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War, what is it good for?

In Crusader Kings II, hopefully you'll gain some titles and in the best of worlds, imprison or behead your enemy. In order to declare a war you'll first need a valid Casus Belli against your enemy(a CB held by a vassal or courtier will of course do as well). You cannot attack the vassals of someone, so if you want one of their titles you have to attack their liege. Also, unlike Europa Universalis III and Victoria II, once a war has started it cannot be extended by adding further wargoals or CBs.

Instead, each CB has three options scripted: Demand Defeat, White Peace and Reversed Demands. As an example, let's look at the Claim CB. This CB lets you attack people holding titles you have claims on. If the war is going well, you can demand that your enemy give his title to you and as a bonus you'll gain a small amount of prestige. If you fail to achieve your goal, you could sue for a white peace instead. You'd want to avoid this though, since signing a white peace gives you a prestige hit(you didn't achieve your goals, after all). White peace is still preferable to the reversed demand however, since if your enemy enforces this, you will both lose the claim and get a huge prestige hit.

CrusaderKingsII_War_2.png

While most wars will end in a peace treaty, this is not the only way they can end. Some CBs have effects that trigger when the leader of an alliance dies. An example of this is the Invasion CB, which is currently used by William against Harold. When the leader of the attacking alliance dies, the war immediately ends. Be careful when going to war with your old king...

Another part of wars is the warscore. Like our other games, you'll gain warscore by occupying enemy holdings(the capital is worth more, vassal holdings are worth less) and winning battles(in CK2, they are worth a lot of warscore). We've also added a warscore effect if the contested title is left with no controller change for some time. After three years(currently), warscore is slowly added to the person controlling the area. This means that it's now possible to win a war as a) a defender in a war by just defending your title or b) attacking someone, sieging down the title you want and then just stand still and defend those provinces. By the way, if you manage to capture and imprison the enemy leader(for example, in a battle), this automatically counts as 100% warscore. We've also removed all limits to warscore, so whoever reaches >=100% first by any combination of occupation, battles, controlling the correct territory and imprisonment automatically wins the war.

CrusaderKingsII_War_1.png

Last but not least we have tagged some CBs to be "hostile against others", for example the Invasion CB. The effect of this is that two parties contesting the same title will fight each other even if they are not at war. It might be better as William to wait a bit until Harald and Harold both have worn down their armies...

'Till next time!
Fredrik Zetterman
Programmer, Paradox Interactive
 
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Perhaps an easy solution would be pop-up window where you could choose either - to obey your duke/king, or disobey and declare independence?
Which would be a choice between immediate game over and a war against at least the attacker, maybe your former liege as well (after all, you dishonored the treaty they signed, thus revolted against them) which is a war you cannot win (given the relative sizes of realms).
Still, an interesting idea, albeit the war would be a definite lost one (otherwise you could have won before the treaty was signed). Yet I can think of no better at the moment.
 
I'm not sure it will necessarily work that way. I have a feeling that the 100% warscore would be based on the alliance's total territory, so your king's land, your land, and the land of any other vassals brought into the war. Perhaps not, but that was how I thought of it.
According to the actual Dev, you cannot refuse peace when you are occupied. This means the AI cannot refuse peace when it is occupied. So if you're Aquitane, some foreigner inherits a claim on you through Agnes, and he manages to occupy all two of the King's provinces your game just ended. War-score is irrelevant.

And I'm still waiting to hear a reason vassal-sniping -- aka: everything that happened in the era -- was actually a problem.

Nick
 
AFAIK Feudalism worked in theory by the King creating a title, and giving it (with land) to someone in return for troops when needed.
Thus the title of the vassal was one that the liege had at first. Which I interpret as the liege being able to claim the title back if he wants to do so, and refusal of this is open revolt.

