How to Declare War?

[Spechtmeise]

I am sure I'm missing something here...I want to declare war on Russia, but I can't. There are no peace turns left that I can see. I am violating Russia's territory. I am issueing ultimatums. I respond with "Declare War" upon Russia entering my territories. I am refusing to withdraw my troops from Russian territory. I have the worst relations imaginable with Russia. What is it that I am missing?
I am at the point where I will subject myself to ridicule in this forum. [&o] What am I missing?

[Disintegration]

Assuming you aren't allied to Russia, are you already at war with another nation that is at war with them? The game doesn't allow 3-way wars.

[Spechtmeise]

Yes, that could be it. I play Sweden, and I am at war with England. England is at war with Russia.
Thanks for your quick reply, disintegration.

[Gem35]

Also try to right click on a Russian province and click on declare war in the pop-up.
Have fun, CoG is a great game.[:)]

[Spechtmeise]

Yes to having fun.
No to right clicking, see the post above.
Thanks for the encouragement, though [:)].

[jkBluesman]

Sometimes it is worth it to ask for an armistice with one nation in order to be able to declare war on another. So in your example you might ask Britain to come to terms and if successful declare war on Russia.

[Spechtmeise]

That did it! Britain agreed to an armistice. Spain (also at war with England) violated my territory, and I declared war on Spain in the hope that I could grab a little piece of territory from Spain. But what the heck is this? I am being steamrollered by innumerable Spanish corps right now, and there is nothing I can do about it. They are besieging Stockholm. They are conquering Malmö. They plundered Copenhagen. My little Swedish empire is gone, lost to the Spanish juggernaut that I didn't know existed.

There ought to be a limit to the number of men you can have under arms.

[Disintegration]

ORIGINAL: Stratocruiser

There ought to be a limit to the number of men you can have under arms.

There ought to be diminishing returns and economies of scale - the 10th artillery unit you raise should cost more than the 1st, and the 20th, a LOT more.

Likewise, conquered territory should, within the time-fame of the game anyway, cost more to administer and garrison than you can extract from it in taxation, and troops raised there (as opposed to troops from protectorates) should have extremely poor morale. It would be a tradeoff for the extra resources to exploit, but eventually you should reach a point where you simply can't afford to hold any more territory.

It's hard to think of a real-world empire that didn't hit such limits, but it's even harder to think of a game that models them well - presumably because most gamers don't want them to.

[Spechtmeise]

Absolutely. The concept of "imperial overstretch" is something that no game that I know of has ever modeled. Maybe Eric can be convinced to consider this for the sequel that I am very much looking forward to?

[Disintegration]

To be fair, at least CoG has much more realistic victory conditions than most popular games - instead of turning the whole map blue or red, your task is to become the dominant power in Europe.

It always bugged me in, say, the Total War games when my English were recruiting archers and billmen in the loyal provinces of Arabia and Pskov preparatory to finishing off the Golden Horde. That's not just ahistorical, it's fantasy fiction in a way that nothing in CoG is.

[ericbabe]

The Waste rules used to be much more aggressive, effectively preventing very large empires (and the "steamroller effect"), but a clear majority of people hated those rules, so we changed them -- making them less severe and allowing Courts to ameliorate the effects of Waste.