Ideas on how to limit great wars over nothing

[bizkit]

Great powers actually don't give a shit about the conflict in question wherever it is in the distant world. They just wanna be dick to the other great power and look for an excuse to fight them. Like Britain and France hate each other no matter what, and Britain will jump into the fight with France who's targeted by an African tribe, Britain doesn't care about the tribe itself, they just wanna smash France.

War needs to be more costly
War losses need to cause crazy number of radicals, especially if it's not a defensive war
AI needs to learn and adapt these while deciding to go to war

 

[FranklyJustNess]

As some people mentioned - the problem isn't, that wars are not costly enough, they absolutely are, as they kill your pops, cost a ton, and are a huge risk with joining a conflict letting enemy side add wargoals to you, and occupy your land. AI already doesn't care. They will bleed and bleed just so Ionian Isles adopts State Religion. You can stack more and more costs onto war, and they will just eat it all.

What I am thinking is getting a proper system of wargoals, as even now the Devs have in their list of things to do, and to introduce some kind of escalation value to each AI. They could look at the wargoals and decide how much they care - return Alscae-Loraine would probably be a high value wargoal, defending yourself against conquest of an incorporated state too, but taking some colonial thing? Not really much of a much.

This value would then determine how much of their force they are willing to commit, and if they see themselves losing or the enemy mobilizing heavier, the value will go up. So maybe you could see a major war between France and GB over a small colonial thing, but it would start with relatively few troops.

 

[Metz]

As some people mentioned - the problem isn't, that wars are not costly enough, they absolutely are, as they kill your pops, cost a ton, and are a huge risk with joining a conflict letting enemy side add wargoals to you, and occupy your land. AI already doesn't care. They will bleed and bleed just so Ionian Isles adopts State Religion. You can stack more and more costs onto war, and they will just eat it all.

What I am thinking is getting a proper system of wargoals, as even now the Devs have in their list of things to do, and to introduce some kind of escalation value to each AI. They could look at the wargoals and decide how much they care - return Alscae-Loraine would probably be a high value wargoal, defending yourself against conquest of an incorporated state too, but taking some colonial thing? Not really much of a much.

This value would then determine how much of their force they are willing to commit, and if they see themselves losing or the enemy mobilizing heavier, the value will go up. So maybe you could see a major war between France and GB over a small colonial thing, but it would start with relatively few troops.

Also a way to prevent over commitment to a small distant war. Maybe some sort of war goal value calculation whereby if you exceed it in terms of costs, your war score starts ticking down? So sending 100,000 soldiers to get stuck naval invading Madagascar would decrease your war score by a lot if the war goal is to get France to give you parts of Ivory Coast. Fighting over the objective within that strategic region should be the emphasis. Countries should also know when its a lost cause rather than wait for the war score to tick to -100. Failed naval invasions should reduce a lot of war score.