You cannot negotiate a separate peace with someone who is the target of a war goal

[unmerged(804580)]

No, it doesn't make sense. You should be able to separate peace that target, and the war leader should be able to force you to give it back up if you can't get the war score for a white peace or something.

When you "guarantee" someone, that means you actually protect them, not hiding 100's to 1000's of miles away and expecting that your mere word will protect them magically. It's beyond comprehension that you think it's OK to manipulate war score without contributing.

Mostly this works against player's favor, because it's usually humans who take on the aggressive role...

But I was actually saved twice by this system where the warleader changes and the target of the war - which was me - couldn't sign separate peace. I didn't know it could happen to human players, but it did as the command went over to Zhou when blobbing Aceh and Hindustan almost simultaneously attacked my then-3PM Sukhothai. There are probably better ways to handle this, but as an in-game mechanism to give small nations some degree of protection, I'm quite okay with it. Zhou peaced out Aceh with their money, and surredered my provinces and their money to Hindustan, which I was not bitter about.

I don't get the point the AI doesn't try to intervene and actually fight for that OPM. It may take time for them to arrive, but I haven't seen the AI allies literally doing nothing and not even trying unless there's a real hindrance to getting to the battlefield, which is certainly not frequent.

 

[Great One]

Because if I guarantee the independence of a OPM, that shouldn't be circumventable by assaulting their province and peacing them out before I can get there. The mechanic makes sense. The problem is just that it is surrounded by bugs and also the general crumminess of the peace negotiation system.

Actually, that is precisely that should happen.

"Where is our powerful ally? They guaranteed our independence and there army is nowhere to be seen! What should we do?"

"The only thing we can do sire. We'll give in to the aggressor's demands and hope that our ally comes to our aid and demands our independence."

 

[Bibor]

TBH I never had any issues with war leader switching, either as defender or attacker. It works pretty consistently in the following fashion:
- you need to siege down 100% of a nation you want to vassalize, then demand it from the war leader.
- you or your vassal needs to siege down the provinces you want to take, then demend it from the war leader.

That's basically it. Never ever had any other scenario happening.

 

[grommile]

TBH I never had any issues with war leader switching, either as defender or attacker. It works pretty consistently in the following fashion:
- you need to siege down 100% of a nation you want to vassalize, then demand it from the war leader.
- you or your vassal needs to siege down the provinces you want to take, then demend it from the war leader.

The war score cost of a province scales based on the size of its owner (so a 3PM's provinces have no discount).

The war score value of a province scales with the size of the enemy alliance (so occupying the whole of a 3PM backed up by a 70-province blob provides very little war score).

 

[Bibor]

The war score value of a province scales with the size of the enemy alliance (so occupying the whole of a 3PM backed up by a 70-province blob provides very little war score).

... and that's where the "Show Superiority" CBs come in.

A few hard hits at the big boy and you are already sitting at 40+ percent warscore.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't get the point the AI doesn't try to intervene and actually fight for that OPM. It may take time for them to arrive, but I haven't seen the AI allies literally doing nothing and not even trying unless there's a real hindrance to getting to the battlefield, which is certainly not frequent.

The AIs will usually do something unless blocked. However, war score will still be altered and often drastically regardless of contribution. The REAL foul stuff from this mechanic, however, comes in MP. For a very low price, you can screw over a rival by constantly taking over as war leader when he can't reach you with the express intention of doing nothing but slowing the other person down at the cost of maybe a little prestige that is easily farmed up off local AIs. Coalitions, DotF (later on where cost is less an object), and guarantees can all be used to effectively screw someone's war score over on purpose with literally no intention to actually contribute to the war. What's worse is that some of these even give you "trust" .

However, even in SP it's an issue when you get into a big war where a significant portion of one side of the alliance can't reach the other, and yet is still weighted in the score calculations as significant.

That's why you declare Show Superiority wars when you suspect Russia or The Ottomans are involved. You can get up to at least 50% warscore without sieging down a single province.

And you still can't full annex 2 provinces off a target, regardless of their actual value.

 

[Bibor]

And you still can't full annex 2 provinces off a target, regardless of their actual value.

Hm... I need to check this one out.

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

And you still can't full annex 2 provinces off a target, regardless of their actual value.

Oh yeah this too is untrue. You can't take capitals off of TPMs unless it's by annexation. You can't annex if the WL changes.

This also applies even if it is isolated; the other province(s) will be greyed out. So you still have to fight two wars to annex a TPM regardless.

Foul language removed - Seelmeister

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hm... I need to check this one out.

Simple setup:

2 OPMs enter a coalition against a giant blob. It is impossible to simply full-annex both of them, even at base tax 1. You cap out at 100% war score on "war leader", getting one province.

