Any Advice For Humbling an Empire

[JimboOmega]

Castille and I have had more wars than I can count. Over the course of which I clawed a previously annexed Portugal and all of its colonial possessions back (at no small diplo cost)

Previously I'd won the wars but not convincingly; my manpower would be drained, I'd be unable to fight them at sea, I'd be drawn into a separate war, etc.

Not this time. Finally, I've landed enough troops to fully seize their Peninsular holdings, and deal with the whack-a-mole game that comes with it (wherein they raise large new armies constantly). I have enough manpower to chase them all over the place. I don't need to rely on fickle allies. My Warscore is already over 60%, and their WE is at 8.

Is there anything I can do that would really slow Castille down? Cause their colonial possessions to declare independence? To damage their prestige so nobody respects them? To force them to deal with revolts and other consequences of constantly failing to war against me? To put them at a major disadvantage in future wars?

I feel like the best I could do - at a large AE cost, sure to upset France - is to take a few of their peninsular provinces and feed them to Portugal.

Even with WE at 8 or so, there's 0% revolt risk is their recently conquered Aragonese lands - even with the wrong religion.

Is it worth drawing the war out to drive up their WE? If I do, will it drop straight back to <2 as soon as the war ends? If I hunt down every last soldier, is there any way to prevent a hundred thousand being recruited to replace them in a year or two?

Anything? It's mid-18th century, I'm Byzantium, and Portugal is my vassal - if that matters.

 

[Anthropoid]

Castille and I have had more wars than I can count. Over the course of which I clawed a previously annexed Portugal and all of its colonial possessions back (at no small diplo cost)

Previously I'd won the wars but not convincingly; my manpower would be drained, I'd be unable to fight them at sea, I'd be drawn into a separate war, etc.

Not this time. Finally, I've landed enough troops to fully seize their Peninsular holdings, and deal with the whack-a-mole game that comes with it (wherein they raise large new armies constantly). I have enough manpower to chase them all over the place. I don't need to rely on fickle allies. My Warscore is already over 60%, and their WE is at 8.

Is there anything I can do that would really slow Castille down? Cause their colonial possessions to declare independence? To damage their prestige so nobody respects them? To force them to deal with revolts and other consequences of constantly failing to war against me? To put them at a major disadvantage in future wars?

I feel like the best I could do - at a large AE cost, sure to upset France - is to take a few of their peninsular provinces and feed them to Portugal.

Even with WE at 8 or so, there's 0% revolt risk is their recently conquered Aragonese lands - even with the wrong religion.

Is it worth drawing the war out to drive up their WE? If I do, will it drop straight back to <2 as soon as the war ends? If I hunt down every last soldier, is there any way to prevent a hundred thousand being recruited to replace them in a year or two?

Anything? It's mid-18th century, I'm Byzantium, and Portugal is my vassal - if that matters.

They can be forced to release Sardinia, Galacia and (once they finish conquering it) Granada. But I don't think you can even do two of those for 100% or less.

I have found (playing as France) that if I take Rousillon, Girona and Barcelona, Spain doesn't seem to form.

Best thing I can suggest is to hold out for 100% WS. That means carpet sieging EVERYTHING. That right there seems to harm a country pretty badly as all that provincial income is cut way back. Nonetheless, in some of my France playthroughs I've done that to Castille at least twice before 1505 and it still didn't seem to dramatically slow them down. Main issue is: Economy only indirectly contributes to tech advance, so even bankrupted and beaten down a nation with a good monarch can still stay in the tech race. Because Castille gets free colonists, and colonists are mostly a function of tech, and only minimally dependent on money (the maintenance slider) they can be bankrupt and beaten and still be colonizing like mad.

 

[zodium]

The best way to beat a large empire down is to kick it till it's down, then keep kicking it. In the first war, siege all their European holdings and hold them until you get Call for Peace, in order to tank their prestige. Take one Granada province and release them as a vassal, return their cores to them. You probably won't get Castille to -100 in the first war, but that's okay, since they'll have worse morale (100 prestige is 20% morale, -100 prestige is -20% morale) in the second war, so it'll be easier.

This isn't all that fun unless you really hate the country, though. It's really good if you have a HRE vassal swarm to do the siege work for you, since all you have to do is declare war and watch your German Horde flood over their borders. Over and over and over.

 

[JimboOmega]

They can be forced to release Sardinia, Galacia and (once they finish conquering it) Granada. But I don't think you can even do two of those for 100% or less.

I have found (playing as France) that if I take Rousillon, Girona and Barcelona, Spain doesn't seem to form.

Best thing I can suggest is to hold out for 100% WS. That means carpet sieging EVERYTHING. That right there seems to harm a country pretty badly as all that provincial income is cut way back. Nonetheless, in some of my France playthroughs I've done that to Castille at least twice before 1505 and it still didn't seem to dramatically slow them down. Main issue is: Economy only indirectly contributes to tech advance, so even bankrupted and beaten down a nation with a good monarch can still stay in the tech race. Because Castille gets free colonists, and colonists are mostly a function of tech, and only minimally dependent on money (the maintenance slider) they can be bankrupt and beaten and still be colonizing like mad.

I'm past that stage of the game - I've entered the era where the only provinces left to colonize are isolated inland areas.

I do think seizing all of their homelands might help some, but as soon as the war ends and my armies march off, they're back to their same old crazy income, and they raise 50k troops in 6 months and act like it never happened. I want to recreate an event like the deluge of Poland-Lithuania. I want to see large portions of their lands lost, their population devastated, their ability to wage war crushed, for at least a decade or two.

