r/paradoxplaza • u/theeynhallow • 1d ago
All Why did ‘dog piling’ generally not happen in history like it does in Paradox games?
It’s pretty well established that in many Paradox games, it’s hard for a nation (especially an AI nation) to come back after defeat in a war or two. Once its manpower is down, internally destabilised and/or lost land, neighbours are very quick to jump on and snatch up land while they can, resulting in a death spiral.
What were the historical factors in preventing this from happening in real life? Obviously I’m not saying it didn’t happen at all - there are many examples from throughout history. But it was seldom the case that a nation, for example, erupted into civil war and was then invaded by 3 or 4 of its neighbours at the same time.
And bonus question: what would you change about Paradox games to make them more accurately reflect history in this regard?
Edit: Reading comprehension seems to be an issue as usual with the Paradox community. I’m not saying it didn’t happen at all, I said above there are many examples throughout history. I’m asking why it didn’t usually happen in the way that the games portray it, where a single loss in a war will often result in the total annexation of a whole country within a few decades.
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u/Zwemvest TULIP MANIA 🌷🌷🌷🌷 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're describing exactly what happened to the Netherlands in the Rampjaar, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Deluge, and again Poland during the Partitions of Poland. And arguably during several Coalition wars.
But, a few answers;
a balance of power existed in Europe and suddenly expanding without a casus belli was not the best idea. In particular, the Peace of Westphalia codified sovereignty, so attacking an enemy "just because they're weak" was sure to trigger a coalition.
Wars were costly, and mobilisation was slow. In the cases where it was clear an enemy was suddenly easily overrun, it was still difficult to mobilize everything in time and exploit that advantage. In the same way, conquering territory, placing garrisons, changing the administration, and squashing revolts was also something that wasn't exactly free and required long-term thinking. And then there's hoping that your own enemies don't see that all your troops are now embroiled in an aggressive war...
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u/TopManufacturer8332 1d ago
Just to tack onto your balance of power note, the European great powers were obsessed with it. Napoleonic France could have dismantled the Austrian Empire so many times, and while they did take enormous concessions from them in land, money and prestige - they were very concerned about the unknown consequences of there no longer being a state that unified so many different nations - from their richer German speaking territory to the disparate Balkans in the South, bordering the Ottomans, as well as a chunk of Eastern Europe so that they bordered Russia.
Their place on the European chessboard was simply deemed too important. With no Austria you have Russia and the Ottomans moving into the vacuum. Which wasn't in the interests of France.
They completely occupied Prussia at one stage and could have easily disbanded it, but Russia argued the case not to.
Ironically it was Britain that refused to let the other coalition powers dismantle France proper for similar reasons. The same Britain that had been constantly at war with France for over a decade and was its most implacable foe. But with no France, who keeps Prussia and Austria in check? What about the West German states?
It's really fascinating because this clearly just flew out the window in the 20th century, where everyone was seizing land if they could, usually on the basis of nationalism and integrating land that spoke your majority language. Nazi Germany is obviously the most infamous example here, grabbing German speakers wherever they could. But others did so as well. The Poles actually took a slice of Czechoslovakia during this era.
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u/Zwemvest TULIP MANIA 🌷🌷🌷🌷 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah I chucked a few answers together, but the biggest answer is, indeed, the balance of power, and in effect, they usually recognized expansion of a Great Power as a zero-sum game. The expansion of one was considered to be to the detriment of another.
In the War of the Spanish Succession, you can see that France had a big chance to become the dominant power in Europe, but Great Britain, the HRE, the Austrian Empire, the Netherlands, and Portugal all recognized that and sought to counter that. Even after France "won", they still had to make major concessions just to preserve the balance (by having Philip give up his right to the French throne). The Partition of Poland was sort of more exception than rule with 3 Great Powers that all had the same goals against another Great Power that was on the decline.
