Peace and your options

[Murat]

Let me start off by saying that I am an aggressive player. EiA is a wargame. At times though you will have peace and I was asked to provide some insight into the various options at your disposal. Never punish an ally for a separate peace unless you want to lose that ally. Two main considerations come to mind when choosing what type of peace and the terms you will choose and that is: what is the position of the other side realtive to me and what is the next war?

Position of the other side involves where are they physically on the board and how strong are they economically and in forces. Normally you want your immediate neighbors weaker than you in money and forces, while more distant players can be left a bit stronger to act as a threat to your immedite neighbors.

What is the next war is important since sometimes a recently defeated enemy, if left with enough forces, may want to regain some lost ground by quickly aiding you in the next battle for PPs and VPs. Today's enemy is often tomorrow's ally if treated right.

That being said let us look at the basic concerns for each nation in getting peace.

France is a strong nation and if a victor can often be fairly magnanimous if they wish. The French dream is naval parity with Britain and Britain should be stripped and humiliated as often as possible to achieve this goal. Britain has all the money and when defeated should be losing that to you along with as many hard to replace heavy ships as you can take. Other than that, France can let the circumstances dictate how they handle their fallen foes. Just make sure they are able to fight you again, but time it (maybe using the extended peace option) so that they have to fight you alone when you choose to fight. If your army is greatly weakened (Allies outnumber you but you have enough left to defeat a single allied army) you will have to surrender. Do not wait and try to fight a retreat back through your minors, every minor you keep helps you to rebuild those lost forces. If surrendering, surrender to all your enemies at once EXCEPT the weakest. Use them to get back the PPs you lose from the surrender.

Britain can also be magnanimous and like France, needs to strip the French at every turn, taking down the Frech army. Usually a surrendering France is doing so with more minors than a peace can take away and they will rebuild their army again before the mandatory 18 month peace lapses. Your goal is to gain naval dominance through battle, not through peace. Like the French who leave weaker armies alive, leave weaker fleets alive and try to fight them alone. If your fleets are shattered, you will have to surrender, otherwise, you do not need to surrender. Keep your opponents starved by denying naval supply and if you have allies, bring allied troops to remove your enemies (usually the French) from the Homeland.

Russia usually needs more land since there are few minors at hand. Always try to make your defeated enemies a new ally after taking their land. Force people to drive you to civil disorder before surrendering. The Russian landscape is very unforgiving and you can often negotiate a generous conditional surrender or even a white peace by being stubborn.

Austria is situational. You usually want to kill French and Russian armies to make your life easier. Beyond that just see what helps your strategy best. When surrendering do it after your army is weakened but before people are in your nation to protect your core areas.

Prussia has the best corps set up next to France. Usually you want land and money to keep those corps up and running. If forced to surrender try to do so while you still have some army left so you can hopefully get a few minors during the coming peace.

Spain you will need to decide your peace depending on your situation at the time. If surrendering be like Russia and force the civil disorder. Guerillas are really annoying and you can often get a better peace.

Turkey most of your army renews every year which is nice. You want money in almost every peace so you can actually use your MP for the part of your army that doesn't renew. Surrender before your enemies get into your homeland to avoid losing territories that give you feudal corps.

And now the types of peace:

Unconditional is your preferred type of peace when you are the victor. It offers you the most options and grants you the most PPs, which translates into more VPs. It can be refused by your opponent and leave you at war.

Conditional often can be used to convince someone to join with you after the peace, you trade leniency for an ally. It is also useful for making sure you get rid of an enemy since it cannot be refused. For example, I usually offer Conditional to Prussia and Unconditional to Austria if I win the first war to split them.

And finally your choices for peace conditions in their typical order of usefulness in my opinion. In conditional you get to select 2, but your opponent can block one type. In unconditional you can pick 3 and none are blocked. Keep in mind your allies get to pick too so I usually set all the conditions in the order I want them.

Conditional choices:

1/2 Reparations
Cede 1 province/minor
I call these the money choices. You need to look at your opponent and figure out if you are better off getting 1/2 of their income in the next income phase or if you are better off taking a listed province/minor and getting that income for the next 6 econ phases. Britain/France/Russia/Austria usually are better on reparations; Prussia/Turkey/Spain usually you are better off with the province/minor. You do have the option of taking both if you are really short on money.

