1. Introduction
War escalation would function in 3 basic ways:
1. Adding new war goals for the war participants. All major allies must confirm this choice.
2. Adding new war participants to the war on a specific side via adding war goals on their behalf.
3. Merging two wars into one
In addition to that, I believe the game should hold by the following rules when implementing such a mechanic:
1. One war participant should as a general rule not be able to screw over their allies unless it can go both ways.
2. War should be possible to escalate gradually after it starts, preferably based on the percentage of the population the participants lose modified by their prestige. Other potential factors include their devastation, war support lost and the infamy of their enemies.
3. In addition to the previous factors, choosing fewer and less radical war goals than possible during the diplomatic play should be taken into account when the possibility of War Escalation for a coalition (one side in a war) is calculated.
4. After the war starts, the nations that refused to take side during the diplomatic play should initially be unable to join the war once it starts until a certain time threshold is reached (roughly 6 months) and/or dynamic based on the total losses taken by both sides of the war. I call this the War Participation Threshold. Both warring parties should then be able to offer war goals to neutral states and thus also allow them to enter the war on their side. This threshold exists so that nations that refused to take side cannot simply turn coat immediately after making clear they want nothing to do with the war. Nations that want to get involved in the war eventually but do not take a side during a diplomatic play essentially place a bet that the war would not reach a swift and victorious conclusion if they did and is therefore not worth committing hundreds of thousands of men just yet.
5. Under specific circumstances, wars should be allowed to merge based on bilateral agreement between 2 parties (see Greece and the Ottoman Empire further down).
6. Independent Non-Negotiators can sign a white peace with the enemy coalition once the new War Participation Threshold is reached. Negotiators can therefore use this time to add war goals for their allies, making them negotiators (with their approval), but also binding them to their coalition. However, this can also happen if the enemy coalition member picks a war goal aimed against the Non-Negotiator (see Wallonia further down).
2. The War Begins
To present as well as possible to application of the aforementioned rules within the already established mechanics set by the Victoria III team, let me show you the resulting mechanic in action.
I present to you Europe in 1920:
In the Spring of 1920 France starts a diplomatic play over the reclamation of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany. Russia is happy to use the opportunity to take Galicia from Austria, which is a staunch ally of Germany. UK also joins on the French side (The Entente, for short), hoping that the continental war will weaken Germany and tank their prestige, but also drain France and Russia, making UK the strongest European power once more. Netherlands owes France and the UK a large debt for allowing them to retake Belgium earlier on and also joins the war on their side, alongside Portugal, which merely wants to honor their alliance obligations with France and UK. In the Opening Moves, Germany sticks to the War Reparations war goal, not yet abandoning hope that the French will reconsider their play before its too late. Yet, after realizing that the Entente means business, they claim Dutch Wallonia, turning the Netherlands into a Negotiating participant. Meanwhile, Austria wants to make damn sure that Russia will never claim Galicia again by seeking part of Congress Poland as well as Russian disarmament. Since neither side is willing to back down, war begins by a combined Entente offensive, which is intended to quickly break Germany. However, the quick Austro-German mobilization stops the French and Dutch in the Western Rhineland, while the Russians likewise face high losses at the hands of Germany and its ally (i.e. the Central Powers).
3. To fight or not to Fight
You would be right to notice that a significant portion of states in Europe and outside of it did not join the diplomatic play. The reasons for this are manifold:
1. They are far too weak to make a difference in a highly risky stage of the war and are scared of the Ottoman Empire joining the war on the enemy side (Romania)
2. They have relatively little to gain from the war in comparison to its risks (Scandinavia)
3. They are unlikely to benefit in the long term from a major war even if they win it because they are not stable and strong enough (the Ottoman Empire and Spain)
4. They have several claims on both coalitions and prefer to wait either to join the winning side and obtain an easy victory or make sure that their claims on one of the coalitions are fulfilled entirely before they commit to the war. (Italy)
5. Is isolated and still unprepared and therefore unwilling to act belligerently too soon. They are expected to spend the valuable time to attack China without international involvement (Japan)
6. Does not have any interest in a European war, hoping instead to rake all that sweet sweet immigration while cementing their industrial might (USA)
In the existing system, they are all forced either to:
1. Join the war immediately and face the consequences to their fragile and/or relatively weak states. In the case of USA, there is also no public support for war, which would be highly destabilizing.
2. Not join the war and be a spectator even if a would-be great window for entering the war arises.
3. Start their own diplomatic play later, but risk fighting the entire coalition alone even after the main war is over. This is highly risky and would likely lead to backstabbing by their informal allies because there is currently no way in the game to ensure otherwise other than sheer trust.
In my system/scenario, however, they choose to wait, not because they do not want the spoils of victory, but because the more exhausted the present war participants are, the more desperate they become to seek their aid. Not only that, but this ensures that their relatively weak militaries can hope to match the might of the already engaged Great Powers.
