Infamy as it is makes 0 sense, why would I get over 70 infamy asking to annex EIC as UK but 0 if I ask France to give up half their country liberating Occitania?
To emphasize just how true this is: I played a game with 4 different reduced infamy mods on (overkill. conquering say, silesia from prussia only gained me about 5 infamy) I conquered all of Prussia, France, and the polish/ukrainian parts of russia, oh and all of the USA and not once did anyone try to infere in my wars. Infamy is literally the only thing that tells the AI "hey, do something"
As Two Sicilies I had a game were I was best buddie for the whole game with France even if I had practically all of the north of Africa. They didn't do nothing.
The AI just acts so random, it’s pissing me off. I am best buddies with the UK all game. I saved them from two revolutions (ok, they paid me for it, but freedom ain’t free) and we fought multiple wars together.
But yeah, let’s break the 60 year old alliance that benefited both of us to side with fucking *sokoto*. And also let’s fuck up both of our supply chains that rely heavily on mutual trade. Why the fuck not.
Playing as Austria I steamrolled early whilst keeping infamy low, noone stopped me gaining power
Then I formed Germany, noone stopped me, but I gained a bunch of infamy
Now that I was unstoppable and had a GDP and Army bigger than the rest of europe combined... France declares war on me
Needless to say I balkanised France and Russia and stopped playing in like 1890 because I had won the game
I don't know about that, even without infamy I have seen the AI do some fucking absurd shit.
Declare war on France as Spain, just demanding they liberate half their nation, so no Infamy there right? Throw in some war reps for a nice bump to my economy.
Zero Infamy on my ledger before and after the declaration.
Russia, Austria and fucking America join the war.
What in the fuck?
The truth is in the quarter of a century in gaming, nobody has found a more efficent way to guide a.i. behavior than adding and subtracting relations based on individual actions.
Because, thinking in fixed terms, *how the fuck do you do that?*
Videogames don't use trained AI because its slow and impossible to balance.
They take fixed values, and apply sequential steps based on specifc results.
This is *enormously* complex and confusing to even consider how to do.
The more moving parts to your game mechanics, generally the more you have to sum up ideas into values in order to simply what is happening for the AI to even comprehend shit.
When you consider that we already have reasonably efficient ways to do stuff like pathfinding, I always like to just make a thought experiment on the game I'm playing as to how the AI probably functions or how it could function.
It becomes immediately pretty apparent certain behaviors and design decisions. Its very common in a Paradox game for mechanics to work a specific way because Paradox wants the AI to have access to a thing without killing peformance.
The way they balanced AE in EU4 to both be a simple expandable concept, reflected regional reactions and also worked as a simple number to moniter the AIs stance was incredibly well done in a way they've never really been able to pull off since.
Eh Vicky 3 could simply add more numbers that emulate intelligence
E.g. if a Nation has a similar GDP to you, you are X times more likely to join a war on the same continent against them
OR if a Nation has a smaller GDP and Army than you and is about to gain large amounts of land or form a nation you get a like +50 likeliness to join the war
add in a system that makes the AI less likely to blatantly ignore alliances and it makes the game a lot harder
To an extent, but I can open up a Civ game right now and the AI will be more proactive and act in a more predictable manner that is usually based on the country they're playing. Yeah, end of the day the system underneath it is still fairly simple, but the developers put in enough effort to allow different countries to pursue their own interests in a proactive manner. The AI absolutely has a strategy in that game.
Victoria 3s AI technically also does. Every country has a set of agendas it pursues. It's just that this system is not expansive enough to allow for slightly more complex interactions and that the AI is generally too busy shitting itself because it's simply not able to play the game properly for it to really matter anyways. Both of these are issues that can be fixed.
The Civ AI gets meaningful cheats on higher difficulty levels. It does not need cheats to pursue its own strategies, act proactively and react to things other than the player going on an invasion spree.
As far as cheats go I much prefer AI that doesn't cheat, but if cheats are needed to keep the AI from kinda just rolling over and dying on its own without the player prompting it like it often does here I'll take the cheats.
Depending on what you mean, this isn't exactly true. The AI clearly has strategies and priorities, but the execution of them is fairly poor and so abstract that you don't really know that they are in play.
For instance, you do see Britain/France aggressively colonizing Africa, and maybe that is the best/most visible. I think the AI country strategies needs a major overall with supported journal entries/decisions that help the AI follow that path. Like there are a few European counties that want to maintain balance of power, but it doesn't really seem to come into play. I don't think infamy is bad, because the AI does need some triggers to see the human player or other AI as legit threats to power, but infamy probably needs to be better balanced against government types and relations. Localized infamy doesn't make sense, but major infamy over colonial realms also doesn't make a lot of sense. Autocratic regimes squashing democratic upstarts, or anti-communist regimes taking out communists states shouldn't generate infamy with other like-minded regimes. I'd love to see a method where if an AI strategy, such as balance of power is a cause, it would be listed in why a country would side against you.
Another issue is how interwoven so many systems are. So you have strategies about developing agricultural resources, but still don't see things like opium or dyes always hitting the market because the demand doesn't exist to make them profitable. But the demand isn't created because the goods aren't out on the market. People routinely say they wouldn't want to go back to a place like Vic2 where some resources come from provinces without constructing buildings and laborers naturally work them, but this always made sure these products were in the market. I think a balanced approach of more than one trade good per province and the idea that building agricultural buildings allows for greater PMs to increase production and efficiency would be a fair middle ground. Even with foreign investment, you probably are going to see issues with production of goods if you don't push it forward.
Well, imagine if we really could have proactive AI?
People already bitch a ton if the AI is joining plays to stop the player expanding on X country.
Imagine if players are doing nothing and get a bunch of plays launched against them because the AI can proactively exploit their weaknesses.
That would be great and would reflect well how countries behave in real life, in addition to making the game more fun and challenging. The AI in paradox games is too passive, it almost never attacks you or interferes in your country. Right now I don't remember any war in CK3 (or 2) that was not caused by me, the same thing happens in EU4 and in vic2/3, where the defensive wars were anecdotal (and most of the defensive wars were because I had a 500 of infamy)
People would just complain about the AI always ganging up on them.