Remove 3 corps
Remove 1 fleet
These are used to weaken your opponent's army and navy respectively. Navies show the values that are in them so you can preselect the navies and put the one you want on top. Armies by default are listed numerically so the 5th army listed for France, for example, is the Guard corp so long as France is using corps I-IV also. Gives you a big edge in AI games, but not so much against humans because they can alter the default to their advantage. You can usually guess where some good corps to kill are though by their listed location and by what you have fought. You can select just 1 corps also if you wish and give someone a light loss if they are about to join you in another war.

24 months enforced peace
The extended peace is used to make sure an opponent cannot declare war on you for a certain period of time. Each of you is blocked for 18 months but this extends that time for the defeated nation. This is good for victorious nations like France because it allows them to time a new war against an enemy knowing that their ally cannot help for a few more months and is good for smaller victorious nation iin that they are protected from attack for a longer period of time.

Royal marriage
Gives you +1 PP and is a nice way to make sure an opponent is less likely to attack you in the future. A good choice if you have an enemy you are not planning on fighting ever again.

No trading
The best trade is between Britain and France. They are not likely to trade with each other unless things are desperate for them. If you select this and your opponent trades anyway you can fight them immediately but few people fall for this. It is a useless pick because anyone who doesn't want to trade won't and anyone you block can often sacrfice the few $ for a while.

Unconditional choices:

Cede 3 provinces/minors
Full reparations
1/2 trade (only against Britain)
1/2 reparations
Again the money choices. This time you get to have up to all of the income from an opponent or, in the case of Britain, 1/2 of their trade income which is a good amount if they are trading with everyone. You can also get up to 3 minors so that option is more tempting as well. Add up the benefits and pick what best suits your needs.

Remove 3 corps
Remove 2 fleets
Remove all home nation garrisons
Kill the enemy units again but now you can kill 2 fleets instead of one and have the option of taking away all the home nation garrisions so add those up since they are also revealed and try to figure out which way kills more and pick according to your plans.

36 months enforced peace
24 months enforced peace
Extended peace with an even longer option. Same as for Conditional.

Remove 1 leader
Some leaders: Napoleon, Massena, Charles, Blucher, Wellington and Nelson; are extremely dangerous foes and can be removed from the map costing the person PP to return them. I use this against Nelson sometimes as a higher pick but usually just select my most dangerous opponent and leave this behind other picks in case my allies take up the picks I want most.

Enforced access
This let's you move through the lands of a vanquished foe, extending your range to attack enemies who are farther away. I rarely use this and like remove a leader, just mark it as a backup in case my allies take the others.

Royal marriage
Same as Conditional.

No trading
Same as Conditional.


Others please feel free to add your insights!

[pzgndr]

Good stuff, thank you Murat!  There are two motivations for bringing this topic up.  First reason is to eventually add some of these insights to the updated User Manual and online Help file to help players (especially newbies) evaluate their choices.  Second reason is to perhaps use these same insights for improving AI performance in v1.09 when it comes to selecting peace options.
 
More comments from other experienced players would be good, to either confirm what Murat has offered or to provide another perspective.

[pzgndr]

This is not the board game. You can just as easily both not check the conditional box. It is often the goal of a power to split the allies against it exactly for the purpose of fighting one alone. The surest way to prevent this is to force unconditional to at least one side who can strip factors and keep their ally on good footing for a victory. If the suing power wants conditional from both of you, just let the host know. If the surrender messes up or the suing power recants the deal, the host can either undo the sole conditional or force through the joint conditional depending on how your group rules on this issue. They have given the host a slew of abilities to fix things like this and then we are not requiring a whole lot of extra programming because people are unhappy that the game works under the written rules.

I want to roll Murat's other comments about conditional peace into this discussion too. The user manual does not do a good job of explaining the pre-selection process for the victory conditions screen. In the boardgame, players can address surrender conditions when the issue arises, but in the computer game players have to pre-select victory conditions upon DOW and periodically update these as the situation evolves. Once surrender comes up, you really don't have a chance to re-evaluate your choices before the computer cranks out results.

So perhaps some additional insights regarding Accept Informal, Allow Separate Peace, and If Conditional Offered would be helpful. As for host editing, this may be fine for pbem games but standalone solo games versus the AI need the clarity and perhaps some additional programming such as another check box to make the peace process as clear-cut as possible.