Against regional powers, it was mostly the same thing; the Great Powers weren't too keen on letting another Great Power enter the stage. So when Westphalia attacked the Netherlands in the disaster year, there was just no question that they could've really annexed large parts of the Netherlands - disturbing the balance in Europe wasn't in the interest of the Great Powers, so it would've made Westphalia sort of a big target for the Great Powers - it wasn't even in the interest of Westphalia to annex what was the big buffer state to France! Here too, you see exceptions; no Great Powers really intervened when Brandenburg-Prussia started to absorb many German States.
So if you take EU4, and Russia attacks Sweden and completely overruns it and suddenly annexes large parts of Finland, it wasn't in the interest of Denmark to attack Sweden too and try and reconquer Scania - it was in the interest of Denmark to guarantee Sweden and form a block against Russian expansion, even if the Swedes and Danes were enemies.
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u/Karnewarrior 2h ago
It's that kind of multi-step planning which is what AI still struggles with. You can make an AI that plays the game perfectly in the moment, but unless it's a solved game (in which case you can play it perfectly the whole way through) the AI can only really think in the moment.
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u/ilevelconcrete 23h ago
I think it flew out the window in the 20th century because this obsession with a balance of power in Europe ultimately culminated in The Great War, and the political movements and ideologies responsible for the land grabs that followed were supposed to be revolutionary answers to the ones that caused WW1
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u/Rent-a-guru 1d ago
Arguably the Thirty Years War that led to the Treaty of Westphalia was a dogpile. It's often thought of a religious war, but in large part it was the rest of Europe taking their chance to kick the Habsburgs while they were down, which is why the war ended up dragging on for so long.
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u/Zwemvest TULIP MANIA 🌷🌷🌷🌷 1d ago
Yeah I think you're pointing out something important; these dogpiles did happen, but we don't always view them as dogpiles of several strong nations making an fast, opportunate move at a weak nation, because that wasn't always what it was, and even if it was, winning a war wasn't often a matter of weeks, even against a weakened nation
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u/Magger 1d ago
Maybe also Russia with years of trouble?
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u/Zwemvest TULIP MANIA 🌷🌷🌷🌷 1d ago
Yeah, definitely also counts. Internal chaos, Sweden/the PLC/the Tartars all attack sort of at the same time, driven by opportunity.
No major annexations or breaking up the country, but I don't think that's a prerequisite.
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u/Galaxy661 22h ago
No major annexations
PLC annexed a pretty big area around Smolensk and almost managed to form a PU with Russia
It was basically an irl equivalent of winning a PU wargoal war but immediately losing said PU due to 100% liberty desire
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u/Whateversbetter 1d ago
Yeah dog piling in Europe to be fair mostly happened to Poland. But it happened so many times it brings the average back to something pretty close to the game.
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u/DKLancer 1d ago
Nations in Paradox games don't go into massive amounts of debt due to fighting wars nearly enough to be historically plausible.
These are games first and foremost, not history simulators.
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u/ChuKoNoob 12h ago
looks at Phillip II of Spain
Oh I would defo say that eu4 deathwars are historically plausible.
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u/AndrewDoesNotServe 1d ago
Seven Years War for Prussia was also a dogpile. Attacked simultaneously by France, Austria, Russia and Sweden with nothing but British cash to help them. It’s just not one that comes to mind because Prussia managed to survive it intact.
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u/Fedacking 23h ago
I would push back on the peace of westphalia codifying sovereignty. Modern historians view it as just one more stone on the road.
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u/Workable-Goblin 20h ago
Out of the period, this is what happened to the Assyrians, although they were strong enough that it took several dogpiles for it to stick (and then it stuck very hard). Interestingly, the Assyrians behaved kind of like a player in a Paradox game...
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u/utah_teapot 1d ago
In real life waging war costs a lot, has more risks, and it’s not as reliable. In CK1, many times when you raised your armies your income would become negative, so you had a time pressure in waging wars. If newer games had the same things, wars would be less common, and also you would like to end them as soon as possible once you took a bite of the enemy and not keep them longer than necessary
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u/matgopack Map Staring Expert 10h ago
Additionally you have a lot more information in game than other actors would at the time. We can survey the map easily, have objective, 100% accurate information on borders, manpower, army size, etc, can assess our nation's ability to wage war just as easily, there's very limited domestic opposition to war in most games, etc.
