In Progress Let's Play Victoria 2 AHD - the south shall rise!

[Norfleet]

They're just going to keep doing that over and over because they still have cores on all your stuff. Constantly fighting them only to give what you have taken from them back is purposeless. If the new update to Vicky2 is anything like the old one I remember, when you start winning things, you're going to find yourself locked in an "There Is Only War" cycle where they will refuse to accept any treaty because the warscore you gain from killing them and invading their stuff is always less than it costs to end the war, even after you have taken everything, so you're stuck occupying them forever, trashing their entire economy in the process.

 

[Cassidy]

Call me a cheater, but when I occupy every single province of an AI controlled enemy country in Vicky 2 I just use the accept all an demand whatever I can without getting badboy to skyrocket. It just makes no sense for the country to refuse if every inch of land of theirs is occupied.

 

[Norfleet]

Call me a cheater, but when I occupy every single province of an AI controlled enemy country in Vicky 2 I just use the accept all an demand whatever I can without getting badboy to skyrocket. It just makes no sense for the country to refuse if every inch of land of theirs is occupied.

Well, it makes no sense for them to be ABLE to refuse: They've ceased to exist and the only thing they could do is whine loudly from exile as you do whatever the hell you want.

Vicky2 doesn't raise badboy on accept, IIRC. The badboy rise occured when you declared the goal to begin with. Eventually, Badboy ceases to even matter. I've had games where I've had Badboy in the thousands, but there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do about it.

 

[Kipeci]

Adding wargoals is what adds the infamy, so if he doesn't have current wargoals to take bordering states already (and since it was a war of Northern aggression, I don't believe he did) then he couldn't add on any more without getting infamy. Thus, no demanding them.
The infamy limit doesn't matter when you're strong enough to just blow past it and take on the world until they cower into their places/stop caring so much, but at his current state the badboy wars would probably be better to avoid.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

They're just going to keep doing that over and over because they still have cores on all your stuff. Constantly fighting them only to give what you have taken from them back is purposeless. If the new update to Vicky2 is anything like the old one I remember, when you start winning things, you're going to find yourself locked in an "There Is Only War" cycle where they will refuse to accept any treaty because the warscore you gain from killing them and invading their stuff is always less than it costs to end the war, even after you have taken everything, so you're stuck occupying them forever, trashing their entire economy in the process.

Actually, this depends on your military strength too, the AI will not start a war if it knows you'll kick its ass. Also, the enemy war demands do not affect their chance of accepting White Peace. However...

Call me a cheater, but when I occupy every single province of an AI controlled enemy country in Vicky 2 I just use the accept all an demand whatever I can without getting badboy to skyrocket. It just makes no sense for the country to refuse if every inch of land of theirs is occupied.

The thing is that state warscore value and cost do not scale with country size. Currently the only way to really gain massive landgrabs in a legit manner is to have a Great War happen, which drops the cost in warscore and infamy to 33% of normal. Still, I find it stupid that massive countries like Russia or China have enormous warscore costs for peace, while you gain so little from conquest.

Personally, I thought about making a separate set of copies of the different wargoals that scale according to target (and the one making the demands), meaning that states in a massive country like Russia will cost 10% of their normal value in infamy and warscore for smaller countries, and regular GPs only cost 33% for smaller countries and 50% for other GPs due to how large these nations are. And of course, infamy would be lowered faster in general and influenced by country size (speed is doubled from -.20 a month to -.50 a month for non-GP civilized countries). This of course ties with the fact that territory and population size is ridiculously important in Vicky 2. Way too important I'd say (just like fucking Coal and Timber), since small countries literally cannot do anything without ruthless expansion.

 

[Norfleet]

Actually, this depends on your military strength too, the AI will not start a war if it knows you'll kick its ass. Also, the enemy war demands do not affect their chance of accepting White Peace. However...

What the AI knows and what YOU know tends to diverge wildly, as the AI's knowledge is rarely grounded in reality and never in past experience. And White Peace makes everything you've done completely wasted, unless you're getting out without having to actually do much of anything except kill their stacks...but if you've killed their stacks, you may as well just finish the job. Victory or death! Otherwise this is just going to repeat itself over, and over, and over.

The thing is that state warscore value and cost do not scale with country size. Currently the only way to really gain massive landgrabs in a legit manner is to have a Great War happen, which drops the cost in warscore and infamy to 33% of normal. Still, I find it stupid that massive countries like Russia or China have enormous warscore costs for peace, while you gain so little from conquest.

