This July 17, 2026 update brings the reworked War System V2: AI declarations now come with explicit casus belli and war goals, wars are pushed toward the negotiating table by war exhaustion and distress, peace settlements are enforced based on the outcome, and new mechanics arrive: capital fall crises, forced conversion wars, and cultural unification wars.
How to switch between V1 and V2:
Newly generated worlds use War System V2 by default.
Existing saves keep their original war system: old saves still load as V1 and show a notice on load. They are never switched automatically.
The switch is in Map Editor → Global Commands → AI Global Configuration:
War System V2 (This Save): switches the war system of the current save. Confirming will force-end all ongoing wars, and the choice is stored with this save.
War System V2 (New Games): sets the default war system for newly generated worlds. It persists across sessions and does not affect the current game or existing saves.
The legacy V1 war system remains fully available, and you can switch back at any time.
Casus belli and war goals:
AI declarations now require a casus belli and war goals: Territorial Conquest, Annexation, Subjugation (vassalization), Cultural Unification, and Forced Conversion.
Territorial Conquest adapts to the balance of power: evenly matched attackers wage opportunistic occupation wars and keep what they hold, while overwhelming attackers claim a connected stretch of border provinces that is ceded in the settlement even if never occupied.
Claimed provinces are picked along the shared border first, then expand inland when more are needed; without a land border, claims start from the nearest landable coast.
With an overwhelming advantage (about 3x strength) over a small state, the AI prioritizes an outright annexation war, significantly reducing cases where one conquest is split across several wars.
Added the Unifier character trait: rulers with this trait prioritize cultural unification wars against same-culture neighbors, claiming all cedeable same-culture provinces (land-adjacent or reachable by sea, at least 2) at once. The trait emerges through succession and bloodlines.
Added forced conversion wars for theocracies: a theocracy can declare war on a neighbor of a different faith; on victory the losing state, its ruling family, and its ruler adopt the victor's state religion, while provinces and people still convert through natural spread.
Wars can carry a war reparations clause: the victor takes whichever is greater, half of the loser's treasury or six months of positive income, potentially leaving the loser in debt.
Player-declared wars default to an annexation goal; participants still negotiate peace on their own according to auto-diplomacy settings, and wars can be ended manually at any time.
War score and war exhaustion:
Monthly war score is composed of occupation (50%), war goal progress (30%), and casualty exchange (20%). Once a war has lasted 36 months, reaching ±50 prompts the leading side to lock in its gains and the losing side to cut its losses; the forced-settlement threshold falls from 75 to 40 as exhaustion rises, so the more exhausted the war becomes, the easier it is to force a settlement.
War exhaustion is composed of four factors—casualties, relative strength, territorial gains and losses, and economic pressure—and is no longer primarily driven by time, while retaining a 60-to-120-month time fallback that gradually fills it. The longer the war and the heavier the losses, the more willing each side is to negotiate.
Added distress capitulation: when a war enters settlement, a side that has been clearly ground down and is in much greater distress than its opponent is judged to have surrendered, reducing half-dead stalemates that end in white peace.
Decisive wars (annexation, subjugation, conversion) build exhaustion more slowly; having your capital occupied adds heavy exhaustion.
Peace settlements:
Normally settled wars end with an enforced settlement based on the outcome: ceded provinces, annexation, vassalization, war reparations, or forced conversion.
A crushing victor annexes what is left of a broken enemy outright instead of leaving a one-city rump to fight again; a side that barely wins on time never triggers annexation.
Truce length grows with each war between the same two states (3 / 6 / 9 / 12 years), so old rivals no longer redeclare endlessly.
Once a war is at least 12 months old, it can settle as soon as its war goals are achieved, preventing same-month lightning settlements.
Net gains are computed against a snapshot of borders taken at the start of the war. History events record the casus belli, primary goal, victor, cessions or annexation, primary belligerents' casualties, and duration.
Capital fall crisis:
When a state's original capital is captured and held by the enemy for a full month, a capital fall crisis is triggered; retaking the capital in time cancels it.
Crisis severity depends on territorial losses, casualties, relative strength, economy, national fortune, and family division; centralized governments such as empires and kingdoms are more fragile, while federations and republics resist better.
Losing the capital immediately forces relocation. After a full month, crisis severity determines whether the state further fractures into civil war or, if already dying under an annexation war, suffers decapitation annexation.
Civil wars and rebellions:
Civil wars moved into War System V2 and now come in four types: succession, overthrow, reform, and independence. Victorious rebels inherit the government's legitimacy or found an independent state.
Civil wars, rebellions, and vassal revolts are fights to the finish: they end only when one side is crushed or its goal is achieved.
Province rebellions reworked: rebels now spawn their initial armies once at the outbreak (scaled by their initial corruption value) instead of endless monthly spawns. Rebels grind against their mother state in a soft phase; once they grow large enough in provinces, armies, or time, the conflict escalates into a formal suppression-annexation war down the regular war pipeline, capital crises included. Family rebellions moved to the V2 pipeline as well.
Vassal revolt pacing reworked: vassals have a 12-year obedience period. After it expires, revolt odds are evaluated from both sides’ strength, national fortune, and the vassal’s age—the longer it survives, the more restless it becomes. The odds rise further if the overlord collapses during a war, and a vassal approaching the overlord’s strength (about 85%) will always revolt.
The AI evaluates vassal targets against the combined strength of vassal plus overlord, and no longer declares wars it cannot win against the whole bloc.
Presentation and UI:
Declaring war plays an arrow-hits-target marker animation on the claimed provinces, and the state panel shows the same claim markers; annexation wars skip the full-map markers.
Ceded and annexed provinces raise flag animations tinted in the new owner's color.
Declarations and settlements generate richer history events: casus belli, war goals, participant counts, victor, cessions, casualties, and duration. Manual ceasefires and war-system switching are force cleanup: they execute no settlement and create no settlement history event.
The state panel now shows V2 war details: your side, per-goal progress, your casualties, war duration, and all participants on both sides.
Added an Annex button to the state panel for directly annexing a state.
Other additions and fixes:
Added District Defense bulk settings to the district panel: set current city defense, max city defense, home battle efficiency, and lock state for every province in a district at once.
Manual saving is no longer allowed in History Review mode, preventing accidental overwrites.
Fixed army icons covering state name labels.
Follow-up plan:
War System V2 will continue to receive balance and mechanical polish based on your feedback. The economic system rework still has many issues and cannot be released in the short term. We may first release a linked family-office-culture system that assigns local officials, military commanders, and administrators based on culture and government type. Once the game has more sources of volatility, we will resume work on the economic system rework.