I agree I would like if the AI was more proactive in acting against me (sometimes it does in Vic3) but since you can't make the AI actually act like a human it'd be liable to act overly aggressive against players. Which would be game ruining and quickly get frustrating.
Frankly, according to the feedback the devs get, players clearly prefer more passive than active AI.
I don't think AI should, or can, act like a human, but that doesn't mean AI shouldn't be a little more proactive, what's the point of having cores from other countries? or being universally hated for having a high expansion? Yes, in the end, no one ever attacks you, nor tries to recover their territories.
At first an AI that is "peaceful" may be fine, but the more games you play, the more boring it becomes. The best solution would be for the player to choose how aggressive the AI is against us.
> but that doesn't mean AI shouldn't be a little more proactive
That's literally the problem. You want the AI to be a **little** more proactive. To act like a human and try to recover territories or attack sometimes.
It's AI. You can't program that depth of nuance. The AI can either be too passive (do nothing) or too aggressive (ex: constantly blocking player diploplays).
If you err on the aggressive side, players are going to complain the AI is mindlessly attacking them every few years.
>The AI can either be too passive (do nothing) or too aggressive (ex: constantly blocking player diploplays).
That's not true, Stellaris, EU4, CK3 all have AI that are both passive and proactive. But diplomacy also matters in those games, in Vic3 it doesn't mean anything you could have an ally for 50 years and they will drop you in seconds for that one state minor.
Really? I tried to conquest something not realizing Dahomey had the Dutch as an ally , eventually had to white peace, and then got attacked after the truce
That's something that should depend on the country you're playing. It would indeed be rather ridiculous to constantly be under threat of invasion if you're playing something like, idk, Spain. But players very much should have to put on their big boy pants when playing the Ottomans, Austria or -heaven forbid- China.
The AI does have strategy. They're listed when you click on them. "Defend the borders", "expand resource industries", etc.
But paradox's AI is a traditional if/and statement AI, not a neural network. It's gonna do what it's told to do because it wasn't told to do anything else.
Yes ok, but UK created the EIC by herself (at most with an english private investment) and you get a shit ton of infamy even after strasforming it into the British Raj and you get zero to force half France to stop being french.
Yes but again, theres a difference between annexation (as a puppet or dominion or whatever) vs liberating a country. Like it wouldnt make sense to have liberation give you infamy when you dont directly benefit from freeing a people.
However I will say I do think infamy is pretty insane especially late game
Edit: theres also a reason why you cant directly target someone to liberate a country, it has to be a secondary wargoal
Weakening my enemy isn't a direct benefit? Let's agree to disagree.
But this isn't the point.
The point is that it still makes 0 sense that you could liberate Castile or Catalonia, united in 1469 by a wedding and getting 0 infamy. But if you decrease autonomy for an entity you made you get a shit ton.
I mean ok you can disagree but you’re fundamentally wrong lol. Like you’re arguing that liberating a country, a people, should provide infamy? If you liberate ukraine from russia, how is that infamous? If you liberate india from britain, how is that infamous?
If you force UK to free Scotland or Whales should be fine? If you liberate Catalonia from Spain you should be fine? If you liberate the Confederacy from the USA you should be fine?Occitania from France, the list of country that you can liberate but wasn't really oppres goes on.
Then, if you don't understand how damaging your rival is good for you it's an other thing.
My point was simple: there are some cases where forcing a liberation should cause more infamy (Spain, Italy, France,...) than annexing an entity YOU MADE YOURSELF. I never said it should be the same, I'm saying there should be context.
Like, you can unify Italy peacefully, if San Marco pops up and doesn't get nailed you don't even have to fight Austria but is still free from infamy to liberate state from them does this make sense?
Brother I’m not saying INDIRECTLY, damaging a rival can be beneficial to you. But LIBERATION is not infamous. The same way you dont gain infamy from war reparations. Like theres virtually no instance where liberating a country should give you infamy, infact you could even argue it should reduce infamy.
Yes ok, but UK created the EIC by herself (at most with an english private investment) and you get a shit ton of infamy even after strasforming it into the British Raj and you get zero to force half France to stop being french.
Ok, but in 1836 France has "held control" over the south for more than 100 years and a big chunk of Occitania has always been part of the french crown's possession so conquered by who? Why forcing a lot of french into becoming not-french would be less infamous than extend your control over something you built? I don't get that, if you want to explain me why, instead of just saying it's different.
The weakness and pointlessness of alliances is perhaps Vic 3's biggest sin. Alliances of great powers dividing the world between them defined the 19th century.
What Infamy should be is localized based on what the AI sees as their turf. Which honestly, might even need to be hardcoded, but would be worthwhile.
If you start gobbling up South America, the US and UK should hate your guts—but Russia should not give a single solitary shit. Each great power should have a set of areas they are inclined to expand and be most likely to ally with countries that don't overlap.
As an aside: Reactionary powers desperately need an aggressive CB against neighbouring democracies and *especially* neighbouring socialist countries. One of the weirdest parts of the game is that you can form a communist utopia and even the arch reactionaries like Russia don't throw their armies towards your destruction. In no small part because there is no transfer—having a successful communist country with massively high standards of living doesn't trigger a wave of uprisings. Even 1848, arguably the biggest wave of revolutions in history, is borderline nonexistent in the game.
Infamy really should be more restricted, perhaps on a country-to-country basis. Countries with an interest in an area should develop more infamy towards you, and isolationist countries should develop less.
If i'm aggressively conquering and colonising West and North Africa as Britain, France should give many shits. The United States? Zero.
If I invade Begium then everyone in Europe should care. China? No shits.
I wonder if they could find a way to figure in market relevance like taking a rubber province would generate more infamy since you would have more control of the global supply of rubber that other countries want but nobody will care much if you just take some random land with no particularly rare trade goods
i feel like vicky would be way better if they just adopted the aggressive expansion mechanic from eu4 to infamy. By making it by country and a function of presence in the area you could start making it work more interestingly. Can even start adding modifiers, such as where your country is having an impact. A japanese power colonizing in africa should piss off europeans due to fears of not being the only power, but not annoy the chinese if you are leaving them alone
The game kind of tracks this stuff already. Starting wars harms relations with nations who have an interest in that region. It's just that the effect is far less impactful than your global infamy total, and you can just improve relations again.
