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Yeah you're right it would be total bullshit if what you thought was a minor scuffle between tertiary powers turned into a giant great power conflagration because of alliances one or more parties weren't expecting, what was I thinking
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Jun 5, 2021 01:17
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I hope you aren’t referring to WW1 because none of those alliances were secret. Like all the major powers knew what was going to happen.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:18
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Weren't a good chunk of secret alliances secret as much because of the potential domestic political backlash as because of the greater diplomatic repercussions?
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Jun 5, 2021 01:19
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah you're right it would be total bullshit if what you thought was a minor scuffle between tertiary powers turned into a giant great power conflagration because of alliances one or more parties weren't expecting, what was I thinking You're describing a completely different scenario from what we were discussing and I don't know why.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:19
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is there a reasonable guarantee anywhere that every algo dealin w a pop is O(n) tops in this game
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Jun 5, 2021 01:20
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The Triple Alliance and Ottoman-German alliance (the one that brought them both in against Russia) are literally taught as the classic example of the secret alliance system but go off
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Jun 5, 2021 01:22
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Crazycryodude posted:The Triple Alliance and Ottoman-German alliance (the one that brought them both in against Russia) are literally taught as the classic example of the secret alliance system but go off If its so secret why the gently caress were the Russians and French 100% aware of it
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Jun 5, 2021 01:23
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Crazycryodude posted:The Triple Alliance and Ottoman-German alliance (the one that brought them both in against Russia) are literally taught as the classic example of the secret alliance system but go off Where?
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Jun 5, 2021 01:25
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Yeah WW1 was not a war with no plans. Their plans sucked but before the war everyone had a strategy
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Jun 5, 2021 01:25
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Crazycryodude posted:The Triple Alliance and Ottoman-German alliance (the one that brought them both in against Russia) are literally taught as the classic example of the secret alliance system but go off It was the opposite of secret. It was an over engineered intricate web of Bismarckian diplomacy that eventually everyone pushed a little too far and it all collapsed in on itself. Alliances of the time were primarily a form of deterrence - that’s less useful when it’s secret.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:31
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All of the alliances were there on the board at the onset. There was a bit of a cavalier attitude they had where each alliance thought the other would surely back down, because clearly their side was stronger and going to war would be ridiculous. That led to neither side backing down, but this involved them knowing who was on the other side.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:32
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To be fair Italy backed down.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:33
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Tomn posted:Weren't a good chunk of secret alliances secret as much because of the potential domestic political backlash as because of the greater diplomatic repercussions? I actually think that is exactly the point, just phrased in a way that simplifies the understanding for the player like, for example, the WW1 clusterfuck wasn't secret, but you had to be a very well informed individual with substantial access to actually spot the big picture and realize the many, many problems around it. There was a significant degree of clusterfuck among monarchist conservatives/reactionaries (the ones who had some awareness on the matter) about why in the gently caress Wilhelm and Nicholas, blood relatives, had to duke it out because of some whatever bullshit in Austria, then it got even weirder when another guy back in the room said "isn't George related as well?!?!"
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Jun 5, 2021 01:35
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Also weren't the most consequential secret treaties the ones that laid down how the spoils would be split AFTER the war like the Sykes-Picot agreement? That just seems like promising your allies certain territories out of a war which definitely should be something you can do. I do think there is some value in being able to intervene in ongoing wars though especially if you're a great power, that is how the US got into WW1 and the Mexican-American war after all
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Jun 5, 2021 01:39
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:It was the opposite of secret. It was an over engineered intricate web of Bismarckian diplomacy that eventually everyone pushed a little too far and it all collapsed in on itself. Alliances of the time were primarily a form of deterrence - that’s less useful when it’s secret. You had to know this was coming.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:39
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People keep posting suggestions here that makes me think they don't really want to play a video game. I'm not sure what they actually want.Crazycryodude posted:The Triple Alliance and Ottoman-German alliance (the one that brought them both in against Russia) are literally taught as the classic example of the secret alliance system but go off Go read guns of august. Stop this.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:54