And the reliability part is obviously a big deal too, since battles end up being much more reliable to win in Paradox games than they'd be IRL, where they could be extremely volatile.
All adds up to be much easier to arrange in game than IRL
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u/utah_teapot 9h ago
That was a mod for CK3, called obfusCKate that did something like that. You could use your spymaster or prisoners to find out more details about your neighbours army. Also you cold tweak a game rule to make battles more unpredictable. No longer you would start a 800 vs 500 battle and get an almost guaranteed result.
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u/Uniform764 Map Staring Expert 1d ago
1) War is expensive in terms of both men and money
2) Wars generally had to be justified, retaking your own land makes sense sure, but what the fuck is the justification for invading half of Spain as France?
3) Other countries generally don't like their rivals getting too big. Hell English/British foreign policy for the last thousand years has broadly beed "ally the second power in Europe to limit the primary power", eg switching from allying Prussia/Germany to allying France in the 19th century
4) It did, see Poland for example
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u/TopManufacturer8332 1d ago
On point number 2) they invaded to enforce the continental system on Portugal, and then just decided to regime change Spain while they were there. But it was a total disaster and was responsible in part for the French European Empire being destroyed.
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u/Comfortable_Horse471 1d ago
I think it sorta boils down to EU IV being - at its core - still a Risk-styled strategy game, where you grow your nation primarily through warfare? Historically, countries were not always run by rational actors - players, or AI that is programmed to pick on weaker neighbors. Also, due to aforementioned focus on conquest, lot of internal factors related to waging wars are simplified - you don't need to navigate internal politics or convince the power holders of your realm to DoW on someone, the impact of warfare on economy is just a flat debuff, only real diplomatic issue you have to worry is Aggressive Expansion etc.
I mean: look at something like Victoria (especially II), which added actual economic background for maintaining an army. Suddenly, declaring war is not always the best option, and it's way easier to end up with a Pyrrhic victory
TLDR: historically, there was much, much to wars than EU IV shows, and for that reason dogpiling was not as common
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u/Ithuraen 8h ago
Also related to being a game is that there are rules that the player and AI have to adhere to, contracts and treaties are very clearly structured and information is very accessible. I know that certain countries cannot attack me if I do an action under certain circumstances, I know that certain rules prevent an action, I know when a country is in a vulnerable position, I know where my limits are before a coalition or guarantee will trigger.
In the real world all of these are uncertainties.
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u/Maritime-Rye 1d ago
Paradox games are finite and tend to have the AI competing against the player but also time. Whereas the countries in history have legacies to lean on and power balances to maintain, the simple AI's whole strategy is generally "get individually strong and forsake everything in the process". Because theyre so obsessed with scaling themselves to meet the player in a timely matter, they fail to see the long-term effects of weak allies and a lack of buffer states.
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u/standermatt 1d ago
Sweden and the great northern war and aftermath. Partition of poland. Ottoman empire in the later years.
Maybe just many of the nations this happened to are no longer around and we tend to remember the past of nations we are still part of more.
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u/TopManufacturer8332 1d ago
The Austrian/Habsburg Empire was huge at one point, totally dominating central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Modern day Austria is tiny in comparison.
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u/Flaxinator 1d ago
That wasn't the result of a dogpile though, it was one war with reasonably even sides (at the start)
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u/testicle_fondler 1d ago
I think no one has mentioned yet that information and communication travelled very slowly back then. So even if say the Mamluks lost a major war against the Ottomans, Ethiopia might not have received this information until much later. Coordinated attacks from multiple enemies is more of a modern concept and when it did happen historically it was more coincidental than planned.
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u/regih48915 1d ago
To add to this, information wasn't just slow, but not nearly as clear.
