Ancient warfare: war score from battles and capitulation

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IsaacCAT

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Preface: I have been thinking about how the game accrues war score and how this reflects ancient warfare.

Observation: It is very easy to take over the capital from AI nations. It may be a problem with the new levy system introduced in 2.0 but in ancient times capitulation was very decisive as well as loosing battles, specially for monarchies.

Suggestion: war score should be only accumulated by winning battles and/or occupying the opposite capital.

How:

War score will be achieved if enough important battles are won or if you are able to subjugate the opposing capital city. Holding the war goal should not give war score, and the war goal will only be the measure of the required war score.

Now you can accumulate war score by occupying enemy territories, blockading hostile ports and fulfilling the wargoal as well. Without these elements, the player and the AI should be more concerned in winning battles, actively looking for your armies, and defending/attacking the capital city.

If the capital city is very far away, the player should prepare a long campaign, seizing provinces to feed the armies to assault the capital city. Because food is a limiting factor when sending your armies directly to the capital city without replenishing in provincial capitals. This applies to sea transport as well, as @Bovrick and @hansnoetig have said, that should be more dangerous and deadly.

In case of monarchies, defeating the king in battle should be as important as taking the capital in Republics.

In a final note, kings should take over command of your most powerful army by default. If the player would like to increase the command level, another lesser army should be attached to the main Royal army. Republics will have more leeway on this regard. Consuls will command but the Senate could oppose this (with a loyalty penalty ofc)
 
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Chehabian

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Wonderful ideas. I absolutely agree with the lot of them.

Also - I wish there were more events for killing generals/leaders in battle when there is just an absolute rout.
 
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John MacWhat

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They could also increase the effect of army size, war exhaustion, losses, etc on willingness to accept peace. Quite common in ancient times for one side to lose a few major battles, realize there was nothing left to defend the capital, and offer terms. Capital under siege could give a massive effect (though would need to be balanced against whether an army is available to relieve the siege, otherwise this could be easily cheesed).

I think there would need to be a bit of a rework to the army AI though, as this sort of system would make defending the capital of paramount importance
 
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