British conquest into china seems excessive

[chlorion]

I feel like in 1.9 Britain is constantly invading China, sometimes takes almost half the country. I might be a little salty because this behavior just ruined my Empire under the pun attempt, but from a historical perspective, Britain taking over China seems ridiculous. I feel like their interest in China should be more focused on trade and exploiting china without actually taking over land.

In almost all my games China looks like this (and here I have already released and helped china win back some territories). It also seems too cheap to take land from china, because China is unrecognized, in the late game each territory costs britain about 6 infamy, which probably motivates them to take even more land..

 

[OnvreOrrivle]

True. While is true that in that era the technological and training differences could lead to landslide victories in wars, in no way reflect the difficulties of occupation, naval invasion and attrition a situation like that would entail

Wish it gets a rework soon

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

Yep. Great Powers seem far too willing to just conquer random territory from unrecognised countries. I’m not an expert, but this doesn’t seem to make sense historically.

In my last game the German Empire conquered the entirety of Egypt state by state over a couple of decades until they had the whole thing, but historically Britain’s conquest of Egypt looked more like subjugating them as a protectorate.

There’s exceptions but it seems like the typical behaviour wasn’t direct territorial acquisition, but the creation of protectorates by force and subsequent reductions of autonomy. The reason seems to be less about the infamy of conquest, and more about what it would cost to directly administer those territories.

Ideally the AI would very rarely consider conquest of centralised territory where they didn’t have claims. They should really favour making protectorates and gaining access to markets. Maybe massively increasing the bureaucracy cost of populous unincorporated territory would help. Infamy doesn’t seem like the most realistic way to balance that, but it’s probably a lot easier than properly balancing the administrative burden and AI consideration of it. It would also be interesting if effective control over unincorporated territory actually required an expensive military presence.

Part of the problem might be how markets work. Britain drawing the entirety of Qing into its market as a protectorate would be more realistic than just conquering parts of it, but it would probably blow up the economy. If my idea of breaking market areas out into actual markets was implemented then Qing would be a separate market area and the effects wouldn’t be anywhere near as dramatic, but there’d still be benefits.

 

[chlorion]

In my last game the German Empire conquered the entirety of Egypt state by state over a couple of decades until they had the whole thing, but historically Britain’s conquest of Egypt looked more like subjugating them as a protectorate.

Yes Egypt also seems like a place where weird borders are created. In the same run, Britain directly controlled Sinai and the Provinces on the coast from Lower to Upper Egypt, but also had the rest of Egypt as a puppet. And i think that shouldn't happen. I actually like the Great Powers fighting over Egypt, it is a valuable region, it makes sense. But it should be more about extracting resources and wealth rather than about directly governing a population.
I mean I also wouldn't mind if GB on occasion would carve out at part of China and made like a "south china protectorate" or smth. But the direct ownership of states goes too far imho. It also makes taking these states away from Britain almost impossible. Because there aren't any large country tags for china you could release, most have 1 state, many states don't have any way to release them and taking them from Britain would generate 4x the infamy that Britain generated taking them.

If you actually want to break Britain currently, the best strategy is probably to conquer China yourself so Britain can't get in, which feels kinda stupid. But I feel like there is no other way. In my run in one war I took over India and released Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which I thought should be absolutely crippling, but it took the British about 7 years to be back at the same GDP they had before our war. Losing Canada and Australia and the larger African colonies later barely even put a dent in their GDP. At the end of the game the only British owned English state was Cornwall and they were still the #6 great power having a GDP of over 200M.

I remember in previous versions of the game Great Powers always wanted to put treaty ports everywhere, and now with all the changes, where you would expect that treaty ports are more valuable GPs seem to think "why take port, when you can take whole state/country?"

Also maybe secession movements should be stronger. They hardly ever rebel and even when they do they are more annoyance than threat, but a secession in a far away land with millions of people should have a serious chance of pushing out occupiers, no matter how far behind they are in tech. I mean even the Zulu won some battles against the British (even though they ultimately lost) and they were fighting with Spears and Shields against Guns and Cannons