Unions and ultimatums - how to balance them

translator_guy · July 2

Diplomacy plays a crucial role in strategy games. Expanding your civilisation peacefuly can be as much, or sometimes even more fun, than simple conquest. The community was upset when unions and ultimatums were scratched from the new release. That is why I have come up with ideas on how to balance and implement these mechanics into the game.

Unions:

Both nations need to be in an alliance together
Both nations need to have relations over 50
Both nations need to control less than 200 provinces each
One nation can form at most 2 unions per game

Alternatively, you could set a rule that only pre-determined unions can be formed like:

Commonwealth = Poland + Lithuania
Great Britain = England + Scotland
Spain = Castille + Aragon

Custom unions could be created in the game editor function like in AoH2

Ultimatums:

Both nations need to have relations below -30
Likelihood of accepting would depend on army size (Country has twice the amount of soldiers - 50% chance of accepting; country has 3 times the amount of soldiers - 75% chance of accepting)
Ultimatums would generate a lot of aggressive expansion, so you can't spam them unless you want a coalition to form against you

What do you think?

Edited July 2 by translator_guy

**MisterT** · July 4

Good idea. I always believed that the ultimatums in AOH2 are very expansionist/war based, I would like more variety of options in the ultimatums. Options related to trade, foreign relations or even population controls or national laws, I can't think of much right now, but it would be ideal that depending on how great the demands are, the army size comparison balancing can be applied, like, you know, I don't think you should have an army three times as big so that the other party accepts an ultimatum requesting a change on a law.