War exhaustion - any way to lower it?

[Zanza]

Is there any way to lower war exhaustion? A single battle can give you war exhaustion that takes a year or two to go away. This is more of a break than badboy for me right now as a series of defensive wars can totally cripple you for the next decade or so.

 

[Timmetie]

if a single battle takes 2 years for you to work off you're doing something wrong..

And I love the new system, the waiting for BB to drop was stupid anyways.

 

[Zanza]

if a single battle takes 2 years for you to work off you're doing something wrong..

Okay, so what am I doing wrong?

And I love the new system, the waiting for BB to drop was stupid anyways.

The way it currently is, my monarch lowers badboy at 10 times the rate that he lowers war exhaustion. And I can get diplomats to lower it even further. This means the whole badboy game mechanic is way too weak to influence my behavior, which makes it superfluous. It may still serve a purpose when you have many smaller countries to annex and don't fight against big countries all the time.

 

[Dietmar1982]

Okay, so what am I doing wrong?

you're losing to many men

 

[Zanza]

you're losing to many men

So does everybody else apparently as most countries that are involved in wars that I participate in have red war exhaustion numbers.

Is there any way to mod war exhaustion so you don't get as much as you currently get?

 

[unmerged(75462)]

Use smaller stacks of troops, if you're defender of the faith you get a further decrease. Someone else mentioned the WE you get depends on your total manpower, so if you have more manpower you can take bigger losses for the same WE. So if that's true, raise your manpower.

 

[StephenT]

The way it currently is, my monarch lowers badboy at 10 times the rate that he lowers war exhaustion.

Are you sure of that? Because the badboy reduction (for example -0.5) is per year, but the WE reduction (eg -0.05) is per month...

 

[spl]

Assault cities..
Don't stack men - I generally keep the infantry on the front line and keep the Calvary behind since they can move up quickly. Don't siege with many men in the winter if you must siege...

 

[Zanza]

Use smaller stacks of troops, if you're defender of the faith you get a further decrease.

Smaller stacks? Why would that help? If they are massacred in a war, war exhaustion shoots up even more. As far as I can tell, attrition does not influence war exhaustion. So I would rather not use small stacks.

Someone else mentioned the WE you get depends on your total manpower, so if you have more manpower you can take bigger losses for the same WE. So if that's true, raise your manpower.

As far as I can tell, there are four ways to do that: one of the adviser types, the national idea, population growth, and conquest. The latter is of course not possible when you have acute problems. Neither is population growth as it takes ages. The adviser type is nice, but I don't have it right now. And the national idea is beyond my current puny tech level.

 

[Elcyion]

Attrition is one of the worse for we

 

[Zanza]

Assault cities..

Assaulting cities seems to be the quickest way to completely wipe out my manpower. Not sure if those losses raise war exhaustion - by logic they should.

Don't stack men - I generally keep the infantry on the front line and keep the Calvary behind since they can move up quickly.

Okay. How does that lower war exhaustion? If you have to fight a battle how do different stacking tactics change the amount of men you lose? I didn't know the EU3 combat engine makes a difference. I thought it just takes all available troops regardless of how the stacks are ordered.

Don't siege with many men in the winter if you must siege...

Attrition does not seem to influence war exhaustion from what I can tell. I may be wrong here.

 

[Zanza]

Attrition is one of the worse for we

Is it? Okay. I'll have to look into that. Didn't seem to make a difference in my last game.

 

[Zanza]

Okay, I just figured out a way to get rid of war exhaustion - let the rebels win. Stupid, but it works. And all for a miniscule 5% tax modifier and a 10% stability cost modifier for 4 years. That's a pretty low price for getting rid of 18 war exhaustion which would otherwise have taken like 25 years. That seems almost like an exploit. Is there any downside to this?

EDIT: Oh, just noticed. -100 prestige. Oh well, that's a fair enough price I guess.

 

[Zanza]

Are you sure of that? Because the badboy reduction (for example -0.5) is per year, but the WE reduction (eg -0.05) is per month...

Yes, you are right. But then war exhaustion also grows much faster than badboy if you fight a couple of bigger wars.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Have you tried assaulting cities with mercenaries? I use mercs every time I run into manpower issues. I firmly believe buying mercenaries are cheaper than running out of manpower at the wrong time.

 

[Zanza]

Have you tried assaulting cities with mercenaries? I use mercs every time I run into manpower issues. I firmly believe buying mercenaries are cheaper than running out of manpower at the wrong time.

My problem was not assaulting cities but just trying to defend my country. I played with Muscovy and the huge Golden Horde, Novgorod, Poland (having inherited Lithuania) and whoever else felt like it picked on me. I tried allying with Sweden, Teutonic Order, and Hungary, but to no avail. I still had to regularly fight defensive wars just to keep my territory. There was absolutely no way I could expand in that situation. My manpower was barely enough to defend myself.

 

[unmerged(75462)]

As someone else said attrition is huge for WE. If you hover over your WE, it says "WE from attrition last month .05", "WE from uncontrolled provinces .01".

The biggest cause of WE in my games were from war taxes whenever I was at 0.0 and wanted extra revenue and hard to track down attrition.

A lot of people suggest seiging to "reduce WE", this seems very incorrect to me. I rarely seiged, mostly I would only do it to recover my provinces after they were seiged, when there were only 100 defenders. Just detach seige and move on. Small stacks. Use military access whenever possible.

 

[Nimic]

Attrition is definitely a killer. I usually try to use overwhelming forces to cut my army's exposure to enemy territory down to a minimum.

 

[Dietmar1982]

I think the big issue here might be that in a defensive warm you might lose a couple of provinces. this gives a massive WE increase

 

[semaphore]

I think the big issue here might be that in a defensive warm you might lose a couple of provinces. this gives a massive WE increase

A couple of provinces gives negligible WE in a situation desperate enough that you have to fight defensively... As long as you keep attrition at bay WE should be no problem.