What circumstances ACTUALLY put a floor on your War Exhaustion?

[endymionologist]

400 hours in, and I still cannot predict before a war if I will be unable to go below 0 War Exhaustion while controlling all the war goals, nor can I ever seem to guess correctly if my enemies will have a floor on it themselves.
My latest disaster is an incredibly greedy Annexation Play where I added a ton of goals against the GPs that jumped in for my subject. I hold all the goals, the subject is already annexed, naval invasions of my capital have been failing for years. My War Exhastion is going -2.6 each week, GB's is -1.8 per week, and the USA's is -1.6, ALL of us have no floor.
Yesterday in the same run I won a war after recapturing a war goal and having the War Exhaustion floor come back after going to negative, today I did the same thing and I'm guaranteed to lose.
Who gets it?

[pauloandrade224]

i think they need to capture the captital or at least have home regions counquered .

Its stupid i know.

[TasteDasRainbow]

Whether or not your war score can drop below zero is based on your opponents war claims or your capital being occupied.

They have to make a claim that they do not control to prevent your war score dropping below 0.

I.e. Japan forcing recognition from Russia; typically russia will pick a goal like conquer, treaty port, etc. on japan, and thus your war score will not drop below 0 unless they successfully navally invade and occupy that state.

Sometimes how the game calculates that occupation can not work or require a load but it's typically consistent.

[6ap6apblckaAa]

I think it's a bug that you go below zero, which was because of invasions. I thought it was fixed, but may be not.

[John Hadley]

All you have to do is mouse over the war score and it will tell you why it cannot go below zero. If you ask for war reparations from them then your side will be required to occupy their capital. If you try to take a state then you will have to occupy that state or their capital. They won't be able to go below 0 war score unless you have occupied everything you need to occupy for each war goal you have. The only way to end a war before taking all the war goals is to remove the war goals that you haven't occupied and ask for a peace treaty.

[endymionologist]

I get plenty of information about why I'm not going below zero when I'm not going below zero, the game seems fairly good about explaining that in the tooltips and whatnot. What I need is information about why I AM going below zero sometimes even when all of the conditions that prevented me from going below zero in a different war are true. Specifically, I was just in a war where ALL participants were ticking below zero simultaneously; all of the enemy powers had the full -1 for war goals control (meaning that the game thought I had all of the war goals), I only lost the war because I didn't have a minimum war exhaustion I could be reduced to even though my corresponding penalty for not controlling war goals was nonexistent. So SOMETHING took away the war exhaustion minimum for me, I just cannot find out what.

It's not loss of capital, unless there was a partial occupation that didn't show on the world map view from the two-year long stalled naval invasion and that counts somehow?
I've been in longer wars where I never went below zero, so I don't think it's a length-of-war thing.
I though it might be that I had lost a wargoal temporarily, but I just fought a war yesterday where that happened and I ended up getting to win after a few months with BOTH a (frozen) negative war exhaustion AND the note in the peace screen telling me I can't go below zero; why would it work one way in that war and another way in this one?
I even reloaded after all three of us were in the negative and we all three were still without the floor, that didn't change it.

Anyway sorry y'all. I thought it would be something obvious so I didn't archive a save to post and it's clear this is one I should have taken to the bug reports instead of the forum; if I hit it again in some other run I'll do that.

[D-Black Catto]

we won't know unless you post screenshots

[John Hadley]

I was wrong you don't have to occupy the opponent's capital for war reparations.

Here's a link to the page on the wiki site that tells what the necessary occupation is for each type of demand:

https://vic3.paradoxwikis.com/Diplomatic_play

Scroll down the page and you will find "List of war goals". Your opponent must control whatever it says for the type of war goal they have or control your capital for the war score to decrease below zero. I'll list a summary here:

MUST OCCUPY *ANY* STATE OF THE OPPONENT
---
Annex Subject
Humiliation
Force Recognition
Liberate Subject
Make Protectorate
Make Tributary
Transfer Subject
War Reparations

MUST OCCUPY THE CAPITAL OF THE OPPONENT
---
Ban Slavery
Cut Down to Size
Open Market
Regime Change

MUST OCCUPY THE TARGET STATE
---
Return State
Take Treaty Port
Conquer State

MUST NOT HAVE YOUR OWN CAPITAL OCCUPIED
---
Declare Independence

The easiest war goals to achieve aside from independence appear to be annex subject, humiliation, force recognition, liberate subject, make protectorate, make tributary, transfer subject, and war reparations as all these goals say they only require the opponent to occupy any state you own. They could occupy an island 10,000 miles away that you forgot about and that will allow your war score to go below zero, if they win enough battles or if your attrition is greater than theirs and you are at a standoff for a long time.

If the opponent only has only easy war goals and they have control of even one state that you own, then your war score can go below zero. If you also have easy war goals and you hold even one state they own then their score can go below zero. In this case it comes down to how much battle score, occupation score, and war attrition you have to see who will be forced to concede first. This is why a weaker opponent will not declare a war goal sometimes when you ask for a treaty port or something like that. You could possibly lose due to war attrition if you just never attack because your war goal requires you to occupy them or their war score cannot go below zero., while they don't need to occupy anything to allow yours to go below zero so they can just stand there and pray you aren't able to attack so they can win the war and get a peace treaty for 5 years.

In the battle where you said you had negative war score then it was locked back to not being able to go below zero again in the middle of the battle, its because your opponent didn't have ownership of a war goal any longer. If they were just asking for an easy goal then they didn't have any state you own whatsoever occupied anymore, so they didn't qualify for your war score to drop below zero anymore. If they had again occupied one of your states then you war score could again drop below zero. If their goal was a tougher war goal, such as conquering a state which requires either occupation of that state or your capital, then if you could just keep them from occupying just those two states, then you could never drop below zero war score and they could not win so those are very dangerous goals to declare if you aren't sure you can capture them because you could capture *everything else* and still lose from war attrition.