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AnEdgelord posted:Also weren't the most consequential secret treaties the ones that laid down how the spoils would be split AFTER the war like the Sykes-Picot agreement? That just seems like promising your allies certain territories out of a war which definitely should be something you can do. Yeah this was one of the things that got the British in hot water in the middle east, because they had promised control of the territory to multiple different local groups if they helped fight against the Ottomans, and while most of those groups were happy to fight the Ottomans anyway, they were not happy when they found out about the double-dealing. This is a much smaller level than the big system of alliances that led to WW1 in the first place though, it was more one of the great powers dicking around some regional allies thinking that they would never find out about it. I believe that when the Russian revolution happened a bunch of dirty laundry was released about all sorts of secret deals across Europe by the now in power Bolsheviks, who had no interest in keeping friendly with all the monarchist powers and were happy to release all the old state secrets kept by the Tsar, although I think that speaks to a point raised up in the thread, where "secret" deals were only secret in the sense that they were not something the average person knew about, but were 100% a thing that all the people at the top making decisions did know about (even if they had to pretend they didn't lest they reveal they are spying on everyone). The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 5, 2021 02:00
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There were secret alliances and secret treaties in both the run-up to and during the war. It's something both the Soviets and Americans criticized as one of the main causes of the war immediately afterward. Both countries now emphasize their own principled (and correct, tbf) opposition to such alliances in the interwar period, and teach it in schools as one of the main causes of the First World War. That said, the alliances themselves weren't secret, just the specific terms. Everyone would know that two nations were on cordial terms, but what conditions they'd support each other under was not widely known except in the most closely-tied examples. It would be ahistorical to not have secret treaties and alliances in Victoria 3, though. I get why you'd remove them, to make the game less of a hassle to play, but the game covers the heyday of secret diplomacy, and they both end at approximately the same time. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 5, 2021 03:17
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Yeah, there were a ton of contradictory territorial promises: for example, this is why Italy lost its poo poo, because Serbia/Yugoslavia got territories the Entente powers had promised to it when they enticed Italy to their side. Sykes-Picot is another one: the British foreign service felt Sykes had been suckered(because he actually gave France what it wanted: Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine). They then planned on just reneging on it, and did in fact wind up keeping Palestine, but they had promised Prince Faisal he would be King of an Arabian kingdom centered on Syria, and the French flipped their poo poo when the Syrian parliament crowned him as Sultan, because they saw him as a British puppet. They chased Faisal away, but the British made him King of Iraq, black-bagging a popular local candidate and shipping him to Malta in the process. No one in Iraq really cared for Faisal. His lazy brother squatted in the Transjordan until the British gave him a kingdom, essentially. Also, the foreign service was super pro-Zionist, but the army was hugely anti-Semitic and constantly tried to stoke anti-Jewish sentiment in Palestine. The whole fiasco created a lot of distrust within the Anglo-French alliance.
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Jun 5, 2021 03:59
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I feel like this could be better modeled by the EU4 mechanic of making your allies vague promises of land and them getting mad when you inevitably stiff them
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Jun 5, 2021 04:23
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Alliances being visible to the player is kind of like manpower and so on being visible to the player in the ledger. That kind of information maybe wouldn't have been visible to the powers that be irl but is a basic concession to making the game work. Clear cause and effect is basic game design.
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Jun 5, 2021 05:07
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Mantis42 posted:Clear cause and effect is basic game design if you can have some sort of signal that, for example, I am playing Denmark and Sweden has something going on with Prussia, that would be good (regarding playing the game) however, continuing the WW1 example from earlier on, doing the thingie where this sort of stuff would affect pops is the sort of amazing lunacy proper to the series: pops getting pissed off after a while because they are going "wait a minute why in the gently caress we are fighting to begin with?!?!" would be awesome (not expecting it at all though) (American soldiers coming back to the country and thinking you know that was total bullshit and maybe those bolsheviks are on to something lmao)
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Jun 5, 2021 05:45
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Secret alliance doesn't sound like a great idea unless it's for a very specific offensive goal. Otherwise you're willing to bet another country will come and save you based on some piece of paper.
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Jun 5, 2021 07:17
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Mantis42 posted:Alliances being visible to the player is kind of like manpower and so on being visible to the player in the ledger. That kind of information maybe wouldn't have been visible to the powers that be irl but is a basic concession to making the game work. Clear cause and effect is basic game design. Diplomacy in particular is tough because the AI absolutely has to do everything through hard game mechanics. Compare to an MP game where you can do all sorts of diplomacy by just sending a dm on discord and hashing things out. You can't dm the AI.
