Demands in Crises

[Bunnytob]

One thing you can do in crises is entice a nation to back your side with a demand/CB. This is easy enough.

However, I have also seen the AI demand goals of their own (e.g. in a crisis over who gets to colonise British Columbia, I've seen the UK demand New England for themselves). So:
A) Can you do this as a player
B) If so, how?

 

[Cypres]

Yes you can do it as a player, however the usefulness is questionable, you pay the full infamy and crisis beeing crisis the is no garuntee you actually get what you gambled for, just justify a war goal manually.

 

[Kovax]

Unfortunately, the AI tends to offer the player incentives to join the war which are beneficial to the offering county, NOT to the player. What do I want with some isolated backwater province which is a core of the country making the offer, and which will inevitably cause friction with that country? It's of use to the offering country because it's their core, and an enemy enclave adjacent to their other holdings that they'd like to remove, but to me it's indefensible and would cost more to garrison against revolts than I'd ever get from its revenues. The AI has NEVER offered me anything useful as an enticement to join their side in a crisis, and I've joined a side of a conflict many times WITHOUT taking their offer.

 

[Bunnytob]

Yes you can do it as a player, however the usefulness is questionable, you pay the full infamy and crisis beeing crisis the is no garuntee you actually get what you gambled for, just justify a war goal manually.

Okay, but how? You can't do it via the screen you do so in a war, I can't see anything on the Crisis screen that allows you to do so...

 

[Gutie]

Yes you can do it as a player, however the usefulness is questionable, you pay the full infamy and crisis beeing crisis the is no garuntee you actually get what you gambled for, just justify a war goal manually.

Are you referring to when you specifically as the player instigate a crisis? I've never seen anything in vanilla+Expansions that allows you to manually pick a specific "reward" for joining a crisis someone else initiates. I'm even unsure of mods that allow you to essentially pick a reward manually during a crisis.

The only way one can specifically pick them I have seen resulting from a crisis as a backer was if war happens from the crisis via pressing your own war goal when you are able to do so (and even then its subject to either the war continuing/being war leader). Even then many times the AI loves to screw you out of getting anything at all, even when really starting to steamroll the other side (AI White peace spam when up >20 WS + war goal met).

If there is some mod that allows for this? I would be genuinely glad to try it. (I don't recall HPM/etc having such a thing, but I haven't touched it in a while).

 

[Kovax]

You can add your own war goal from the target country's diplomacy screen (while viewing war progress), if your country has sufficient "Jingoism", but that often requires sieging a country to the brink of total occupation until you get enough public support. Hover over the box (between the country's prestige points and its infamy, shifted toward the right), and it should show how much Jingoism you need and how much you have at present. Normally, the AI will accept the existing surrender conditions long before that becomes a viable option. As said, you also pay full infamy to place the war goal, and the war leader is very likely to simply ignore it when settling the war.

It CAN happen, but it's an extremely unreliable way of gaining something.

In a loosely related situation, I wanted to take a province from another major country, but every time my truce with them expired, another crisis happened before I could formulate a CB, and then I was stuck with another a 5 year truce until just before the NEXT crisis. Stupid idea, for whoever figured that 5 years was the right cycle length for both crises AND for truces. Ultimately, I had to take the nasty prestige hit for not getting involved in the crisis (dropping my national rank almost out of GP status), then declared my war after the crisis was resolved.

 

[Bunnytob]

Okay, but that's how it's done during a war. I've been in situations where I've definitely had sufficient Jingoism during these crises and yet haven't been able to add anything that way... unless there's something I'm missing.
(It's greyed out, with the message that "We are not at war". For reference, this is in a situation where I am a major power and crisis leader, and very definitely have enough Jingoism support because I just fired event 14180 about ten times.)

I should probably clarify that I do mean adding demands before war begins - though you probably already assumed that.

 

[Kovax]

Odd, because I added a crisis war goal during a Prussia campaign earlier this year. The original crisis war goal was for Austria to release Bohemia-Moravia. As the crisis leader on my side (NGF,/UK/Russia versus Austria /France), I placed my own war goal on France (on the Austrian side of the war), which gave me A-L. I took the prestige hit and DIDN'T liberate B-M, so I'd be able to annex it along with Austria later. A normal war against Austria 6 years down the road was sufficient to allow full annexation while forming the German Empire. Granted, I had to wait for (1) sufficient war score to allow another war goal, and (2) sufficient Jingoism to allow me to place a war goal. The first happened really quickly, but getting sufficient Jingoism to place that second goal took at least a year, with both Austria and France around 70-80% occupied. I don't think the AI need to meet the same requirements.

 

[Bunnytob]

Granted, I had to wait for (1) sufficient war score to allow another war goal, and (2) sufficient Jingoism to allow me to place a war goal.

Sounds like you added the goal during the war.
Which isn't what I'm talking about.

 

[Kovax]

OK, you mean placing your own war goal during the lead-up to a crisis, rather than during the actual crisis war? I don't think you can place your own war goal there, unless you offer it to another country as an incentive to join your side, in which case THEY would reap the benefits if it's enforced. A third party can't choose to add their own war goal until the war begins, and I've never seen the AI do it. I HAVE seen the AI make some rather strange offers to uncommitted GPs.

Too often, the crisis leader's AI will offer something that IT want's rather than what the country that's receiving the offer might want (such as the UK offering Pondicherry from France to Spain, Belgium, or Prussia), which occasionally leads to a future war down the road when the current crisis leader decides that they want it back from the country they handed it to. In about half the cases, however, the offer is to Humiliate a country on the other side of the crisis.

 

[Bunnytob]

OK, you mean placing your own war goal during the lead-up to a crisis, rather than during the actual crisis war?

Yes, that is what I was referring to. I have seen the AI do it (for themselves, not as an incentive to another country) multiple times.

So... in short, you can't do it as a player. Good to know.