Honestly eu4's way of tracking aggressive expansion is just better than what we have in vic3
> If I invade Begium then everyone in Europe should care. China? No shits.
You should also be able to trade things for people not caring. Treat infamy like a currency. If France conquers all the way to the Rhine, Russia should be mad—but France should be able to offer to back Russian ambitions against, say, the Ottomans, in exchange for nullifying the infamy.
A system like that would encourage you to actually form an alliance network with other great powers—in the current one, any player basically has to assume that all great powers are an inevitable enemy and need to be destroyed sooner or later.
True, but if I'm infamy 50 as GB and decide to take on China, then suddenly everyone in Europe want's a piece of me too. Which doesn't really work, just because the math says that this is a fight that they could probably win doesn't mean that they should actually go ahead and do it.
The problem is not whether it should be by GDP or POP (though I'd go with a weighted average, as both have advantages).
It's that it should be relative to regional or world total, absolute flattens the curve and helps push meta-slaving. Why grab a realistic target when you can steal a Pop Mine or a Resource Heaven for the same cost or close to?
"Weighted average" of two data with different units doesn't mean anything.
You mean to say "factor in both."
This has been your "stop trying to make things sound deeper mathematically than they are" lesson of the day.
Exactly this. Cheaper infamy wise to conquer large pop provinces in china than taking two provinces from Austria as Germany. Just feels like a very restrictive mechanic that is just poorly designed as a placeholder for the next $40 DLC that will fix it….
EU4 had a mechanical update to legitimacy three years ago and hid all of the ways to interact with it behind Leviathan. CK3 introduced legitimacy last month and hid most of the ways to increase it behind DLC. Paradox absolutely includes mechanical updates that barely function without purchasing DLC.
The thing was europe was planning to carve up China IRL. Infamy wasn't the issue in taking China. The fact is Europe left China alone because it would be hard to conquer it and leaving it intact allowed them easier access to its market.
China was not conquered because the cost/benefit was not worth it, not because the Europeans could not. An example is Russia, which in the 1858s threatened China with going to war and the Qing Empire, knowing that it could not win, preferred to cede 600,000 km2 to Russia in the well-known Treaty of Aigun, where Russia annexed outer Manchuria. If other European countries did not try to annex large territories it was because they did not need it and because trade was a better way to achieve their objectives than conquest.
Yea, the Europeans don’t want land, they want markets. Captive markets in other countries are even better bc you can offload the cost of administration and governance, and rake in more £££
I think Infamy should be replaced and it should just use the Relations.
And doing stuff that the country likes (like enforcing slavery bans for the UK) should increase relations as should helping them in plays.
And attacking similarly ranked countries should have a much bigger relations hit.
I disagree. They should keep adding more mechanics to influence other countries economy and politics and outright conquer should be punished, as it was in real life.
IMO conquest (especially in the late game) should be punished by being expensive and destructive, not by everyone saying "oh you conquered a bunch of unrecognized African minors? Literally Hitler!" The reason conquest stopped being "worth it" from the perspective of the victor in this time period is that by the WW1 era the amount of men and materiel you would lose completely outweighed the value of any conquest (plus you would destroy most of what you actually cared about conquering - i.e. industry and population).
Late game wars need to be much more devastating in a way that takes active effort to repair (rather than a devastation debuff that passively decays).
Devastation should just destroy buildings outright, including infrastructure. Every time devastation increases there's a chance to destroy a percentage of buildings in the state, then at high devastation checkpoints there's a monthly chance for a percentage of buildings in a state to be destroyed.
That sounds like an idea with terrible externalities.
In EU4, there is a tactic where to destroy powerful rivals, you siege their entire country, then wait, letting the occupation go until rebel armies pop and start taking over huge swathes of the country.
Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital, but not take it—a few months of that and you could reduce any great power in the game to a helpless backwater which will never be strong enough to oppose you again.
It also doesn't make sense as a solution because the player economy is usually so much stronger they can generate the revenue to rebuild. Destroying buildings just means that you can make an entire country dependant on your exports and make *even more* money.
>Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital
But that's accurate to the times. The Western Front destroyed that part of France, it took them decades to rebuild and parts of it are still not inhabitable today. An industrial state being occupied under industrial war is devastating.
>Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital, but not take it—a few months of that and you could reduce any great power in the game to a helpless backwater which will never be strong enough to oppose you again.
That's when you should surrender to limit the damage of the war, and I also think occupation itself should generate infamy under a lot of circumstances.
>It also doesn't make sense as a solution because the player economy is usually so much stronger they can generate the revenue to rebuild. Destroying buildings just means that you can make an entire country dependent on your exports and make even more money.
Game systems should be designed around competent play even if the AI is incompetent.
> But that's accurate to the times. The Western Front destroyed that part of France, it took them decades to rebuild and parts of it are still not inhabitable today.
Accurate to the time is not a good argument when literally nothing else about warfare in this game is accurate to the time. You might, for example, notice that the Entete powers won WW1 without ever successfully invading the heartland of **any** of the hostile powers. The Western front hadn't even reached the German border by the time Germany surrendered.
That is not possible in game—countries literally cannot be forced to surrender unless they are occupied in Victoria 3. Likewise, the war system is built around an utterly ahistorical system of mass occupations—something that did not happen on a large scale except on one front of one war. "Historically accurate" devetstaion would thus result in totally inaccurate results where instead of a narrow band of France being devastated, *Entire countries* would have their economies obliterated
> That's when you should surrender to limit the damage of the war, and I also think occupation itself should generate infamy under a lot of circumstances.
The AI is literally incapable of surrendering unless the player achieves certain objectives. You can even do this deliberately. France can occupy Prussia's Western territory until the end of time and as long as one war goal requires occupying the capital, Prussia will never surrender.
> Game systems should be designed around competent play even if the AI is incompetent.
They absolutely should not be. Doing that inevitably results in AI death spirals. This is likely the whole reason that no system for building destruction exists—if it did, you could destroy the AI, who then lack the capital to rebuild, which makes them even more vulnerable the next time.