You can end up in situations sometimes where you can't even reach a state because its landlocked when you had a war goal against two enemies and one of them surrendered and it ended the war against them so you can't cross their land anymore to reach the second participant. If you invade the sovereignty of another country it will probably cause you to get slapped down by an extra great power jumping into the fight. If you can't reach their capital and you had a war goal of ban slavery, cut down to size, open market, or regime change, then you can't ever win the war no matter how many battles you win and how badly you dominate them. You must achieve the war goals for them to be able to concede due to war score. The best you can do is ask for a white peace otherwise.

[endymionologist]

Yeah, I should have saved screenshots or kept a save file, especially since it seems from your summary that it must be a bug. Instead I loaded up the exit autosave from before the play and tried something different.

I can tell you, from the tooltip in the "Make Peace" section when I checked everyone's war exhaustion rate, that all of my gain was from lost battles and casualties; none of the three belligerents had 'does not control capital' flagged and none of the wargoals required control of any main capital, they wanted to Return State one of my subjects and Regime Change another one. I had none of my exhaustion rate from occupation; I may have been unable to find some random occupied colony but the game was telling me in the tooltip that none of my anything were occupied. In each of my opponents war exhaustion tooltip messages I could see that they had some war exhaustion tick from being (barely) occupied and the full -1/weekly tick from my control of war goals. If the rates had been different I would have won, I just had so many casualties from the early phase of the war when all my little unrecognized subjects threw themselves against the British regulars that my exhaustion rate was enormous.

[John Hadley]

If the war claims were against your subject and not against you then maybe thats the reason your war score could go below zero. If they don't have a war claim directly against you, then perhaps you are not immune to losing the from war attrition because your people wouldn't have the same vested interest in continuing the war as the people that were actually going to lose their own sovereignty or their own land. Your subjects may have been immune to losing the war from war score, but not you. In that case if you are forced to concede then they almost immediately lose the war as soon as your armies aren't defending their capitals anymore.

[endymionologist]

That's interesting! If it turns out you can auto-win 100% of wars against France by by adding regime change to Tahiti it will completely change my future games.

[John Hadley]

I had a war against Egypt that couldn't drop below 0 on either side today. As Sweden I had two war goals against Egypt: 1) Make Egypt my protectorate and 2) Transfer subject Oman to me. Egypt had one war goal against me, which was to ask for war reparations.

Egypt had a larger army that I couldn't compete with, but a small navy that I could dominate so I was going to try to make Egypt my protectorate by occupying Crete, which Egypt couldn't defend due to having only 7 ships while I had about 30, then letting the war score tick down once I had occupied Crete. I thought this would work because the wiki says you only need to occupy any state they own for a Make Protectorate claim, but that appears to not be the case. You most certainly need to capture the capital to make another country your protectorate.

Originally I was just going to go to war with Egypt to make it my protectorate, but I added taking away Oman into this war since none of the territories Oman owned were adjacent to Egypt so the lack of ships would prevent Egypt from being able to defend them and its own lands at the same time. Oman's armies were inferior irregular infantry, so not a challenge for my larger and much stronger army. Egypt however had about three times as many battalions guarding its capital as I had myself to try to take its capital. I did have Persia, Hedjaz, and Norway on my side as they were my protectorates, but their troops were impossible to focus in a naval invasion because they just go kamikaze and don't wait for the right moment to attack and even with all their troops I was still probably 50% weaker than Egypt in army power.

During this war, I quickly occupied all the territories Oman owned plus Crete which Egypt owned since Egypt wasn't able to land many troops on any of them due to my navy. I thought that would be enough to allow the war score to go below zero, but it was not. The goal to make Egypt my protectorate required occupying their capital and the war score wasn't allowed to drop below zero until I accomplished that. Egypt couldn't drop my war score below zero because it didn't occupy any of my territories (which it couldn't reach without ships) and I couldn't drop its war score below zero because I couldn't occupy its capital because its mainland army was too much more powerful than mine.

Ultimately we were locked in war for over ten years as I was not willing to accept white peace as an outcome and we were both prevented from losing the war due to attrition or war score by our opponent being unable to procure a necessary war goal. Nothing could force either of us to concede. The only reason I was able to finally win the war in the end was because after ten years of war Egypt was in a bad state financially, spending twice as much as it was making on the war and the Ottoman Empire which is Egypt's arch enemy decided to wage its own war to capture the states of Lower Egypt and Matruh. Since Lower Egypt was the capital of Egypt, all of Egypt's armies were were worn down in population and their morale devastated by the end of that war. I landed a naval invasion with my fully populated and maxed out on morale troops in the south part of Egypt just before the war with the Ottomans was about to end and beat down the remnants of Egypt's army to take the new capital at Middle Egypt once that war was resolved. The occupation of their capital finally allowed their war score to go below zero and they conceded almost immediately.

If you don't think you can overpower a country's capital don't try to make it your protectorate because that war goal will prevent you from winning the war by claiming other goals that are easier to accomplish like simple war reparations or conquering a weak remote state that is not the capital. Don't ask for war reparations in a war if you don't think you can gain any land from a country because it is remote and its navy or army too powerful for you to make a successful naval invasion. If Egypt had not asked for war reparations without being able to actually occupy any of my states due to my more powerful navy then I would not have been able to be locked in eternal war with it for over ten years and bled its economy dry from its military spending. My people would have gotten tired of the war from war attrition long before that and demanded me to end it if not for that.