4. Passing the Threshold
After several months of heavy fighting, trench war ensues, which greatly benefits those nations that decided not to join when it began. Not only are their neighbors and rivals losing their pops in the hundreds of thousands, they are also becoming more and more willing to recognize their claims on the lands of their enemies!
Now that both parties inflicted casualties amounting to a notable percentage of their pops of the enemy, they have accumulated Escalation points to the enemy coalition. Escalation points serve to limit the demands a coalition can make from the enemy and how many allies it can seek out. As a result, a large power will be unlikely to lose a huge portion of their land, especially to a single enemy in a large coalition. This value is thus central to the question of war escalation and taking losses is the main way of increasing it (the secondary being taking few war goals at the start of the war, which means that that coalition starts out with a bank of Escalation they can use to add those war goals once the war starts or save them until the War Participation Threshold is reached and then using them to find new allies. Because Escalation points are limited and so are the available allies, members of a given coalition will need to think not only about what they really want, but also how their acquisitions influence their geopolitical position once the war ends. Needless to say, these points will only go much higher in this scenario. As these points accumulate, the warring parties must deliberate on the question of how they wish to spend their Escalation points, either adding more war goals for themselves or seeking allies. In practice, this means that the more Escalation points are accumulated, the more and more drastic war goals can be chosen and the more powerful allies can be gathered.
Important note: Choosing a new war goal for themselves or their new ally also gives a fraction of the spent escalation to the enemy, which means that they will likely soon choose a new war goal themselves. A positive feedback loop may thus ensue: Casualties cause Escalation, which causes more Casualties and Escalation. This is not that likely to happen early on because the wars are based largely on mobility and losses to general population will probably be much more moderate. Plus generally, nobody who starts the war (defender or the aggressor) wants a long and bloody war, even if it allows them to choose more war goals. Remember, they pay for those in the blood of their men, not those of their enemies. Adding new allies is the likeliest way the war will be won, but this may upset some of the more ambitious coalition partners. In addition to this, adding a powerful nation to the war will cost a hefty price of Escalation points even if the war goal is just to take a lonely island in the Pacific they barely want. So, while the Entente may want Italy to join them more so than Romania, adding in Romania (and satisfying their territorial ambitions) will be cheaper than doing the same with Italy and will also grant less Escalation to the Central Powers.
5. In Search for Victory
In our scenario both parties eventually decide that winning the war ASAP is more important than enforcing their own demands, so both parties look for an ally who would support them in exchange for the war goals. However, seeing the hundreds of thousands of men dying in such a short period of time makes the war a tough sell at this point. It is an open secret that Italy is waiting for an opportunity to join the war and has thus far refused to join any of the parties. This means that once the War Participation Threshold is reached, everybody looks to Italy to support, or invade them. In this situation, Italy has good reasons to join any of the parties, since they want South Tyrol, Istria and Dalmatia but also Savoy, Corsica and Tunisia. There is no way they get both in this war, so they want to make damn sure they get everything they can from one of the coalitions for the least amount of effort.
View attachment 783392
Mock War overview from the point of view of Italy. Both sides want them to join their coalition. In the case of the Entente, they are willing to invest all 9 of their Escalation points. Accepting would grant the Central Powers 6 points based on the power of Italy and the cost of this war goal. Istria is more valuable than Corsica, so joining the Central Powers would grant the Entente one less Escalation Point. The sheer power shift Italy can cause by joining the war is the cause of much of the Escalation points potentially caused by its entrance, the rest being the war goal chosen. The higher the losses taken by a coalition, the more Escalation points they will have, but it will also slowly become more expensive to invite Italy (or any other power) into their coalition, since the joining of a fresh power into the war is becoming more valuable.
Note: The War Support, Dead and Wounded count are not meant to be representative. I am also not certain whether it is possible in the existing Victoria III system to choose war goals for a co-belligerent targeted against another co-belligerent (like Austria vs. Russia) during a diplomatic play. However, if it is not, such moves could in my system always be made shortly after the war starts if the demands of a given war coalition were limited thus far. Because adding new war participants is temporarily disabled until the War Participation Threshold is reached, both sides are incentivized to add war goals for their allies in order to make the war profitable and make separate peace impossible (or at the very least highly dangerous to the nation making peace, depending on how that particular feature is implemented).
