I could write up a long post about this and how it pertains to my current game (namely how I've killed about 200,000 Austrian soldiers over Greece, an OPM in Caffa with a spectacular 5 BT), but I think it's important to really look at this mechanic in other circumstances.
For those who don't know, a quick recap: if you've got an OPM and a great power allied, you could occupy the OPM, get 100% warscore, and take a bunch of territory (albeit stuff you've occupied) from that great power. You're basically taking the warscore of one nation and applying it to another. It was a horribly unbalanced mechanic; it made dismembering really big countries easy if you could arrange a CB that wouldn't allow war leaders to change. In 1.8, war leaders never change, so you could theoretically do something like play France, declare war on Lorraine, drag Austria in, occupy Lorraine, and then snatch up Austrian provinces much more easily than you would have been able to otherwise. So having some sort of lockout for this makes sense. It gives the big country an opportunity to fight and keeps you from quickly carving up great powers. Makes sense, yeah?
... except it's obnoxious in practice. Look, I totally get why it's there. But I'm fighting a five year war with my chief rival over an OPM. I'm not trying to take anything from Austria or anything; I just want Caffa because it's a mission objective for the Ottomans. Austria wasn't even allied to Greece before I declared war; they have no business being in this fight. But since Greece is Catholic, and because Austria is DotF, I'm now fighting Austria. An Austria who hasn't come within a few dozen provinces of the war goal, mind.
Let's assume I win this war. According to the old mechanics, Austria loses the DotF title. But what's to stop them from simply claiming it again at some point (is there even a lockout?) It's a paltry 500 gold; that's probably only a few months of income for them. They pick the title up again later and, if I'm invading Lithuania or something, I suddenly get to fight Austria again.
DotF should be a special case. Instead of preventing me from annexing this guy for five years, simply make it impossible to take territory from the DotF for a few years. That prevents abuse while not making DotF a huge pain.
For those who don't know, a quick recap: if you've got an OPM and a great power allied, you could occupy the OPM, get 100% warscore, and take a bunch of territory (albeit stuff you've occupied) from that great power. You're basically taking the warscore of one nation and applying it to another. It was a horribly unbalanced mechanic; it made dismembering really big countries easy if you could arrange a CB that wouldn't allow war leaders to change. In 1.8, war leaders never change, so you could theoretically do something like play France, declare war on Lorraine, drag Austria in, occupy Lorraine, and then snatch up Austrian provinces much more easily than you would have been able to otherwise. So having some sort of lockout for this makes sense. It gives the big country an opportunity to fight and keeps you from quickly carving up great powers. Makes sense, yeah?
... except it's obnoxious in practice. Look, I totally get why it's there. But I'm fighting a five year war with my chief rival over an OPM. I'm not trying to take anything from Austria or anything; I just want Caffa because it's a mission objective for the Ottomans. Austria wasn't even allied to Greece before I declared war; they have no business being in this fight. But since Greece is Catholic, and because Austria is DotF, I'm now fighting Austria. An Austria who hasn't come within a few dozen provinces of the war goal, mind.
Let's assume I win this war. According to the old mechanics, Austria loses the DotF title. But what's to stop them from simply claiming it again at some point (is there even a lockout?) It's a paltry 500 gold; that's probably only a few months of income for them. They pick the title up again later and, if I'm invading Lithuania or something, I suddenly get to fight Austria again.
DotF should be a special case. Instead of preventing me from annexing this guy for five years, simply make it impossible to take territory from the DotF for a few years. That prevents abuse while not making DotF a huge pain.