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Jun 5, 2021 07:40
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ilitarist posted:Secret alliance doesn't sound like a great idea unless it's for a very specific offensive goal. Otherwise you're willing to bet another country will come and save you based on some piece of paper. a piece of paper but also the realpolitik that lead to the decision to make the secret alliance? like no one is signing a secret deal to do some war out of the kindness of their heart
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Jun 5, 2021 07:41
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Tomn posted:Weren't a good chunk of secret alliances secret as much because of the potential domestic political backlash as because of the greater diplomatic repercussions? Which then led to public outrage at the Tsar's failure to protect fellow Slavs and deciding that in the name of national prestige that the next time a crisis came up in the Balkans, they could not back down. And at the time, the Tsar figured a war would also encourage dissident elements to rally round the flag, staving off revolution. The Revolutions podcast is doing the Russian revolution and they've been covering the origins of WWI, it's a pro listen. CharlestheHammer posted:Yeah WW1 was not a war with no plans. Their plans sucked but before the war everyone had a strategy Not the Austrians! Despite being one of the prime movers and their Chief of Staff being one of the leading 'we must crush Serbia' voices, he apparently didn't actually plan how that was going to happen.
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Jun 5, 2021 08:06
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Gaius Marius posted:Where? https://www.britannica.com/event/Triple-Alliance-Europe-1882-1915 Triple Alliance, secret agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in May 1882 and renewed periodically until World War I.
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Jun 5, 2021 09:57
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Enjoy posted:https://www.britannica.com/event/Triple-Alliance-Europe-1882-1915 Though the next article also says these alliances were meant as deference so it was not secret in the way this discussion was implying
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Jun 5, 2021 10:04
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Also the whole "Europe accidentally stumbles into war because of an arcane alliance network" thing is nonsense. The war happened because the german government wanted to beat the poo poo out of Russia and France and they took the first excuse they could to do it. They knew exactly what they were doing. The austro-serbian conflict was the equivalent of a random event where Germany gets to choose between +relations or a CB.
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Jun 5, 2021 10:25
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I think there's room to model the concept of a "secret agreement" but still leave it somewhat open. Consider: You can send an Envoy and spend influence to get an AI to Do Something(tm) such as attack a neighbour (where you have to be a Great Power and higher rank than the other nation; they have to have a valid CB already; any nation can attempt in reverse to get a GP to support its own claims but you need to have positive relations, an alliance or protectorate status or similar; similar to CK2 favours). When this is happening; other nations will see the following message, "Germany is currently influencing Austria about some silly matter in the Balkans" you won't know specifically what is happening. You can attempt to decrypt their diplomatic cables by sending an envoy to find out; but if something does happen in the Balkans you can probably figure it out what's what. Thus you can simulate both the fact that "on paper" alliances exist; but also the basic uncertainty as to whether these alliances are actually effective. Something like italy backing out is a result of Germany not having enough favours/influence points for both Austria-Hungary and Italy. Edgar Allen Ho posted:Also the whole "Europe accidentally stumbles into war because of an arcane alliance network" thing is nonsense. The war happened because the german government wanted to beat the poo poo out of Russia and France and they took the first excuse they could to do it. They knew exactly what they were doing. I mean not quite, a random event happened that gave Austria a CB and then Germany wanting to take the opportunity proceeding to nudge Austria into using it promising to have their back if Russia intervenes. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 5, 2021 10:29
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Mans posted:Go read guns of august. Stop this. its a fine book, but not really used any more as a definitive text for historical research Yvonmukluk posted:
far from true, they had extensive plans. their problems on this area was that their doctrine was outdated, ill suited for the areas their best known losses were and made for a much shorter war then it turned out to be. there's also of course the well known problems resulting from their shattered multi-ethnic empire. serbia was also a much stronger country militarily then often assumed by readers (and A-H)
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Jun 5, 2021 11:04
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Serbia just came out of Balkan wars as a victor, and had quite a large and modern military for its size. I kinda wonder if the other great powers never intervened, would they be celebrating Hristmass outside Vienna by 1915?