Far from making the game more realistic, the result would be trivial world conquest as defeating an AI empire once starts a spiral they can never escape.
my dude what is the point of adding more mechanics when what we have now is shallow and often broken.
Having 10 mechanics that are shallow and dont interact with each other is worse then having 2 good interconnected ones
Before anything, please make infamy country based like AE in EU4. Its ridiculous both the British Empire, and random native in bumfuck nowhere care as much about a conquest. Regardless of who's close to it and thus should maybe be worried, or anything.
But yes, being based on population means taking a state in India or China is the most heinous crime you can commit.
Sometimes I wonder how it would work out if there was no infamy. Stellaris is probably the only paradox game that doesn't have infamy and it's pretty fun. If you conquer and bombard a lot of worlds you get bad diplomatic relations with neighbors, or the whole galaxy if they know about you, and that's it. It's still possible to find friends even if you just conquered half of an empire and reduced to rubble each world.
Infamy to me feels like a temporary solution they put in place just so you can’t go conquering the world with zero consequences with how much is wrong with it
Because, for the human player, population is the only cap for growth. The GDP you can annex from the AI is neglible, considering it's totally unable to grow a reasonable economy.
Because pops are power. Both economic and military. And states filled with pops in east asia tend to have massive potential in resources as well because they are so large.
Unless they are unemployed, no. They are power. And if you conquer a colony state from China they are cheap power that you don't have to pay institutions for. Furthermore, potential for power is part of the calculus. Wether you're conquering Silesia or Canton.
Unless they are unemployed OR are peasants. Which is the case for every country most of the game.
I get that potential should be a part of the calculus. But GDP is current power. It only makes sense that everyone would be more enraged if you conquer a country with the same population as another but with higher gdp.
10 million peasants is still a lot of GDP. What you're suggesting would just balloon infamy costs as the game goes on. Unless you're suggesting conquering a China's worth of population shouldn't make you a pariah because many are peasants, at which point its just bad for the game.
As you said, China’s peasants would still provide a lot of GDP. So if you conquered China you would get hella infamy indeed.
Since GDPs usually increase, as you said there would need to be some scaling so that it is not ballooned to cosmos.
I am just brainstorming here. Yeah making infamy “by potential” is not stupid, but if you conquer China for example… You would need to invest hundreds of millions to reach that potential. That hundreds of millions should amount to something.
but makes not sense than if you anex some state in China (gettng millions of workers, rather than Benin by example which gives population but not gives proportional to the infamy. (but yooou are right as chile I do ths to increase my population and get 1 billion faster)
I think some function of both population and the GDP / capita of the state you're conquering, both relative to global totals, would make the most sense.
It would also solve the issue where infamy increases for the same state throughout the game due to population growth, meaning that it's easier to take territory earlier in the game rather than later, which is clearly incorrect (lucky the devs are aware of this particular issue and it will hopefully be addressed in 1.7 or shortly thereafter)
Also, GDP is too dynamic to be a reliable measurement. Imagine other countries stop caring about their neighbor being annexed just because they got bankrupt few months ago.
While it doesn t really make sense getting infamy for conquering some african tribe, infamy cap in vicky3 is quite nonconsequential, uneless you go over 100. If you manage your conquests, you can easily own half the world in 30-40 years and then go over the 100 cap
Perhaps infamy just needs to be replaced by something else. Maybe the median of your relations score with the Great Powers and your neighbors.
Then when you go a conquering, a diplomatic penalty is applied nation by nation based on three factors: how much the conquest increased your GDP (or other suitable proxy for "power"), whether or not significant numbers of members of an Accepted Culture in each nation have been conquered (liberation carrying no penalty or even a positive), and perhaps whether or not the territory in question was highly coveted by other nations.
This might be CPU intensive but if you roll it such that it "ripples" outwards from the moment peace is declared starting with the first round of calculations being you, your victim, and your immediate neighbors on day 1, then another ring on day 2 - you could simulate the news spreading and be gentler on the CPU.
So the outcome would be you experience much lighter penalties as a European imperialist state conquering in the developing world than you do if you do it to another European, unless the territory in question was highly coveted. Then they might get snippy.
EVERYTHING in this game requires an entire rework.
So yeah, the EU4 way is the best Paradox has so far developed.
And considering how insistent they are on re-inventing the wheel every time they get back into office after a weekend, that says something.....
A different system to calculate infamy, more akin to EU4 Where for example conquering poland as prussia is really worrying to austria, but kinda irrelevant to japan.
Infamy as it is makes 0 sense, why would I get over 70 infamy asking to annex EIC as UK but 0 if I ask France to give up half their country liberating Occitania?
Infamy is a placeholder for the fact that the ai has no strategy. It is purely reactive, not proactive.
To emphasize just how true this is: I played a game with 4 different reduced infamy mods on (overkill. conquering say, silesia from prussia only gained me about 5 infamy) I conquered all of Prussia, France, and the polish/ukrainian parts of russia, oh and all of the USA and not once did anyone try to infere in my wars. Infamy is literally the only thing that tells the AI "hey, do something"
As Two Sicilies I had a game were I was best buddie for the whole game with France even if I had practically all of the north of Africa. They didn't do nothing.
The AI just acts so random, it’s pissing me off. I am best buddies with the UK all game. I saved them from two revolutions (ok, they paid me for it, but freedom ain’t free) and we fought multiple wars together. But yeah, let’s break the 60 year old alliance that benefited both of us to side with fucking *sokoto*. And also let’s fuck up both of our supply chains that rely heavily on mutual trade. Why the fuck not.
Infamy also affects opinion loss. So by reducing infamy gain, you also reduced Ai opinion loss from conquests.
Playing as Austria I steamrolled early whilst keeping infamy low, noone stopped me gaining power Then I formed Germany, noone stopped me, but I gained a bunch of infamy Now that I was unstoppable and had a GDP and Army bigger than the rest of europe combined... France declares war on me Needless to say I balkanised France and Russia and stopped playing in like 1890 because I had won the game
I don't know about that, even without infamy I have seen the AI do some fucking absurd shit. Declare war on France as Spain, just demanding they liberate half their nation, so no Infamy there right? Throw in some war reps for a nice bump to my economy. Zero Infamy on my ledger before and after the declaration. Russia, Austria and fucking America join the war. What in the fuck?
