Losing successful wars due to non-existent war target

[Calamity Darren]

I've just lost a long-running campaign in a matter of minutes due to a war with my liege.

In short, the situation:
I was requested to change religions, which I denied, providing my liege with the righteous imprisonment casus belli. My liege declared war on me, and though I was successfully defending my demesne, and had actually captured holdings belonging to other vassals, I noticed I was actually losing the war!

For some reason, I was the aggressor in the war and my liege the defender, despite them having the war declared on ME.
I was failing due to 'not capturing the war target', to which none were listed.
As far as I was concerned, I successfully defended my land and resisted capture, that is until the war ticker reached -100%. After imprisonment, my kingdom and county titles were all revoked, and I had instantly lost the game.

Why would I be the aggressor in a defensive war, and what would this mythical war target be?
Have I misunderstood the requirements of the war, as in, should I have attempted to capture my liege?
As a side question, why am I unable to continue playing as any of my other landed dynasty members?

It's a bloody nuisance to have a few days worth of effort snatched in an instant.

[Calamity Darren]

I've started a second campaign and a similar situation is occurring.
It seems when refusing a lieges demands results in the liege starting a war against me where I am the aggressor. Successfully defending my territory results in losing the war.

[Montavious]

Ive never had a liege declare on me, so no idea why thats happening to you. But either way you look at it, if its making you the attacker, you have to attack whatever targets its telling you to. Defending wont raise your war score.

[Calamity Darren]

I've only been able to end the war on the lucky chance that I imprison my liege.

I believe it's a mistake that the player is the aggressor in the war.

Even if I misinterpreted the situation, in that refusing demands is a direct act of war and not considered diplomacy / cold-war, I believe the player should be considered defender.
If I can maintain a stalemate, I've successfully maintained my right against whatever the liege demanded.

I've created a bug report on the CK3 forums: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck-iii-1-2-2-argent-player-considered-attacker-in-defensive-war-successful-defense-results-in-loss-of-war-game.1452121/#post-27217135

[Rheinmetall]

Originally posted by Choogs:

For some reason, I was the aggressor in the war and my liege the defender, despite them having the war declared on ME.

This is not a bug. Disobeying your liege is criminal. This is very useful in cases where you are the liege, because it's much easier to get allies to join in a defensive war (which rebellions are by definition).

Originally posted by Choogs:

I was failing due to 'not capturing the war target', to which none were listed.

I'm not 100% sure of this but I think the war target for any rebellion is your lieges capital.

Originally posted by Choogs:

As far as I was concerned, I successfully defended my land and resisted capture

This would make sense if you were resisting an invasion, but you were not. You were essentially forced into rebellion, and that means the target is the capital of the defender, just like in a liberty war, claimant war etc.

(Also, capturing the enemy capital is *always* a good idea, even if it's not the war target, because you get way more war score for it than anything else, and possibly very valuable hostages which also gives you war score)

Originally posted by Choogs:

As a side question, why am I unable to continue playing as any of my other landed dynasty members?

You would have been, had you had any titles left. The game ended due to your amount of titles being zero.

[Calamity Darren]

I guess I just have a poor understanding of the situation.

In my mind, I still see the liege as the aggressor, with their objective being to imprison the player for their criminal action. It would be preferable if the player wasn't forced to declare war, since as far as I'm concerned I AM resisting an invasion.

[Rheinmetall]

Like many things in this game it helps to adopt a medieval state of mind. Your liege owns you, you're not an independent ruler so if they demand your conversion that is an order, and by disobeying that order you're already in open rebellion by definition.

What you're saying makes sense in the context of an independence war, but a rebellion is not an independence war by definition. What I mean with "by definition" is that if you open up the war and look at the consequences of winning/losing the war, winning it will not make you independent.

[Calamity Darren]

So by that token, the price of saying 'no' is equal to the price of usurping your lieges throne.
One of these is far more valuable than the other.

I've just attempted the reverse of the situation, and I can confirm that when a vassal refuses your demands a war is not declared.

