It's time to drop Province Warscore Cost

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TheProf

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Feb 4, 2019
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I believe the time has come for conquest to no longer be bound by province warscore cost.

With the addition of governing capacity to curb expansion, and the existing systems of coring, aggressive expansion, rebels and states/territories; province warscore cost, something I've long thought an unfortunate but necessary mechanic, can be dropped.

Some tweaks may be necessary to the above systems, it should only be possible to take occupied provinces, and the manpower needed to occupy those provinces should be taken directly from ones standing army, for balance. 1k for ordinary provinces, 1k - max garrisson for fort level for forts.

The dev of the province should still be used to calculate AE and coring cost, but shouldn't count towards a warscore cost.

More balancing may be necessary in terms of vassal feeding, perhaps a scaling liberty desire by difference in government ranks, to prevent vassals obtaining too much governing capacity, thus limiting their usefulness to administer land.

This change would make the game more interesting, impactful, and contribute to the spirit of "Right by Conquest" where if you can take it, and if you can hold it, it's yours.
 
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I don't think that
1) it's the right forum
2) it's a good idea (more micro management of armies for useless siege carpetting, no thanks).
3) it is more fun that way.
 
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Agreed that province warscore cost needs to be examined. As France, I could only claim a bit over half of the cores received on Burgendy, after it fell into a PU under Oldenburg. Cores. Not even just claims. Completing missions on some big areas can take forever. Like as the Ottomans, you need to wail on the Mamluks for well over a hundred years, even if you hit them as soon as truces elapse. And Muscovy needs like three wars against Novogrod to finish them off.
 
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it should only be possible to take occupied provinces,
have you ever fought a late-game war with a eurocolonizer in one of the versions of EU4 where that was the rule in force?

it was an experience made of walnuts, mayonnaise, aniseed, and hate.
 
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I think it works like it is now. I don't have the feeling that the province warscore cost is a significant constraint - AE is far more limiting. This might also create problems for the AI and new players who might stumble into huge coalitions.
If you use reconquest casus belli you can take huge lands if you have enough cores, did you use a different casus belli (War of Burgundian Succession?). Even with reconqzest French land has such high average development that its one of the places where you can hand hit that ceiling too.

If anything should be reworked its distance modifier for AE, its absurd that countries in Malaya join a coalition because they are angry when I take their fellow Sunni lands in Africa or the Levant
 
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Sorry for the long post. I had lot to say on this subject.

Initially I must say I'm sympathetic to the idea. Warscore (WS) is an abstraction which seems completely arbitrary and random. It is imposed on the players and is often frustrating, as a player knows he could have taken more without problems.

That said, I don't think the solution is to remove it entirely.

WS is useful to exchange an occupation by a conquest elsewhere in the world. Anyone who ever "conquered" useless islands in the Pacific that way will not want warscore to go away. It is tedious enough to select them. Imagine having to conquer them one by one!

In addition, it is not unheard of that some fortresses occupied at one end of a country were retroceded in a peace treaty in exchange for others which were untouched. I don't have a particular example right now, but it doesn't seem impossible at least.

Furthermore, WS is also used to demand other things than provinces. What happens, if WS is removed, of treaties about war reparations, transfer trade, cancel treaties and the likes?

What the OP seems to want is the ability to conquer more land, as he considers that maximum WS is inadequate to represent the constrains a country had in the size of its conquests. That could be done by making WS cost dependant on the size of the attacker country.

But before expanding on that, it seems to me useful to explain why WS seems inadequate.

In the beginning of the game, especially when a player is small, overextension (OE) isn't a problem, since a player will find himself struggling against his neighbour far before he reaches 100% OE. Agressive expansion (AE) is often the real block to player's expansion. WS is even less a problem, since a player daring to take 100 WS in provinces at this stage will often find himself hopelessly outnumbered by angry ennemies as well as imploding.

Later, while AE is still a concern, OE starts being one. As a country becomes able to wage multiple wars at the same time on different theatres, or to completely overwhelm one region, OE becomes a blocker. I must say I don't like the way it is portrayed, but OE isn't the main subject, right now.