Part of it is because you don't gain warscore for taking and holding your objectives. It's just a flat score for occupying any given thing, and since the score for occupying a thing is generally much lower than the score required to end the war that way, the war can't end, leaving you with no other option but to grind them into the dirt and completely destroy their economy as all their factories go bankrupt from the unending 50-year occupation.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Actually, this depends on your military strength too, the AI will not start a war if it knows you'll kick its ass. Also, the enemy war demands do not affect their chance of accepting White Peace. However...

What the AI knows and what YOU know tends to diverge wildly, as the AI's knowledge is rarely grounded in reality and never in past experience. And White Peace makes everything you've done completely wasted, unless you're getting out without having to actually do much of anything except kill their stacks...but if you've killed their stacks, you may as well just finish the job. Victory or death!

The thing is that state warscore value and cost do not scale with country size. Currently the only way to really gain massive landgrabs in a legit manner is to have a Great War happen, which drops the cost in warscore and infamy to 33% of normal. Still, I find it stupid that massive countries like Russia or China have enormous warscore costs for peace, while you gain so little from conquest.

Part of it is because you don't gain warscore for taking and holding your objectives. It's just a flat score for occupying any given thing, and since the score for occupying a thing is generally much lower than the score required to end the war that way, the war can't end, leaving you with no other option but to grind them into the dirt and completely destroy their economy as all their factories go bankrupt from the unending 50-year occupation.

Actually, occupying your objective cuts its cost to around half of its base cost, so there is obvious advantage to it. The issue is that for large states the costs are often massive and the warscore against them hard to raise.

The AI does accept White Peace and does take offers that don't exceed 100 value, there is no eternal war unless you personally fuck up. However, I completely agree that warscore goes up wayyyyy too slowly against all countries, Germany, Austria and France are probably the only GPs that are not total arsemongery to fight since they don't have a bazillion provinces (hell, their colonies in lategame don't matter that much either, since they form only a fraction of their warscore total) which are spread out around the world, see United Kingdom.

One thing I tried to do in fixing the "war issue" was to raise the Battle value to warscore from 25 to 50 at maximum. However, seems that it's a hard-coded value.

So, until I get around to fixing it, I'll just liberally apply cheats when I think enough is enough.

 

[Norfleet]

Actually, occupying your objective cuts its cost to around half of its base cost, so there is obvious advantage to it. The issue is that for large states the costs are often massive and the warscore against them hard to raise.

Well, that's true, but what I was saying is that it doesn't matter whether you've held that ground for 30 days or 30 years. Like in CK2, you gain warscore for taking and holding it, so there comes a point when they realize they ain't getting it back.

The AI does accept White Peace and does take offers that don't exceed 100 value, there is no eternal war unless you personally fuck up.

Well, take, for instance, the typical example that typically causes Eternal War: You fight over a state that has demands a cost of like 30 score. You, of course, sweep in, slaughter the entire enemy army, sink their entire navy, and occupy the region. You get....5 score. Now what? Despite no longer having an army and no longer controlling the region, they're unwilling to call it quits.

One thing I tried to do in fixing the "war issue" was to raise the Battle value to warscore from 25 to 50 at maximum. However, seems that it's a hard-coded value.

The catch with battle value is that you often can't even get 25 battle value, because even after killing the enemy's entire army and sinking their entire navy to the last unit, you've gotten like 3, and this leaves you with nothing left to kill. Sometimes it's even possible to kill your opponent's entire military and end up with NEGATIVE value, which becomes very common if you're playing with Mile Wide Mass Of Zergs nations like Russia or China, who have crap tech and rely on simply burying your opponent in the Mile Wide Mass of Zergs.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Actually it's fairly easy to get 25 battlescore against zerg countries like China or Russia, you need to lose in order to go negative. You won't hit 25 only if you're fighting a small country whose army isn't enough to fight a sustained war anyway, in which case you'll have the necessary warscore fairly soon anyway.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm not talking about fighting AGAINST them, I'm talking about fighting *AS* them. And no, that's not necessarily true of smaller countries. I've seen a lot of cases where even taking ONE state costs 80+ score, while giving merely 30-ish. And, of course, being that they have no army to speak of, you won't get any battle score worth mentioning off them.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

I have to agree with you Vaarna that getting enough war score against a major power with a huge land mass can be quite frustrating. Fortunately Russia and China tend to be rather weak technologically, not so with the US here.