Which gives a dual edge to a foreign DoW on a vassal:
  • firstly it is a title of the liege a foreign usurper is trying to take, thus promoting its defence (making the liege fight with teeth and fingernails)
  • secondly it gives a CB against the offender to claim the title back, thus losing the war (intentionally, on day 1) is no more than a prestige issue, promoting surrender without much of a fight.
The latter also means a powerful exploit in taking the vassals' land into the King's hand, that is, centralising the state.
 
Which would be a choice between immediate game over and a war against at least the attacker, maybe your former liege as well (after all, you dishonored the treaty they signed, thus revolted against them) which is a war you cannot win (given the relative sizes of realms).
Still, an interesting idea, albeit the war would be a definite lost one (otherwise you could have won before the treaty was signed). Yet I can think of no better at the moment.

Well, if player as a vassal is small and insignificant then yes, you are right. However, if we are talking about powerful French duke in 1066 start, you have a lot of land (more than your king) and you should theoretically be able to peace out giving only small consessions.
 
Well, if player as a vassal is small and insignificant then yes, you are right. However, if we are talking about powerful French duke in 1066 start, you have a lot of land (more than your king) and you should theoretically be able to peace out giving only small consessions.
I see. However, if you stand any chance of winning the war, you shouldn't get to be handed away in the first place (because you were winning the war anyway...)

About small concessions: in CK2 there are only three peace deals: White peace, Revokation of Claim the war was for, and Cession of the claim the war was for.
Thus unless you are a many-title duke, you can only pull off something favorable (including WP :)) or be fully annexed. But if you are a several-title duke, you can afford to lose the title the war was for without gameover, so you won't have too much of a problem with your king handing that one away... (other than making a Raaage thread like one in EU3).

Edit: or should we put some feature in to every peace deal made by the alliance leader? To accept / fight on without allies? This would make some sense, but it should have a high chance of getting you to war with the Leader who signed the treaty on your side as well... then good luck with winning out of that situation, Térémaire! (Charles of Burgundy)
 
but this is no more than in any of the other games, the decision to arbitrarily hand over your title at the end of a war has always been in the hands of the AI for minors as the AI was always warleader.

It wasn't this way in CK1.

Which, last time I checked, was not only a Paradox game it was the Paradox game most directly comparable to CK2. So your "always" argument is not only false, it's uniquely inappropriate to the situation.

i think all paradox is saying is that the King is the warleader.
to gain a neighbours duchy you go to war along with your king with your liege leading the war, and against the enemy king, whose duty it is to protect his dukes.
You cant decalre war on another realm yourself without your lieges permission, in which case he does it for you, and you cant declare war on a vassal without the lord coming in to protect it.
and if the war is lost, the aggressors war-goal is granted. Its no different from in V2 when someone declares war on you with a conquest CB and your ally joins the fight and gives in without asking your permission to give in. only in CK2 its going to be your king is who gives your land away not a random stronger ally or meddling GP like in Victoria 2, EU3 etc. the king is the warleader, so he has power over alliance peace.
nothing to be getting worked up over

An excellent explanation of the feature.

The problem with the feature isn't that it has not been sufficiently explained, it's that the feature has no place in a Medieval game. You wanna know why it has no place in the game? Grand Duchy of Burgundy. If the Dukes had been forced to fight the HRE and France every time one of their claims was contested it would not have existed.

BTW, your gameplay argument regarding large Kings and Mantua makes some sense. Not a lot -- if 1 in a hundred vassal games ends because the King was too prissy to fight that's unacceptable -- but it makes some.

The problem is that it doesn't address ComradeOm's point. Medieval lords acquired claims on the other side of the border all the time. Which means most of these wars involving Count-sized targets were started by Count or Duke-sized countries. Wars like that were so common they didn't get named.

Let's move from Mantua and go to Flanders, a hotbed of this kind of warfare. Let's say the Count of Hainut (German vassal) gets a claim on Vermandois (French vassal). This feature means that if he acts like his historical counterpart he will declare war on Vermandois, and he'll almost certainly lose because Hainut is smaller then France. If the devs have left force-vassalization as a peace option he'll probably also end up a French vassal. Which means in the devs desire to eliminate historic offensive vassal-sniping they've created unhistoric defensive vassal-sniping.