If the thickly populated, but weak and not very prestigious China were hypothetically to join the Entente, they would still not be able to virtually stop the acquisition of Escalation by the Entente due to the small percentage of the total Entente population dying. This is because the gain of Escalation is calculated as a percentage of losses in the war of the warring nations in a coalition modified by the prestige of the respective warring nations within that coalition. In practice, China losing 1 million men would add only few Escalation Points to the Entente, but if the same happens to the Netherlands, the Entente Escalation Points will rise alongside the screams of the Dutch player as he looks at his pops dropping. If rather highly populated AND prestigious USA were to join the Entente instead, the cost for doing so would be higher than that of a weak China and the gain of the Entente Escalation Points would be somewhat slower unless the US was determined to fully commit to the war and take significant losses in their own right. Therefore, it is generally much better for a coalition to invite a would-be ally which has a lot at stake once it enters the war, like Italy or Romania. Reluctance to actively participate in the war (by a cheesy US player, for example) would negatively affect the standing of his nation as well as his economy due to the impossibility of trade with his CP enemies, not to mention the prestige impact of losing a major war, even if it hardly touched their soil and did not cause any concessions from them as a nation.
Since neither of the parties has enough Escalation to offer Italy everything they want just yet, they offer Italy to admit it to their side for at least some of these war goals. This offer can be accessed through the war window as seen above. A warring side can only see their own offers and a neutral side can only see the offers made to them. Italy can thus gently whisper to France about the German offer to give Italy virtually everything they ask for if it joins the CP (by adding more war goals later which Italy would be able to oversee). It will be up to the Entente to decide whether Italy is bluffing or whether they are facing the last chance to convince Italy to join their side or at least stay neutral. Perhaps, they believe that Italy is in fact merely hoping to make gains without actually joining the war. They may thus add a war goal for Austria to cede Istria to Italy with no strings attached. This would be a fine case of Italy making profit off of war without actually joining it and it would not bear the Escalation cost of the Italian entrance into it. However, this also leaves Italy with no assurances that these war goals are actually pressed when the peace is signed. Still, if the Entente loses, Italy can kiss goodbye to any gains from Austria. In fact, even if Entente wins, it can turn their back on their promise when the window for the Italian move is long past and the Entente neither needs Italy nor fears its entrance on the side of the Central Powers any longer if Germany reaches its breaking point. Italy can, however, choose to accept both the Entente neutrality option and then join the CP anyway. That would remove the Istrian CB from the Entente, but also allow them to reinvest the Escalation elsewhere along with the one gained by the Italian entry.
In our scenario, however, Italy chooses to be patient in order to let the warring participants to grow even more weary and desperate even though Entente offers them Istria and the Central Powers offer Corsica. As mentioned before, this is not nearly enough to fully satisfy Italy, but by accepting this offer they would have a seat and thus veto powers in any further new war goals and negotiations. Italy is in a good position here, but waiting for too long has its own flaw: The Entente and Central Powers have also been wooing other neutral states. The first nation to intervene is Japan, joining the Central Powers in the summer of 1922, more than two bloody years after the war had started. Having finished a major naval expansion, Japan uses the British and French commitment in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to crush the Russian Pacific Fleet, taking Vladivostok and invading British Singapore (the newly added war goal alongside Vladivostok). This is a major boon to the Central Powers, which were until now incapable to fight the Entente navy anywhere near evenly. Italy promises to join the Entente... in the near future following the modernization of their army and adding South Tyrol to the table. Meanwhile, Romania is still unwilling to make their own move. Even though the war is taking great toll on the European Central Powers, the Entente is unable to finish off their enemies for the foreseeable future.
6. The Turkish Gambit
The Ottoman empire is in the meantime still unwilling to commit to the war - they have little will to fight Austria for Bosnia, as that would ultimately help strengthen their main rival Russia. However, fighting Russia in the Caucasus and Britain in Egypt is not to their liking, either. Fortunately, they can still use the existence of War Merging mechanic to their advantage. In July of 1922, the Ottomans start a diplomatic play to annex Greece, which has thus far been under protection of Russia and Britain. If those decide to back Greece and the Ottomans refuse to back down, starting a war, the Ottomans will either face them without any affiliation with the Central Powers, which may come back to bite them if the Central Powers sign peace, but also allows them to negotiate on behalf of themselves and thus possibly use the presence of another conflict to quickly destroy Greece and peace out victoriously, or, if Britain and Russia manage to save Greece, sign a peace that does not bear the costs of Total War because both Britain and Russia have bigger problems on their plate. Alternatively, however, the Ottoman Empire and Greece would have the potential to ask the Entente and Central Powers respectively to merge the war, meaning that Greece joins the Entente and the Ottomans ally with the CP. Because at least the primary war goals of Greece and the Ottomans would also merged with the wider war, both Greece and the Ottoman Empire would automatically become negotiators in the conflict between the Entente and the Central Powers. Merging the wars can take place at any time after the new war had started, but only if the coalition that does the merging (in this potential case, the Entente and Greece) has enough combined Escalation points. Because the Greek population and prestige is so small compared to the whole Entente, their escalation points would be almost meaningless in this equation. The Ottoman empire would in this situation automatically join the Central Powers, but those would be allowed to go into deficit of Escalation points because of that if they are low on those (which they are, thanks to Japan). If Greece is not supported by Russia, Britain or anyone else and decides to stand alone against the Ottomans, it will be extremely unlikely they would be able to gain another strong supporter once the war starts, since the price in lives they would first have to pay combined with the War Participation Threshold would give the Ottomans plenty of time to finish the job. The question at this time is whether Britain and Russia are willing to merge the potential war, fight it separately (assuming the Ottomans do not eventually merge it with the CP) or let Greece fall and use the 1 year long peace treaty with the Ottomans to their advantage in the more important conflict.
