Further consequences to a crushing defeat

[enioch]

Hello all

So, here's the problem: you stomp the AI into the ground. Regime collapses. They have like 2 capital ships remaining. You have parked half a megaton of battleship outside their harbors and your carriers stand ready to bomb them back into the stone age. You claim one of their crummy ships as reparations, you grab a couple of their colonies or all of their monies and you go home.

Five years later, they have recovered and bother you again. You might want to fight another power, you might want to spend some time rebuilding your own fleet, you might want to avoid this war altogether, but THEY ARE BACK, AND THEY WILL FIGHT YOU...until you do it all again, and stomp them back into the ground. And then, five years later, when you're fighting another war, tensions spill over AGAIN, and you have to fight them AGAIN, and HOW MANY TIMES WILL I HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON OLD MAN.

This is a scenario that might affect a Japanese player, who has kicked everyone out of NE Asia, and yet has to fight the Russians like clockwork, because there's no way to permanently get rid of the bloody fleet they station at Vladivostok all the time (my God, those coastal raids, against the two airbases, over and over and over and over and over nothing but coastal raids aaargh). Or it might be a German player in the Baltic. Or an Austrian / Italian player in the Mediterranean. The mechanics of the game mean that your constant fleet presence in an area tend to continuously raise tensions vs the same AIs and so you end up fighting the same war against the same opponent over and over, and they KEEP REBUILDING THEIR FLEETS and throwing them at you. And there is nothing you can do to stop them.

Now, I understand that for game balance reasons it shouldn't be possible to fully annex an AI or kick them out of their home region, but I think it's not unreasonable to figure out a way to severely hamper their warmaking potential for a bit, and ensure that your NEXT war or two will be against someone else.

When the AI beats me convincingly, I can be forced into a treaty limiting my construction, that makes me non-competitive for quite a while. This, I think, should be an option for decisive wins too - force a specific AI to limit itself to treaty designs until the next war. Alternatively, hit the basing capacity of their home region (simulating the enforced demilitarization). E.g. if I collapse Austria-Hungary as Italy, let me reduce their basing capacity by a lot and they can get that back over the following years. Perhaps kill their drydocks, drop them down to a smaller dock size. SOMETHING that affects their 'core' stats and abilities.

A war does not just involve gains for the victor. Especially not a war in the first half of the 20th century. It also involves crippling losses for the loser. And while the PLAYER can suffer such losses (e.g. treaties), the AI does NOT.

Please, devs. Give me a way to cripple an AI in the long run. Give me a way NOT to fight the SAME. BLOODY. WAR. AGAIN. AND. AGAIN. AND. AGAIN.

[enioch]

To further illustrate my point.

Russia has had a lower budget than me for the past decade. She has lost three devastating wars, including a 20-point and a 10-point collapse. She lost more than a dozen capital ships in the last war. Somehow she can still afford a fleet that's larger than mine.

And she can still keep most of it parked in my front lawn.

This makes no freaking sense.

[noshurviverse]

While I certainly agree that there should be more long-lasting repercussions from a serious war (seriously, in a French game I'm in the middle of my 6th war with Germany in 30 years), I'd ask a couple questions of your save.

1)Where is most of your construction budget going? I see you're spending almost 28,000 but I only see 3CV and 2CL building (and 80,000t CVL rebuild?). Are you mass producing DDs or subs?
2)Some number crunching shows that your average capital ship is 65,000t, while the AI's is between 38,000-41,000t. Could some of this discrepancy be the result of you making capitals 50% larger than most other nations?
3)A rather obvious question, but are you placing airbases in reserve during peacetime? If not you could be losing upwards of 10,000 units of money a month that could be going to fleet construction.

[enioch]

In order:
1. Massive light forces rebuild. My CVLs are getting rebuilt with modern systems, I have new 2500t DDAAs in the docks and I also had a couple of dozen subs building.
2. Of course I have fewer ships because they are bigger and better. Do not mistake me. I do not consider this Russian fleet a threat.
3. Yes. At the time when the screenshot was taken, I had mobilised them all, because tensions were rising again and I wanted pilot quality to go up in preparation of the war.

Let me be clear. I do not believe this Russian fleet is any actual threat and, at the time of writing I am in the process of surprise pounding it back into the seafloor where it belongs. My point is that, in any universe subject to a lick of common sense, the Japanese would NEVER tolerate its existence so close to the Home Islands and, after several annihilations of its predecessors would have the capability and justification to impose its continued absence from their front yard.

I do not have said capability and it grates having to fight the same war over and over and over.

[deadmetal]

It is one of the largest shortcomings of this game. Even from the gameplay perspective, a player should be able to harm their enemy much more than is currently possible in the game. Given that the player overwhelms them completely. Otherwise, it becomes an unrewarding, repetitive and an unrealistic chore.

The time it takes for a nation to recover after a crushing defeat should be much longer. If after a crushing defeat, a player or an AI nation goes into war against the same opponent and experiences another such defeat, the consequences for the defeated side should be dire. Eventually, it should be even possible to annex their home territory. To make it balanced, AI nations should be much less willing to go into a war if their navy isn't evidently stronger than the players. When they do go into war while having a stronger navy, they should be trying to have a quick and decisive victory in one or two very large battles, instead of giving a player opportunity to use attrition tactics.

Also, AI nations should be reacting to a players godlike naval performance and unstoppable rise in power. If a players nation is evidently becoming a hyper militaristic threat to the world, AI nations should leave behind their differences and form an alliance. Then they should make a good strategic use of their additive naval power, conducting huge invasions, blockades and provoking a player to have battles where the odds would be largely in the AI alliances favor.

I could suggest more things to make this game less boring, more realistic, more challenging and much more rewarding, but I hope that my general message is clear. Make it unforgiving and make losing or winning actually count. If you think that there are people who prefer this mild gameplay mode over what I'm suggesting (I'm certain that there are almost no such players), then just make it configurable in the options.

[christian]

currently 80 month wars once over feel like easy recovery and building time and like absolutely nothing just happend the last 80 months 


oh you just wiped the american surface fleet from the face of the planet after 80 months and they have no capital ships left while you have over 10 ?

nah its fine USA just collapsed WITH ALMOST 0 DETRIMENTS TO THEIR ECONOMY they barely have to pay any war repercussions and they have no war restrictions placed on them


so a solid 10 years later when they declare war again they have a fleet twice as big as yours and you have to do what you did 10 years prior all over again

unlike in real life where after tsushima the russian fleet quite literally never recovered until the damn 60s and even then it could be argued it was far from strong (even before the revolution they never ever recovered from tsushima)



or how after 1918 the german fleet never ever recovered to its former self

or how literally no navy after a war in which it had been heavily damaged and captured recovered

[wlbjork]

Some form of diplomatic penalty should maybe apply as well? Nothing more odd than watching tensions rocket up again after a sound thrashing.

Something along the lines of a (10(S-Y))% chance of any pop-up incident involving the defeated nation not occurring. In this case, S = the final war score/capture points and Y = number of years since peace. The same could apply to any non pop-up type increase in tensions.

[mobeer]

Two things go wrong:
1) a crushed enemy immeadiately regains its full naval budget - a collapsed economy or war reparations don't seem to have any lasting effect
2) a crushed but not impoverished enemy is spending very little on maintenance so can build a new fleet of modern ships