War Score and taking far away counties from large empires

[Forblaze]

I'm playing as Ireland and France owns two counties in England. How am I meant to take these counties without launching a full scale invasion into france? It seems like there's no difference between 'take over your entire kingdom' and 'take over a county that's not even connected to your empire' in terms of war score. Stellaris solved this with status quo peace, but I don't see an equivalent mechanic in CK3.

I tried this myself by taking a county in Sweden, and the war really does just go on forever. Sweden will send waves of troops over to me to be slaughtered, but I don't have to make any attempt at actually exerting military control over that county to continue holding it.

Is this really how the system is intended to work?

[Edmund Greyfox]

Battles only counts for a max of 50% of the war score. The rest comes from winning sieges or taking captives. Capture a king and it's pretty much war over, no matter what else has happened.

[Rheinmetall]

If you click the war icon in the bottom right it will tell you the reason for the current war score. The most common reason for a war score not changing is, as mentioned, that you probably only did one of the things that count towards the war score -- for example, you won all the battles and maybe even took the enemy capital, but you don't actually hold the region that the war is about, which the headline of the war will tell you ("War for X's claim on Y").

[Forblaze]

So are you guys saying there's no way to take these counties without a full invasion of mainland france?

[Rheinmetall]

Originally posted by Forblaze:

So are you guys saying there's no way to take these counties without a full invasion of mainland france?

I'm not sure what you mean. You said:

I'm playing as Ireland and France owns two counties in England. How am I meant to take these counties without launching a full scale invasion into france?

If the war is regarding these two "counties in England", if you're holding them then that should very slowly count your war score upwards. There's no way to win a war for the defender if the enemy consistently controls the war target.

If you want the war to be less slow, you should win battles and invade the enemy capital, which has a high chance of giving you a valuable hostage which will improve your war score greatly.

And as mentioned, if you open the war dialogue in the bottom right it will tell you what the reason is for your current war score.

[Edmund Greyfox]

No, but you might have to siege a town or two in France if you can't get enough war score from battles and capturing those two counties to force France to surrender. Like rheinmetall said, taking the enemy capital is usually a good choice since the potential for important prisoners that boost your war score is pretty good.

[Rheinmetall]

Originally posted by Edmund Greyfox:

you might have to siege a town or two in France if you can't get enough war score from battles and capturing those two counties to force France to surrender.

Just for the record, I think that technically you will always win a war sooner or later if you hold all the war targets, it's just really slow. So one way to "defensively" win a war, which may be nice if the capital is really far away, is just to siege the relevant counties and then disband your army until the enemy actually comes to take them back. If they come by sea you can attack them immediately with men-at-arms for example because they'll have a penalty for being recently disembarked.

[Red_Dwarf]

If you take the county you have a claim on you get a trickling warscore which will slowly fill to 100 just by you holding it. So you could take the land, beat back the AI when it try's to take it back and you'll eventually win without having to invade France.

Invading France would speed up the process tho, also if the enemy king is leading his army beating him may give you a chance to capture him giving you 100% warscore.

[Edmund Greyfox]

Originally posted by Rheinmetall:

Originally posted by Edmund Greyfox:

you might have to siege a town or two in France if you can't get enough war score from battles and capturing those two counties to force France to surrender.

Just for the record, I think that technically you will always win a war sooner or later if you hold all the war targets, it's just really slow. So one way to "defensively" win a war, which may be nice if the capital is really far away, is just to siege the relevant counties and then disband your army until the enemy actually comes to take them back. If they come by sea you can attack them immediately with men-at-arms for example because they'll have a penalty for being recently disembarked.

You may be right. I always get impatient and just start taking other towns to get the war over with, so I've never waited to see if the war score keeps going up just by holding my targets.