Diplomacy queries

[dodgy]

I have a few diplomacy oddities I would like to question to see if I understand properly (and maybe get some change?), I apologise if any of my surmsies are wrong about how diplomacy works:
1. You are at war with a nation and it has a client state, you massacre the client state building up a huge positive war score BUT this gets ignored when you try to make peace, correct? So you might be the Maurya at war with the Seleucids & Bactria, take every Bactrian region/province but can't get any of them in peace negotiations because the Seleucid will ignore your war score versus Bactria when judging if your request is reasonable. You can't even get them by wiping out Bactria because they stay alive despite having no regions because they are a Seleucid ally.

2. I have had a situation where I face a medium sized enemy field army (say 15-20 units) in battle in one of their regions and lose narrowly for the loss of, say, 2 units. The other side gets some positive war score which is fine. I send in a much larger army and this time my opponent decides discretion is the better part of valour: their field army doesn't offer battle and joins the garrison behind the walls of the city in the region. I sit down and besiege them until every single unit is dead by siege casualties, taking the city and region. I have completely exterminated the enemy field army yet seem to get no credit for that in the war score because it was done by siege rather than open battle. So it is possible that after completely wiping out my enemy's field army and capturing the region they were defending, I have a net negative war score due to the loss of a few units early on in that region. If I am correct that this is the current method for calculating war scores, could it be please be adjusted so that killing non-garrison units in a successful siege earns positive war score, like it would in a battle?

3. I am not sure about this one but I am trying to figure out how I ended up with the warscores I have playing Maurya (M) with a war against the Seleucids (S) and their client Bactria (B). In a single war M has taken every region of B (13 I think) and many from S (14?), + wiped out out all B armies and most S armies it has encountered although losing some battles against them on the way. M's war score against S is -6 (!!) and against B is +109 (okay but completely ignored), so despite owning about 26 of their regions and wiping out many armies, M can only make peace if it offers something to S and gives up all 26 regions it has gained. Anyway, I suspect the following might have happened a number of times and contributed to this situation:
(a) an army of M walks into a region of S and captures it so war score versus S is adjusted (+5 for example) - which is fine.
(b) The M army wanders off and an army from B captures the region. Then the game gives a warscore boost to both B for capturing it AND to S because its region is no longer owned by M. So although the net change from the start in regions owned by M is nothing it has a 0 war score versus S and a -5 war score versus B.
(c)Then the B army goes away and M recaptures the region and this time doesn't lose it. However, only the war score versus B is adjusted. That means that M has captured a region originally owned by S but has a 0 war score with both S and B - no chance of requesting the region in a peace proposal.
Normally, to get around the shortcomings in the peace negotiation process, in my game M would just keep going until it captured the remaining 25 S regions and all of its gains are automatically granted. But one is surrounded by Antigonid regions and another by Saka, and thus not accessible without declaring war on or allying those third parties.

I apologise if my surmises above about the war score calculations are inaccurate. But if they are even vaguely close to correct, could we get some changes please?
It would also be nice to have a bit more information about how war scores are determined since they are so important to the peace and diplomacy process.

[dodgy]

(replying to my own message)
I see now that there is an old thread where others have pointed out the problem with negotiating for client state regions, so you can probably ignore that part of my original message.

That thread also mentioned the bug where you can't ask for a province to be ceded if you have formed it yourself from captured regions, so hopefully that will be fixed.
Related to that issue, is there a limit of 12 on the number of regions you can individually request in a peace negotiation? I have tied to work around the inability to request provinces by adding individual regions but there seems to be a hard limit on the number you can request.

[Morbio]

I've just posted a similar issue (slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=534&t=98155), it is most frustrating and potentially makes the game impractical to play

[Pocus]

I replied to the CS issue in Morbio's thread. Apology guys for the bug, it is fixed internally but the patch will only be released with the new DLC.

I can tell you how to fix it if you fancy editing a text file, but only if you don't play MP or that would botch the game and p*** off all others players playing it!

You are indeed right about WS not factoring all losses, although upon taking the region, you should be more than compensated with WS gain from the take over. I'll add a note on these ignored losses though, but this is not at the top of the list.

[dodgy]

Thanks Pocus.

Given that the client state diplomacy bugs can be crippling, are we going to have to wait much longer for the DLC and thus a fix? If it is still some time away, is there no chance of a patch in the meantime?

I recently started a MP game playing Maurya and guess I'm pretty stuffed until this is fixed.
Will all other players in the MP game have to at least have downloaded the properly working version? I am assuming it is not necessary to buy the DLC to fix it. I almost certainly will buy but maybe others won't.

[ronehjr]

Pocus, will the patch include Casus Belli as a diplomacy option?

[Pocus]

Sorry, we can't make a patch before the DLC, preparing a patch and not making a mistake always means a significant number of hours just checking everything is set right, and the DLC is nearing, only a few weeks.

No extra diplomatic option in the DLC, the focus is elsewhere.

I feel like the grinch, sorry guys.

[Bridger]

I can tell you how to fix it if you fancy editing a text file,

What do we need to edit in which text file?

[dodgy]

Thanks for the update Pocus - now back to working on the DLC to deliver it as soon as possible!

[Morbio]

Whilst it's disappointing not to get a patch sooner, I understand the challenges of managing a release, so I'll just have to be patient.

Pocus, will the fix address retrospective issues, or only new issues? One of my games, the Dalmation/Byzantine game I reported, like someone mentioned earlier is screwed until this fix comes out.

[Pocus]

This should work in ongoing games yes.