Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Field of Glory: Empires is a grand strategy game in which you will have to move in an intricate and living tapestry of nations and tribes, each one with their distinctive culture.
Set in Europe and in the Mediterranean Area during the Classical Age, experience what truly means to manage an Empire.

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kvnrthr
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Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by kvnrthr »

Is there any way to do this? Sometimes I prefer to just let a strong ally handle himself, and would rather not share a border with some annoying enemies. There was a situation where an enemy took an ally's land, then I retook it but it went to my control.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by sage3 »

+1
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by devoncop »

kvnrthr wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 5:23 am Is there any way to do this? Sometimes I prefer to just let a strong ally handle himself, and would rather not share a border with some annoying enemies. There was a situation where an enemy took an ally's land, then I retook it but it went to my control.

At the moment there is no way to do this though they are looking at implementing more diplomatic options I believe and I would hope this will be one of them.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by FlashXAron_slith »

.. anyway that game needs A LOT MORE DIPLOMATIC OPTIONS, how it is now, it isn't really satisfying
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by Lysimaque »

FlashXAron_slith wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 7:51 am .. anyway that game needs A LOT MORE DIPLOMATIC OPTIONS, how it is now, it isn't really satisfying
Agree, it very a big lack actually.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by Gilmer »

I'd also like options after beating an opponent's army in a region they own - At least 1 that says "Loot the region but don't take ownership". I don't want your regions!
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by ledo »

I think a balance needs to be struck, like a hit to your loyalty or legacy or something every time you give up a region. I really like the difficulty in maintaining an empire in this game, and one of the best parts is getting stuck in a war with someone you can defeat and then being straddled with terrible territory. This provides a cost of war that rarely gets shown in other games, the aftermath (what to do when you've won). I think this would be one of the only games that can accurately reflect a mistake like the Iraq war, easy military victory followed by nothing but headaches, violence and an inability to just get out without seriously losing face. I don't want to be able to just farm out problematic provinces or just cut down my empire at will to clean up my decadence, because that would not reflect the difficulty of extracting yourself out of a conflict when its over and create neat cookie cutter empires designed to last (without the necessary geopolitical sacrifice of being very careful who you get into a conflict with).
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by PDiFolco »

What's even more missing is that you cannot give back a region when brokering peace, and the enemy refuses peace because you own their regions!!
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by Kaede11 »

ledo wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 4:09 am I think a balance needs to be struck, like a hit to your loyalty or legacy or something every time you give up a region. I really like the difficulty in maintaining an empire in this game, and one of the best parts is getting stuck in a war with someone you can defeat and then being straddled with terrible territory. This provides a cost of war that rarely gets shown in other games, the aftermath (what to do when you've won). I think this would be one of the only games that can accurately reflect a mistake like the Iraq war, easy military victory followed by nothing but headaches, violence and an inability to just get out without seriously losing face. I don't want to be able to just farm out problematic provinces or just cut down my empire at will to clean up my decadence, because that would not reflect the difficulty of extracting yourself out of a conflict when its over and create neat cookie cutter empires designed to last (without the necessary geopolitical sacrifice of being very careful who you get into a conflict with).
I see your point but it's also inconsistent being forced to absorb territories because they won't stop declaring war on you. There should be a "force becoming a client state" or tributary something like this.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by ledo »

Yeah I'd like to see something in that vein but again I think it has to be very carefully implemented because otherwise it'll tilt back the other way where you start blobbing through client states. To maintain the growth and decline cycle of this game you need to be forced to become bloated and sometimes that should be unavoidable. Maybe a period of mass discontent in the client state with constant revolt risk and massive penalties if the state falls apart. Or maybe you can release a client after a war but the process takes a while meaning you temporarily take the penalty and risk a new war with the nation if it doesn't hold together (with them receiving free troops).
ledo
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by ledo »

