the game it is more like this:
May 16th '36 - Germany declares war on Estonia
May 17th '36 - Germany declares war on Finland
May 22nd '36 - Germany declares war on Denmark
May 25th '36 - Germany declares war on Poland
May 28th '36 - USSR declares war on Finland
June 5th '36 - Germany declares war on Greece
June 12th '36 - Germany declares war on Czechoslovakia
June 15th ' 36 - Germany declares war on France
June 20th '36 - Japan declares war on USSR
June 23th '36 - Germany declares war on Norway
June 27th ' 36 - Germany declares war on Netherlands
July 2nd '36 - Japan declares war on Afghanistan
July 5th '36 - germany declares war on UK
July 8th ' 36 - USSR declares war on Poland

A bit too much maybe? A bit too early?! And as result of too many war declarations in too short time Germany is obliterated in 3 months.

And notice that allied and axis regions even did not have time to form any alliances this early in the game.

Now, I really do like new system where countries declare unscripted wars. World feels alive. But this really needs to be toned down. Even on medium volatility wars soon begin to spiral out of control. On high volatility it is just madness!

Hotfix is really badly needed for this since this is gamebreaking.

[YoMomma]

Just wondering, is that sandbox you are playing? I didnt have any war declarations in trump scenario.

Im sure they are fine tuning it, Before patch that was like China and Russia in modern scenario and now it is way better in some scenarios. Just makes me wonder what actually make the ai declare war.

[Zuikaku]

It is a sandbox game. And German AI allways declares wars in the same time of the day (10 AM)

Restarted the game for a few times. Allways the same story. By mid '36 Germany is at war with everyone. Really a bit way too much...

[Fistalis]

Maybe readjust your expectations for each volatility level.. like maybe medium or low is what you're looking for post update. As far as the whole getting out of control thing.. theres a domino effect.. more wars lead to worse relations lead to more wars. toning it down will just put us right back where we were..

[YoMomma]

That's exactly what i was thinking Fistalis. Fixing how cb works right now and nothing happens. George just have to do alot to either difficulty settings or world volatility or both. Because right now it doesnt mather much which settings you use.

The thing is in case of Netherlands you have about 9 regions you can ally with, with use of mutual defence mostly, but most regions have like 2-3. Ai however never offer mutual defence, so i think only UK will get some allies which it has full positive relations and thats about it.

I hear George talking before patch about clusters and regions only ally cloose to them, while we saw the whole freaking world ally eachother besides Russia and China. If George can actually do it so that each region have like 2/3 allies, without use of mutual defence i think it will make alot of ppl happy.

And yeah in sandbox you shouldnt expect anything historical, cause devs will need to make thousands of events. Maybe they can lower agressiveness of Germany in ´36 and make event where it turns agressive in march 1939, but i guess scenario of Germany is fine.

BTW main problem i think on the old system was you and ai get positive relations over time, trade, treaties, etc. But there are no negative relations/CB besides declaring war or breaking treaties. That will lead to world allying eachother besides some countries... which have hard penalties already in game.

[Zuikaku]

Problem is you lose some features if you lower volatility level. Features like ability to bring in nations into your sphere through elections.

[Flayer]

Same observations in the modern game (Trump scenario). What I've noticed is the AI going 'war spirals' where once it's declared war on one country it seems to just continually declare on all countries within range.

Playing a game as Rwanda (in which I conquered Burundi and DR Congo) and watched this happen:

Germany wars Denmark
China wars Japan
China wars India
Russia wars China
North Korea wars South Korea (and wins, for once)
North Korea wars East Timor, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, etc
North Korea wars China (and together with Russia crushes China in Manchuria)
China wars Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, etc
Russia wars Estonia
Russia wars Lithuania
Russia wars Georgia
Germany wars Netherlands
Russia wars Poland (Poland overruns Kaliningrad and Lithuania)
Russia wars Latvia (Poland then pushes into Estonia)
Russia wars Ukraine
Russia wars Norway
Russia wars Turkey
Thailand wars Myanmar (crushes them, then invades and overruns southern China, NK by now near Shanghai. Thais start overrunning NK-controlled China since NK had declared war earlier)
India wars Thailand
Germany wars Austria, Belgium
France wars Antigua/Barbuda
France wars Germany (gets crushed, Antigua/Barbuda apparently end up with Guadeloupe and Martinique)
Russia wars Turkey (pushes back Poland into its own territory but starts losing Caucasus to Turkey)
Russia wars Azerbaijan
Russia wars Sweden (which overruns Finland and starts pushing deep into Russia proper along with Turkey and eventually Ukraine - Swedes and Ukrainians have race to Moscow with Swedes narrowly winning)
North Korea wars Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, and other random countries in Asia (as Thais close in on Pyongyang)
North Korea wars Russia (creating four-way chaos between them, Thailand, and Chinese remnants)
Russia wars Iran (which overruns them in Azerbaijan)
Turkey wars Kurdistan and Islamic State
Russia wars Kazakhstan (by now they're totally defeated in Europe but holding out because of their base in conquered Manchuria)
Turkey wars Ukraine (they now share a border due to Russian conquests, Ukraine gets totally crushed)
Germany wars Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland (all crushed)
Germany wars Turkey (they start fighting stalemate in Ukraine)
Germany wars United Kingdom (UK actually invades France in first AI naval invasion I've ever seen, well done)
Germany wars Sweden
Iran wars Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
China wars Vietnam (which ends up getting to Hong Kong before China totally wiped out)
Iran wars Turkey
Iran wars Pakistan (starts losing badly)

Not even a complete list by the way - plenty of minor wars by the same powers I'm leaving off because I don't have the game open in front of me.

Meanwhile, the U.S. just sits back and watches.


Now this was a very dynamic game, which is infinitely better than just watching the rest of the world sit there and do nothing, but this AI behavior is stupid. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran one by one have DOW'd themselves into oblivion by declaring pointless additional wars after they're already fighting ones they can't handle (with Germany threatening to do the same to themselves now after successfully conquering most of Europe). North Korea was actually in position to become a major power with South Korea and half of China under their control, but were undone by their totally pointless initial DOW on Thailand and by an additional one against Russia when they were already losing to the Thais. Russia was doing great - until it decided to fight Sweden, Poland, and Turkey at the same time as half its army was in China (and then declared further suicide wars on Iran, Kazakhstan, etc. once it was already losing).

The Middle East, meanwhile, was free of war (save the ones Turkey and Iran started), as were Africa (aside from my own), and the Americas entirely.

Another observation: the AI countries never made alliances with each other, not even once. Seems as though the breaking of the game by alliance spam has been replaced by the breaking of the alliance system altogether.

So the AI seems in need of a sanity check feature to keep it from declaring more wars than it is capable of handling, and a tweak in favor of alliances again (but to a limited, reasonable extent).

[Zuikaku]

Another observation: the AI countries never made alliances with each other, not even once. Seems as though the breaking of the game by alliance spam has been replaced by the breaking of the alliance system altogether.

So the AI seems in need of a sanity check feature to keep it from declaring more wars than it is capable of handling, and a tweak in favor of alliances again (but to a limited, reasonable extent).

Same in every my game. Instead of alliance spam, no alliances at all!
Instead of not any unscripted war - lots of pointless DoW spam.

Seems we are just going into extremes...

[YoMomma]

I noticed it is either one side or the other, not just with war declarations. Hopefully BG can prove me wrong in future.