User Guide

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for at least one month to elapse before you
will be able to send a diplomat with your
declaration.
• You cannot declare war on a country if you
have a military access agreement allowing
your forces to enter that realm. You must
first revoke the access agreement and re-
move any forces from within its borders.
Once you have done so, you will be able
to declare war, although there will be the
mandatory one-month delay before you
will be able to send the second diplomat
with your declaration so your intended en-
emy is likely to anticipate your intentions.
• You cannot declare war while your nation
is ruled by a regency council.
National Stability Effects
Your own population generally prefers to be at
peace. If you disrupt that peace by declaring
war, you may experience an immediate drop of
stability in your realm. The extent of this drop
depends on several factors:
• If you have a
casus belli against the other
country, your public will be somewhat
sympathetic to your cause; however, if you
declare war without a casus belli, you will
immediately experience a -2 drop in stabil-
ity.
• Your public dislikes it when you declare
war against nations who have a similar na-
tional religion to your own. You will expe-
rience a -1 drop of stability if you declare
war against a country that has a state re-
ligion that is in the same religious group,
even if the religion is a different sub-type
of that group.
• Declaring war on a country with which
you have a good relationship will confuse
and upset your public. You will receive a -1
drop in stability if you declare war if you
have a good relationship, or a -2 penalty if
you have an excellent relationship.
• Declaring war on a nation with which you
have a royal marriage will anger your peo-
ple, resulting in a -1 drop in stability.
• Declaring war on a vassal will result in a -1
drop of stability since your public will not
be impressed that you are being aggressive
towards a nation that is already subservient
to your realm.
• If you conclude a war with a country by
either surrendering or forcing a surrender,
a truce will come into effect between your
realms for the next five years. Although
you may break this truce and declare war
prior to its expiry, this will anger your pub-
lic and result in a -2 drop on your stability.
When a war concludes in a "white peace",
there is no period of truce and you may de-
clare war at any time you like.
If your country is already highly unstable, your
public will simply refuse to go to war. You may
not declare war at all (the button will be greyed
out) if your current national stability is at -3.
You may declare war if you are at -2, but if the
resulting loss of stability due to the above fac-
tors is greater than -1, this will spark an imme-
diate revolt in at least one of your provinces. It
would be much safer to bide your time, invest
part of your budget in improving your stability,
and then declare war at a later date. Of course,
you will experience no loss of stability at all if
another country declares war on your nation,
since you are not the instigator.
War Exhaustion Effects
Not only may your population react negatively
upon hearing the news that you are at war, they
will also resent a war that lasts for any length of
time. For each month that you remain at war,
regardless of whether you were the instigator,
your provinces will experience a slight increase
in the population’s “war exhaustion”. This val-
ue is one of a variety of factors that affect the
chance of a province revolting, and will con-
tinue to increase as the war drags on. A lengthy
war could result in widespread internal revolt,
forcing you to divert a portion of your military
strength simply to deal with organized rebel
armies that rise against you in your provinces.
Once a peace has been negotiated, the public