Basically if you need to get rid of them so you can redirect your forces elsewhere then you're going to have to eat the territory. But if you have the luxury of time try to rebuild that failed state as an ally.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by 13obo »

ledo wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 4:09 am I think a balance needs to be struck, like a hit to your loyalty or legacy or something every time you give up a region. I really like the difficulty in maintaining an empire in this game, and one of the best parts is getting stuck in a war with someone you can defeat and then being straddled with terrible territory. This provides a cost of war that rarely gets shown in other games, the aftermath (what to do when you've won). I think this would be one of the only games that can accurately reflect a mistake like the Iraq war, easy military victory followed by nothing but headaches, violence and an inability to just get out without seriously losing face. I don't want to be able to just farm out problematic provinces or just cut down my empire at will to clean up my decadence, because that would not reflect the difficulty of extracting yourself out of a conflict when its over and create neat cookie cutter empires designed to last (without the necessary geopolitical sacrifice of being very careful who you get into a conflict with).
This is an amazingly good point and I agree that a balance needs to be struck between reality and gameplay.

I've started reading on the Diadochi (as with any historical strategy I play), and saw that a lot of the power-play between Alexander's successors involved generals helping each other out by sending troops or relinquishing territory to each other. Now in FoG:E, we have the issue that the game is far longer than the wars of succession after Alexander's death, but the point is diplomacy needs to allow for a lot more fluidity than the current "attack a region and conquer it subsequently" that we are only allowed to do.

The game is amazing in all aspects but diplomacy, but I'm looking forward to the future development that will enhance it.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by Kaede11 »

ledo wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:19 am Yeah I'd like to see something in that vein but again I think it has to be very carefully implemented because otherwise it'll tilt back the other way where you start blobbing through client states. To maintain the growth and decline cycle of this game you need to be forced to become bloated and sometimes that should be unavoidable. Maybe a period of mass discontent in the client state with constant revolt risk and massive penalties if the state falls apart. Or maybe you can release a client after a war but the process takes a while meaning you temporarily take the penalty and risk a new war with the nation if it doesn't hold together (with them receiving free troops).
I agree. It's all about balance. Obviously, releaseing territories as client states and living off them is not realistic, but I think there could be lots of creative ways to find a balance if it was well thought. War is too basic for my taste at this point. Some wars were decided in 1 or 2 battles and never ended with a total nor partial annexation. I am thinking about Rome vs Seleucid Empire and the treaty of Apamea. The Seleucids were forced to lose all european claims and relinquish all their elephants. Also, the romans took 20 hostages, including Antoichus son, as a guarantee. They had to pay a large sum of money and give up Asia minor west of taurus mountains, which the romans ceded to Pergamum. Their navy was also restricted.

It is realistic to give different diplomatic options which (maybe) should be tied to your rank or culture. From this example, there could be this options of negotiation:

- Give up claims (in the game this could be represented by forcing an enemy to give up objectives which you both have in common).
- Give up resources (This could restrict their use of a resource they are creating for X time. Or maybe force them to give up on importing this resource from outside their borders)
- Take hostages (This could be used to force a non-aggresion pact with the affected country until death of the ruler; with severe negative impacts if broken. Maybe even make it so there is a low chance the next ruler has some sympathy for the culture where he/she has been held as hostage in case it was the heir of the previous ruler.)
- Force them to pay X amount of resources. (Selfexplanatory. Possibly restricted to money, but I could also see metal or manpower here).
- Force them to become client state / tributary.
- Force them to pay X amount of resource during Y turns.
- Cede territories to X (Where X could be one of your allies or simply a previous conquered country, making them reappear again).

All this can be then balanced and integrated in the system with loyalty mechanics, making other powers react to the treaty conditions and basically juggling around with existing work. It would also be fine if bad relations meant harsher environments or some parts of the game became more difficult. I'm having lots of fun with the game, but some things are not realistic at all, like seeing some tribal nations spread like wildfire like arverni or celtiberia.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by ledo »

Maybe having the AI undertake war differently to players would be interesting. With the AI calling it a limited war or war of opportunity if they declared war just because see that you're down (or any other reason other than actual superiority and an objective target), this would make it easier to peace out if you defeat the enemy a few times, just so you can do a few knockout blows to get the smaller countries off your back. I could also see the ability to loot a target while receiving a decadence penalty, with a much higher penalty if its not a limited war. This would work ok with players as well, as it would mean that a limited war would encourage the opponent to not take your territory unless they actually wanted it, while declaring a total war would practically force their hand, hurting both of you in the process. Anyway, the devs will probably come up with something, but I think we all agree that the empire mechanics are good, but some diplomatic flexibility that doesn't hurt those mechanics would be a good.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by juanval »

Sometimes I feel that I want to weaken an strong neighbour nation crushing one of its armies or attacking the capital, but, in order to do this, I must conquer some regions and suffer the cdr penalty.