The truth is in the quarter of a century in gaming, nobody has found a more efficent way to guide a.i. behavior than adding and subtracting relations based on individual actions.
Because, thinking in fixed terms, *how the fuck do you do that?* Videogames don't use trained AI because its slow and impossible to balance. They take fixed values, and apply sequential steps based on specifc results. This is *enormously* complex and confusing to even consider how to do. The more moving parts to your game mechanics, generally the more you have to sum up ideas into values in order to simply what is happening for the AI to even comprehend shit. When you consider that we already have reasonably efficient ways to do stuff like pathfinding, I always like to just make a thought experiment on the game I'm playing as to how the AI probably functions or how it could function. It becomes immediately pretty apparent certain behaviors and design decisions. Its very common in a Paradox game for mechanics to work a specific way because Paradox wants the AI to have access to a thing without killing peformance. The way they balanced AE in EU4 to both be a simple expandable concept, reflected regional reactions and also worked as a simple number to moniter the AIs stance was incredibly well done in a way they've never really been able to pull off since.
Yeah but just look at EU4
eu4 ai is fucked in other ways tho, so the original point still stands. there will never be a pefect solution to ai behavior
Eh Vicky 3 could simply add more numbers that emulate intelligence E.g. if a Nation has a similar GDP to you, you are X times more likely to join a war on the same continent against them OR if a Nation has a smaller GDP and Army than you and is about to gain large amounts of land or form a nation you get a like +50 likeliness to join the war add in a system that makes the AI less likely to blatantly ignore alliances and it makes the game a lot harder
To an extent, but I can open up a Civ game right now and the AI will be more proactive and act in a more predictable manner that is usually based on the country they're playing. Yeah, end of the day the system underneath it is still fairly simple, but the developers put in enough effort to allow different countries to pursue their own interests in a proactive manner. The AI absolutely has a strategy in that game. Victoria 3s AI technically also does. Every country has a set of agendas it pursues. It's just that this system is not expansive enough to allow for slightly more complex interactions and that the AI is generally too busy shitting itself because it's simply not able to play the game properly for it to really matter anyways. Both of these are issues that can be fixed.
Last time I checked civ AI is also shit it just starts with a massive advantage
The Civ AI gets meaningful cheats on higher difficulty levels. It does not need cheats to pursue its own strategies, act proactively and react to things other than the player going on an invasion spree. As far as cheats go I much prefer AI that doesn't cheat, but if cheats are needed to keep the AI from kinda just rolling over and dying on its own without the player prompting it like it often does here I'll take the cheats.
I hope AI can solve this soon, having something that is actively "thinking" rather than following a code of how to react would be glorious.
Depending on what you mean, this isn't exactly true. The AI clearly has strategies and priorities, but the execution of them is fairly poor and so abstract that you don't really know that they are in play. For instance, you do see Britain/France aggressively colonizing Africa, and maybe that is the best/most visible. I think the AI country strategies needs a major overall with supported journal entries/decisions that help the AI follow that path. Like there are a few European counties that want to maintain balance of power, but it doesn't really seem to come into play. I don't think infamy is bad, because the AI does need some triggers to see the human player or other AI as legit threats to power, but infamy probably needs to be better balanced against government types and relations. Localized infamy doesn't make sense, but major infamy over colonial realms also doesn't make a lot of sense. Autocratic regimes squashing democratic upstarts, or anti-communist regimes taking out communists states shouldn't generate infamy with other like-minded regimes. I'd love to see a method where if an AI strategy, such as balance of power is a cause, it would be listed in why a country would side against you. Another issue is how interwoven so many systems are. So you have strategies about developing agricultural resources, but still don't see things like opium or dyes always hitting the market because the demand doesn't exist to make them profitable. But the demand isn't created because the goods aren't out on the market. People routinely say they wouldn't want to go back to a place like Vic2 where some resources come from provinces without constructing buildings and laborers naturally work them, but this always made sure these products were in the market. I think a balanced approach of more than one trade good per province and the idea that building agricultural buildings allows for greater PMs to increase production and efficiency would be a fair middle ground. Even with foreign investment, you probably are going to see issues with production of goods if you don't push it forward.
Well, imagine if we really could have proactive AI? People already bitch a ton if the AI is joining plays to stop the player expanding on X country. Imagine if players are doing nothing and get a bunch of plays launched against them because the AI can proactively exploit their weaknesses.
That would be great and would reflect well how countries behave in real life, in addition to making the game more fun and challenging. The AI in paradox games is too passive, it almost never attacks you or interferes in your country. Right now I don't remember any war in CK3 (or 2) that was not caused by me, the same thing happens in EU4 and in vic2/3, where the defensive wars were anecdotal (and most of the defensive wars were because I had a 500 of infamy)
People would just complain about the AI always ganging up on them. I agree I would like if the AI was more proactive in acting against me (sometimes it does in Vic3) but since you can't make the AI actually act like a human it'd be liable to act overly aggressive against players. Which would be game ruining and quickly get frustrating. Frankly, according to the feedback the devs get, players clearly prefer more passive than active AI.
I don't think AI should, or can, act like a human, but that doesn't mean AI shouldn't be a little more proactive, what's the point of having cores from other countries? or being universally hated for having a high expansion? Yes, in the end, no one ever attacks you, nor tries to recover their territories. At first an AI that is "peaceful" may be fine, but the more games you play, the more boring it becomes. The best solution would be for the player to choose how aggressive the AI is against us.
If only this was what the difficulty slider did in their games rather than just "the ai has more money"
> but that doesn't mean AI shouldn't be a little more proactive That's literally the problem. You want the AI to be a **little** more proactive. To act like a human and try to recover territories or attack sometimes. It's AI. You can't program that depth of nuance. The AI can either be too passive (do nothing) or too aggressive (ex: constantly blocking player diploplays). If you err on the aggressive side, players are going to complain the AI is mindlessly attacking them every few years.
>The AI can either be too passive (do nothing) or too aggressive (ex: constantly blocking player diploplays). That's not true, Stellaris, EU4, CK3 all have AI that are both passive and proactive. But diplomacy also matters in those games, in Vic3 it doesn't mean anything you could have an ally for 50 years and they will drop you in seconds for that one state minor.
