when i occupy a colony of my enemy, nothing happens. when someone occupies mine, i capitulate.

[candiedaphid]

new update is cool.

occupied a random bit of china and made it a protectorate after china exploded. ottomans had another puppet. i decided to take it and i occupied it and after 13 years of devastation, the population went from 18.8 mil to 7.5 mil. just for fun, i surrounded the ottoman ports and cut them off from trade. eventually they collapsed to a revolution, but they didnt capitulate until they were literally revolting from SOL collapse. i killed over 20 thousand of their sailors.

went to war with france to nationalize their buildings in my country because they decided to liberate one of my puppets when i was occupied and i had to capitulate. they occupied liberia, and because it was their only wargoal, i capitulated. despite winning my war otherwise, despite burning corsica and all of their algerian colonies to the ground and surrounding their country for over 5 years until their gdp went from 223 mil to 190 mil, i capitulated because they occupied a random bit of africa with 560k gdp.

thanks for the warfare updates paradox. riveting gameplay lmfaooo

[candiedaphid]

"president roos! SIR! the french have occupied liberia!"

"Whats a liberia"

"It's our african colony!"

"how is the war going outside of liberia?"

"well sir, corsica has been pillaged, they've 40 million dollars in debt and it is growing by 2 million dollars a week, and their colonies are full of unemployment, poverty, and unrest as all goods are cut off at the french coast."

"hmm. it sounds like we're doing too well. tell them we give up."

"sir? as a diversion"

" "

"sir???"

[candiedaphid]

also why the ♥♥♥♥ do i have to go to war to manually nationalize a country's assets. thats a sanction you morons, not something you go to war over. it's something countries usually go to war with you over. i should not have to rock up to the french president's doorstep and point a gun at him to make him give up all the factories IN MY COUNTRY. he should come to MY country to try to get them BACK if he thinks he can. why do i have to blindly nationalize all of the buildings in a particular group including those of my allies and random nations i dont want to piss off????

[candiedaphid]

going to war over the details of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ contract is something paradox would code into a game and idk why im shocked they did it. make it to where i can mass nationalize french assets to make the anti french league happy and give france a wargoal for "nationalization compensation" or something and make it give them a lump sum amounting to how much you seized from them. alsoalso why can i not SEIZE foreign assets? WHY ARE THERE NO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ASSET SANCTIONS IN THIS GAME WHEN ASSETS EXIST. WHY IS THERE NO FINANCIAL SYSTEM OR FOREIGN DEBT SYSTEM WHEN FINANCIAL SECTORS AND DEBT DIPLOMACY ALREADY EXISTS.

the idiocy of this game development company never fails to disappoint. at least i can actually play til 1936 now

[candiedaphid]

some big daddy modders please make some qol mods

[Dumpster]

depends on what the wargoal is. If the enemy has the wargoal for your colony, you will start losing ticks.

[Chozer]

Originally posted by candiedaphid:

"president roos! SIR! the french have occupied liberia!"

"Whats a liberia"

"It's our african colony!"

"how is the war going outside of liberia?"

"well sir, corsica has been pillaged, they've 40 million dollars in debt and it is growing by 2 million dollars a week, and their colonies are full of unemployment, poverty, and unrest as all goods are cut off at the french coast."

"hmm. it sounds like we're doing too well. tell them we give up."

"sir? as a diversion"

" "

"sir???"

Plot twist its ma'am

[John Hadley]

You don't yet understand how the war score system works.

Occupying the capital of a country you are going to war against is the only way to make them concede quickly. This applies to all participants in the war. If a participant concedes then all claims targeting that particular participant will immediately be granted..

There's two types of war goals, those that are required and those that are not. All war goals except war reparations and humiliate are required I believe.

If you cannot occupy the capital of your opponent to perform a quick knockout, then you can win the war via war score only if you occupy at least one war goal you are trying to press against any opponent and *ALL* required war goals against the opponent you want to concede. It takes a lot longer to win via war score, even if you occupy 100% of the war goals unless you also occupy a large percentage of the country you are trying to make concede because owning 100% of the war goals only gives -1 war score per week I think.

If one country has even a single *required* war goal in a claim against an opposing country, then that opposing country's war score cannot drop below zero unless that war goal is occupied, even if the claimant occupies every other war goal against them and every part of their country except their capital and wins 100% of the battles.

If you have only war goals that are not required, then I believe you need to possess at least one of the war goals for the war score to be able to drop below zero. It doesn't even have to be a war goal from that country. It can be a war goal against anyone else on the opposition side.

