Devastation needs a nerf!

[Naveed]

Poor Baden is going to be depopulated by the time this devastation clears up. This was a 5 million pop state before getting devastated in a large war. Still at 90% devestation few years later. It's not unrealistic for territories to be depopulated in war but they should move away mostly rather than die, and devastation sticks around way too long after the end of a war.

 

[Froonk]

I think devastation is fine as an effect but it needs to scale up differently, active battles should increase it more rather than passive occupation so that an area which gets occupied for 3 months without any conflict taking place there shouldn't be immediately maxed out on devastation. There also really needs a way to address it directly, I think Emergency Relief degree should be stronger in dealing with devastation, provide more baseline infrastructure and reduce pop mortality more and increase the recovery speed.

 

[praftd]

It doesn't need a nerf, just tweaking. Even now it is costly forgettable in most cases. Before it barely even had impact

 

[Veiovis123]

It doesn't need a nerf, just tweaking. Even now it is costly forgettable in most cases. Before it barely even had impact

Define "most cases". Because right now, with the AI's prospensity for forever wars, you get multiple completly annihilated regions per game. I have seen the entire world population drop by 50% when a couple GPs get into a war in China with poorly chosen wargoals.

Also, if I read the defines correctly, a single day of occupation ticks up devastation as much as an entire gigantic battle. Considering the death tolls, every occupation in this game is an Nazi-Style war of extermination.

And finally, given players are given exactly zero ways to interact with devastation, "barely an impact" is right where the mechanic should be.

 

[Dman1791]

For reference, full occupation gives 0.1 devastation per day (the same amount as a battle before modifiers), which takes it from 0 to 100 in less than 3 years.

Realistically, I don't think occupation shouldn't be causing devastation now that we have another way of modelling the harsh economic impact (0% market access).

 

[Naveed]

It is now December 1900 and poor Baden is still dying. Devastation is gone but it caused some sort of vicious cycle, the region is no longer habitable.

 

[Voidian]

Battles should cause a lot more of it.
Occupation should not cause any.

And decrees should be able to handle one or 2 states in an emergency