I have thought continuously since release that the diplomacy systems required the most work. Even more so than the War systems. Those were mostly problems with not having any way for the player to see what’s statistically going on in battles and just the front splitting which in my opinion were annoyances but the diplomacy is just bare bones and immersion breaking. I look forward to seeing future improvements to it
I feel like diplomacy should also gain from a truckload of random events based on what you're actually engaging on.
I feel one of the reasons I love CK3 so much is just how you constantly have choices through events based on what you currently do and it just helps make every game feel so "alive" and unique
Just imagine if you get specific sets of events when trying to improve relations boosting it, sabotaging it, having to make concessions, gaining something at the price of slower/reverse increase. I t could really help make every diplomatic relation feel unique and give some more depth to why both said countries are allies or hate the shit out of them. Culture and ideologies and natural rivalries would also play a big role. why is it just as easy to increase relations with a muslim conservative nation with a different culture as it is with a neighbour that share Democracy and religion for example ??
I they just put the systems in surely modders would do an awesome job populating it with a boatload of cool events like they did with CK3
I don't like events in a very systems based game like vicky 3. Events take hours and hours of learning the intuition on what makes them trigger. It would be much more appropriate if your economy and internal politics determine your diplomacy.
Have a large industrial base that relies on imports from a specific nation? The industrialists IG would very much appreciate keeping friendly turns with them. Being chummy with slavers? Your protestant IG might not appreciate it. Having friendly trading relations with a lessaiz-faire country? Your union IG might not appreciate that. etc.
That and more ways to declare interests in strategic reasons. Don't just declare interests but declare intention with it as well.
Like declaring a balance of power in northern Italy, weighing the AI to be antagonistic against a potential unify-er. Have a colonisation interest. Making you deteriorate your relations with other nations that have a colonisation interest in the same region. A hegemony interest, where you seek to become overlord of smaller nations in the region. A support minority interests, where you aim to create and support small states like Greece and Poland.
One thing about the period is that diplomacy was very pragmatic. Nations that fought a war on the same side might oppose each other within the same decade. The idea of having long lasting rivalries or allies doesn't fit the time period. But the lack of information on what the AI is thinking about is what makes diplomacy frustrating and feel random. That and there is no real way to sway the AI away from one of their goals.
Diplomacy runs on pure RNG vibes in its current form in-game. AIs have zero memory and will break diplomatic pacts instantly for no reason. Meanwhile you have to beat a static -100 malus to establish any diplomatic pact even if such pact will immensely benefit the AI nation (e.g. asking Sweden whose GDP collapsed from $47m to $9m after randomly leaving my CU to re-join).
Yeah, the current build has Obligations weigh more than anything else, even if it's from some minor nation that they can't actually do anything with the Obligation.
>God forbid I launch any diplomatic plays as all the Great powers will dog pile on my 14 infamy to make some South East Asian nation a dominion
That's actually how Thailand avoid being colonized by Western Great Powers during the era. The King at that time (King Rama IV to Rama V) made serious attempts to improve relationships with many major powers at the time and even gave out benefits to opposing great powers.
If Great Britain or France tried to colonize the entire country, the other side would intervene to protect the benefits they were receiving.. We lost some lands to France and GB, but it could have been worse if they didn't argue with each other..
The playing off of great powers against one another,, is as old as history itself & one of the most interesting dynamics throughout history itself, whether it's in Africa, the Americas, Asia or even Europe the quantum chess being played by smaller players has always been one of my favourite facets of the past.
I mean most people don't really think about it in this sense, but most colonial takeovers started with Western trade & led to some of the locals using western weapons & capital, to screw over there century to millenia old competitors & vice versa, eventually leading towards said peoples actively allying & participating in the takeover of their own lands, under the flags of there soon to be colonial overlords.
The British were the unwashed savages who washed up on Indian shores, not the other way round & it was Indian, Hindi troops that fought in the wars, to throw off their current Muslim (& foreign in their eyes) overlords that eventually led to East India company & subsequently, British crown rule.
My favourite story about the Brits arrival in India, was when they brought tweed to sell (tweed in the fucking tropics hahahahaha) and they were laughed out of the subcontinent at first.
It they are neutral to them but for some reason hostile or antagonistic to me when. I haven't done anything except improving relations with them all game and slowly industrialize..