- It would be great to make punishment campaigns, where you enter in enemy lands, and have the posibility to return your armies to your original land, giving the conquered regions to independents or to a friendly nation.

- The game should let you to choose between taking slave prisoners or not. It's a big problem when you gain one slave population anytime you defeat a medium/big sized army.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by Gilmer »

Well, I have found insulting their ambassador sometimes makes them declare war, but then you have to beat them on your regions and not theirs ever...
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by ledo »

juanval wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:14 pm Sometimes I feel that I want to weaken an strong neighbour nation crushing one of its armies or attacking the capital, but, in order to do this, I must conquer some regions and suffer the cdr penalty.

- It would be great to make punishment campaigns, where you enter in enemy lands, and have the posibility to return your armies to your original land, giving the conquered regions to independents or to a friendly nation.

- The game should let you to choose between taking slave prisoners or not. It's a big problem when you gain one slave population anytime you defeat a medium/big sized army.
Yeah the first point I agree with as it would some flavour to wars but again would need to be balanced. The second point I'm not so sure. I don't think the game should give you too much flexibility and cookie cutter behaviour. I think some of the effects have to saddle you with suboptimal decisions as a compensation for your ability to ignore cultural norms, mistakes you can see in hindsight etc. Otherwise you just begin to act too optimally and all the flavour of the game is lost.

I'd take ggs war in the east as an example, although it's a great game and I love it. In that game there are no huge penalties for retreating early because national morale is hardcoded and Stalin's stubbornness is not abstracted. So most players retreat all across the line back to the dnepr as fast as possible at the start of Barbarossa, with no real general executions or heavy morale penalties. It's optimal play that allows improvement through hindsight but it loses all flavour because it doesn't reflect confusion about how ineffective the Soviet army really was and the pressure to limit territorial losses both politically and to avoid a collapse in national morale.

Taking slaves was a part of spoils of war back then. It might be suboptimal but it's a part of the society that you have to adjust to. If you remove the need to do it, it just makes the game easier while also removing part of the flavour. If you decide to do it there should be at the very least a penalty to loyalty or unrest, or manpower as people don't want to join the army if they're not allowed to loot, to reflect that you're breaking the norms of those nations. But really I'd rather the game continued to railroad you in some places while allowing you to work within those bounds to do the best you can. I.e. victory comes from good army management and careful building planning rather than flexibility to break norms and get rid of all your slaves or at will just cut down your empire.

Grand strategy games give you god emperor status when you play them. They severely overstate the level of centralisation and freedom of decision making a leader has because they cannot account for all the nuances of personal character faults de facto power groups and elaborate schemes, the people that play them have far more information and experience of running the same scenarios over and over than the original leaders and work with far fewer unknowns etc. I think good game design in Grand strategy limits your freedom not expands it, because it makes for more difficult games that have more character. And it creates true differences between the flow of these games. This game has done it extremely well, with wars going back and forth, with blobby nations rising and falling, creating the challenge of survival and rebirth that few other paint the map simulators have. If I wanted to snowball and create a perennial untouchable world empire I'd load up a paradox game, as you can usually achieve that in the first try (small nation in eu3 maybe being the exception to that rule).
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by devoncop »

ledo wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:13 pm
juanval wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:14 pm Sometimes I feel that I want to weaken an strong neighbour nation crushing one of its armies or attacking the capital, but, in order to do this, I must conquer some regions and suffer the cdr penalty.

- It would be great to make punishment campaigns, where you enter in enemy lands, and have the posibility to return your armies to your original land, giving the conquered regions to independents or to a friendly nation.

