Length of war modifier really needs to be changed or the AI needs to smater

[Kirikano]

It starts at a massive 70+ or something to war enthusiasm, leading to some really bad wars for the AIs. For example, I declare war on a small AI country that has an allied country nearby and a larger ally far away that can't actually get any troops across land or sea to fight me. I fully occupy that small country and the closeby ally but both of them refuse to peace out and have high war enthusiasm thanks to length of war, even though I'm fully occupying them. By the time they accept my peace deal, they are often over 15 war exhaustion and promptly collapse to rebels after the peace deal. Length of war modifier should quickly start decreasing if I'm crushing them with no hope of them gaining back any ground, or AI needs to be smarter about realizing that its far away ally can't help or about taking a favorable peace deal when its occupied completely and doesn't really lose anything much.

Case two, with pictures.

I'm almost finished conquering India in my current game, but the last Indian nation costs just a little bit too much for me to fully annex and I have to leave 3 provinces out. GB declares on them and annexs. I declare on GB, take the 3 provinces, sack a bunch of their colonies, crush the fleets and troops their alliances manages to send to me, and I offer a peace deal worth 3% warscore for just the 3 Indian provinces...and they refuse, taking a stab hit. This repeats over and over until they hit -3 stab. All because of that stupid length of war modifier. While Spain was invading their mainland in a separate war. While they are forced to constantly buy down their WE. All for 3 measly provinces that they didn't even have cores on.

This same pattern repeated with Spain and France when I declared on them for some Asian province they took that I wanted. They just refuse to peace out because of length of war and take stab hits until they go to -3.

 

[clykke]

I agree with the OP.

 

[Freudia]

I don't recall talking about length of war in public, but I have mentioned (maybe in my circle of friends who play the game) before that length of war is a really stupid modifier and should be reworked. +1.

 

[Bragi]

Yeah, it looks like a good thing, but I observed like the OP that the AI can't handle it properly and constantly get serious damage out of this.

 

[IIWW]

"The war isn't lost until You consider it lost" Erich von Manstein.
Seriously though, AI takes it too literally. +1.

 

[Seraphithan]

I think one reason for this is that "X is making gains" is kind of a useless modifier. I don't think I have ever seen it higher than ~5 even with countries that are about to be completly sieged out or that have gotten their armies smashed repeatedly. If that modifer was more impactful you possibly could finish wars in a more timely manner.

 

[herrhals]

Agreed.

 

[Aries666]

Combine length of war with relative strength of alliance and you quickly find out that large colonials with many colonial nations simply will not cede a handful of overseas provinces for decades unless you invade their mainland constantly buying stab, WE and harsh treatment to keep the war going depsite being unable/unwilling to retake their overseas possessions.

Anything that improves the AI's evaluation of such situations would be welcome.

 

[Bellygareth]

I've asked about that to Johan in an AMA a few month ago and he said they were looking into it. So Paradox is definitly aware that the modifier might not be the best. Maybe they'll change it in the future who knows.

 

[Rabid]

I actually saw for the first time ever yesterday an AI give up significantly more than the warscore% due to its being crushed by rebels, but that's because we had been fighting for many years as I had been forced to crush their allies before moving onto the tasty dessert. I honestly feel like you could remove the length of war modifier entirely and get better results all round. Ideally the AI would be unwilling to make peace until its armies had been properly fielded in battle but to really be true to the period you should be able to win a limited peace for a single claim in many cases with just a siege and beating their main army once or twice, not this "chase around mercs for years while carpet sieging" stuff.

 

[Aries666]

Ideally the AI would be unwilling to make peace until its armies had been properly fielded in battle but to really be true to the period you should be able to win a limited peace for a single claim in many cases with just a siege and beating their main army once or twice, not this "chase around mercs for years while carpet sieging" stuff.

This would be good, the AI just doesn't pay any attention to how vulnerable waging a particular war is making it until a) a massive rebellion, b) dogpiled by other nations. If they were willing to make limited concessions based as you say on losing a few major battles and a couple of provinces you would probably get fewer cases of total implosion.

 

[Redwallzyl]

is there something you can mod to reduce it?