The only thing vaguely close to accomplishing that would be WE... 8 WE should take (baseline) 6 years to tick down, but I know as soon as I sign the peace deal it too will evaporate.

I could insist on their trade power, which would maybe put a small dent in their income for 5 years. Woo.

 

[zodium]

What is their maximum manpower?

 

[JimboOmega]

What is their maximum manpower?

Based on a screenshot I took... Hmm, 10, 15 years before this, about 138k. They haven't lost any core lands since then; perhaps a few provinces though.

 

[zodium]

It should be quite possible to exhaust their manpower over about 3 wars.

 

[JimboOmega]

It should be quite possible to exhaust their manpower over about 3 wars.

Is there any way to tell how many I've killed? And if they were mercenaries or regulars?

The pattern of the last year or two, game wise, since I killed their main army stacks is that they recruit in every province I'm not sieging, the little armies snowball up into a decent size army, I chase it down and destroy it with whichever army I feel can handle the attrition (2% per province boundary crossed...), and repeat. A lot of smaller armies get run over along the way, as I try to sweep them up as much as I can. I feel like it HAS to be over 100k I've killed - but can I verify that somehow?

 

[dstarsboy]

This is what I did but you'll suffer around 70 AE, but it's worth it to never have to deal with Spain again.

You need 100% warscore to free Aragon and since they usually end up allying with Spain again anyways, what's the point...

However, you only need, like, a 24% warscore to free Ganada.

If you win ONE great war against Spain and get them to 80% or so you can peace out with releasing Granada + grab 3 any provinces next to Granada. Now diplo-vassalize Granada and sell them the 3 provinces. BAM, Spain is cut in half and the other half fights for you in future wars.

 

[zodium]

Is there any way to tell how many I've killed? And if they were mercenaries or regulars?

The pattern of the last year or two, game wise, since I killed their main army stacks is that they recruit in every province I'm not sieging, the little armies snowball up into a decent size army, I chase it down and destroy it with whichever army I feel can handle the attrition (2% per province boundary crossed...), and repeat. A lot of smaller armies get run over along the way, as I try to sweep them up as much as I can. I feel like it HAS to be over 100k I've killed - but can I verify that somehow?

Use the Ledger, at the bottom right of the UI, and sort by manpower under Armies? You can see highly detailed information about other countries' income, treasuries, max and current manpower, army size and composition, generals, etc. It seems like you know this already, though, so maybe I'm not getting the question.

 

[JimboOmega]

This is what I did but you'll suffer around 70 AE, but it's worth it to never have to deal with Spain again.

You need 100% warscore to free Aragon and since they usually end up allying with Spain again anyways, what's the point...

However, you only need, like, a 24% warscore to free Ganada.

If you win ONE great war against Spain and get them to 80% or so you can peace out with releasing Granada + grab 3 any provinces next to Granada. Now diplo-vassalize Granada and sell them the 3 provinces. BAM, Spain is cut in half and the other half fights for you in future wars.

I'm Byzantium, so I'm Orthodox, so no diplo-vassalization for me.

Also Castille hasn't formed Spain, though they're well on their way - Aragon has two provinces left on the peninsula (their capital and Rousillon, iirc). There are little bits of Aragon in the strangest places, though - like Tahiti.

I already clawed Portugal out from them, but I could, I suppose, grab a southern province or two to release as Grenada, grab a couple ones with no cores to feed to Portugal, and feed Grenada more provinces in the NEXT war.

Or I could release Grenada, guarantee them, and if I wind up in a war with Grenada/Spain, force-vassalize Grenada on my way. Both ways require more wars, and really, Grenada is what... 4 provinces of a 100s of province empire?

The question is AE with regards to France... I have no interest in getting into a war with France-Muscovy.

Do the colonial rebel cores ever show up in this version? I'd much rather see Castille release, say, Brazil than Grenada. They can have their stupid peninsula. But from a role playing point of view nearly all of our conflicts have been over colonies or related expansion. This war and the one before it have been (at least as I see it) because of their attempt to seize control of the Gulf of Aden trade node, which I regarded as grossly unacceptable and contrary to my interests.

Is there any way to take the colonies (which they will give to me for a pittance of Warscore) without the attendant overexpansion and admin-point cost of coring them? I know historically about this time, France gave up "a few acres of snow" in exchange for retaining control of a few islands, and Spain has lost this war much worse than France lost that one.

 

[BBBD316]

The new world cores don't form till sometime in the 1700's as I have forced them to release Mexico, the US and Brazil on occasion.

The issue at the moment is there is no way to premenantly dismantle an empire, which is an issue at late game.

I personally would like to see accords and treaties in late game which would only give minimal land to the victor, but would force huge colonial transfers and releasing of old and new nations.

 

[JimboOmega]

The new world cores don't form till sometime in the 1700's as I have forced them to release Mexico, the US and Brazil on occasion.

The issue at the moment is there is no way to premenantly dismantle an empire, which is an issue at late game.

I personally would like to see accords and treaties in late game which would only give minimal land to the victor, but would force huge colonial transfers and releasing of old and new nations.

I agree wholeheartedly - colonies should be possible to transfer en bloc, but that is something we may well see in the upcoming expansion, no?

For this game, it is late - like 1740, maybe 1750. What makes the cores show up? Are there conditions?