How to use "humiliate rival"

[Fozzforus]

Why will this game not let me declare war on my rivals right away? Do I have to wait until I have a claim? Is this cb even worth worrying about?

[bri]

No war can be declared until Dec 12, 1444 (assuming you are using the earliest base game start date) so the ai has time to form alliances. Note this also applies to the ai attacking the player. The only exception to this is wars triggered by events such as a succession war or the Maine event war. Additionally, some CB types only update as part of the monthly tick as a performance improvement measure.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Humiliate Rival allows you to use the Show Strength War-concession option, which gives you +100 of each MP, +35 PP (also counts as a humilate for PP growth), and a lot of prestige.

And you can potentially do up to 3 of them each 15 years, which can functionally pay for around half of your tech costs every tech level. in Addition to keeping PP maxed out for additional benefits.

It's mostly helpful for tall play but occasionally useful if you've over-eaten and can't take any territory in the near future but still wanna mess with your rivals. You can also use it to get extra MP for expansion in a different direction if your rivals aren't really holding anything you wanna take.