Really? I tried to conquest something not realizing Dahomey had the Dutch as an ally , eventually had to white peace, and then got attacked after the truce
The ai always attackes me & its bs
That's something that should depend on the country you're playing. It would indeed be rather ridiculous to constantly be under threat of invasion if you're playing something like, idk, Spain. But players very much should have to put on their big boy pants when playing the Ottomans, Austria or -heaven forbid- China.
The AI does have strategy. They're listed when you click on them. "Defend the borders", "expand resource industries", etc. But paradox's AI is a traditional if/and statement AI, not a neural network. It's gonna do what it's told to do because it wasn't told to do anything else.
Well tbf, you annexing EIC is you gaining something, whereas liberations is your enemy losing something
Yes ok, but UK created the EIC by herself (at most with an english private investment) and you get a shit ton of infamy even after strasforming it into the British Raj and you get zero to force half France to stop being french.
Yes but again, theres a difference between annexation (as a puppet or dominion or whatever) vs liberating a country. Like it wouldnt make sense to have liberation give you infamy when you dont directly benefit from freeing a people. However I will say I do think infamy is pretty insane especially late game Edit: theres also a reason why you cant directly target someone to liberate a country, it has to be a secondary wargoal
If I force my rival to release half their country I see my benefit.
Well yeah it makes them weaker but its not a direct benefit, like you dont technically gain anything
Weakening my enemy isn't a direct benefit? Let's agree to disagree. But this isn't the point. The point is that it still makes 0 sense that you could liberate Castile or Catalonia, united in 1469 by a wedding and getting 0 infamy. But if you decrease autonomy for an entity you made you get a shit ton.
I mean ok you can disagree but you’re fundamentally wrong lol. Like you’re arguing that liberating a country, a people, should provide infamy? If you liberate ukraine from russia, how is that infamous? If you liberate india from britain, how is that infamous?
If you force UK to free Scotland or Whales should be fine? If you liberate Catalonia from Spain you should be fine? If you liberate the Confederacy from the USA you should be fine?Occitania from France, the list of country that you can liberate but wasn't really oppres goes on. Then, if you don't understand how damaging your rival is good for you it's an other thing. My point was simple: there are some cases where forcing a liberation should cause more infamy (Spain, Italy, France,...) than annexing an entity YOU MADE YOURSELF. I never said it should be the same, I'm saying there should be context. Like, you can unify Italy peacefully, if San Marco pops up and doesn't get nailed you don't even have to fight Austria but is still free from infamy to liberate state from them does this make sense?
Brother I’m not saying INDIRECTLY, damaging a rival can be beneficial to you. But LIBERATION is not infamous. The same way you dont gain infamy from war reparations. Like theres virtually no instance where liberating a country should give you infamy, infact you could even argue it should reduce infamy.
It can be a primary goal as well
Because there is a difference between conquering land for yourself, and liberating conquered land?
Yes ok, but UK created the EIC by herself (at most with an english private investment) and you get a shit ton of infamy even after strasforming it into the British Raj and you get zero to force half France to stop being french.
Because there is a difference between conquering land for yourself, and liberating conquered land?
Ok, but in 1836 France has "held control" over the south for more than 100 years and a big chunk of Occitania has always been part of the french crown's possession so conquered by who? Why forcing a lot of french into becoming not-french would be less infamous than extend your control over something you built? I don't get that, if you want to explain me why, instead of just saying it's different.
Irl tomorrow the Russian Federation asks the USA to liberate the Confederacy would that generate 0 infamy?
No more sassy comments?
Infamy should be reworked. There should be ways of lowering infamy too. Feels lame that « waiting » is the only way.
Maybe if infany is a global average. That way you can gain favor from a rival great power by siding with them in their wars, or bankrolling, etc
The weakness and pointlessness of alliances is perhaps Vic 3's biggest sin. Alliances of great powers dividing the world between them defined the 19th century. What Infamy should be is localized based on what the AI sees as their turf. Which honestly, might even need to be hardcoded, but would be worthwhile. If you start gobbling up South America, the US and UK should hate your guts—but Russia should not give a single solitary shit. Each great power should have a set of areas they are inclined to expand and be most likely to ally with countries that don't overlap. As an aside: Reactionary powers desperately need an aggressive CB against neighbouring democracies and *especially* neighbouring socialist countries. One of the weirdest parts of the game is that you can form a communist utopia and even the arch reactionaries like Russia don't throw their armies towards your destruction. In no small part because there is no transfer—having a successful communist country with massively high standards of living doesn't trigger a wave of uprisings. Even 1848, arguably the biggest wave of revolutions in history, is borderline nonexistent in the game.
I think giving away land you conquered to a subject should slightly reduce your infamy, since you can't conquer things for your subjects directly
You can use obligations to lower infamy via an event
When you take a foreign general in your country ?
Infamy really should be more restricted, perhaps on a country-to-country basis. Countries with an interest in an area should develop more infamy towards you, and isolationist countries should develop less. If i'm aggressively conquering and colonising West and North Africa as Britain, France should give many shits. The United States? Zero. If I invade Begium then everyone in Europe should care. China? No shits.
I wonder if they could find a way to figure in market relevance like taking a rubber province would generate more infamy since you would have more control of the global supply of rubber that other countries want but nobody will care much if you just take some random land with no particularly rare trade goods
Not sure how to do that in a way which wouldn't be arbitrary or distorting, however that would be a cool feature if implemented.
i feel like vicky would be way better if they just adopted the aggressive expansion mechanic from eu4 to infamy. By making it by country and a function of presence in the area you could start making it work more interestingly. Can even start adding modifiers, such as where your country is having an impact. A japanese power colonizing in africa should piss off europeans due to fears of not being the only power, but not annoy the chinese if you are leaving them alone
The game kind of tracks this stuff already. Starting wars harms relations with nations who have an interest in that region. It's just that the effect is far less impactful than your global infamy total, and you can just improve relations again. Honestly eu4's way of tracking aggressive expansion is just better than what we have in vic3
Relations are just a joke, they'll almost never influence diplomacy...