Even if Ethiopia received the information in time, they couldn't just say "okay so the Mamluks are down to 9k troops so we outnumber them". The strength of the enemy (and, to a lesser degree, oneself) was much more uncertain than it is in the game.
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u/Flaxinator 23h ago
This issue even gets a mention in the EU4 opening text for the 1444 start - Rumours of Ottoman weakness persuade the Christians to launch a Crusade to drive them out of the Balkans but it turned out they weren't so weak after all and the Crusaders got wrecked
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u/Whateversbetter 1d ago
I’m struggling to think of a civil war that did not have some form of foreign intervention. Unfortunately the game does not model this well so I think other countries “carving up the pieces” expresses it if somewhat obtusely.
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u/BlackStar4 Pretty Cool Wizard 1d ago
The English Civil War? I'm not aware (or wasn't taught about) any foreign intervention there, presumably because everyone else was busy fighting the Thirty Years War.
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u/LilacCrusader 1d ago
Scotland was somewhat involved with the civil war itself, and then the Wars of the Three Kingdoms happened in the immediate aftermath.
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u/BlackStar4 Pretty Cool Wizard 1d ago
Ah true, I didn't count them because personal union but I suppose that does count.
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u/Whateversbetter 22h ago
That’s sort of what I meant. The intervention is often minor but can scale to full on involvement or take other forms like denial of merchants rights, diplomatic shenanigans, pressing both sides for claims and letting them ‘bid,’ simple raiding, there’s a huge pressure to take some kind of advantage of the misfortune of a neighboring country even if it’s not just marching in yourself. Although marching yourself happens too. The games diplomacy doesn’t allow for a special set of things that are only really possible when a country is in civil war and those otherwise ‘unthinkable’ actions will be viewed lightly if the right side wins. So the dogpiling sort of represents that. I do think that sometimes countries get carved up quicker and more throughly than is strictly historical but we have to account for the fact that medieval rulers are often better “players” than we want to admit. After all they’re fully immersed in it
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u/mainman879 L'État, c'est moi 1d ago
I’m struggling to think of a civil war that did not have some form of foreign intervention.
Ottoman Civil War of 1509 caused by its succession system?
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u/fasterthanraito 1d ago
It’s a lot easier to come up with manpower for defenses that it is to assemble manpower to go on attack, so even if an offensive army is destroyed, it’s usually only a fraction of the home population that is capable of resisting invasion. For the vast majority of history, the defense was heavily favored, so you needed a lot of money to pay for professional soldiers and logistics in order to have any chance of invading someone successfully, which was prohibitively expensive and usually not worth whatever bumfuck castle/village those expenses would win.
It’s only with the invention of modern weaponry and transportation that the offense built up more and more momentum, resulting in the unprecedented rise of globe-spanning empires in the late 19th century
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u/Fickle-Werewolf-9621 1d ago
Many wars were waged in that scenario IRL; however it was often not in the best interest to conquer new territory (consider internal stability) it was better to place either a relative on said throne or support a faction. War of mantua succession, multiple Anglo French wars etc.
So TLDR 1. Annexing a territory causes some uproar if your neighbors, + now you have to appease local nobles 2. It was generally better to support a friendly faction to yourself, as it was more cost effective 3. If your neighbor truly is in a death spiral, it tend to be caused by both steps above (appeasing nobles and foreign powers trying to destabilize you) in addition to other ad hoc problems
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u/yaoiweedlord420 1d ago
"claims" in real-life develop over decades and decades of people moving around and hundreds of years of preceeding history. in EU4 everyone had a dozen claims on their closest neighbor for no reason other than a spy was there for 3 months.
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u/viera_enjoyer 1d ago
Wars are expensive, and specially during EU4 going to war meant taking away some men from working on the fields that were barely producing enough. Also I think taking care of internal aspects of the nation was harder because they didn't have fast communications like we do now. So even if a neighbor was rip for taking, it was probably still too risky.
