I have mentioned this in a couple of thread but it was pretty deep in the thread and I doubt the devs even saw these suggestions. Anyway here is the solution:
Basically despite any Warscore or other war declaration calculation the AI should have to ask itself 4 simple questions before the AI gets a green light to go to the next step and consider if it should declare war or not.
Here are the questions:
1) Am I already at war?
If the answers is yes then no war declared....EVER!! No current war is a condition that has to be met period. No country should wanting to fight two factions, on two fronts simultaneously, that is just a recipe for self-destruction, look at Germany during WWII.
2) Is the Faction I want to fight weaker and/or disadvantaged such as being already at war with another faction?
If the answer is Yes and answer to Question 1 is no, then war can be declared. If the the answer is No, then no war declared. Disadvantaged could mean more than just being at war with another faction but I would say that even if the faction was stronger as long as that faction was fighting another faction then it would be considered as disadvantaged for the purposes of this condition.
3) Does the Faction I want to go to war against have territories bordering mine?
If the answer is No, then no war declared even if the other conditions are met. It is just silly that Vlandia would ever go to war with the Khuzaits as long as there were two or three other factions between them and Vlandia. In a real situation no country would let you march an Army through their territory to attack another country. This is like America wanting to go to war with China and deciding it would attack China's Northern border by marching its armies through Europe and Russia without asking either countries permission or opinion. It is just pure ridiculous.
4) Have you been in a war within the last 30 days.
If yes, no war is declared despite other conditions being met. This is an another common sense things. Soldiers need rest, the economy needs to recover. No country would willingly want to fight back to back to back wars non-stop without rest.
These 4 questions consisting of simple logical conclusions, solve 90% of the war issues frequency issues. No Kingdom should want to be at war with multiple factions, when it is disadvantaged, when they are recovering from a pervious war or if they don't have bordering territories....EVER!!! This doesn't mean another, more powerful faction which finds itself meeting all the conditions wouldn't declare war on your faction and you could very well find yourself fighting 2-3 other factions if 2 opposing factions met all their conditions to declare on you but it should be pretty rare to be fighting more than 1 faction at a time if these four question has to be answered correctly each and every time the AI decided it needed to check for a war declaration.
Also I know that there is some concern about the pace of things and thinking that if you weren't fighting as often the game might be boring however, having 15-20 days of peace here and there would resolve several issue. One, is player fatigue as it would ensure that got a break from the constant repetition of just fighting. Two, it ensures the player has time to allows them to do other things like work on Smithing, Trading, finding the right companion, getting married,etc. Three, it would help advance the game faster. This is critical for the game to be multi-generational. Having periods of peace guarantees that more time is spent on the campaign map operating under time compression. Having 30 minute of real time down time from fighting due to a period of peace, means that maybe as much as 3 months to a year in game time might progress between wars. This makes it more likely that a character would reach old age and pass his work on to his children. Constant fighting just ensures that the player will spend most of his time in a battle where game time is frozen.
Anyway, I really hope that the devs will take a look at these solutions because sometimes it really is the simplest answers that solve the hardest questions. To try to think like a programmer, I really do think that if upon the Warscore calculation reaching a critical point to declare war on a faction triggered and that trigger then prompted the AI to answer these four questions and pass these filters before actually declaring war that this would solve most of the issues we have with how, when and how frequent wars happen in game. I am not a programmer can't help but think adding 4 binary yes or no questions resulting in a 0 or 1 answer and requiring a specific sequence of 0s and 1s to actually trigger a declaration of war would not be all that hard to add as code. It is kind of simple IF THIS, THEN THAT type of processing.
Basically despite any Warscore or other war declaration calculation the AI should have to ask itself 4 simple questions before the AI gets a green light to go to the next step and consider if it should declare war or not.
Here are the questions:
1) Am I already at war?
If the answers is yes then no war declared....EVER!! No current war is a condition that has to be met period. No country should wanting to fight two factions, on two fronts simultaneously, that is just a recipe for self-destruction, look at Germany during WWII.
2) Is the Faction I want to fight weaker and/or disadvantaged such as being already at war with another faction?
If the answer is Yes and answer to Question 1 is no, then war can be declared. If the the answer is No, then no war declared. Disadvantaged could mean more than just being at war with another faction but I would say that even if the faction was stronger as long as that faction was fighting another faction then it would be considered as disadvantaged for the purposes of this condition.
3) Does the Faction I want to go to war against have territories bordering mine?
If the answer is No, then no war declared even if the other conditions are met. It is just silly that Vlandia would ever go to war with the Khuzaits as long as there were two or three other factions between them and Vlandia. In a real situation no country would let you march an Army through their territory to attack another country. This is like America wanting to go to war with China and deciding it would attack China's Northern border by marching its armies through Europe and Russia without asking either countries permission or opinion. It is just pure ridiculous.
4) Have you been in a war within the last 30 days.
If yes, no war is declared despite other conditions being met. This is an another common sense things. Soldiers need rest, the economy needs to recover. No country would willingly want to fight back to back to back wars non-stop without rest.
These 4 questions consisting of simple logical conclusions, solve 90% of the war issues frequency issues. No Kingdom should want to be at war with multiple factions, when it is disadvantaged, when they are recovering from a pervious war or if they don't have bordering territories....EVER!!! This doesn't mean another, more powerful faction which finds itself meeting all the conditions wouldn't declare war on your faction and you could very well find yourself fighting 2-3 other factions if 2 opposing factions met all their conditions to declare on you but it should be pretty rare to be fighting more than 1 faction at a time if these four question has to be answered correctly each and every time the AI decided it needed to check for a war declaration.
Also I know that there is some concern about the pace of things and thinking that if you weren't fighting as often the game might be boring however, having 15-20 days of peace here and there would resolve several issue. One, is player fatigue as it would ensure that got a break from the constant repetition of just fighting. Two, it ensures the player has time to allows them to do other things like work on Smithing, Trading, finding the right companion, getting married,etc. Three, it would help advance the game faster. This is critical for the game to be multi-generational. Having periods of peace guarantees that more time is spent on the campaign map operating under time compression. Having 30 minute of real time down time from fighting due to a period of peace, means that maybe as much as 3 months to a year in game time might progress between wars. This makes it more likely that a character would reach old age and pass his work on to his children. Constant fighting just ensures that the player will spend most of his time in a battle where game time is frozen.
Anyway, I really hope that the devs will take a look at these solutions because sometimes it really is the simplest answers that solve the hardest questions. To try to think like a programmer, I really do think that if upon the Warscore calculation reaching a critical point to declare war on a faction triggered and that trigger then prompted the AI to answer these four questions and pass these filters before actually declaring war that this would solve most of the issues we have with how, when and how frequent wars happen in game. I am not a programmer can't help but think adding 4 binary yes or no questions resulting in a 0 or 1 answer and requiring a specific sequence of 0s and 1s to actually trigger a declaration of war would not be all that hard to add as code. It is kind of simple IF THIS, THEN THAT type of processing.