question about wars against defensive pacts

[ShadeThorn]

So how does one win these wars? you start out with negative warscore and capturing territory does not improve this. I just lost a war to defensive pact even though I had the target fully captured plus their capital and had won every single battle up to the moment I was forced to surrender. They never captured any of my demesne and had no prisoners. So what gives?
Who do you pick on to win these wars? should I try to destroy the strongest army in the pact?

 

[josefrees]

all you have to do is meet the conditions of the Casus Belli. IE conquer the territory and a battle with the land owner most of the time.

Easiest way to win these wars is have mercs and retinue already on the move. Declare war when they are a day away from the targets. You basically want to have the war won by the time the doomstack get organized. The bigger the war you are trying to fight the harder it is to win these big defensive pact wars until you become actual hegemon

 

[ShadeThorn]

all you have to do is meet the conditions of the Casus Belli. IE conquer the territory and a battle with the land owner most of the time.

Easiest way to win these wars is have mercs and retinue already on the move. Declare war when they are a day away from the targets. You basically want to have the war won by the time the doomstack get organized. The bigger the war you are trying to fight the harder it is to win these big defensive pact wars until you become actual hegemon

yeah I had my retinue in place before I declared.
When I checked the warscore breakdown, it was giving them loads of warscore for sieging some backwater tribes that didn't even belong to me.

I also found out that I could enforce the piece and against Byzantium despite having negative score.

 

[jwalche]

If you had your retinue in place, how could they siege some backwater tribes before your retinue stormed all the target's holdings?

If your war target was a duchy within a large kingdom, then it was probably not a good idea to declare in the first place, unless you could easily defeat all its allies too. I used to block all the paths from Byzantium and Italy before declaring holly wars on Francia.