Diplomacy is entirely broken

[Cheetah]

They are all entirely Random, the test and proof of this is perfectly simple.

1) As soon as you get a DOW, reload the game from the Autosave taken just before you ended the last turn.

2) Re-run the end of turn.

If the DOW is based upon logic and the diplomatic/geopolitical situation at the end of that turn then nothing has changed and the same faction will DOW you every turn. If it doesn't, and never bothers you again then clearly it was a completely random event.

This is clearly not a sufficient test. You are making up a strawman by assuming that the decision making of the AI is either (i) completely deterministic, or (ii) completely random. This need not be so.

Most likely it is a probabilistic decision making process. Lets say the AI has a certain chance decalring a war on you. Denote it with p (where 0<p<1). Then of course the chance of not declaring a war on you is 1-p. How the program calculates this chance ofc unkown to me, it can depend on many factors. The point is that it is entirely possible that in one turn it throws a dice and gets a number smaller than p, thus declares war on you, yet if you reload the game it throws a number larger than p thus it keeps peace. What you would see is not deterministic but definitely not random either.

The real test would be to run let say 100 of reloads and count the number of DoW. Then compare this sample to a sample generated by random number generator. If you dont get a statistical difference (i.e. the mean of the samples do not differ statistically, i.e roughly speaking the mean probability of getting DoWs is around 0.5) then you could conclude that DoW is random in that given context. Otherwise it is not.

I would bet a large sum of money that it is not.

Also, please take a look at the two lists of DoWs that I posted before and tell me how could you get those list by a purely random process. Thanks.

[Didz]

Most likely it is a probabilistic decision making process. Lets say the AI has a certain chance decalring a war on you. Denote it with p (where 0<p<1). Then of course the chance of not declaring a war on you is 1-p. How the program calculates this chance ofc unkown to me, it can depend on many factors. The point is that it is entirely possible that in one turn it throws a dice and gets a number smaller than p, thus declares war on you, yet if you reload the game it throws a number larger than p thus it keeps peace. What you would see is not deterministic but definitely not random either.

I would agree with that theory, if over the course of the next few turns the same DOW occurred again. The logic being that the criteria remain more or less the same so the only variable is the randon number rolled.

However, prior to Patch 1.3 that certainly wasn't the case, and once avoided most DOW's never materialised again for the rest of the game. It quite literallly only this afternoon that I've noticed a change and it now looks like DOW's are a lot more consistent and persistent. Even if they are still lacking in intellegence.

That I also noticed, the system is made to keep you at war at all times, I know it's called total War but it would be nice if you could just build up a trade empire and choose wars yourself instead of having the AI choose them all for you, that's not to say it should never declare war but if it always does 1 or two turns after you eliminated the last faction then that is just a silly way to keep you on your toes, I could think of a few better ways to achieve the same thing without making one province factions declare war on the mightiest faction around.

Yeah! its quite dissapointing really. I mean its supposed to be a strategy game, but as someone pointed out at the the moment the campaign game requires about as much intellectual input as pub brawl. I suspect the only players getting any sort of challenge out of it are the blitzers.

[Sheogorath]

Alright, I just started an Ottoman campaign to try them out, since I've never played them seriously before.

I started out, as usual, at war with Russia. I spent my first four turns getting as many trade agreements and alliances as possible. I even managed to procectorate Dageistan and make an alliance with Persia and decent relations, including a trade agreement, with Austria.

Turn four hits, and suddenly EVERY SINGLE NEIGHBORING STATE declares war on me. In one turn, Austria, Persia, Georgia, Dageistan and Venice declared war. I don't count the Crimean or Barbary as 'neighboring states' because theyre protectorates and useless, although the Crimean did, rather amusingly, managed to take Kiev because the Russians used the entire Kiev garrison to attack an army, which then retreated to and took Kiev.

Either way, the campaign was a bust. Austria took its DOW seriously and Dageistan and Georgia did their thing, which was to spawn massive armies from their single cities and drive all resistance before them. It's hard to fend off a massive half-stack of line infantry when the best you can do is a couple of units of militia, since your annual budget is about 1000 Baghdad Bucks.

[Husar]

So you had several allies declare war on you? Makes sense, let's advertise the AI as backstabbers, obviously it's very sophisitcated. I'm getting the impression that the most reliable factions are neutral ones.

[Lucius Verenus]

Turn four hits, and suddenly EVERY SINGLE NEIGHBORING STATE declares war on me. In one turn, Austria, Persia, Georgia, Dageistan and Venice declared war.

It would be interesting, if you still have it, to reload the save before this and hit end-turn and see if some/all/none of them do it again

Sig..

[Sheogorath]

So you had several allies declare war on you? Makes sense, let's advertise the AI as backstabbers, obviously it's very sophisitcated. I'm getting the impression that the most reliable factions are neutral ones.

Theoretically protectorates are more reliable, but Dageistan proved me wrong there.

It would be interesting, if you still have it, to reload the save before this and hit end-turn and see if some/all/none of them do it again

Sig..

I went in a few more turns out of curiosity and Poland jumped in a few turns later. I tried reloading a couple times with the same result.

This is the first time I've ever had a protectorate declare war on me. It's completely stupid.

[Zarky]

In my Ottoman game I managed to persuade Dagestan to be my ally (they had taken russian region so no protectocrate) and they didn't backstab me until I did to get last region I needed for winning.
At start they were hostile to me, before I stabbed them at best they were indifferent.

[Didz]

It would be interesting, if you still have it, to reload the save before this and hit end-turn and see if some/all/none of them do it again

Yes, I must admit that would have been my first reaction.

It does sound like the 'Player Hate Routine' kicked in and just decided you were having things too easy.

It would also be interesting to go back and list the 'Friend-o-Meter' ratings of all the factions that DOW'd you just before they did so, just to see if there is any tangible link.

I'm pretty sure that each faction has some scripted DOW's early in the game, certainly when playing Maratha I have never been able to avoid an early war with Mysore no matter what I do to try and placate them and you may have been targetted by one or more of those, but a reload would have confirmed that.