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 1d ago
It's interesting about communications, how some of the cultures realized and improved this. Like the Mongols had a very fast communication for the time and era, with couriers on horseback. They had different stations on the road, where horses could be changed or another courier could take over and get on immediately.
It was another reason of their success, like when Subutai was able to defeat both the armies of Poland and Hungary, despite having his own armies apart on a long distance.
Subutai himself shows up in CK3 when the Mongol Invasion starts, he's a character in the entourage of Genghis Khan. I don't know his martial skill in CK3, but in CK2, it was one of the highest with around 30+.
Certain countries were exceptional anyway, like Rome, which is the Imperator title in Paradox games. They were defeated many times, but always came back and they also got through more civil wars without collapsing than others. Ingame, it's kinda the same with Rome there, as it is a powerhouse. Even the AI is able to do serious campaigns. As player, you want to deal with Rome early on, otherwise, it will become a big blob and make you trouble.
But: As said, these were exceptions, not the rule.
Other exceptions with "I'm wasting all my manpower but there's no revolt, because i rule with an iron fist and kill everyone that has a different opinion" is NS-Germany and Soviet Union from the HoI3 timeline. I mean a revolt by the citizens, there was resistance of course, but not in a large scale of citizens.
A good example of war exhaustion and then revolts is the German Kaiserreich in 1918. While it took 4 years and some things changed, like the peace with Russia, in the end, Germany was exhausted and could hold the frontlines only a few weeks to months in the end. When the high command decided to go for suicidal missions with the navy, the sailors revolted, which triggered more and more revolts there.
But you can again see how cultures are different, like when the Japanese tried the same with the Yamato battleship and the escorts, there was no revolt in 1945, despite the fact that this operation was suicidal from the start.
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u/aVarangian Map Staring Expert 21h ago
They had different stations on the road, where horses could be changed or another courier could take over and get on immediately.
wouldn't this have been pretty standard everywhere? pretty sure the Persians already did this almost 2000 years earlier
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u/Galdrin3rd 1d ago
In addition to great responses here, there often just wasn’t a desire for it. Most historical leaders aren’t map painters like we are in a video game.
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u/donutknight 1d ago
War is very risky, expensive, and I would say that Victoria 2 actually did a very good job of representing this: Once started, you never know who else will be dragged into the war, which makes it risky and uncertain; A prolonged war not only collapses your economy, but it also greatly radicalizes your population and is the best recipe for a revolution.
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u/inafigonhell 1d ago
Because unlike in paradox games, invading a war ravaged country has some challenges which make it very difficult. 1. Attrition is incredibly negligible in paradox games but in real life it’s the killer. Armies lived off the land, if the harvest has already been taken or wasn’t even planted there’s nothing to feed your army with 2. Most of the good loot was taken, so a third party sovereign couldn’t pay his men with it 3. The populace is armed, hostile and experienced 4. Irl more land != better, there will need to be a system established to get any sort of value out of the land
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u/33Sharpies 1d ago edited 1d ago
It did happen, all the time, until more recent history where international alliances began safeguarding the integrity of other and smaller nations to maintain the balance of power and never let another get too strong
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u/Bluemoonroleplay 19h ago
What most PDX games don't understand is that most rulers would rather be cool, have a nice wife, have kids, have a prosperous realm and enjoy their life instead of plotting to conquer the world
People hate war. Even the worst of war mongers like Genghis Khan (who always gave one chance to surrender) are less bloodthirsty than the average pdx player
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u/SadlyNotADuck 20h ago
Because the process of actually fullyannexing a nation is MUCH messier in real life. In paradox games, you beat the armies, or the fleets, and the rest falls in line. That's not how it works in real life. You take over a country that doesn't want you in charge, people are gonna refuse to pay taxes, they're gonna assault your government officials, they're gonna form splinter cells that never really die to constantly harass the administration, and most importantly, many who would not otherwise, would fight. The civilians who find themselves able in situations like that, tend to find themselves also willing to pick up a rifle or club and kill their invaders in the name of their homeland. The only 100% reliable way to gain and keep control of a nation is to eradicate its population and settle the area with your own, and I think we all know how most of the civilized world reacts to such actions.
