How to declare war without this happening?

This looks like you couldn't wait for the call to arms and started a seperate war against Poland. Both of you used conquest and now you ruined Barbarossa because there is no way to supply it from Athens.
Easiest solution: Wait for the call to arms next time, and let Germany kill Poland alone. At least don't take territory. German AI is usually very eager to call her minor European allies to arms when she wants help.
I think your Sweden issue is related. Enter the same war via call to arms from Germany, and her wargoals will take precedence over yours (at least Drang nach Osten). Don't dow seperately. If the CtA never happens, we're talking about another story, that one is easy to get via console command.

You can declare war, just don't pick conquer or puppet.

The problem with the wargoals system is that not all countries have a full set of options to take land. For the majors, there are regions that you can claim, but for a lot of the minors, it's "all or nothing", and there is no way to choose "nothing" other than by losing.

I've had a number of games where I wanted a particular port, city, or resource location, but had no choices other than "Annex" or "Puppet", and in a few others could also go for "cores", which generally included nothing of any real value in game terms. Sure, Italy (for example) can claim several French provinces along the Alps, but Nice doesn't have any Leadership, IC, or Resources of its own, those are all concentrated in Marseilles, which is NOT available as part of any wargoal short of "Annexation".

Another fine example is Hungary, which gets "cores" in three of its neighbors. You get all three of those by political events without doing anything, but those are only what was returned historically, and only about half of the land which was taken away at the end of WWI. There are several "juicy" provinces just outside the available "cores", which were very much a part of Hungary's aspirations to recover its lost land and people. If you want the remaining pieces, you have to conquer and annex all of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia (you can actually choose several different regions in CZE as wargoals, in fact everything EXCEPT the piece that they wanted back and didn't get), but annexing CZE before 1st Vienna breaks Germany's event chain, and attacking Slovakia after 1st Vienna puts you in a really short war against both GER and ITA.

The wargoal system was a great idea, but only half-implemented in the game.

gunstickuncle said:

If the CtA never happens, we're talking about another story, that one is easy to get via console command.

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Please, what is that console command?

And any advice on use, such as how long would one wait before expecting a CTA won't happen (other than waiting to prepare)?

Sir Garnet said:

Please, what is that console command?

And any advice on use, such as how long would one wait before expecting a CTA won't happen (other than waiting to prepare)?

Click to expand...

The easiest way to get a Call to Arms is to open the console (press the "~" key), and then type "TAG GER". That should switch you to playing Germany. As Germany, issue your own country a CTA. Whatever you do, DON'T start the clock, otherwise the AI will start strategically redeploying your entire army to strange places, butcher your production and research settings, cancel half of your trades, and do all sorts of other things in seconds, which will take you hours to fix. At that point, save the game, quit, and reload as your own country.

It's also possible to simply tag-switch back without saving and reloading, but sometimes things break. As a safety precaution, I'd still recommend saving the game, but you could try switching back ("TAG <your own country's 3-letter code>") and see if it works for you. If not, you can reload the saved game.

Thanks. I'll continue to steer clear of tag switching other than re-loading up the game.

Regarding choice in war goals, I've been playing HPP which offers a variety of war goals in its cb_types.txt files, including non-acquisitive ones, so it seems open to modding by those who can.

Sir Garnet said:

Please, what is that console command?
(other than waiting to prepare)?

Click to expand...

you mean push ~ then type noneutrality ?

If you go into the games folder (hoi3/tfh/) I think its in the maps folder, you'll find a file called regions. If you enter the word 'peace' underneath the region names (eg. ROM_4556) you'll be able to take whatever region you want

You could also manually assign some provinces to your country by console after the war, but yeh the wargoal system is a bit lacking in the game. I hope we can choose manually some things in hoi4