- The game should let you to choose between taking slave prisoners or not. It's a big problem when you gain one slave population anytime you defeat a medium/big sized army.
Yeah the first point I agree with as it would some flavour to wars but again would need to be balanced. The second point I'm not so sure. I don't think the game should give you too much flexibility and cookie cutter behaviour. I think some of the effects have to saddle you with suboptimal decisions as a compensation for your ability to ignore cultural norms, mistakes you can see in hindsight etc. Otherwise you just begin to act too optimally and all the flavour of the game is lost.

I'd take ggs war in the east as an example, although it's a great game and I love it. In that game there are no huge penalties for retreating early because national morale is hardcoded and Stalin's stubbornness is not abstracted. So most players retreat all across the line back to the dnepr as fast as possible at the start of Barbarossa, with no real general executions or heavy morale penalties. It's optimal play that allows improvement through hindsight but it loses all flavour because it doesn't reflect confusion about how ineffective the Soviet army really was and the pressure to limit territorial losses both politically and to avoid a collapse in national morale.

Taking slaves was a part of spoils of war back then. It might be suboptimal but it's a part of the society that you have to adjust to. If you remove the need to do it, it just makes the game easier while also removing part of the flavour. If you decide to do it there should be at the very least a penalty to loyalty or unrest, or manpower as people don't want to join the army if they're not allowed to loot, to reflect that you're breaking the norms of those nations. But really I'd rather the game continued to railroad you in some places while allowing you to work within those bounds to do the best you can. I.e. victory comes from good army management and careful building planning rather than flexibility to break norms and get rid of all your slaves or at will just cut down your empire.

Grand strategy games give you god emperor status when you play them. They severely overstate the level of centralisation and freedom of decision making a leader has because they cannot account for all the nuances of personal character faults de facto power groups and elaborate schemes, the people that play them have far more information and experience of running the same scenarios over and over than the original leaders and work with far fewer unknowns etc. I think good game design in Grand strategy limits your freedom not expands it, because it makes for more difficult games that have more character. And it creates true differences between the flow of these games. This game has done it extremely well, with wars going back and forth, with blobby nations rising and falling, creating the challenge of survival and rebirth that few other paint the map simulators have. If I wanted to snowball and create a perennial untouchable world empire I'd load up a paradox game, as you can usually achieve that in the first try (small nation in eu3 maybe being the exception to that rule).


I could not agree with this more ....big round of applause :D

Whilst we are all different I definitely love the feeling that I am not omnipotent in this game. Client States forces are not just extra armies that you can move around conveniently or use as garrisons for your own territory. Instead they will often attack in places you really would prefer them not to (I am looking at YOU Nabatea :D )

If the slave mechanics were unmanageable then folks have a point but they are not. The slaves can be sold, freed or converted depending on your choices.

Very happy with design choices here.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by guanotwozero »

I quite like the EU method wher you "occupy" territories, but they don't officially become yours unless/until negotiated at the final peace treaty. However, neither system really allows for marauding/raiding, cutting a destructive swathe through enemy territory without permanently occupying any of it.

It seems to me that there should be a choice between occupying and passing through (albeit destructively) - that would allow for punitive expeditions and nomadic armies. Think of how the Vandals travelled down through Europe and N. Africa to occupy Carthage, just so they could corner Rome's grain market.

When you occupy a territory, Perhaps a simple option of "Pillage" or "Take Possession" would suffice. If you pillage and move out, it either reverts to the original owner or becomes neutral/independant/unoccupied - up for grabs for whomever wants to rebuild it.
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Re: Is there any way to give or return territory to allies?

Post by loki100 »

some general musings.

First there are examples from this era of the states returning to the status quo ante bellum - this really is how all the major wars between Rome and Parthia ended;

Second, some trading would help resolve small wars (so that hooks into issues of the diplomatic system)

Third, I like the impact of having to deal with what you take. It forces you not to send marauding armies into regions you don't want to get to something you do want. So in that sense (esp linked to the decadence rules), the current system tends to prevent long strung out Empires (the sort of thing that used to happen a lot in EU3)

Fourth, my feeling is mostly in this era states took regons for the long term, its not the 18C where wars usually ended with both sides grabbing out of the way settlements simply to have something to bargain with at the peace settlement

so ... not sure, but change very cautiously?
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