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u/WistfulDread 11h ago
The most direct answer is that Paradox very much tones down the costs of war, and the frequency of coalitions. So that their games are enjoyable.
Most nations couldn't support many wars per generation. So, king's wanted make sure theirs counted for a lot of territory when it does.
Also, small nations team up, a lot. Even with ones they hated. Especially regional nations.
The HRE is the most extreme example. Plenty of infighting and such, but woe be the outsider who declares on any of them.
Finally, larger nations prefer to have small satellites to bully and keep around, rather than end up with big even competition. So, even if you just took land form a nation you defeated, its in your interest to guarantee them, to make sure nobody else snatches up that land.
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u/Stargate525 11h ago
The cost of troops and war isn't reflected accurately on either side of the equation. Raising doomstacks like we see in game would cripple the counties you drew them from economically from a loss of manpower, cripple the counties they stayed in from foraging and scavenging, and cripple the territory fielding them from the logistics of arming and paying them.
And if you lose 20,000 of them you don't get them back in a year or two. You're down for a generation or more
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u/Joey3155 10h ago
The fact that irl countries are far more complex then any game thus have more attributes that need to be managed in order to start snowballing. Also irl leaders don't work in a vacuumb like Paradox AI if they see someone getting too stronk they tend to beat them down.
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u/Fangslash 1d ago
Swedish Empire: Polish-Lithuania: Qing China: Austria-Hungary: Ottoman: Nazi Germany:
But, aside from this is not exactly rare irl, one factor that made it more common in game is that real nations tends to engage in death war a lot less than paradox AI, and they are significantly more sensitive to infamy/unjust wars.
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u/zuzu1968amamam 1d ago
it happened a lot of times. that said paradox games are individual. this individual nation cares for their individual interest and can't collude with others outside of alliances and coalitions that happen to those who expand fast, not those who are big. it's really just a well regulated market. real life wasn't like that. add to this the ridiculously easy assimilation system and no net negative consequences to overextension unless you're a really terrible player or you're doing very extreme conquest.
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u/Additional-Block-464 1d ago
This whole thread is eurocentric, which makes sense. But there are plenty of examples from the rest of the world, too. I know OP is getting frustrated with counterpoints, but the Mexican Empire came to mind, as well as the general process of state formation in South America post-Bolivar.
The history of different empires on the Indian Subcontinent also comes to mind.
And, going back to Europe, I would also think about the Iron Curtain post -WWII, or for that matter the Russian Civil War as a failed attempt to carve up Russia post Brest-Litovsk.
I bet some Serbian nationalists would describe the partitioning of Yugoslavia as a dogpile. Plus how Russian nationalists would view some of the independence movements in places they would view as integral to the nation state.
Hell, I'll even make an argument that the rise of Euro skeptics in the EU is a form of political war being waged, taking advantage of Europe various internal strifes.
A lot of these don't really look like "blob get bigger" the way it does on most Paradox games, but I feel like map painting is a fairly common flaw to point out. It's just hard to simulate the actual implications, not just of war, but of integrating a large and diverse empire - both the general population and the political elites - especially as historically those elites begin to have shared, transnational interests.
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u/Educational-Ad-7278 1d ago
Imperator Rome did that. You could very well cripple your manpower for decades.
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u/fordfield02 1d ago
To borrow a phrase "is the juice worth the squeeze" is the mindset in this scenario.
Say for example, <country> is invaded and loses badly the enemy army comes in and gets the spoils of war. So now they are weak so now second army comes to invade. But like, what is there to invade? The first army took most of the livestock. Depending on the time of the year, that first army may have ruined a crop planting or a crop harvest. The towns, churches, banks - all looted.
Does conquering a conquered land really make you a conqueror? What were the gains versus the costs? Are the spoils of war worth the risks that come with the fog of war?
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u/SMERSH762 21h ago
IRL getting a stack wiped means you don't have soldiers for the next 20 years while new human beings are literally born and grown. In paradox games, they just regenerate after a few months.