We've always been at war with the union.

It would appear those African Americans aren't to proficient in English 'merican.

Thats quite a bit of coal there.

Time to start paying back that debt, the interest adds up quickly.

God damned quitters, get back over there and find it.

I need feminism because...

I guess they just buggered of with the money.

Finally debt free again.

I'm going to try to grab some more land of Mexico while I still have the truce with the union.

More coal, there can never be to much coal.

Finally some success, though I'm going dangerously close to my infamy limit.

This is clearly unacceptable, they must be punished for this!

...if we knew were they are. They are some where in this general region of foreign land.

Silly Mexicans, every one knows that god speaks English.

Time to grab liberate some more land I would think.

And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling yanks! Looks like I've got another major war on my hands.

 

[Norfleet]

This is why you need to quit the senseless peaces with them and finish the job in a final War To The Knife. Otherwise IT NEVER ENDS. Once you've destroyed their armies, don't just end it and allow them to rebuild. Grind them into the dirt. The border you have is way too long and indefensible for this kind of constant annoyance to be tolerable. OCCUPY UNION!

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Last two wars I didn't nearly destroy their armies, at the end of the war they had an even larger advantage in numbers than at the start of the wars and I only managed a white peace thanks to being able to occupy a small amount of land. Any way this war I'm going to try to a different strategy and concentrate my forces even more. Hopefully this will allow me to easily surround and pick of their armies one by one and thus being able to completely remove their army and OCCUPY WALL STREET, OCCUPY WASHINGTON, and OCCUPY UNION!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Should have started from the Grand Campaign, you'd have been able to make the CSA start stretching from California and Oregon all the way to Cuba (+ other wetback acquisitions).

 

[Norfleet]

I think he wanted to experience the entire Civil War thing, which turned out to be a severely anti-climactic flash in the pan followed by an endless stream of core wars. The scenario sort of goes completely off the rails when you're allowed to start messing with it from the very beginning with the intent of favoring a specific side.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Where's mah update?

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

It's in the land of tomorrow. After much time (and whiskey) I finally managed to get through that horror of a war with the union, and I might just get around to posting it tomorrow or perhaps even tonight if I can muster the strength.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Alright let's see were this madness will lead.


OCCUPY UNION!

The new war starts of with a few battles in the Virginia region, not to different form last time.

And I get overwhelmed to say the least.

In the wast however I'm working on surrounding and defeating smaller union armies. Thats right surrender and we might let you live union scum.

Well thats 40k less union troops to worry about, now just rince and repeat about 500 times.

While I have no idea what exactly that is I do know that is good.

Let's use that research power to improve the army, the war is bound to last a long time so I will most likely get a lot of use out of it.

Well there certainly is a lot of them.

But I'm going for concentrated local numerical superiority to finish of the armies one by one with minimal losses.

Soon it will be us occupying you!

Begone from confederate lands.

Another union army surrendered, this is going quite well.

... well as far as battles are concerned.

Surrender, we have you partially surrounded!

With the union gone it's time to unoccupy what ever that area is called.

The Mexicans join in as well, no matter they are a nuisance at most.

Well the union has been more or less driven from the eastern states at least.

Occupy Washington!

And yet another union army surrenders.

Drive them back and advance the flag of dixie!
Continued in next post.

 

[Norfleet]

You lose provinces awfully quickly. Did they change something in AHD to make taking undefended provinces much faster than vanilla? And some of those doomstacks you have sitting there are simply massive. How do you support that many without them all...horribly dying?

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Marching in Memphis, unoccupy the confederacy!

Once again the union army finds them selves surrounded.

Glorious, several regions retaken and a large enemy army defeated.

Well the war appears score wise to progress nicely. It would also appear the Ottomans are a bunch of Jews if they want their money that much.

Washington occupied!

White peace? I don't think so, this will not end until the union is completely crushed or we will die trying.

Some new tech, this should swing battle results further in confederate favor.

Time to invest in more military tech, this war will likely drag on for years.

Unoccupy Texas!

I've now weakened the union enough to start occupying them further. Soon New York will be occupied.

They try to retake Washington but it's confederate controlled now, begone !

Industrialized union killing, I approve.

Oil, oil and ocean of oil! I don't think there is anything that can really be made from it yet though.

The union has taken a beating but isn't giving up yet, that large army will cause some trouble.

