Pushing the Limits

[epaminondas]

There are a number of territory transfer issues that have cropped up in my current game that I think might point to 'traps' in the system logic. I'm playing an all stops out game as Austria looking to establish such a powerful production base that I can compensate for its neutered colonisation capacity by taking down all the colonial powers when the Great War arrives. As the game notes indicate, this has taken me deep into the unknown and along the way thrown up a series territory transfer anomalies that the devs might want to know about.

The Grozny Gratuity

Austria DoWs Russia and runs rampant through the Caucasus. In the process she occupies Grozny - far beyond her existing territorial boundaries. Peace is concluded with the transfer of a couple of Russian border provinces and Russia throws in Grozny as a bonus.

Is Madam certain that she ordered Adrianople?

Austria DoWs the Ottomans for the umpteenth time and and runs rampant everywhere. When she sits down at the peace table she has room enough on her credit card to order both Adrianople and Nish. When table service is delivered, however, the only thing on the plate is Nish.

You are not speaking French so I cannot hear you.

Austria DoWs France and - well, you know what happens. Austria has previously gained all of continental Sardinia-Piedmont and so shares borders with both Dauphine and Provence. She has sufficient warscore points to claim both in a peace settlement and does so. Rather than delivering them, however, France returns with an alternative peace offer of her own - one that includes only one of the two along with a variety of side dishes. This process - like garlic snails - repeats and repeats.

[Jim-NC]

As to the French part, if they have any diplomats, they will keep offering peace until you accept, or they run out of diplomats. They tend not to accept your peace until they run out of diplomats, which could be a problem (if they get more than 12 diplomats a 6 month period).

[loki100]

aye, for some reason if the AI offers peace it means any offer you made (in the previous turn) becomes invalid.

best solution is to set their diplomats to 0, offer the deal you want and then reset to a reasonable value. Use the

SelectFaction = $FRA
ChangeResStock = $merDiplomat;XXX

obv $Fra in this case as you want to remove their diplomats, where I have XXX enter a value say -30 should be enough. Post peace redo the event to given them '20' diplomats so that France then carries on as normal.

[epaminondas]

That's certainly how it seems to play out - but in this case the interesting thing is that their peace offers come ex post facto and break into the normal sequence of events. I've not encountered that before - in every other situation there's a 'fallow' period between a nation's peace proposals. That is, an offer will be made on Turn 1, you will have the opportunity to accept or put in an offer of your own on Turn 2, on Turn 3 they'll adapt to your offer because of the points mechanic and the peace action will be removed, then on Turn 4 they'll formally accept your offer and units will be relocated. Here the offer is made on Turn 1 and if the offer I make on Turn 2 includes both Dauphine and Provence it is not 'received' and a new French offer appears on Turn 3.

Normal programming is resumed if I make a lesser offer (e.g. Provence and Basses Alps) but the Dauphine/Provence combination seems to be particularly unpalatable - again like garlic snails.

I'm not terribly fussed about the issue (after all, I'm playing a game that isn't meant to be played yet) but I figure it's an anomaly that might point to conflicts in the system logic.

A further complication that I failed to mention in the Adrianople example is that the apparent conflict there doesn't prevent the AI from offering the same combination of provinces in its peace proposals, and that if you accept you then do get both. This particular glitch isn't unique to the Turk either, it also occurs in negotiations with Russia (Odessa + Masowsze for instance).

[epaminondas]

Owe you an apology, Jim. I've tested further and you're right about France blocking my peace offerings with offers of their own - it seems to happen no matter what my offer is. I was sure they'd accepted a Provence/Basses Alps offer from me but I can't for the life of me reproduce it. Perhaps, as you suggest, I happened to make it on a turn when they'd run out of diplomats, or perhaps I just dreamed it. In any event your analysis stands up better than mine.

[loki100]

what happens is they send offers every other turn ... sometimes for more than the warscore.

if you accept, that happens immediately.

In the 'other' turn, you can send an offer, if they accept, the impact is delayed to the end of the next turn. In the meantime they send you a revised offer and that eliminates the offer you've made.

Hence the short term fix of removing their diplomats. Send your offer, have it processed normally (ie over 2 turns), then reinstate their diplomats. Bit inelegant but its the only work around.

On the other hand, if the AI believes it is losing it will give you peace offers worth more than the warscore, so it may be worth waiting for a nice juicy one to turn up - certainly happened to me in the last war in my recent game

[Christophe.Barot]

there are several points :

a) the "cancel peace offer when AI does one" - this should be changed as it obviously blocks peace concluding - perhaps they would accept your terms but we'll never know as they offer something else (that you won't accept instead) - I don't know what is the programming cost to change it

b) problem of warscore value - obscure and not moddable it seems - and ability to be selected (opaque too) - guess it is hardcoded - do you play with annexation constraints lifted ? but for an historical game, I'd like to have some indication about that - perhaps Adrianople is just not annexable from Austria - what puzzles me is that Nish should not either ! ditto for grozny, which is not claimable - but other border provinces should not either (except in Poland) - do you play with extended claims ?

whatever it requires some explaination on basic claims

[epaminondas]

No, not playing with annexation constraints lifted. But playing very aggresseively so that when the claims on Nish and Adrianople were made they were in fact border provinces due to earlier Austrian expansion. Both Adrianople and Nish were annexable and were transferred when offered by the Ottomans as a peace settlement (including when offered in combination), but when I claimed them on the basis of warscore the claim was permitted (i.e. the 'OK' button was available) but only Nish was delivered.

Edit: Sorry, I might have misinterpreted "annexation constraints". I am playing with "extended claims".

[epaminondas]

Just a quick update with more of the same.

Unfortunately Bulgaria is out of stock at this time but we will retain your payment and forward it when available.

Pursuing the aim of driving the Ottoman out of Europe entirely I've annexed all territories there other than Bulgaria and Rhodopos. Now with ample warscore to claim Bulgaria I find the offer accepted but while peace is declared the province remains Turkish. Additionally, Turkey no longer offers peace.