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Jun 5, 2021 11:22
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gently caress off Batman posted:Serbia just came out of Balkan wars as a victor, and had quite a large and modern military for its size. I kinda wonder if the other great powers never intervened, would they be celebrating Hristmass outside Vienna by 1915? Austria wasn't so much a shitshow Serbia could advance into them, but unless they get the Bulgarians to come in one the flank I doubt they push into Serbia successfully
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Jun 5, 2021 11:30
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A recurring problem that makes Paradox's games ahistorical is that they push modern structures of diplomacy, sovereignty, and nationalism all the way back through history. The average Paradox game buyer can reasonably be expected to understand politics that way, and any new stuff on top of that (eg casus belli) can just be taught in a tutorial. You can argue about the impact of secret diplomacy in World War I. I think people are exaggerating how much each nation knew about each other's commitments to each other. But that war marks the end of a long century of diplomacy where who would support who under what circumstances was a state secret. State secrets weren't necessarily actual secrets but they weren't something you could know with confidence the way I know that France and Poland have an alliance in a game of EU4. That sort of perspective isn't terribly historical in any of Paradox's games' time periods! But Victoria's timeframe ends with the failure of the old system. That long century is Victoria's long century. It's the last heyday of the diplomat plenipotentiary, the largely independent and autocratic diplomatic mission. This autocracy gave diplomats the flexibility to bluff at alliances or non-aggression pacts that may or may not exist, or work with enemies against a common enemy. It's one of the remnants of monarchy that the social and technological change in this period sweeps away. This sort of autocratic delegation isn't compatible with democracy, modern governments can exert more control over their diplomatic arms with the advance of technology, and both the Americans and Soviets were ideologically committed to stamping out this sort of diplomacy in favor of something more transparent. I can understand why Paradox might hesitate to make players learn how to think like a 19th-century diplomat as a requirement just to understand what's going on, in what is already going to be a wickedly complex game, but I also think it's a shame if they can't find a way to make it workable and fun.
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Jun 5, 2021 12:53
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Cease to Hope posted:I can understand why Paradox might hesitate to make players learn how to think like a 19th-century diplomat as a requirement just to understand what's going on, in what is already going to be a wickedly complex game, but I also think it's a shame if they can't find a way to make it workable and fun. This honestly, I feel like there's room to at least explore some of this mechanically.
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Jun 5, 2021 13:01
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What that sort of diplomacy also happens in WW2 pretty famously. It doesn’t die or even change all that much. Hell you could argue the bloc systems are just an extension of this system
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Jun 5, 2021 13:01
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CharlestheHammer posted:What that sort of diplomacy also happens in WW2 pretty famously. It doesn’t die or even change all that much. Hell you could argue the bloc systems are just an extension of this system It's not like modern diplomacy snapped into place everywhere all at once. And there are still remnants of secret diplomacy to this day, for example with nuclear weapons. But there is a clear difference in the independence and secrecy of diplomatic missions before and after the world wars, and the hard lessons of the long 19th century and the concert of powers are why.
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Jun 5, 2021 13:09
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CharlestheHammer posted:What that sort of diplomacy also happens in WW2 pretty famously. It doesn’t die or even change all that much. Hell you could argue the bloc systems are just an extension of this system I dunno, I feel like there's more of an argument that the diplomacy leading up to WW2 is at best more of a last gasp of Pre-WW1 style diplomacy and is considerably more ideological in nature (Anti-Commintern and the Tripartite pacts and the Pact of Steel in particular) by the fascist powers; while the agreements by the Allies were moving towards more open and clear diplomacy. The diplomats had a lot less freedom and were much more concerned with implementing the geostrategic goals of their governments.
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Jun 5, 2021 13:09
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Just going to throw out here that when people talk about "secret" diplomacy and alliances, it's not the existence of the alliances that are secret, it's the exact terms of those alliances.Raenir Salazar posted:I mean not quite, a random event happened that gave Austria a CB and then Germany wanting to take the opportunity proceeding to nudge Austria into using it promising to have their back if Russia intervenes. You're being far too fair to the German "white paper" here. The Germans basically just told the Austrians to do whatever, Germany has your back. Then of course that came about because in Germany you had a civil government that was 1) appointed by the monarch and not beholden to the electorate or national assembly in any real way 2) had pretty much no legal authority over the military. And the military was full of fatalists who were looking at French military buildup and Russian industrialization and despairing that if this went on Germany would never be able to win a war against them or even Russia alone, also they drew up a war plan which rendered it impossible for Germany to mobilize without launching an all out invasion against France through neutral Belgium, they did this in an environment where no one outside of their circle every really got to be able to tell them "NO! Jesus Christ, NO!". Randarkman fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 5, 2021 13:50
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I am just describing it as "a nudge" because I'm a fan of the British style of understatement. In any case I suggest people watch Extra History's series on the July Crisis, for no particular reason other than it's currently thread relevant, and also this series in particular made me feel an emotional connection to the events I hadn't previous felt.
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Jun 5, 2021 14:11
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