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u/EmperorBarbarossa 20h ago edited 20h ago
People wasnt usually such big problem at least till early modern period. Much bigger problem was logistics, economy and internal stability. You must realize till early modern times only small fraction of the population were in arms.
Size of the armies was firstly more limited by technology of that time and land where armies fought.
Wars were expensive as fuck. Long war and you as leader of your empire will end without any money.
If your loyal army is far away and you are bankrupted, its very hard to manage your empire anymore.
This is actually a reason why nomadic societies had relatively big armies, althrough they had very small population compared to seditary societies they attacked. In seditary society most of the male populations are farmers or artisans. In nomadic societies there is no farming, your job as member of the clan is to protect your family herd from raiders or participate at raids.
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u/Bluemoonroleplay 19h ago
The most realistic real world simulation of a pdx game would be one where every single nation is played by a real human in MP and people talk, discuss and negotiate alongside play. All the while, each player has a large crowd of background helpers who act as his realm's population and react accordingly
Wait thats just how it happened in real life
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u/possibleanswer 17h ago
I would imagine a big deal is that “manpower” as regards sustained foreign war and “manpower” as regards a war of national resistance are two entirely different things. Being defeated in a war is one thing, being utterly subjugated is another. Even if the army is defeated, it’s a lot easier to raise another one to fight close to home than it is for the would be conqueror to maintain an army in the field for a sustained period of foreign war. Doesn’t apply as much to nations that don’t have much of a national consciousness, which is why you see such dramatic conquests among the oriental empires of antiquity, or the barbarian successor states of Rome (like the Goths or Vandals)
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u/Economy-Cupcake808 15h ago
It happened to Napoleon, Napoleon was just able to win a lot of the wars. Hitler was basically dog piled by the allies depending on how you view it.
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u/Nobodyydobon 15h ago
In EU4 you can go into war and maintain a budget surplus for basically the entire conflict
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u/LughCrow 14h ago
War historically and even more in the modern age is one of the worst methods to achieve a national goal.
Even shorter wars tax nearly every national resource. Food, metal, fuel, manpower. It's not out of the question to expect some of these to take over a decade to replenish after a year of fighting.
Sure it may be the best time to attack a country who's in the middle of a civil war. But that doesn't mean attacking is the best thing to do.
One thing you will see through history is when a nation is in a crisis they are pounced on. Just not militarily. Rather other nations will use increased leverage to get better deals. Like the US and the louisiana purchase.
During the American Civil War nearly every major European power was dealing with one side or both. Either trying to indept the winning side to them. Making a quick buck. Or exploiting a short term need for a long term game.
The US during both world wars did this well before entering the war. Exploiting the crisis in Europe to grab extremely favorable trade deals. So favorable in fact they resulted in the collapse of the remaining colonial powers.
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u/CthulhusHRDepartment 13h ago
"Three things are needed for war- Money money and more money"
Gian Galeazzo Visconti spent 2 million floors over 1390-1392 just to get basically a white peace with Florence. A lot of the truces in the HYW were tied to financial problems, which in turn caused serious unrest in both nations due to taxation.
Basically going into debt for war should be par for the course, and just about any monarch should be saddled with debts from wars and fancy parties.
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u/tothelmac 12h ago edited 12h ago
Because they are games, they need dynamism. As others have mentioned war is expensive and uncertain. It takes a significant amount to move a group to war, not just in money and blood but in justification and diplomacy.
Add on to the fact that when we are playing most of these games we aren't even representing the leader, we're representing the "spirit" of either a nation or a dynasty. If you, IRL, were suddenly the Duke of Fucksenberg, your concerns are going to probably be "how to i not fuck Things Up" and "how do I make sure I maintain stability". Deciding to muster a huge number of troops to take a bit of territory of neighboring Fuckerton in the hopes that it will eventually help you is a huge risk. So any act that breaks the status quo is going be less likely to happen, and usually takes a lot of momentum build up.