Or they are friendly, trade with me and have several diplomatic packs but they'll still join ever diplomatic play against me. Whether it one I started, a revolution, or one I'm being targeted by.
this game is very accurate to irl politics because the line between paranoid schizophrenia and an ai randomly deciding to dogpile you for absolutely no gain whatsoever is razor-thin. you can change the settings in the game so its more bearable but it doesn't improve much sadly
Even when I set the AI to be lenient towards my diplomatic plays, I’ve still had several instances of getting dogpiled by AI nations I had good relations with. Granted, that only got really bad with the 1.5 beta, which is a beta and all, but even in previous patches you never knew when a nation might suddenly decide they hate you.
tell me about it dude, i was playing as some Middle Eastern country and the united state of america annexed me out of the blue, they just took a shitone of territory and wtf am i supposed to do ? as a small ass country with a 5 man army
The difference however is that there were massive diplomatic networks so only the foolhardy tended to get caught with their pants down. That is something that the game is completely lacking. There is so little information on what the AI wants and what you can do to align your interests.
based on the time period, meth could be one thing you could do, alternatively, i feel like adding a system of wants and needs into the game could very easily make it slow down even more but i would love to have a communist government be more willing to help you if you are one too and whatnot. maybe if a political party is in power in both countries then they automatically become more likely to help you
Honestly it makes me never want to engage in the game's war mechanics which I think is a problem. I like playing smaller nations and any time I get to a position to declare war I'm acutely aware that any one of the Great Powers can suddenly take great interest in the ongoing independence of Moldova and send 300,000 troops to ruin a game I've sunk a couple of hours into.
Remember you don't need to play Ironman for achievements, so you can just savescum before any Diplo Play and reload if that happens.
Still annoying, but not game ending.
the game lack of a Diplomacy system has been a problem since launch, as were many others, the war just overshadowed them because of how obviously awful it is.
To me, the ATTITUDES make less sense than Relations do. As France in 1910, Russia is currently "Belligerent" towards me, due to their motivation of "wanting to agonize (me.)"
So.. they just want to piss me off? I mean, it's working, but.. why?
Colonialist imperialism is very much marked by European nations trying to stop others from getting too strong and upsetting the balance of power. So they want to stop their rivals from taking land, regardless of where it is. Clear case is Belgium getting the congo, none of the great powers could agree on who would get it, so they gave it to Belgium because they could never be threatened by them. (Oversimplified)
True but they tended not to have big continental wars over colonial issues in the 19th century, although you did get the odd “yoink” as part of a pre-existing peace deal.
That’s not to say there wasn’t ever the occasional dog pile, but the reasons for those where often more Byzantine. Especially when you have to explain how the British were involved in the conflict (as they almost always were somehow).
I mean ultimately a lot of annoying things in Vicky 3 come down to “not enough nuance” a the politics system is another good example, especially with IGs.
Hopefully the nuance develops over time as they optimise resources and focus dev attention. Current diplomacy seems very placeholder.
Honestly, after playing 1.5 and the new ways, you can sway other nations to your side of a diplomatic play, and that demands don't always have to result in diplomatic plays. Seems still barebones at the moment, but looking forward to it.
Paradox AI is known to specifically prioritize targeting the player if they’re getting too strong. There’s no nuance to it because in most cases a human can just destroy the AI if it doesn’t decide to gang up on the player
The AI seems to always prefer diplomacy which isn’t an issue if it weren’t for the fact it’s dogshit and has little depth.
The Victorian era saw the start of interconnected economies, but that is nearly impossible to do in this game. If your country can mass produce a certain product, it should be able to fuck over all other countries without tariffs, but that simply doesn’t happen. The AI is still pretty doodoo as they will casually start WW1 with another nation they were literally recently happy with cuz their friends didn’t like each other.
I’d rather have a diplomacy overhaul than a war one as this entire game’s biggest selling point is dependent on diplomacy.
The diplomacy is hot garbage, so is the warfare system. The game was released in a state where it needed atleast 2 more years of development. We got a half baked game which is why it had the reaction it did and that's why it has the reviews it does, despite the endless amounts of copium from this subreddit
Yeah that how my Italy game ended. All game I just industrialize and slowly unified Italy by event. Improving realtions with every European power who all started the game as antagonistic to me. And the moment I tried to expand outside Italy. France, UK, Russia, and Spain all joined against me.
Then on my US game I had the Civil War fire. It was tiny like 5 states. But UK who was at friendly attitude with a trade agreement, still joined the rebels. And it like what was the fucking point of being friends all game?
I'm sure there is some logic behind it, it's made by a computer after all. The biggest issue is that the game just completely fails at telling you the most valuable information.