So far, let's assume a player was able to take what he wanted in peace deals. AE represents the external threat while OE represented the internal strains that threatens to rip apart his country.

Sometimes a player reaches a state we'll call the "late game", in which AE becomes a non-issue because coalitions melt away before the player's strenght. At this point, and even before, the player can use vassals to circumvent OE (a "strategy" named vassal feeding). It is done by giving recently conquered provinces (usually on day one) to vassals who will have the job of integrating them, thus multiplying the admin points and overextension limits a player can have.

In such a situation, WS, along with the soft limit in the number of vassals one can have, appear to be the main limiting factors. That's why the HRE and the Shogun vassal swarms are so powerful, since they allow to have numerous vassals without hitting the cap in diplomatic relations.

If we put diplo slots aside, WS is the only limit on what a player can take in late game. And unlike AE and OE, it doesn't have an in-game explanation. It appears to be (and is) purely arbitrary.

In earlier versions, maybe maximum WS was meant to be as much as maximum OE, which would make sense to a point. But since then, modifiers were added for a player to go beyond 100% OE in WS, which basically means that the only way to cope with this is to use vassal feeding or to take less than 100% WS in provinces and other advantages.

Vassal feeding is then an integral part of the game and is actively encouraged by the game's mechanics. A way to "legitimate" vassal feeding would be to tie it to the WS mechanic : a country couldn't take more in territory or WS than X% of its size, which would then be redistributed between itself and its vassals.

The logical number of WS a country could then have would be 100% OE + 100% of each of his vassals OE. However such a number would quickly become insigificant. It would also ignore that not every vassals can obtain lands from the country attacked and that not every WS point would be used to obtain land.

The fact that I used OE to make my calculus seems to be the main reason the solution presented above doesn't work. OE is the same for every country, minus administrative efficiency. If we were to link WS to OE, we would have to rework OE as well. A way to do that would be to link OE to a country size.

If the devs were to link OE to a country size, the OE limit would have to be higher the bigger a country is. Consequently, the WS limit would also be.

The concrete effect would be that a country like the Ottomans attacking the Mamluks, for example, could take maybe half of the country, representing his maximum OE, while Karaman doing the same thing could only take Syria in WS.

Additionnally, in the late game, as administrative capacity and absolutism would kick in, the amount of land a country could take in a single peace treaty would become ungodly. Which isn't a bad thing, since at this point the only thing left to do is to mop up the rest of the world.

Such a solution would also make vassal feeding relevant, not because a player would reach OE very quickly, but because he would lack admin points.
 
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The current peace treaty system goes by warscore. Except when you 100% occupy your enemy (which is tedious and ahistorical), all peace treaties are negotiated peace treaties. Without the warscore system, there is no way for the AI to calculate if it will accept a treaty or not. I could see removing the warscore cap for 100% warscore, but that would allow the player to wreck their enemies in a single war. You could demand money, war reps, transfer trade, release all cores, release all subjects, release all possible nations, break all alliances, humiliate, remove all rivals (to farm prestige), and force religion (to potentially give your enemy low prestige). That would reduce any nation (before the cores disappear in 1594) to just a few provinces and likely bankrupt them. And, you could do that just with diplo points, making no AE or over-extension in the process.
 
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The current peace treaty system goes by warscore. Except when you 100% occupy your enemy (which is tedious and ahistorical), all peace treaties are negotiated peace treaties. Without the warscore system, there is no way for the AI to calculate if it will accept a treaty or not. I could see removing the warscore cap for 100% warscore, but that would allow the player to wreck their enemies in a single war. You could demand money, war reps, transfer trade, release all cores, release all subjects, release all possible nations, break all alliances, humiliate, remove all rivals (to farm prestige), and force religion (to potentially give your enemy low prestige). That would reduce any nation (before the cores disappear in 1594) to just a few provinces and likely bankrupt them. And, you could do that just with diplo points, making no AE or over-extension in the process.

That is already the case. Get 100% WS, fully occupy and take no land just ducats, war rep, break their alliances and they are done. Sure, big nations can come back from this, but even then will be significantly weaker after you wreck them.
 