But, of course, if the devs only decide to hard-code the Hainut AI to act completely unhistorically this will all be fixed.

In essence that's my problem with this feature. It's so blatantly anti-history that virtually every element of the game has to be programmed to act un-historically or it will be a disaster.

And, because I think I'll have to do this daily until I get a "Yes:"
Will you be able to ask your liege to force a claim in another realm?

Nick
 
Let's move from Mantua and go to Flanders, a hotbed of this kind of warfare. Let's say the Count of Hainut (German vassal) gets a claim on Vermandois (French vassal). This feature means that if he acts like his historical counterpart he will declare war on Vermandois, and he'll almost certainly lose because Hainut is smaller then France. If the devs have left force-vassalization as a peace option he'll probably also end up a French vassal. Which means in the devs desire to eliminate historic offensive vassal-sniping they've created unhistoric defensive vassal-sniping.

If I understand it correctly, it wouldn't. As Hainut will not be able to declare war 'outside' his realm without his liege. Meaning, if he has a claim and wishes to press for it, it would be a HRE (if they agree) against France and not Hainut against France.

A notion I do find a bit concerning is capture of the King leads to 'instant lose' in a war. This would lead to people not using the King in battles, as a war dragging on for months could just end because of a bad dice role. Even if you have decimated the foe and taken 90% of their kingdom. Why take the risk? To negate that, a King leading his army should have significant bonus (and I mean significant) to offset this risk. Not just a +10 prestige or +1 martial!
 
If I understand it correctly, it wouldn't. As Hainut will not be able to declare war 'outside' his realm without his liege. Meaning, if he has a claim and wishes to press for it, it would be a HRE (if they agree) against France and not Hainut against France.

A notion I do find a bit concerning is capture of the King leads to 'instant lose' in a war. This would lead to people not using the King in battles, as a war dragging on for months could just end because of a bad dice role. Even if you have decimated the foe and taken 90% of their kingdom. Why take the risk? To negate that, a King leading his army should have significant bonus (and I mean significant) to offset this risk. Not just a +10 prestige or +1 martial!

As stated before it only applies to certain CBs.
 
If the devs have left force-vassalization as a peace option he'll probably also end up a French vassal. Which means in the devs desire to eliminate historic offensive vassal-sniping they've created unhistoric defensive vassal-sniping.
Nick
1) The best France can get from the war is the revokation of the Hainautian claim to Varmandois. So defensive NOT-vassal-sniping.
2) Although somewhat unhistorical, certainly legitimate. The King should be able to defend his vassals... if he wants to.

So I say that a CB given to the liege should suffice. If it wanted to retaliate, he could (and revoke the claim/free the already annexed vassal). If he didn't, then he would leave them to battle it out themselves.
If the liege would lose the war they declared, the treaty would strengthen the original attacker's claim on the title, as well as boost its prestige (while costing a lot of it for the liege).
 
Yeah, the "captured king = 100% war score" mechanic sounds horribly unbalanced. I'm the Duke of Brittany and I have a claim on the King of England. I declare war, quickly move all of my levies to England, get lucky, capture the king, and suddenly I'm the King of England, no questions asked? That's not right, PI.

I think a captured King should be worth maybe 50% of the war score. If you're doing poorly already, then your captured king would be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and the war would end. If you're doing really well, then there's only a 50% slide in war score and you can continue the war. Your captured king would force you to ask for lesser demands like white peace.
 
Yeah, the "captured king = 100% war score" mechanic sounds horribly unbalanced. I'm the Duke of Brittany and I have a claim on the King of England. I declare war, quickly move all of my levies to England, get lucky, capture the king, and suddenly I'm the King of England, no questions asked? That's not right, PI.

I think a captured King should be worth maybe 50% of the war score. If you're doing poorly already, then your captured king would be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and the war would end. If you're doing really well, then there's only a 50% slide in war score and you can continue the war. Your captured king would force you to ask for lesser demands like white peace.

