exhaustion, warscore, and occupation

well I think that has more to do with occupying colonial provinces, than it does nation size. in eu3 for example (I'm just thinking it's the same with vicky), if you occupy off-continent provinces (e.g. colonies) you will not increase the enemy's war exhaustion.

war exhaustion influences jingoism gain and militancy of pops, but I think have no influence to war score.
The bigger your empire became, the less value has each single province. Also not sure: but at some point there is some rounding error. And yes: sometimes you can let them conquer something useless while you grab important stuff. I often have no armies on small island.
war score cost of provinces depends on relative value to the country size. The bigger the empire the less war score is need for a province, further a colony is often far cheaper than a state. This is because of the industries they have built and can increase war score cost up to 250. Also bigger regions like ontario are also more expensive, simple population size hasn't that influence )
When the demanded region is competely occupied the war score cost is halved ( no matter who occupies it ) and one demand, even when it goes over 100 at the end - one demand will be accepted, when the enemy is at 99%/100% at least.

And who defends all, defends nothing. Defend where it is needed.

I think in Victoria it may be different: playing Java, by occupying all of Indonesia, I got the Netherlands' war exhaustion to over 70% and Prussia's fairly high, too. You'll get some WE from merely being at war rather than having your provinces occupied. That said, in a different game as Germany by occupying none of Indonesia and only the mainland Netherlands, I got their WE up all the way to 100%.

Warscore and War Exhaustion are unrelated...

I noticed that occupying all of British Asia (including half of China, and India) gave me no Warscore or WE. The same thing happened when they took all of my Africa. I got all my warscore from battles, one of which was worth 30+ and sent the score right to the cap, but no WE. There might be a few provinces in there that are worth a small amount, but the warscore tooltip is packed with 0.0%s...

AdeptusM said:

Thank you all. The other reason I needed to know, is that if GB and myself (GER) will be at war, the only way to hurt them is in battles. We are almost at the point that only 4 "groups" of nations exist: British Asia/Africa, German Europe/Africa/S. America, Russia, and USA/Americas. This means I can only take provinces up to ~25% war score.

Click to expand...

That's not necessarily the case. They will give value to certain provinces, but I'm not sure which. I think provinces with factories might get higher weighting...

It's provinces on the home continent. If you want some of India as Germany, jump the channel and take all of the Home Isles, that'll give you plenty of War Score.

In my experience, even with all the home islands conquered, you may only get 1 province in India, as towards the end of the game each province might be worth 60 warscore!!