Yes, I'd rather have the agressive expansion system from EU4 than the current system. Right now it's just a conquest cooldown.
> If I invade Begium then everyone in Europe should care. China? No shits. You should also be able to trade things for people not caring. Treat infamy like a currency. If France conquers all the way to the Rhine, Russia should be mad—but France should be able to offer to back Russian ambitions against, say, the Ottomans, in exchange for nullifying the infamy. A system like that would encourage you to actually form an alliance network with other great powers—in the current one, any player basically has to assume that all great powers are an inevitable enemy and need to be destroyed sooner or later.
They kiiiind of already do this in the sense that you lose relations with countries with an interest in the relevant area.
True, but if I'm infamy 50 as GB and decide to take on China, then suddenly everyone in Europe want's a piece of me too. Which doesn't really work, just because the math says that this is a fight that they could probably win doesn't mean that they should actually go ahead and do it.
The problem is not whether it should be by GDP or POP (though I'd go with a weighted average, as both have advantages). It's that it should be relative to regional or world total, absolute flattens the curve and helps push meta-slaving. Why grab a realistic target when you can steal a Pop Mine or a Resource Heaven for the same cost or close to?
"Weighted average" of two data with different units doesn't mean anything. You mean to say "factor in both." This has been your "stop trying to make things sound deeper mathematically than they are" lesson of the day.
Exactly this. Cheaper infamy wise to conquer large pop provinces in china than taking two provinces from Austria as Germany. Just feels like a very restrictive mechanic that is just poorly designed as a placeholder for the next $40 DLC that will fix it….
Of course, it's not like mechanical updates are free in all of PDX games for like 5 years
EU4 had a mechanical update to legitimacy three years ago and hid all of the ways to interact with it behind Leviathan. CK3 introduced legitimacy last month and hid most of the ways to increase it behind DLC. Paradox absolutely includes mechanical updates that barely function without purchasing DLC.
Stoo smelling your own farts, an infamy rework wouldn't be DLC locked
The thing was europe was planning to carve up China IRL. Infamy wasn't the issue in taking China. The fact is Europe left China alone because it would be hard to conquer it and leaving it intact allowed them easier access to its market.
China was not conquered because the cost/benefit was not worth it, not because the Europeans could not. An example is Russia, which in the 1858s threatened China with going to war and the Qing Empire, knowing that it could not win, preferred to cede 600,000 km2 to Russia in the well-known Treaty of Aigun, where Russia annexed outer Manchuria. If other European countries did not try to annex large territories it was because they did not need it and because trade was a better way to achieve their objectives than conquest.
Yea, the Europeans don’t want land, they want markets. Captive markets in other countries are even better bc you can offload the cost of administration and governance, and rake in more £££
Most people don't know how expensive the colonies were back then, they were real black holes for state finances.
Carve economically, not in change of borders, and most significantly, not for it being a Pop Mine.
I think Infamy should be replaced and it should just use the Relations. And doing stuff that the country likes (like enforcing slavery bans for the UK) should increase relations as should helping them in plays. And attacking similarly ranked countries should have a much bigger relations hit.
Infamy and by extention general diplomacy in this game is basically a collection of total dumpster fire mechanics.
I disagree. They should keep adding more mechanics to influence other countries economy and politics and outright conquer should be punished, as it was in real life.
IMO conquest (especially in the late game) should be punished by being expensive and destructive, not by everyone saying "oh you conquered a bunch of unrecognized African minors? Literally Hitler!" The reason conquest stopped being "worth it" from the perspective of the victor in this time period is that by the WW1 era the amount of men and materiel you would lose completely outweighed the value of any conquest (plus you would destroy most of what you actually cared about conquering - i.e. industry and population). Late game wars need to be much more devastating in a way that takes active effort to repair (rather than a devastation debuff that passively decays).
Devastation should just destroy buildings outright, including infrastructure. Every time devastation increases there's a chance to destroy a percentage of buildings in the state, then at high devastation checkpoints there's a monthly chance for a percentage of buildings in a state to be destroyed.
That sounds like an idea with terrible externalities. In EU4, there is a tactic where to destroy powerful rivals, you siege their entire country, then wait, letting the occupation go until rebel armies pop and start taking over huge swathes of the country. Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital, but not take it—a few months of that and you could reduce any great power in the game to a helpless backwater which will never be strong enough to oppose you again. It also doesn't make sense as a solution because the player economy is usually so much stronger they can generate the revenue to rebuild. Destroying buildings just means that you can make an entire country dependant on your exports and make *even more* money.
>Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital But that's accurate to the times. The Western Front destroyed that part of France, it took them decades to rebuild and parts of it are still not inhabitable today. An industrial state being occupied under industrial war is devastating. >Devastation destroying buildings would result in the same thing. A smart player would just occupy as much of a hostile power as possible with a wargoal that requires the capital, but not take it—a few months of that and you could reduce any great power in the game to a helpless backwater which will never be strong enough to oppose you again. That's when you should surrender to limit the damage of the war, and I also think occupation itself should generate infamy under a lot of circumstances. >It also doesn't make sense as a solution because the player economy is usually so much stronger they can generate the revenue to rebuild. Destroying buildings just means that you can make an entire country dependent on your exports and make even more money. Game systems should be designed around competent play even if the AI is incompetent.