I disagree with the idea of giving a large country the potential to conquer faster, being large already makes the game extremly easy and in general boring, which is one of the main reasons why many people rarely go into lategame. Conquest was historically limited in scale and should be so for gameplay and balance reasons, it just doesn't make sense that you could potentially annex France as a whole. And with high levels of Admin Efficiency you can take quite big chunks of land.

Even Napolean only took small bits one by one in a series of wars - but he was probably a 6 6 6 ruler with 5 5 5 advisors who could take a few stab-hits from truce-breaking :)
 
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@Manwe_Sulimo The question is why were conquests limited? Was it because people limited themselves, or because they had strategical and diplomatic constrains? And are those constrains well represented in-game?

For AE, I believe it represents well the external threat. So by the time the coalitions dissolve, meaning when a player is stronger by a factor of ten over them, I would believe the game is effectively over.

Should there be something more, representing the internal difficulties? I believe there should be something weakening an empire expanding too quickly, but nothing as limiting as OE and WS.

The example in the period that often comes to mind is the conquest of the Mamluks by the Ottomans in 1516. There were nobody in the immediate vicinity who could object to that and the Ottomans managed relatively easily to integrate their new conquest in their administration.

From that, how could we accurately represent this war in-game without breaking balance elsewhere? That would be the holy grail of grand strategy games, in a sense.

You could also argue that the conquest of India by the British was of a similar scale. I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but the question I ask is : is it replicable in-game?

Maybe the solution of tying WS to development wouldn't work. But then what could solve this problem?

A while ago I proposed a modifier based on similar culture and religion. This could be applied to OE or WS or both. It would be easier to take more lands from a country in the same cultural group and of the same religion than to take lands from a very different culture and land.
 
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Well, now imagine at a scale of unlimited war score.

Wouldn't change much in terms of damage dealt. Annual alliance and cancel rival are useful but situational useful, as is steer trade and transfer trade power.

War rep + max ducats is already 35%. Transfer/steer trade/humiliate adds up to 110%. Annual alliance is 10% each and cancel rival 30%.
 
Wouldn't change much in terms of damage dealt. Annual alliance and cancel rival are useful but situational useful, as is steer trade and transfer trade power.

War rep + max ducats is already 35%. Transfer/steer trade/humiliate adds up to 110%. Annual alliance is 10% each and cancel rival 30%.

And what about release nations, cancel subjects and return cores? Also dont forget you can take land for yourself aswell on top of all these.
 
And what about release nations, cancel subjects and return cores? Also dont forget you can take land for yourself aswell on top of all these.

I would really like release nations and return cores (to non-subject countries) to be more useful. Maybe if there were a discount in WS cost...
 
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I would really like release nations and return cores (to non-subject countries) to be more useful. Maybe if there were a discount in WS cost...

Just being able to vassalize released nations on peace deal would make that option a lot more useful.
 
And what about release nations, cancel subjects and return cores? Also dont forget you can take land for yourself aswell on top of all these.

Revanchism is a thing and losing land in peace deal erases all WE. Like I said, you can already wreck a nation without taking a single province from them.
 
@Arizal
I don't think they anyone ever limited themselves. Maria Theresia thought the partition of Poland is wrong - in the end "she wept but she took" because it would have been crazy to not participate. They were limited by circumstances. Charles V tried to establish uniform Catholic Monarchy, wipe out the Protestants and centralize the HRE under a Spanish-Austrian-Burgundian-Italian empire, but he failed because after his victories his enemies "formed a coalition" and because it was just too large to rule such a large empire. In the Thirty Years wars the Habsburg were in a similar situation of power until the Swedish and later the French intervened.

India was conquered over the time-frame of a century by the East India Company, which was increasingly controlled by the Crown and then finally replaced in 1858. Also Britain never controlled all of India directly, but large parts where controlled by the princely states as protectorates. That is kind of in line with the EU4 mechanics.

Its true there are some rapid conquests in history that are not possible in the game, besides Mamluks by the Ottomans, the Aztecs and Inka by the Spanish come to mind, while this is not ideal it would destroy game-balance if only one of the limitations on conquest were lifted to allow this.