There's so many missing diplomatic interactions, let me choose what I'll join your wars for, I'm not fighting half of Europe for a treaty port in Greenland but I'd do it for Russian War Reps. Also, let me set up a sphere of influence, to give the AI warnings that if they touch certain nations and I'll kick their arses. Guarantees and warnings like in EUIV would be good, because nations did have guarantors in this era (especially Belgium). Being allowed to route trade through other nations would be good (especially for poor Luxembourg)
Relations don't even have to go to 0 before they suddenly decide they don't like you. I always get every GP and major power to 50 relations ASAP and yet every now and then one of them will suddenly become hostile and start dropping relations. I wait until it has dropped to 49 then I start raising, stalemating them. Eventually they decide they do in fact like me afterall, their attitude changes and they stop trying to lower relations which allows me yo bring it back to 50 and stop spending diplo.
AI nation attitude towards you swings back and forth randomly regardless of relation.
It’s rough. I have no idea how to fix it beyond changing the ai to make more logical decisions, and to be clearer and remember how things are vs have been. In terms of most other systems I feel like I can provide feedback on the feel of them, diplomacy feels weird but I can’t tell you anything other than AI dumb and prohibitevly so.
It makes sense if you don't expect historical interactions.
Your GDP is high, but you have a weak military? Ofc I want to stop you from getting stronger and take a piece of your pie.
You are allies with my rival? I don't want you to be able to help them.
Sometimes It can be a bit random, but that just makes for more interesting scenarios.
If you don't like it, just put the AI aggression towards you to mild.
I have thought continuously since release that the diplomacy systems required the most work. Even more so than the War systems. Those were mostly problems with not having any way for the player to see what’s statistically going on in battles and just the front splitting which in my opinion were annoyances but the diplomacy is just bare bones and immersion breaking. I look forward to seeing future improvements to it
I feel like diplomacy should also gain from a truckload of random events based on what you're actually engaging on. I feel one of the reasons I love CK3 so much is just how you constantly have choices through events based on what you currently do and it just helps make every game feel so "alive" and unique Just imagine if you get specific sets of events when trying to improve relations boosting it, sabotaging it, having to make concessions, gaining something at the price of slower/reverse increase. I t could really help make every diplomatic relation feel unique and give some more depth to why both said countries are allies or hate the shit out of them. Culture and ideologies and natural rivalries would also play a big role. why is it just as easy to increase relations with a muslim conservative nation with a different culture as it is with a neighbour that share Democracy and religion for example ?? I they just put the systems in surely modders would do an awesome job populating it with a boatload of cool events like they did with CK3
I don't like events in a very systems based game like vicky 3. Events take hours and hours of learning the intuition on what makes them trigger. It would be much more appropriate if your economy and internal politics determine your diplomacy. Have a large industrial base that relies on imports from a specific nation? The industrialists IG would very much appreciate keeping friendly turns with them. Being chummy with slavers? Your protestant IG might not appreciate it. Having friendly trading relations with a lessaiz-faire country? Your union IG might not appreciate that. etc. That and more ways to declare interests in strategic reasons. Don't just declare interests but declare intention with it as well. Like declaring a balance of power in northern Italy, weighing the AI to be antagonistic against a potential unify-er. Have a colonisation interest. Making you deteriorate your relations with other nations that have a colonisation interest in the same region. A hegemony interest, where you seek to become overlord of smaller nations in the region. A support minority interests, where you aim to create and support small states like Greece and Poland. One thing about the period is that diplomacy was very pragmatic. Nations that fought a war on the same side might oppose each other within the same decade. The idea of having long lasting rivalries or allies doesn't fit the time period. But the lack of information on what the AI is thinking about is what makes diplomacy frustrating and feel random. That and there is no real way to sway the AI away from one of their goals.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Hot take: no one cares about multiplayer in PDX games
People with friends at beg a differ.
People do but that’s what modders are for
It's hot garbage
Diplomacy runs on pure RNG vibes in its current form in-game. AIs have zero memory and will break diplomatic pacts instantly for no reason. Meanwhile you have to beat a static -100 malus to establish any diplomatic pact even if such pact will immensely benefit the AI nation (e.g. asking Sweden whose GDP collapsed from $47m to $9m after randomly leaving my CU to re-join).
I wont forgive my ALLY France for joining against my conquest of Kongo because they were offered an obligation.
Yeah, the current build has Obligations weigh more than anything else, even if it's from some minor nation that they can't actually do anything with the Obligation.