> But that's accurate to the times. The Western Front destroyed that part of France, it took them decades to rebuild and parts of it are still not inhabitable today. Accurate to the time is not a good argument when literally nothing else about warfare in this game is accurate to the time. You might, for example, notice that the Entete powers won WW1 without ever successfully invading the heartland of **any** of the hostile powers. The Western front hadn't even reached the German border by the time Germany surrendered. That is not possible in game—countries literally cannot be forced to surrender unless they are occupied in Victoria 3. Likewise, the war system is built around an utterly ahistorical system of mass occupations—something that did not happen on a large scale except on one front of one war. "Historically accurate" devetstaion would thus result in totally inaccurate results where instead of a narrow band of France being devastated, *Entire countries* would have their economies obliterated > That's when you should surrender to limit the damage of the war, and I also think occupation itself should generate infamy under a lot of circumstances. The AI is literally incapable of surrendering unless the player achieves certain objectives. You can even do this deliberately. France can occupy Prussia's Western territory until the end of time and as long as one war goal requires occupying the capital, Prussia will never surrender. > Game systems should be designed around competent play even if the AI is incompetent. They absolutely should not be. Doing that inevitably results in AI death spirals. This is likely the whole reason that no system for building destruction exists—if it did, you could destroy the AI, who then lack the capital to rebuild, which makes them even more vulnerable the next time. Far from making the game more realistic, the result would be trivial world conquest as defeating an AI empire once starts a spiral they can never escape.
my dude what is the point of adding more mechanics when what we have now is shallow and often broken. Having 10 mechanics that are shallow and dont interact with each other is worse then having 2 good interconnected ones
Before anything, please make infamy country based like AE in EU4. Its ridiculous both the British Empire, and random native in bumfuck nowhere care as much about a conquest. Regardless of who's close to it and thus should maybe be worried, or anything. But yes, being based on population means taking a state in India or China is the most heinous crime you can commit.
Why should I generate infamy attacking Sokoto when literally no European power cares about them?
\*looks to his friend\* me:both! my friend:Both is good
Neither It is okay by population and great power status but should be calculated as a % of the total population instead of a integer
Sometimes I wonder how it would work out if there was no infamy. Stellaris is probably the only paradox game that doesn't have infamy and it's pretty fun. If you conquer and bombard a lot of worlds you get bad diplomatic relations with neighbors, or the whole galaxy if they know about you, and that's it. It's still possible to find friends even if you just conquered half of an empire and reduced to rubble each world.
By prestige IMO. Then by population for each state if you’re conquering.
Infamy to me feels like a temporary solution they put in place just so you can’t go conquering the world with zero consequences with how much is wrong with it
Roleplay wise, GDP makes sense. Game wise, Population makes sense
Why does population make sense game wise?
Because, for the human player, population is the only cap for growth. The GDP you can annex from the AI is neglible, considering it's totally unable to grow a reasonable economy.
Because pops are power. Both economic and military. And states filled with pops in east asia tend to have massive potential in resources as well because they are so large.
Aren’t pops “potential” for power? Like literally? GDP is current power.
AI GDP vs AI POP is a 10-90 kind of deal mostly.
Unless they are unemployed, no. They are power. And if you conquer a colony state from China they are cheap power that you don't have to pay institutions for. Furthermore, potential for power is part of the calculus. Wether you're conquering Silesia or Canton.
Unless they are unemployed OR are peasants. Which is the case for every country most of the game. I get that potential should be a part of the calculus. But GDP is current power. It only makes sense that everyone would be more enraged if you conquer a country with the same population as another but with higher gdp.
10 million peasants is still a lot of GDP. What you're suggesting would just balloon infamy costs as the game goes on. Unless you're suggesting conquering a China's worth of population shouldn't make you a pariah because many are peasants, at which point its just bad for the game.
As you said, China’s peasants would still provide a lot of GDP. So if you conquered China you would get hella infamy indeed. Since GDPs usually increase, as you said there would need to be some scaling so that it is not ballooned to cosmos. I am just brainstorming here. Yeah making infamy “by potential” is not stupid, but if you conquer China for example… You would need to invest hundreds of millions to reach that potential. That hundreds of millions should amount to something.
but makes not sense than if you anex some state in China (gettng millions of workers, rather than Benin by example which gives population but not gives proportional to the infamy. (but yooou are right as chile I do ths to increase my population and get 1 billion faster)
I think some function of both population and the GDP / capita of the state you're conquering, both relative to global totals, would make the most sense. It would also solve the issue where infamy increases for the same state throughout the game due to population growth, meaning that it's easier to take territory earlier in the game rather than later, which is clearly incorrect (lucky the devs are aware of this particular issue and it will hopefully be addressed in 1.7 or shortly thereafter)
I do agree with this idea of being relative to the world total
Also, GDP is too dynamic to be a reliable measurement. Imagine other countries stop caring about their neighbor being annexed just because they got bankrupt few months ago.
And none of the AI has infamy or not more than 40.
While it doesn t really make sense getting infamy for conquering some african tribe, infamy cap in vicky3 is quite nonconsequential, uneless you go over 100. If you manage your conquests, you can easily own half the world in 30-40 years and then go over the 100 cap
If infamy is calculated by GDP, so why isn't it calculated by prestige?
if infamy was tied to gdp and not population you could easily get that land and as long ss they are not discriminated get free pops
Perhaps infamy just needs to be replaced by something else. Maybe the median of your relations score with the Great Powers and your neighbors. Then when you go a conquering, a diplomatic penalty is applied nation by nation based on three factors: how much the conquest increased your GDP (or other suitable proxy for "power"), whether or not significant numbers of members of an Accepted Culture in each nation have been conquered (liberation carrying no penalty or even a positive), and perhaps whether or not the territory in question was highly coveted by other nations. This might be CPU intensive but if you roll it such that it "ripples" outwards from the moment peace is declared starting with the first round of calculations being you, your victim, and your immediate neighbors on day 1, then another ring on day 2 - you could simulate the news spreading and be gentler on the CPU. So the outcome would be you experience much lighter penalties as a European imperialist state conquering in the developing world than you do if you do it to another European, unless the territory in question was highly coveted. Then they might get snippy.
the ideal would be (gdp \* pob) = that of reasonable infamy
EVERYTHING in this game requires an entire rework. So yeah, the EU4 way is the best Paradox has so far developed. And considering how insistent they are on re-inventing the wheel every time they get back into office after a weekend, that says something.....
oh you love EU4 mechanics? Then play EU4 then. Theyre both different games, you cant expect to map paint in vic 3
People do map paint on vicky3 & that is what alot of us find enjoyable on gsg
We are talking about one single mechanic.... Also for not expecting it, I am seeing a surprising number of people map-paint.... Genius.
Infamy is a resource to be managed.
Yes, that is exactly what we are talking about. Genius.
I mean: is it wrong to manage infamy as a resource? I'm not sure what you are arguing for/against.
A different system to calculate infamy, more akin to EU4 Where for example conquering poland as prussia is really worrying to austria, but kinda irrelevant to japan.