I don't think that the warscore cost is that limiting in general, especially once you get a certain level of Admin Efficiency. Making co-belligerents or in cases were AE is not an issue even taking land from non-cobelligerents allows you take several 100 % worth of warscore in provinces in a single war. Releasing nations and returning core is a common thing and has its purpose, in many situation you will just prefer to take land for yourself or take more money. I fear that a discount would make it too easy to cripple a nation. You can often diplo-vassalize the released land or simple conquer after the truce has expired anways.

The peace deal and warscore systems are as they are for gameplay reasons, they simplify a lot and can't represent history with all its complexity though.
Now I don't say there might be room for improvement here and there but in general I think this is an essential mechanic for the game.
 
Wouldn't change much in terms of damage dealt. Annual alliance and cancel rival are useful but situational useful, as is steer trade and transfer trade power.

War rep + max ducats is already 35%. Transfer/steer trade/humiliate adds up to 110%. Annual alliance is 10% each and cancel rival 30%.

The issue is calculating the decision to accept a peace deal or not. Removing province warscore would result in the AI giving away all the provinces but one at 10 warscore, provided a nearby fort is occupied and other such conditions are met. In order to calculate negotiated peace deals, there needs to be a province warscore cost. What I think OP is proposing is the removal of of the 100% warscore cap. It would also be quite silly if you can full annex a late-game Ottomans or Russia, but can't humiliate, transfer trade, and cancel two rivals in one war.

There are two issues in this thread. First, is the issue of taking everything in single wars. Second, if the issue of how you would actually implement it. In the current game, nearly all peace deals are technically negotiated, but are only negotiated because you can 100% in a peace deal well before you actually siege everything down. Allowing complete conquest would require a massive rework of the warscore system.

Even if you limit 100% to taking provinces, you can still literally dismantle any nation with zero AE via releasing subjects, releasing nations, and returning cores using just diplo points.
 
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I'd appreciate it if Humilitation, Transfer Trade, and Steer Trade peace terms were changed. Humiliation doesn't offer enough to be worthwhile at most points in the game. Transfer Trade Power doesn't last long enough to be worth declaring a war over. Same deal with Steer Trade, which can actually be useless if they collect from a node en route to yours, or just don't get that much from other nodes.
 
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@Arizal
I don't think they anyone ever limited themselves. Maria Theresia thought the partition of Poland is wrong - in the end "she wept but she took" because it would have been crazy to not participate. They were limited by circumstances. Charles V tried to establish uniform Catholic Monarchy, wipe out the Protestants and centralize the HRE under a Spanish-Austrian-Burgundian-Italian empire, but he failed because after his victories his enemies "formed a coalition" and because it was just too large to rule such a large empire. In the Thirty Years wars the Habsburg were in a similar situation of power until the Swedish and later the French intervened.

India was conquered over the time-frame of a century by the East India Company, which was increasingly controlled by the Crown and then finally replaced in 1858. Also Britain never controlled all of India directly, but large parts where controlled by the princely states as protectorates. That is kind of in line with the EU4 mechanics.

Its true there are some rapid conquests in history that are not possible in the game, besides Mamluks by the Ottomans, the Aztecs and Inka by the Spanish come to mind, while this is not ideal it would destroy game-balance if only one of the limitations on conquest were lifted to allow this.

I don't think that the warscore cost is that limiting in general, especially once you get a certain level of Admin Efficiency. Making co-belligerents or in cases were AE is not an issue even taking land from non-cobelligerents allows you take several 100 % worth of warscore in provinces in a single war. Releasing nations and returning core is a common thing and has its purpose, in many situation you will just prefer to take land for yourself or take more money. I fear that a discount would make it too easy to cripple a nation. You can often diplo-vassalize the released land or simple conquer after the truce has expired anways.

The peace deal and warscore systems are as they are for gameplay reasons, they simplify a lot and can't represent history with all its complexity though.
Now I don't say there might be room for improvement here and there but in general I think this is an essential mechanic for the game.

In the case of India, isn't that basically just feeding a bunch of vassals who transfer Trade Power?
 
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