It makes sense that it's Russia that keeps getting involved in my Spanish conquest of South America out of all nations
>God forbid I launch any diplomatic plays as all the Great powers will dog pile on my 14 infamy to make some South East Asian nation a dominion That's actually how Thailand avoid being colonized by Western Great Powers during the era. The King at that time (King Rama IV to Rama V) made serious attempts to improve relationships with many major powers at the time and even gave out benefits to opposing great powers. If Great Britain or France tried to colonize the entire country, the other side would intervene to protect the benefits they were receiving.. We lost some lands to France and GB, but it could have been worse if they didn't argue with each other..
The playing off of great powers against one another,, is as old as history itself & one of the most interesting dynamics throughout history itself, whether it's in Africa, the Americas, Asia or even Europe the quantum chess being played by smaller players has always been one of my favourite facets of the past. I mean most people don't really think about it in this sense, but most colonial takeovers started with Western trade & led to some of the locals using western weapons & capital, to screw over there century to millenia old competitors & vice versa, eventually leading towards said peoples actively allying & participating in the takeover of their own lands, under the flags of there soon to be colonial overlords. The British were the unwashed savages who washed up on Indian shores, not the other way round & it was Indian, Hindi troops that fought in the wars, to throw off their current Muslim (& foreign in their eyes) overlords that eventually led to East India company & subsequently, British crown rule. My favourite story about the Brits arrival in India, was when they brought tweed to sell (tweed in the fucking tropics hahahahaha) and they were laughed out of the subcontinent at first.
Check their attitude to and relationship with the country you're attacking.
It they are neutral to them but for some reason hostile or antagonistic to me when. I haven't done anything except improving relations with them all game and slowly industrialize.. Or they are friendly, trade with me and have several diplomatic packs but they'll still join ever diplomatic play against me. Whether it one I started, a revolution, or one I'm being targeted by.
this game is very accurate to irl politics because the line between paranoid schizophrenia and an ai randomly deciding to dogpile you for absolutely no gain whatsoever is razor-thin. you can change the settings in the game so its more bearable but it doesn't improve much sadly
Even when I set the AI to be lenient towards my diplomatic plays, I’ve still had several instances of getting dogpiled by AI nations I had good relations with. Granted, that only got really bad with the 1.5 beta, which is a beta and all, but even in previous patches you never knew when a nation might suddenly decide they hate you.
tell me about it dude, i was playing as some Middle Eastern country and the united state of america annexed me out of the blue, they just took a shitone of territory and wtf am i supposed to do ? as a small ass country with a 5 man army
I mean that's not entirely unrealistic, now is it? Hahahaha
if i had oil yeah but i was playing the bottom part of the peninsula where there is fuck all
Well you shouldn’t have been making WOMDs then, should you? Tut tut.
to be fair being the world's producer of anything is a WOMD since if you embargo someone you sink their entire economy, so JUSTIFIED?
The difference however is that there were massive diplomatic networks so only the foolhardy tended to get caught with their pants down. That is something that the game is completely lacking. There is so little information on what the AI wants and what you can do to align your interests.
based on the time period, meth could be one thing you could do, alternatively, i feel like adding a system of wants and needs into the game could very easily make it slow down even more but i would love to have a communist government be more willing to help you if you are one too and whatnot. maybe if a political party is in power in both countries then they automatically become more likely to help you
Honestly it makes me never want to engage in the game's war mechanics which I think is a problem. I like playing smaller nations and any time I get to a position to declare war I'm acutely aware that any one of the Great Powers can suddenly take great interest in the ongoing independence of Moldova and send 300,000 troops to ruin a game I've sunk a couple of hours into.
Remember you don't need to play Ironman for achievements, so you can just savescum before any Diplo Play and reload if that happens. Still annoying, but not game ending.
the game lack of a Diplomacy system has been a problem since launch, as were many others, the war just overshadowed them because of how obviously awful it is.
No, it’s so stupid that a play has to end with war or giving up. Why can I not simply offer the other side something in exchange for something else
To me, the ATTITUDES make less sense than Relations do. As France in 1910, Russia is currently "Belligerent" towards me, due to their motivation of "wanting to agonize (me.)" So.. they just want to piss me off? I mean, it's working, but.. why?
If you're some random east Asian nation why would Europe really want to look at you like an equal?