Aye, but you're warring with the king. If you've captured the king, the war is over, because he has no real choice but to accept all your terms. It's very realistic.
Of course, the various lords of England would not be so happy, and quite possibly would create a huge rebellion-plot, effectively forcing you to fight the same war over again, if you don't act quickly to limit their power.
 
I'm the Duke of Brittany and I have a claim on the King of England. I declare war, quickly move all of my levies to England, get lucky, capture the king, and suddenly I'm the King of England, no questions asked? That's not right, PI.
Hang on a sec lemme just fix this for you....
I'm the Duke of Normandy and I have a claim on the King of England. I declare war, quickly move all of my levies to England, get lucky, kill the king, and suddenly I'm the King of England, no questions asked? That's not right, PI.
welp!

ps: I love how you gloss over the "Get lucky" part of yuor plan like it's the easiest thing in the world. The King might not be leading his armies. He might escape even if he is.
 
Aye, but you're warring with the king. If you've captured the king, the war is over, because he has no real choice but to accept all your terms. It's very realistic.
Of course, the various lords of England would not be so happy, and quite possibly would create a huge rebellion-plot, effectively forcing you to fight the same war over again, if you don't act quickly to limit their power.

How is it very realistic to have every Prince, Duke, and Count in the realm get down on bended knee and accept you as the King of England because you got lucky and captured the king?


Hang on a sec lemme just fix this for you....
welp!
ps: I love how you gloss over the "Get lucky" part of yuor plan like it's the easiest thing in the world. The King might not be leading his armies. He might escape even if he is.

Unfortunately, your "fix" is historically broken. This is King Stephen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Stephen_of_England

He was captured. When he was captured, he didn't stop being the King of England, his partisans didn't suddenly roll over, and "the Anarchy" period of civil war didn't end on the same day. As it is in CK2, if King Stephen was captured, that's what would have happened. Stephen would have abdicated to Matilda, Matilda would have become Queen, and the war would have ended. Anyone displeased over it would have to start a new war, I guess.

As for luck, I brought it up as a hypothetical scenario, and properly so considering capture and escape in a battle will almost certainly be decided by invisible dice rolls.
 
Which raises the question over whether kings even have to be ON the map...
But if not, capturing the capital would account to the same coupe de grace.

Do the infidel go by the same rule? Thus sending off navies towards egypt and a quick march with 15000 men into cairo just might get you lucky aswell.. capturng said sultan and caliph with his pants down in the harem... and now you are emperor of egypt :p
 
What in the extremely unlikely situation of both kings being captured in the same battle (day of battle)? :D

So Kings captured should be worth 50% WS as Jia Xu suggested.
 
What in the extremely unlikely situation of both kings being captured in the same battle (day of battle)? :D

So Kings captured should be worth 50% WS as Jia Xu suggested.
I imagine that the capture event only takes place at the end of a battle and only for the losing side.
 
The feature on it's own isn't flawed and I have no problem with it, personally. However from a gameplay perspective it should be more balanced I think. With the current model the player has no real incentive to take his King to battle if there is a possibility for 'instant loose' regardless of his strategy, tactis and preparation for months. What I fear is that the AI will not take this into account... This can be easily rectified if say the army gets a 50% moral/fighting boost or some other form of very heavy bonus if the King is leading an army. This could give a smaller nation the chance to face of a bigger opponent and decide to take the risk against a bigger foe for example. After all the HRE emperor will probably not lead his army against a nameless count (and risk being captured), the count would however get significant boost if he leads his -most likely outnumbered - troops and take this risk. It would just add another choice/dimension to the game which is never bad.

Curious if Paradox took this into account for game balance purposes and if yes if there is a solution in the works for this. Or they feel it is balanced as it is already... after all we haven't played with the game yet.
 
I imagine that a king staying away from battle will not be looked upon very favourably.
His vassals might believe him a coward, for instance.
Or maybe battles are an excellent opportunity to gain prestige, glory, respect et cetera.