The fact that the player is forced into a war where they are an aggressor when it is the liege that seeks to enforce demands, in addition to the fact that in the reverse situation this never occurs causes me to believe it may therefore be a bug, or at least an oversight.

In my mind, the reverse situation is correct whereas I see issue with the players hand being forced.

[Rheinmetall]

1. Yes. So? All wars against your liege work the same regardless of their goal.
2. Not automatically, but you can often choose to imprison them, and if they refuse a rebellion is launched automatically.
3. It’s not

[Mediva]

Something similar happened to me near the start of my current campaign. There was a small difference in that I was part of an independence faction. When my liege tried to revoke my title due to religious reasons (he was Catholic, I was unreformed Norse Pagan), I refused, and he declared war on me. Two other people in the independence faction came to my defense immediately (essentially my liege declaring war on me kicked off the faction independence war.) Surprisingly, some fellow vassals that weren't even part of the independence faction before it kicked off ended up joining our side throughout the course of the war (even though they were all catholic as well, I was the only pagan in the entire kingdom.)

Anyway, the important part is that throughout the course of the war, I personally sieged down and occupied my liege's capital and even took his primary and secondary heirs hostage. I also occupied the rest of his personal holdings. Holding both of his heirs hostage wasn't granting our side ANY war score whatsoever, and despite holding his capital and all his other holdings, we weren't getting any war score for capturing the war target, in fact, it was the opposite, somehow we were progressively LOSING war score as the war dragged on. My memory might be a little foggy, but I think our war target war score had gone below -100, and the only thing keeping us from losing the war was that we had the 50% war score from winning battles throughout the war and the war score from captured counties. The problem was that there was literally no way for us to win that war since the war target war score was constantly ticking down non-stop throughout the entire war even though we won all the battles and had already captured half of our liege's Kingdom.

Somehow, one of the original vassals who was a part of the independence faction from the get go ended up dropping out of the war, and as soon as that happened, I finally got the war score from the captured heirs and was able to enforce my demands.

That was by far the longest and most tedious war in my whole campaign. It absolutely felt bugged, from the non-stop ticking down war score, even though I had half of my liege's kingdom occupied (including all of his personal holdings and realm capital), to his captured heirs not granting any war score for over 10 years until they finally did after an ally somehow dropped out of the war.

[Rheinmetall]

It could be that the vassal that dropped out joined someway along the way in the war, and that somehow their counties (that was previously enemy counties) somehow made the "amount of enemy counties sieged" counter bugged somehow.

There are a bunch of known bugs listed on the actual Paradox forum, so it's not impossible you'll find it there somewhere.

[Calamity Darren]

Originally posted by Rheinmetall:

1. Yes. So? All wars against your liege work the same regardless of their goal.
2. Not automatically, but you can often choose to imprison them, and if they refuse a rebellion is launched automatically.
3. It’s not

I see, so it's the lieges attempt of imprisonment that triggers the war, hence the player automatically reacting.
In that case, the price of saying no isn't equal to usurping your lieges throne, the price is imprisonment, the price of refusing imprisonment is defeating your liege through rebellion.

I had never seen victory in these wars as I expected the requirement was to prevent my lieges incursion into my land, preventing their demand, and maintaining status quo (though I still do, maybe I'm alone in that).

I expect, in that case, victory would lead to the deposition of the liege and annulment of any perceived crime. Though I don't see how the following lieges are prevented from repeating the scenario ad infinitum.

In reverse case I played, it showed the icon that I could imprison my vassal, though I couldn't execute it as the game had insisted it already had been, despite no such interaction taking place, and so a war didn't ensue. I took it as an example just to show that a war wasn't automatically declared.

It all happens so suddenly, I'd appreciate the time to orchestrate some more comprehensive rebellion in that case.
It almost seems as if the scenario hasn't been 'fleshed-out' far enough and the automatic war declaration is a place holder, or a 'good enough' scenario, rather than a bug.

I hope to see some form of retaliatory subterfuge or factional action instead of this in future expansions.
It's difficult to appreciate the situation when it feels vague and forced.