After being defeated it split into several small armies retreating which are hunted down.

The union are clearly responsible for this!

Confederate technology strong, soon there will be a strong confederate industry.

Occupy Wall Street!

And finally some decent railroad tech.

Cleaveland is successfully occupied despite fierce resistance from locals with heavy brows throwing canned food at great velocities.

Finally some one realizes what a great nation the CSA is to be allied with.

Kulturkampf! A few less Mexicans certainly won't hurt.

With new industrial tech the economy is stable, but people over all are rather uneducated in the CSA:

How dare they, occupy union and humiliate them! Also the CSA is now the worlds most prestigious nation.

Continued.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Occupation of the union continues!

With the rising militancy and unrest in the population from the war I enact some social reforms. Basic healthcare gives a noticeable pop growth increase which shall be useful.

They never give up do they? It seems for every two union regiments crushed they recruit one new. At least it's not the opposite like a hydra.

Occupy the red union hydra!

Africa? It's full of negroes isn't it? Got plenty of them as it is, no need to occupy Congo.

Some new Jew tech should help with the economy and repaying those debts.

A splendid little war!

By now the union people are so tiered of war that they are starting to rebel. While I would really like to see New England break free, the rebels are messing with my war score.

The rocky mountains and desert of the south west union is some pretty harsh terrain, this should reduce attrition nicely while taking it.

By now the people are rebelling quite often.

My German allies ask for help to unoccupy Elssas-Lothringen from France. I accept, but won't be able to lend any help.

Rebels, rebels everywhere. To be honest at this point my armies are completely worn down, and so are my soldier pops. I simply can not continue to take the rest with out losing more to rebells than what I take. Currently I have about 70% war score and I don't think it will get any better. So the question is then, what to demand in peace treaty? I'm rather close to my infamy limit, but I could go for a few free state goals to weaken the union at minimum infamy cost. That or I could let the war go on, but I doubt I will get any better than this to be honest. What to do?
What i really wished existed was some sort of renounce claim war goal like in EU3 so this wouldn't happen all the time. Perhaps a special event for the CSA that makes the US lose all claims on it's territory if it wins the first war would be nice.

 

[Norfleet]

What kind of Rebels? If they're the useful kind of rebels that will actually dismember your target into pieces for you, that's nice. Most likely they're the useless kind, though.

Mostly, however, I think you're about to be trapped into Eternal War. The broken cost system is going to make it impossible to formulate a conclusion that the AI will actually accept, since you've long passed the point where the score/cost gap can be made up for in battles. With the amount that you have won, settling that way would probably be in the several-hundreds, which they would stubbornly refuse to accept even if all their base were to belong to you.

Thus, you're occupying them for life now. It's one of the more obnoxious aspects of Vicky2's design, that wasn't present in the HOI games or CK2.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Cleaveland is successfully occupied despite fierce resistance from locals with heavy brows throwing canned food at great velocities.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You lose provinces awfully quickly. Did they change something in AHD to make taking undefended provinces much faster than vanilla? And some of those doomstacks you have sitting there are simply massive. How do you support that many without them all...horribly dying?

Not sure, but I'm going to go out on a limb and bet the Yankee bastards have full Guard armies with Hussars. Doomstacks of those do take down unfortified provinces really fast.

Mostly, however, I think you're about to be trapped into Eternal War. The broken cost system is going to make it impossible to formulate a conclusion that the AI will actually accept, since you've long passed the point where the score/cost gap can be made up for in battles. With the amount that you have won, settling that way would probably be in the several-hundreds, which they would stubbornly refuse to accept even if all their base were to belong to you.

Assuming there are no Hawaiian and other Pacific Islands in the mix yet, Merk will occupy all their provinces shortly, pushing to 100% warscore, where they will instantly accept any peace treaty that isn't 100+ in cost. You have to personally construct on Eternal War, you don't get one if you are winning.

The issue is simply that it takes goddamn forever to build up warscore to large levels and requires massive occupation. However, because Merk already has 87% he could easily add a wargoal for two Kwan states and make separate peace with Mexico for Jalisco.

Cleaveland is successfully occupied despite fierce resistance from locals with heavy brows throwing canned food at great velocities.

 

[Cassidy]

DIXIE ÜBER ALLES!

Too bad Vicky 2 lacks an event-triggered WW1, for CSA with the Allies could possibly crush the Entente.