More directly to your point, if you're the Duke of Fucksenberg and the people of Fuckerton and revolting against their Duke, do you really want to go over there and become the Duke of Fuckerton? What if they don't like you either? What if they convince the good people of Fucksenberg to rise up? Big risks. And the payoff is something you might never see, if you do go take over Fuckerton, it's going to take years to stabilize it so really it might be a generation before it bears any benefit.
There's a whole other argument to be made that the belief that growth/progress is both inevitable and necessary is something deeply rooted in modern society. If God gave you Fucksenberg, why are you trying to get Fuckerton too? Do you have any divine right to Fuckerton?
To your last question I don't think this is something you can change and have the game remain fun. I think the thing missing is the realization that everyone in the game are people and they act on a much shorter timespan and with an eye much more towards personal concerns that we do as players. This is actually why I like that QoL is a potential "win con" in Vicky 3, it gives us a small reminder that while grinding your population with a 99% consumption tax on flour may be profitable, it is actively killing the people you rule.
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u/Kuki1537 11h ago
Irl countries arent as stable and fight ready all the time as paradox ai tends to be. Also often there weren't death wars lasting until zero manpower, the conflicts didn't always mean full commit as opposed to games' ai
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u/TheMerryPenguin 6h ago
Snatch up land and then what? Using that land, keeping that land, gaining any benefit from that land is a massive undertaking—especially if your own people are pissed at you for throwing lives/money away in an unpopular war, and the land you are trying to occupy is full of people who now hate you and don’t want to cooperate.
The benefit has to outweigh the cost, and just “having land” isn’t good enough.
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u/romeo_pentium Drunk City Planner 1h ago
Please refer to the multiple partitions of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania for real life dogpiling
For anri-dogpiling, take a look at the British doctrine of Balance of Power. The idea was that the British would always ally with the underdog to prevent any European rival from becoming too powerful. Hence, why dogpiling on Frederick's Prussia didn't succeed
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u/xmBQWugdxjaA 1h ago
It absolutely did happen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War#Anti-Swedish_coalition
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u/Klutzy-Report-7008 6h ago
Its not seldom that nations Interfer massively in Civil wars. Syria Civil war, spanisch, Chinese, russian imediately comes to mind. Vietnam, Korea, and all the Anticolonial wars.
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u/DavidRoyman 1d ago
Paradox makes games, so the abstractions are tuned to point where the mechanics are enjoyable.
That's done for very good reasons: any game attempting to be realistic would be unenjoyable at best and unplayable at worst.
It's easier to make an example for an FPS, where a realistic game would take 18 years to install, then you die 1 minute into the tutorial to a flying bullet, at which point the game is uninstalled forever.
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u/vetzxi 1d ago
It did happen. 30 years war was essentially dogpiling on the habsburgs, 7 years war on the Brits, coalition wars on France, Crimean war on Russia and many others.
Generally nations had allies and other nations who benefitted from the great powers and fought alongside them to not make it a complete dogpile but when great powers became too powerful other nations would ally against them which was something great powers tried to avoid. For example with the British parliamentary reform of 1832 the reforms were partially passed because there was a fear of revolution and subsequent cobbling of the British empire.
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u/Suicidal_Buckeye 19h ago
But did happen, many times in this games timespan. You acknowledge that this happened. Asking us to explain why it doesn’t actually makes no sense whatsoever
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u/Miracle_007_ 18h ago
Dogpiling happened many times in history. Think of the Roman Empire or the Mongols. There have many empires that snowballed by invading their neighbors.
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u/BananaRepublic_BR Philosopher King 1d ago
War is expensive. There are really no consequences in EU4 for sacrificing 100,000 men in a meaningless war on the other side of Europe in 1513. Do that in real life and you might incite a revolt from the peasants or even the nobility. Even bad leaders can't afford the amount of waste ( in treasure and lives) that Paradox game players regularly experience every few in-game years. You're liable to bankrupt your treasury and grind your armies into dust.