Otter’s Terrible Wars Mod

NOTE: This mod uses the on_actions file, thus any other mod that makes use of this file will not be compatible with this mod unfortunately. Hopefully Paradox makes modding more flexible in a future update (not likely) and in EU5 (very likely!).

Welcome to my latest mod. I have been using this mod privately for a few hundred hours, off and on throughout 2022, and thought I’ve made it good enough for the public. I’d love any feedback on balancing and of course any bugs. This, like so many mods, benefits mostly the player.

There are 3 ideas built into this mod: Alternate Carpet Sieging, Seizing Capital Debuffs, and removing FoW options.

The First idea is alternate Carpet Sieging. While the spam d/v/right-click method is far superior, maybe you’re just chilling and want to push front lines. Or whatever. This effectively makes it so that capturing a province also captures other provinces in the area (also known as state (s)). Effectively allowing you to take 1-3 or even more extra provinces. This will not work on provinces with forts and those will have to be captured manually. (Think I:R if you have ever played it). This is especially useful in early game and in regions not Germany (where there is a fort every other tile). Again, d/v/right-click is a lot faster, but this can be useful when pushing a front line and you don’t want small stacks getting caught out.
Don’t worry, Rebels cannot make use of this feature. I had it on for them for a while, but it made the game frustrating vice harder.

Second idea is giving huge penalties for a country losing their capital. Sadly, I cannot encourage the AI to better protect their capital, but it has always been my opinion that the capital should always be the primary or at very least secondary war goal. Losing the capital will incur in an immediate punishment as well as debuff “Distrust in the Capital”. Also, instead of capturing land in the ‘area’, you will capture all of that nation’s provinces neighboring the capital (unless it has a fort).

The immediate penatlies are:

• +5 War Exhaustion (To lower enthusiasm faster)
• -1 Stability (They lost their capital!)
• -1 Yearly Manpower (Defectors)
• 1 Random Advisor Leaves (Either due to being killed in the sacking or fleeing)
• -5 Prestige (Not a good look to lose your capital)
• And gain “Distrust in the Capital” for 10 years.

Note: These numbers used to be higher and included more penalties, but for the sake of brevity and balance, I’ve made it do the above.

Let’s look at the negative modifier for “Distrust in the Capital”:

• +2 Global Unrest
• -10% Land Unit Morale
• -15% Land Force Limit
• +50% Reduce War Exhaustion Cost
• +0.75 War Exhaustion MONTHLY
• +0.5 Yearly Corruption
• -1.2 Yearly Prestige
• +25 Liberty Desire from Subjects

Note: These numbers used to be higher and included more penalties, but for the sake of brevity and balance, I’ve made it do the above.

The above lasts for 10 years UNLESS the country takes a decision available to them to remove the modifier which will also give back some of the losses they incurred (+5 Prestige, +1 Stability). The AI will always take this decision when available. They can also remove the modifier by taking back their capital in war.

To take said decision they must have at least 50 Loyalty from the Nobles estate (or equivelent). Countries with tribes, such as most hordes, will not be able to remove it. I thought this made sense, if you think that is dumb, let me know and I’ll take another look. They also need:

• At least 0 Stability
• At 80% Manpower
• No Loans
• At Peace
• Not Bankrupt

This is a high price after losing a war, but it only lasts 10 years and the AI, where they lack intuitive decision making, they make up for in hardiness. It will also encourage players to not give up their own territory and to protect their capital a little bit more, especially when you are in early game.

The final piece is what I just added this year is to Remove Fog of War. I found out this year of the event that allows you to gain the ability to see into a Nation’s FoW by getting the event for the first time after 1k+ hours of playing and also found out on Reddit you can take a covert action to remove it for 5 years at Tech 30. FYI, tech 30’s base tech year is 1805, so it is the last portion of your run and many of us don’t play that far. So this options make it available immediately.

The new covert action is called Remove Fog of War. I suck at tooltips and don’t know how to make it say what you need to use it, so my apologies.
To take the action you need (and spend) 60 Spynetwork. You can discount this price by 20 points for having either Tech 10 or Espionage Ideas completed. Having both reduces the price by 40! It lasts 4 years.

It does cost a lot, but it is a feature only Players can benefit from (thus AI will never take this action as it will be a waste of Spynetwork). I also tested this for a while with it lasting 2 years and found that by the time I sieged the border provinces I ran out of time with the action and the 20 to 60 Spynetwork would have been better used for the Siege Ability. So I doubled the time.

Ok, that’s a big wall of text over a relatively small mod, but I like to make notes on intentions and the whys behind things for my own future reference and the user. I don’t plan on splitting these into their own mods, but feel free to use any of the code included.

If you like this you may also like my other mod: that adds more advisors to play with: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2831560368