War Momentum (Less Tedious Wars)

In Vanilla, nations are far too detached from the evolving balance of power in a war. In reality if a nation has lost its army, and the countryside is burning, the garrison of a fort has little reason to hold out, after all, no one is coming to help them. This mod makes decided wars more rapidly come to a conclusion and makes nations that suffer repeated and extended occupation have a much harder time holding themselves together (The Golden Horde for instance).

This mod penalizes nations that are losing a war with reduced fort defense and increased war exhaustion. Losses to your military, enemy occupation, diplomatic pressure from trapped allies, and the fall of your capital all compound to make decided wars end faster. The AI is affected equally, creating more dynamic and interesting outcomes across the world.

Up to +0.5 monthly war exhaustion and -50% Fort Defense.

Tracks four components relative to their wartime peak:

• Army Strength: Combat power of all fielded forces (regulars, mercenaries, levies). Contributes to both war exhaustion and fort defense loss.
• Manpower: Current reserves, capped at 4x regular army capacity. Having a large pool of manpower is useless if you fail to raise it into a meaningful army. Contributes to both war exhaustion and fort defense loss.
• Navy Strength: Weighted composite of the fleet based on crew and hull size per ship type. Contributes to war exhaustion only.
• Sailors: Current sailor reserves, capped at 4x fleet composite. Contributes to war exhaustion only.

Army and navy are weighted proportionally by their share of overall peak strength. A nation with a large navy and a small army will feel naval losses more heavily than army losses.

Military strength is reduced through casualties and recovered by replenishment, manpower recovery, or hiring mercenaries. The peak resets after being at peace for a month tick. Subjects combine their military strength with their overlord’s.

Up to +0.4 monthly war exhaustion and -50% Fort Defense.

Scaled by percentage of territory under enemy occupation. Fortified locations are weighted 5x.

• Capital Resilience: Up to +50% Fort Defense, cancelling half the global penalty.
• Capital Fallen: A flat -25% Fort Defense modifier when your capital is under enemy occupation. Vanilla applies a -0.1 war exhaustion penalty already that has been kept.

Up to +1.0 monthly war exhaustion on the war leader (in practice, usually much lower).

War allies that are unable to separate peace apply diplomatic pressure to the war leader to end, or in the case of coalitions, possibly continue the war. Subjects always apply pressure to their overlord based on their war exhaustion. Coalition members apply pressure when above 5 war exhaustion but reduce the leader’s war exhaustion when they are below 5. Each nation’s contribution is weighted by their tax base relative to the leader multiplied by 0.05% of their current (or current minus 5 for coalition members) war exhaustion.

Subjects with limited diplomacy and coalition members who cannot separate peace have their own war exhaustion penalty halved.

• Territorial Occupation: The side holding less territory is penalized proportionally with the Occupied Home Territory modifiers. Fortified locations count five times more.
• Civil War Surrender: Each side can surrender after 12 months if they have reached 20 war exhaustion. This mirrors the auto surrender forced upon nations during standard wars when reaching 20 exhaustion.

Nations that annex territory during the current war (Timurids, conquistadors) still inflict occupation pressure on the original defender. Conquered locations merge into the regular fortified and unfortified counts. Re-occupying conquered territory reduces the penalty.

• War Exhaustion now impacts stability. At 20 War Exhaustion: -1.0 stability investment and +100% stability investment cost.
• Vanilla occupation war exhaustion has been removed and replaced by this system.
• The war exhaustion tooltip includes a detailed breakdown showing army and navy strength with current/peak values, per component war exhaustion and fort defense contributions, occupation status, and diplomatic pressure sources.
• Localizations are added for all languages supported in the base game.

Please let me know if you run into any bugs, missing tooltips, or incorrect game concepts. Balance feedback is welcome.