Required war goals
Conquer state - occupy the state you want to conquer
Regime change - occupy the capital of the country you are trying to impose it on
Liberate country - occupy the capital of the country you are trying to liberate
Return state - occupy the state you want to return
Make protectorate - occupy the capital of the country you are trying to impose it on
Transfer country - occupy the capital of the country you are trying to transfer to you
Take treaty port - occupy the state where the treaty port you are trying to take is
Independence - don't have your own capital occupied

Non-required goals
War reparations - occupy any state of the country you want war reparations from
Humiliate (I think) - occupy any state of the country you want to humiliate

Example 1: British East India Company decides that they want to take the part of Kerman in the Persia region that you took from Oman. All its puppets join in against you and as long as you only make war reparations claims against them and nothing else then even occupying a single state of any one of them you have a war reparations claim against is enough to allow their war score to drop below zero, eventually. British East India owns some land in Siam that is split off from the rest of India so it can only be reached by boat. They won't defend it with very many units because they have few ships to deliver troops and they'll keep the bulk of their troops defending their respective capitals. All you have to do is land and capture that one territory in Siam and kill off their tiny number of ships when they try to land there or at Kerman and they are powerless to do anything with their massive army. Since you can't take the bulk of their states in the mainland where their army outnumbers you by a huge amount their war score will only go down very slowly with you having occupation of only 1 of 10 war goals (the war reparations against British East India due to occupying one territory of theirs in Siam) and not being able to capture any one of their capitals to perform a KO on that member of the opposition. They are trying to claim your state and they can't occupy it because they don't have a strong enough navy to even make a landing so your score can never drop below zero because conquer state is a required war goal. You could just sit there for a few years just beating down their small number of ships until the whole lot of them are required to concede the reparations to you for having a more powerful navy than them, which might only be 20 ships against enemies with 40+ million GDP.

Example 2: You go to war against Egypt and try to claim state on Lower Egypt and Crete because you know Egypt's navy is small and they will put most of their troops in Lower Egypt to defend the capital. They ask for just war reparations against you. You make a landing on Crete and occupy it with next to zero resistance and Egypt doesn't have a powerful enough navy to make a landing to take it back. You think you can just hang out there and wait until you win the war. However, you are wrong because conquer state Lower Egypt is a required war goal and you aren't able to occupy Lower Egypt because their army overpowers you on their mainland. You can't force them below zero war score due to this required war goal not being fulfilled so you can never win this war despite having 50% of the war goals. You end up having to eventually accept a white peace or let the war go on for a decade until they go bankrupt, someone attacks them and wipes out most of their army to the point that Lower Egypt becomes weak enough for you to occupy it. If they manage to occupy and hold any state whatsoever that you own before that their war reparation claim is occupied so your war score can go below zero while theirs cannot so you will be forced to concede.

[candiedaphid]

Listen to me when i say this: i know how it works. I understand how the system functions. I think it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid beyond belief. Look at how many hours i have in this ♥♥♥♥ ass game. I know how the system works babe.

My point was that france was literally collapsing economically, almost politically (happened literally right after the peace deal when the arms factories laid off workers), and their colonies were all occupied+100% devastation for 10+ years, but because they occupied my one single overseas territory for 10 weeks, I capitulated and couldnt go back to war for years. I understand why that happened mechanically. what i dont understand is why the ♥♥♥♥ that is the mechanic. who the ♥♥♥♥ thought that was a good idea? do you? because if so i have a bone and im going to pick it out of your spine.

[candiedaphid]

My point was MY country was not collapsing. why did i lose the entire war over a wargoal that affected me not at all and literally did not change the trajectory of the war for any other reason than game mechanics said so.

[John Hadley]

Its an arbitrary system and you have to play by the arbitrary rules to win. You must occupy all your war goals against the opponent to allow you to eventually win a war and you must prevent the opponent from gaining at least one of his war goals against you to prevent your country from being able to eventually be forced to concede.

[Big Moustache]

You are not supposed to engage in grand warfare to destroy enemy economies and manpower. Tha's what EU4 is for. Here you pick a flag and you rush to capture it from your enemy. The end.

If you really want to weaken grand powers by warfare, make liberate country your main wargoal and bite good chunks out of their territory

[endymionologist]

Originally posted by candiedaphid:

My point was MY country was not collapsing. why did i lose the entire war over a wargoal that affected me not at all and literally did not change the trajectory of the war for any other reason than game mechanics said so.

Capitulation isn't 'losing,' though. A country can sometimes stave off capitulation until the war is totally lost, but you actually see the reverse on almost every war: total occupation with no chance of liberating anything is followed by a couple of months of declared 'war' before capitulation.
Capitulation happens when a country gives up on a war, not when the player controlling the country does. War Goals are not binding international contracts, they're propaganda. Your people don't care about keeping an African colony enough to suffer any privation at all, if you were successfully defending that land they would stick with the war just out of a sense of national pride but with the place already lost they're done. Meanwhile, France has told her people that the future depends on building an empire in the sun and has actually captured the place, her people are much more willing to endure the devastation you are causing in their periphery which is obviously an impotent tantrum, you can't actually protect your colony or threaten their capital.
The details of this are abstracted in the game's mechanics in a way that can harm immersion but that's true of nearly every feature of every game ever.