[Murat]

A note about the above: at times, and we will use France -v- Austria/Prussia as an example, a nation that is losing a war may decide to surrender to one ally but try not to surrender to the other. If Austria/Prussia were winning currently but the French army outnumbered the Prussian, France might find it useful to try and keep Prussia in the war while getting the Austrians out of it. Of course if both allies go for a conditional peace, this is not an issue, but if one goes unconditional, the losing side can refuse it. Some people apparently have been fooled into going unconditional and getting stuck. Short answer: if your opponent can leave you in a war and defeat you even after losing 3 corps (if you and your ally both go unconditional and the losing nation gets rid of the bigger threat), then you need to choose conditional no matter what they tell you, thus my statement under Prussia's strategy of always take conditional or you will not get a peace. You cannot be left in a war if you choose to take a conditional surrender from your opponent. That being said, onward.....


Accept Informal:
This is a handshake peace. No one gains or loses anything. There should not even be a period of mandatory peace - only formal peace blocks players from declaring war on each other for 18 months, but this may not be programmed this way. I have not tested it, I rarely use it. If I have bothered to go to war with someone I usually am looking to get a peace from them. It is useful under certain circumstances such as if Russia and France suddenly start working together, everyone else may end all wars to hold them off.

Allow Separate Peace:
This is whether or not you will make your ally lose PP and break your alliance for going to peace without you, usually because you want unconditional and they take a conditional or they feel they need to surrender. This is you punishing your ally for making peace and you most likely losing an ally. I always let my allies take separate peace because I like having allies and you will not have them if you punish them for helping you to victory or kick them when they are down.

If Conditional Offered:
If you are surrendering and your opponent(s) offer you conditional peace you can block what peace condition they choose. You even have the option of blocking a different condition for different opponents, for example being Spain and blocking Britain from taking forces but blocking Turkey from taking land. The problem is that usually your enemies list extra conditions to cover what you might block. It is best to determine what you want to protect and then block everyone from taking that. If you want to keep your current fleets/armies, block your enemies from removing forces; want to keep your land, block them from grabbing provinces. I do not block money because my allies can usually at least partially replace what I lose or I can just make militia and save my $. I do not block extended peaces because the extra time helps me rebuild and I can do other things to mess up being put on a war rotation.

[gazfun]

Do you mind If we use this and post it in our forum?

[pzgndr]

gazfun, you'll find most of this has already been integrated into the updated v1.08 game manual under section 6.4. If you have any feedback about what Murat provided and how it's written up in the manual, I can easily make some revisions in the next version. Whenever that may be. I also want to add some more information to the manual regarding the Diplomatic Reactions screen. And I'm curious to see if Marshall will consider Mantis #785 and tweak the surrender conditions, in which case I'll document the changes accordingly.

[Hattori Hanzo]

an interesting thread

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: Murat
Allow Separate Peace:
This is whether or not you will make your ally lose PP and break your alliance for going to peace without you, usually because you want unconditional and they take a conditional or they feel they need to surrender. This is you punishing your ally for making peace and you most likely losing an ally. I always let my allies take separate peace because I like having allies and you will not have them if you punish them for helping you to victory or kick them when they are down.

I have been investigating a potential bug regarding separate peace and some clarification from others would be helpful. My review of EIA rule 4.4.7 and EIH rule 4.6.10 (same) concludes that the separate peace penalty only applies to the 'victor' in a formal peace (Conditional or Unconditional Surrender) or an informal peace. So only the victor breaks its alliance with any MP still at war that has the Separate Peace box unchecked and loses -2 PP, not for an ally that surrenders separately. Yes? Also, there is nothing in the rules to force a MP to surrender to all other MPs in an alliance that have no separate peace agreement in place. Except, if an enemy has no units in country then the MP cannot surrender to it unless it sues for peace with all MPs it is at war with. On this last point, I am not seeing anything in the code to check for this condition, so that's something I can address. Mantis bug #541 asserts that "separate peace should only be enforced for conditional surrender according to normal EiA rules" but I cannot find this in the rules? So, I plan to verify the separate peace penalty works correctly in v1.21 for the 'victor' for any separate peace agreement (informal, conditional and unconditional) and will look at the other condition when I can (probably v1.22). Thoughts/comments?