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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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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.

Keep in mind that this is not a modern total war.

You are not fighting some dude. You are fighting your cousin.

If he looks at your peace proposal and says "I'm hungry, have that wench make some chicken," you don't really have a choice to be have said wench make said chicken.

A cease-fire of some sort is realistic. The AI taking over while you are captured is realistic. 50% warscore is realistic. But your knights aren't gonna jeopardize your life by turning over their castles until they know this is an agreement you support personally.

Nick
 
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.
Sounds like it applies to both player and AI.
 
IIRC correctly from CK1, once you were occupied it was game over. You didnt even have the chance to complain about your King giving your title away. From the way the Devs have phrased this, it sounds highly, highly, highly unlikely that your King will trade away your title unless you are occupied and/or he hates you. Afterall, why would your King trade a loyal vassal (you) for an ambitious, foreign, militarily powerful troublemaker? Best case, its no worse than CK1. Stand and fight by your own merits. Worst case, you can defend yourself by keeping friendly with your liege.

If neither you nor your King can defend your lands...well, then it sucks to be you.
 
IIRC correctly from CK1, once you were occupied it was game over. You didnt even have the chance to complain about your King giving your title away. From the way the Devs have phrased this, it sounds highly, highly, highly unlikely that your King will trade away your title unless you are occupied and/or he hates you. Afterall, why would your King trade a loyal vassal (you) for an ambitious, foreign, militarily powerful troublemaker? Best case, its no worse than CK1. Stand and fight by your own merits. Worst case, you can defend yourself by keeping friendly with your liege.

If neither you nor your King can defend your lands...well, then it sucks to be you.

In CK1, losing your title because your provinces were occupied had nothing to do with your liege.
 
If capturing the enemy King = victory, then the Hundred Years War would have been the 19 Years War

Huh, the English did capture Jean II. And he had to pay a huge ransom to be freed.
 
Will marriages and bethorthals between teh feuding families be part of peace negotiations. It was not uncommon to agree to a bethrotal or marriage as part of a peace treaty, to cement the peace and avoid future conflicts. Even Richard the Lionheart offered to marry his sister, Princess Joan to Saladin's brother Al-Adil in an attempt to secure peace in the Holy Land...
 
Will marriages and bethorthals between teh feuding families be part of peace negotiations. It was not uncommon to agree to a bethrotal or marriage as part of a peace treaty, to cement the peace and avoid future conflicts. Even Richard the Lionheart offered to marry his sister, Princess Joan to Saladin's brother Al-Adil in an attempt to secure peace in the Holy Land...
I doubt, for two reasons.
Firstly, peace deals can only be three things:
  • victory of the attacker: he takes what he declared the war over. All of it, and nothing more.
  • white peace: nothing changes, both sides lose some prestige.
  • defeat of the attacker: he renounces his claim(s) on the title/land, and loses a lot of prestige.
I don't know if you see betrothals or marriages here, but I certainly don't. Unless you declare war with the Shotgun wedding CB. :D

Secondly, betrothals and marriages prevent DoWing in the first place, so if both sides want peace for a looong time, they will arrange it after the treaty. E.g. it remains a separate diplomatic option which is not included in the treaty itself.

So you example is possible in-game, but not as a part of peace treaties. BtW the girl in question would hate you for it if you do this...
 
Huh, the English did capture Jean II. And he had to pay a huge ransom to be freed.

Yes, that was what I was referring to. It didn't result in Edward III taking the french crown. There was a treaty agreed after a few years of further fighting, but it didn't represent a complete English victory, and in the event was never fully implemented.
 
Regarding the issue of a lazy/apathetic/defaitist/antisocial king handing over your county while you still want to keep fighting...

Would it be possible and feasible to implement a possibility for a vassal whose title gets handed over to refuse to accept the peace treaty? The result would be that the vassal would break free and be independent, and the war would continue with the attacking king, but without the support of your own former realm. That is, a position in which the now independent former vassal would almost always be screwed anyway, but would have to be forcibly dislodged anyway. After all, as was said earlier, a vassal is not a provincial governor who can be sacked at the snap of the king's fingers. He's a guy with a private army loyal to him, a private army that needs to be overcome if he decides to contest the decree of his liege.
 
No, I mean that I assume that if I occupy 100% of the AI's territories, they can still refuse peace, even if it works differently for a human player 100% occupied.

When has that ever been the case? Im pretty sure the AI has also always had to accept at when 100% occupied if the WS was 100 or less, just like the player.
 
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No, I mean that I assume that if I occupy 100% of the AI's territories, they can still refuse peace, even if it works differently for a human player 100% occupied.
In EU3 you could offer peace beyond 100% WS value, and AFAIK they are automatically rejected (the AI doesn't get to evaluate it).

However, in CK2 you couldn't make treaty offers beyond 100%, and just like in EU3 an offer no more than 100 is always accepted if the enemy is 100% occupied, it will be auto-accepted.
BtW, in EU3, in Message settings, you should enable a popup for 'some country broken'. It happens surprisingly frequently.
 
That's great but we're talking about 100% occupation, not 100% warscore.
I had point it out because they are a notable exception.
That is, if you have 100% WS (total occupation), all peace offers at or below it (and all are treated as such in CK2) are always accepted. While above 100% (this is not possible in CK2) they are automatically rejected.

I mentioned it so that no fool could react to 'all peace offers are accepted at 100% occupation' with whining about his beyond-100 offer being rejected.
 
In CKII you don't have to conquer the whole nation to get 100% WS. So there is no total occupation needed. As stated you get WS from several things not just conquering his lands.
Like battles, which 'now give a lot of warscore'. (A quote from a dev comment)
My response would be: in EU3 WS from battles often went to 30-40 in a prolonged war (in which I participated, of course). Which was very decisive early-war, but didn't really matter once I started occupying.
Though I have to admit, the Battle of Agincourt and a finished-unit-during-siege battle being treated as equal in WS was annoying. Even if I profited from it.