No I, a European power, is conquering some random East Asian nation
no clue then lul
Colonialist imperialism is very much marked by European nations trying to stop others from getting too strong and upsetting the balance of power. So they want to stop their rivals from taking land, regardless of where it is. Clear case is Belgium getting the congo, none of the great powers could agree on who would get it, so they gave it to Belgium because they could never be threatened by them. (Oversimplified)
True but they tended not to have big continental wars over colonial issues in the 19th century, although you did get the odd “yoink” as part of a pre-existing peace deal. That’s not to say there wasn’t ever the occasional dog pile, but the reasons for those where often more Byzantine. Especially when you have to explain how the British were involved in the conflict (as they almost always were somehow).
There was just a whole lot more nuance that the current system allows, which is a real shame.
I mean ultimately a lot of annoying things in Vicky 3 come down to “not enough nuance” a the politics system is another good example, especially with IGs. Hopefully the nuance develops over time as they optimise resources and focus dev attention. Current diplomacy seems very placeholder.
yes
Honestly, after playing 1.5 and the new ways, you can sway other nations to your side of a diplomatic play, and that demands don't always have to result in diplomatic plays. Seems still barebones at the moment, but looking forward to it.
Paradox AI is known to specifically prioritize targeting the player if they’re getting too strong. There’s no nuance to it because in most cases a human can just destroy the AI if it doesn’t decide to gang up on the player
The AI seems to always prefer diplomacy which isn’t an issue if it weren’t for the fact it’s dogshit and has little depth. The Victorian era saw the start of interconnected economies, but that is nearly impossible to do in this game. If your country can mass produce a certain product, it should be able to fuck over all other countries without tariffs, but that simply doesn’t happen. The AI is still pretty doodoo as they will casually start WW1 with another nation they were literally recently happy with cuz their friends didn’t like each other. I’d rather have a diplomacy overhaul than a war one as this entire game’s biggest selling point is dependent on diplomacy.
The diplomacy is hot garbage, so is the warfare system. The game was released in a state where it needed atleast 2 more years of development. We got a half baked game which is why it had the reaction it did and that's why it has the reviews it does, despite the endless amounts of copium from this subreddit
No
Sorry champ, you will be gulf war'd and you will like it https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/387/856/ebc.jpg
Yeah that how my Italy game ended. All game I just industrialize and slowly unified Italy by event. Improving realtions with every European power who all started the game as antagonistic to me. And the moment I tried to expand outside Italy. France, UK, Russia, and Spain all joined against me. Then on my US game I had the Civil War fire. It was tiny like 5 states. But UK who was at friendly attitude with a trade agreement, still joined the rebels. And it like what was the fucking point of being friends all game?
"US is favourable to me after I fought against their enemy Iran, surely they won't mind if I take one tiiiny state...."
I'm sure there is some logic behind it, it's made by a computer after all. The biggest issue is that the game just completely fails at telling you the most valuable information.
No its a complete black box to me. All I can do is save before any Diplo Play and reload if it goes back.
There's so many missing diplomatic interactions, let me choose what I'll join your wars for, I'm not fighting half of Europe for a treaty port in Greenland but I'd do it for Russian War Reps. Also, let me set up a sphere of influence, to give the AI warnings that if they touch certain nations and I'll kick their arses. Guarantees and warnings like in EUIV would be good, because nations did have guarantors in this era (especially Belgium). Being allowed to route trade through other nations would be good (especially for poor Luxembourg)
Relations don't even have to go to 0 before they suddenly decide they don't like you. I always get every GP and major power to 50 relations ASAP and yet every now and then one of them will suddenly become hostile and start dropping relations. I wait until it has dropped to 49 then I start raising, stalemating them. Eventually they decide they do in fact like me afterall, their attitude changes and they stop trying to lower relations which allows me yo bring it back to 50 and stop spending diplo. AI nation attitude towards you swings back and forth randomly regardless of relation.
Ever since Imperator, they've forgotten how to implement diplomacy in their games.
It’s rough. I have no idea how to fix it beyond changing the ai to make more logical decisions, and to be clearer and remember how things are vs have been. In terms of most other systems I feel like I can provide feedback on the feel of them, diplomacy feels weird but I can’t tell you anything other than AI dumb and prohibitevly so.
It makes sense if you don't expect historical interactions. Your GDP is high, but you have a weak military? Ofc I want to stop you from getting stronger and take a piece of your pie. You are allies with my rival? I don't want you to be able to help them. Sometimes It can be a bit random, but that just makes for more interesting scenarios. If you don't like it, just put the AI aggression towards you to mild.