7. The Floodgates Open
Keeping all this in mind, Britain and Russia choose not to save Greece (RIP Greece) and thus every member of the Entente (because Russia and Britain are in it) gets roughly 1 year long peace treaty with the Ottomans. This peace treaty affects not only Britain and France, but their entire coalition, even those members of it who have not entered it just yet, most importantly Romania. This means that The Ottomans cannot just take over Greece and join the war anyway by declaring on France, for example. With the Ottomans appeased, Romania can join the war without worrying about their southern flank anytime soon. In fact, they are incentivized to do so before the Ottomans decide to turn them into another Greece. They join the Entente and are thus under the protection of the peace treaty between Russia, Britain and the Ottomans. Romanian entrance into the war in the autumn of 1922 is bittersweet, however, as Spain immediately after joins the Central Powers, seeking to take over Gibraltar and Portugal. With France facing war on two fronts as well as losing its Portuguese ally, Italy finally joins the entente, plugging the holes in the French southern front and invading Austria, with limited success. The final nation to join the war is Scandinavia. They have thus far feigned disinterest in the war despite attempts by both blocs to admit them into the war. Instead of waging war to take Schleswig from Germany, Scandinavia uses the Russian focus on Germany and Austria to quickly take Finland and besiege Saint Petersburg. They also use their navy to balance the scales in the Atlantic. Besides Portugal (btw RIP Portugal), France and Austria suffer the most during this stage of the war. Because France and the Netherlands are getting low on manpower at this point, Britain has to increase their own contribution on the frontlines. With Europe and parts of Asia on fire, the Escalation points of both sides of the war grow to unprecedented levels, and so do their respective demands on the enemy. Neither side manages to convince USA to participate. With France, Germany, Netherlands and Austria all near the brink, situation continues until the late summer of 1923, when the Ottomans finally come to the rescue of the Central powers following their Peace treaty expiration, opening the way to the war's conclusion.
8. The Conclusion
The Ottomans quickly force Romanian capitulation and alleviate the Central Powers in the Eastern front. France and Netherlands finally collapse in the fall of 1923, followed by Italy. Britain can only watch as Egypt falls to the Ottomans. The last Entente power to capitulate is Russia, which cannot face 4 Central Powers in Europe as well as Japan in Asia. USA wants to join the Central Powers so it can use its remaining Escalation points to press demands on Canada, but is resoundingly denied because their involvement is no longer needed. Neither do they have the time to stop the imminent downfall of the Entente if they contemplate doing so. The Central Powers instead use these points to fulfill their own respective demands. There will be no American gains in this war, but the US can still launch their own diplomatic play...
By Christmas 1923, the guns went silent in Europe, as the Russian Empire signed an armistice with the Central Powers. The continent has changed greatly since the 3 long years the war had begun. Romania is no more, partitioned between the Ottoman Empire and Austria. France has lost the remainder of Lorraine as well as Roussillon and Corsica. Italy has been punished severely for its ambitions, with the Two Sicilies being released as an independent state under Austrian protection. Italy has also lost Friuli and Sardinia. Russia lost all of southern Caucasus, Crimea, Finland, Karelia, Ukraine, White Ruthenia as well as Lithuania and the Baltic governorates. Their only solace is that Saint Petersburg remains in their hands, albeit mere kilometers from the new Scandinavian and German borders. Britain remains largely intact, although their Mediterranean possessions are no more. However, voices in her dominions rise, seeking independence from the weakened and severely indebted British Empire.
And that would be all for this Mock AAR. I hope I was able to convince you of the viability of my concept of War Escalation. I believe it is a good combination of realism and dynamic, interactive gameplay which will make wars much more fun and interesting than they now seem. Still, if you find any fundamental or other problem with it, feel free to give your constructive feedback, keeping in mind this post took me ages to put together
I recognize that the War Merging in particular is a very tricky feature that could potentially go wrong in many ways, but it can at the same time be reworked or removed without touching the core War Escalation mechanic. To those who have actually read all this text until now, I raise my glass to you.I would also be highly thankful if @Wizzington spent some of his valuable time to further contemplate on the validity as and the eventual implementation of some variation of this mechanic.
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