The issue is the province cost scaling vs war score scaling as pointed out earlier.

 

[arthurs towel]

Have a worse instance of this. As Prussia used Imperial ban on Burgundy, who had a 40k army at war start. Have obliterated them, singing, or signed every province, same for ally Hesse. Have taken wargoal (Metz). Problem is that Spain was called in (who were barely stronger than Burgundy, except for their holy crap navy. They weren't even guaranteeing Burgundy, no anything that should allow this to be blocked. But because this stupid thing my ability to end war is crippled. It won't hurt, except getting to Madrid would be needless hassle. The war is won, except for the singing, since no one except me and Austria have an army left. But very stupid regardless.

 

[Bibor]

Have a worse instance of this. As Prussia used Imperial ban on Burgundy, who had a 40k army at war start. Have obliterated them, singing, or signed every province, same for ally Hesse. Have taken wargoal (Metz). Problem is that Spain was called in (who were barely stronger than Burgundy, except for their holy crap navy. They weren't even guaranteeing Burgundy, no anything that should allow this to be blocked. But because this stupid thing my ability to end war is crippled. It won't hurt, except getting to Madrid would be needless hassle. The war is won, except for the singing, since no one except me and Austria have an army left. But very stupid regardless.

Sieged. Long live auto-correct

 

[arthurs towel]

Sieged. Long live auto-correct

Oh my. I'm used to looking for it on my phone, but I didn't know my surface had that too.

Dear computer makers, never, ever, EVER set autocorrect on by default on any device using a keyboard.

Signed,
Me

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Incidentally, superiority wars don't have a true war goal target (you can get it by killing anybody's units, or lose it by losing to anybody as long as they're part of that war), so you can avoid this message that way.

 

[arthurs towel]

Incidentally, superiority wars don't have a true war goal target (you can get it by killing anybody's units, or lose it by losing to anybody as long as they're part of that war), so you can avoid this message that way.

Yeah in hindsight I should have taken the trade dispute CB. Had I realized this before 1 year into the war, after stackwiping all of Burgundy, Spain and Hesse's armies, I probably would have restarted the war. Live and learn, but it's still a pretty poor design choice. Fortunately getting about +40 WS from battles meant that I didn't need to siege anything in Spain.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah in hindsight I should have taken the trade dispute CB. Had I realized this before 1 year into the war, after stackwiping all of Burgundy, Spain and Hesse's armies, I probably would have restarted the war. Live and learn, but it's still a pretty poor design choice. Fortunately getting about +40 WS from battles meant that I didn't need to siege anything in Spain.

Trade wars and recompense wars are both great; not only do they work on superiority (which is usually easier to get ticking), they also run 75% cost, which means that in some cases you can actually vassal nations that wouldn't be possible with conquest.

Religious CB doesn't get the cost reduction, although it instead gets 75% AE.

Choosing CB carefully can make a big difference.

 

[grommile]

Trade wars and recompense wars are both great; not only do they work on superiority (which is usually easier to get ticking), they also run 75% cost, which means that in some cases you can actually vassal nations that wouldn't be possible with conquest.

I'd like to see a screenshot of a peace offer screen demonstrating this, because to the best of my knowledge:

• the WS cost, Prestige, and Aggressive Expansion modifiers from your choice of CB only apply to the approved objectives of the CB
• po_become_vassal is not an approved peace demand of cb_loan_cancelled or cb_insult or cb_trade_war.

The CBs for which po_become_vassal are an approved peace demand are:

• Subjugation
• Disloyal Vassal
• Excommunicated Ruler
• Tribal Conquest (nomad invasion of sedentary)
• Tribal Feud (nomad attack on nomad)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd like to see a screenshot of a peace offer screen demonstrating this, because to the best of my knowledge:

• the WS cost, Prestige, and Aggressive Expansion modifiers from your choice of CB only apply to the approved objectives of the CB
• po_become_vassal is not an approved peace demand of cb_loan_cancelled or cb_insult or cb_trade_war.

The CBs for which po_become_vassal are an approved peace demand are:

• Subjugation
• Disloyal Vassal
• Excommunicated Ruler
• Tribal Conquest (nomad invasion of sedentary)
• Tribal Feud (nomad attack on nomad)

I don't know; I've seen it change both in positive and negative directions between conquest and recompense. IE, I've conquered them to 95% on follow-up war to vassal, then declared 5 years later and they're 102. I've also declared in a follow up war to find that the target which still had >100% war score last time is now 100% or less. No provinces changing hands, and no way they could have built buildings to modify tax base or manpower (insufficient tech - we're talking earlygame southeast Asia).