Is this a bug? need some insight

[amah]

-i am the Byzantines around 1460.
-Venice declares war on my vassal Albania with cb "reconquest Albania" .
-I have 2 cores on Crete and Naxos and they are under venetian rule.
-I win the war and ask that they give Crete and Naxos back

-I get 22,5 aggressive expansion

Is there a reason why , getting my core provinces back in a defensive war , marks me as an aggressor and results in half of northern Italy in a coalition against me?Is it a bug or working as intended?

 

[hauptman]

No cassus Belli, so no core discount to ae... suck it up, make nice, let the coalition fade.

 

[panionios]

You are fighting a defensive war. Only if it was you who started the war, choosing the correct CB, would it give you the reduced AE.

 

[Kapteinsabel]

Same reason that if you take all your land back from England in the 100 years war, you die to a coaliton, no cb!

 

[StatikShocker]

even with reconquest cb you get AE, just less. Why? is reclaiming your land aggressive, or expansion? its more reclamation

 

[amah]

I realized the mechanics and i see what most of the posters say.

What i do not understand is ,how can this be working as intended .

casus beli = reason to war. Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please ,just like Machiavelli said .ww1 started because the austrian duke was assassinated. But the peace offer in the end had nothing to do with it

At the peace offer, the game should check any of the demands i make and penalize me if i do not have a valid reason to demand them .

All i know is that i have a single non-greek non-core province in my country ,yet i am penalized .My options are these

I cannot "suck it up" as proposed earlier because the ottomans have joined the coalition and will attack me anytime soon , forcing me into an ottoman+"northern italian minors"+" central european allies" war that i cannot win .

or i could ,make no demands , which means i just wasted a few years fighting a war ,losing half my manpower etc to ask for 40 ducats and a claim revocation or something equally idiotic .

Not my idea of "fun" . thank you guys for the insight ,cya in a few months when paradox decides to remove the artificial "cant do that" crap in diplomacy and we can have an enjoyable game.