War Score "WTF" issues

[Guy]

I love this game, but in terms of development and improvements I'd like Paradox to look at whether something can be done to make War Score well... more realistic. Take into account common sense...

By way of example, I am England and I conquer all of Scotland. Scotland happen to be allied to the Livonian Order - strange, but whatever.
The fact is, I have crushed Scotland, they have no army or navy left, I control all their territories.
I want to end the war and fully annex Scotland.
The Livonian Order do not have the means to do anything about it, they are not in a position to challenge me on this. They are not sending an army to liberate Scotland. Their ships are nowhere to be seen.
If I do nothing, the war will just continue with nothing happening - the Livonian Order AI doesn't seem to be doing anything.
It's bonkers that I am not ALLOWED by the EU4 game mechanics to take all of Scottish territory, just because the Livonian Order are part of the enemy alliance and they have not also been completely crushed.
The only way out of this appears to be for me to sail an army all the way across the Baltic to conquer all of their territory (which I don't want, I'm not interested in that land), just so that I have 100% war score?
Why should I have to do that? This is silly, it's not common sense.

If the Livonian Order want to continue the war then I should be able to issue them some sort of ultimatum - either you sail over here and re-conquer Scotland, or I'm just going to unilaterally consider this war over and the territory is mine.
You want to fight over it? Then come and actually battle me, don't just sit in a meaningless alliance and not take any action.

If Paradox wanted to discourage the player from taking the "unilateral" option (which I can totally understand), then just make it costly by using some other game mechanic, such as a heavy dose of Aggressive Expansion.
That would be realistic and logical, and as the player I can then enjoy making the decision whether I want to take the hit to my AE or not.

/rant

[Medicles]

You could just send your ships and an army to the Livonian Order and siege a couple provinces for a quick white peace.

Your situation is too specific, because your capital is not on mainland europe. The AI has to use ships to defeat you and you might have realized by now how the AI handles that. There is a reason why England is the safest nation to play as.

Heck, in 1.29 it was even a proper tactic to just let the Maine war play out as England without any alliances. You just stay on your island for 20 years and white-peace out Frances allies one after another until only you and France are left.

[grotaclas]

There is already a mechanic that addresses your issue. If the war has been going on for at least 5 years and you fully occupy the warleader and they don't occupy any of your provinces, you will automatically get 100% warscore. So you don't need to occupy their allies.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Interesting.

[Guy]

Originally posted by Medicles:

You could just send your ships and an army to the Livonian Order and siege a couple provinces for a quick white peace.

Your situation is too specific, because your capital is not on mainland europe. The AI has to use ships to defeat you and you might have realized by now how the AI handles that. There is a reason why England is the safest nation to play as.

Heck, in 1.29 it was even a proper tactic to just let the Maine war play out as England without any alliances. You just stay on your island for 20 years and white-peace out Frances allies one after another until only you and France are left.

I know my example situation was quite specific, but that's the situation I came across in game so I thought best to use that to demonstrate the problem as I see it.

Yes England is easy to defend, perhaps that's something else that could be improved in EU4. But that's getting a bit off topic for the point I'm trying to make about peace settlements.

Thanks for the suggestion but as I said I don't think it should be necessary for me to take an army and sail all the way over to do that.

Realistically, if you imagine such a scenario in the real world, England wouldn't be there thinking "Yikes, we can't possibly treat Scotland as ours now, because we haven't got agreement from the Livonian Order. We must wait and make sure the Livonian Order are happy for us to do this, and if they say we can't have certain territories of Scotland then we'll just have to give them back" ....
That would just be silly.
England would say to Livonian Order "Alright look, we control Scotland now, there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it. We don't want your land so let's agree peace as it stands and move on."
That's what I mean when I say it needs to be more realistic and based on common sense.

[Guy]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

There is already a mechanic that addresses your issue. If the war has been going on for at least 5 years and you fully occupy the warleader and they don't occupy any of your provinces, you will automatically get 100% warscore. So you don't need to occupy their allies.

Interesting, thanks I didn't realise this.
But that doesn't entirely solve the problem, as it's still a silly, arbitrary mechanic.
It would be much cooler if the game was able to appreciate the power balance in the circumstances and adjust accordingly (i.e. allow the issue to be settled as soon as the situation is helpless rather than forcing the victor to wait an arbitrary length of time).

[Mr.M]

...as above. Either send an army there or wait till you get the automatic 100%.

It might be far from perfect but this mechanic is there so you cant just steamroll a nation and instantly annex them without their allies doing anything.
Downside is that it leads to wacky situations.

[Rumi]

play crusader kings 2 if you want semi realistic war fighting, where you can win wars and territory just by occupying a single province for a month or so

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Guy:

Originally posted by grotaclas:

There is already a mechanic that addresses your issue. If the war has been going on for at least 5 years and you fully occupy the warleader and they don't occupy any of your provinces, you will automatically get 100% warscore. So you don't need to occupy their allies.

Interesting, thanks I didn't realise this.
But that doesn't entirely solve the problem, as it's still a silly, arbitrary mechanic.
It would be much cooler if the game was able to appreciate the power balance in the circumstances and adjust accordingly (i.e. allow the issue to be settled as soon as the situation is helpless rather than forcing the victor to wait an arbitrary length of time).

If the game just looked at the power imbalance, it would be too easy to conquer other countries once you are big. And I don't think that the game can really distinguish a situation in which the allies can't do anything (like in your example) from a situation in which it just takes a little more time for the allies to reach you. Because of that I think 5 years is a good time. It gives far away allies time to reach you and actually siege down one of your forts.

[McKay]

Yes, that situation is completely unrealistic. Imagine Germany going to war against England, Poland and France, defeating and fully occupying Poland and France. Now England has no way to get to Germany and vice versa. Since Poland was the primary war target, the war should just end there with Germany full anexing Poland and France, and England being white-peaced out.

[Vetgirig on Linux]

If you send ships to fully blockade Livonian Order. They should want to leave the war real soon. You get 25% warscore against LO for a full blockade and can often even take war reparations and some gold from them.

[eightiesboi]

What might be useful is if there were a mechanic that utilized participation of an ally to help decide when to peace out; for example, a model in which the current warscore was compared to the participation of each ally. For low participation allies, if the warscore is high, then they should have a bonus to accepting a white peace. This would keep situations like the OP described from happening. On the other hand, if the ally were highly involved in the war (i.e., high participation percentage), then they would not get the modifier and wouldn't be as ready to peace out.

In my current game, I (as Castile) was at war with France with Scotland as France's ally. I had occupied nearly every province in France and reduced them to an army of 12k troops with no manpower reserves and no money for mercenaries. Scotland had never sent troops nor ships to France's aid, and while France was more than ready to negotiate peace, Scotland was still willing to fight on (so to speak, since they hadn't really fought at all.) (And yes, I know I could have sent blockades to Scotland.)

OTOH, isn't there a negative modifier with your ally if you peace out early? And also, since in theory you could benefit from negotiating separate truces, perhaps if there was a mechanic that caused low participation allies to leave the field, so to speak, maybe there would also have to be a separate whiter-than-white truce that wouldn't let you benefit from these absentee enemy combatants.

[Kapika96]

5 years. Just be patient.