Improving rivalry
Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 5:38 am
Rivalry, right now, doesn't really make a ton of sense. It's instant, it instantly lets you declare war, it's ONLY good for declaring war, and upon a successful military conquest rivalry status is reset so the rival status doesn't delay you from immediately improving relations with the conquered nation. The cases where it is meaningfully anything other than a +10 influence cost to the Declare War action are edge cases at best.
It seems like rivalry should be a step in the process of preparing to go to war with a nation- conceptually, building up public support, building up a cassis belli, and/or making the necessary military planning for the war- just like allyship is a step to federation and federation is a step towards unification. It also seems like, having built up a nation as your public enemy, then making them allies and eventually federation or unified partners should take longer. This works both thematically, and gives rivalry some weight and mechanical impact on the game in ways that are consistent with the delays imposed by relationship changes in the other direction.
I think this could be implemented without significantly expanding or adding new game systems:
1) Add a "must have been rivals for at least 90 days" requirement to Declare War, just like the federation/unification timer. For extra flavor, make it scale with the democracy level of the declarer, ie. democracy <=2 can declare war within 60 days, scaling up to 365 days at democracy >=8.
2) When a nation is conquered, set it to Rival with the coalition that conquered it and start the improve relations timer anew. However, remember the nation that gained executive control of it after the conquest. As long as it remains in control, that nation is allowed to join in defensive wars against the nation it conquered. (to plug the obvious problem of "if I can't ally with it, anyone can just declare war on it and take it from me")
It seems like rivalry should be a step in the process of preparing to go to war with a nation- conceptually, building up public support, building up a cassis belli, and/or making the necessary military planning for the war- just like allyship is a step to federation and federation is a step towards unification. It also seems like, having built up a nation as your public enemy, then making them allies and eventually federation or unified partners should take longer. This works both thematically, and gives rivalry some weight and mechanical impact on the game in ways that are consistent with the delays imposed by relationship changes in the other direction.
I think this could be implemented without significantly expanding or adding new game systems:
1) Add a "must have been rivals for at least 90 days" requirement to Declare War, just like the federation/unification timer. For extra flavor, make it scale with the democracy level of the declarer, ie. democracy <=2 can declare war within 60 days, scaling up to 365 days at democracy >=8.
2) When a nation is conquered, set it to Rival with the coalition that conquered it and start the improve relations timer anew. However, remember the nation that gained executive control of it after the conquest. As long as it remains in control, that nation is allowed to join in defensive wars against the nation it conquered. (to plug the obvious problem of "if I can't ally with it, anyone can just declare war on it and take it from me")