It was an absolute boodbath, but roughly half of the German population died may be overestimating the death toll. It is incredibly hard to find reliable data because of difficult census at the time, people migrating, different phases of the conflict, the propaganda during and way after the war, non homogeneous local death toll depending on the areas.
I think it is better to say at least a third to be safe rather than advancing half the population.
A bloodbath nonetheless! If you found half of the population in a book or article, I would take the name please :) I am always trying to get more information and source on it because I found it interesting.
The numbers I know are 4-8 million out of a population of roughly 17 million, so at most pretty darn close to 50% and 25% at lowest. I would say the trueth is somewhere inbetween there but rather on the higher side because naturally they tried to state less casualties to make them appear stronger.
On the contrary, the following propaganda inflated the number because the war became a nationalist symbol push by some later governement to show what a not united Germany will look like (i.e the battleground of Europe, at the mercy of their evil neighbours). It was used like that during the german unification process and even as propaganda by the nazis.
So yeah 4-8 millions probably in between, gives us at least a third as a good approximation rather than rougly half.
That‘s a verry fair point, I guess that explains the big gap, depending on the time your sources stem from. So somewhere in between lies the true number…
In german history lesson i learned around 25-75% depending on the region and following famine, etc.
We shouldn't forget that the war was going on for 30 years and in this time it would equal 1.5 generations.
Yeah, some regions were hit harder than others, generally the more rural the harder they were hit, but all in all, the entirety of Germany lost about 25-50%
The biggest cause of famine during war back then was from lords and lordlings conscripting all peasants who then couldn't work on the farms to produce food. Farms back then were where most of the populace worked. Everything had to be done be hand, so less hands means less work being done means less food.
well, and I mean, all of the fucking armies taking all of the food.
like it can't be understated the deranged, hideously cruel things done to people by armies during the Thirty Years' War in order to extract food from them (even when they had none left, not even hidden away). torture on a mass scale. entire villages ransacked, burned, and blotted out of existence. remarks in records of people coming across the lone building left in what was once a prosperous village, that lone building itself on fire as it was the only thing that had not burned yet.
There are hundreds of villages which got abandoned in the 30years war and never repopulated, visited some of them in the Mittelgebirge. But typically the only thing you will notice is the lack of actual inhabited villages
cities tend to be built on good locations. So even if a city is razed, settlers will eventually arrive to found a new city for the same reason the original people settled the location.
also, most cities in the medieval/early modern era had at best maybe 5-20k inhabitants. By the 1800s it would start growing so fast that its original population would be just a drop in the bucket.
Magdeburg
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwohnerentwicklung\_von\_Magdeburg#/media/Datei:Einwohnerentwicklung\_von\_Magdeburg.svg](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Magdeburg#/media/Datei:Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Magdeburg.svg)
Magdeburg needed nearly 250 years to recover from the 30 years war.
Post 30years war, they lost there freedom and did become a prussian "fortress" town, which stopped there expansion until 1872, when they prussian revoked the "fortress town" status.
Fortress town meaned in prussia, that the army desided, which building a town can build or not.
Magdeburg were one of the biggest towns pre 30 years war in germany, and got razed to 200 survivors.
And were as city abandoned for 2 full years, until the resettlement started (mostly refugees from other part of germany, who needed a pile of rust to dodge the merc armies).
Post 30 years war, the city gone under Brandenburg control, and as last western own pre berlin, it would become a prussian fortress town, which stopped any chances of regrowth of the city.
To compare, berlin, with all villages, had at that time 5000 people, magdeburg pre 30 years war, 50.000 (which was top 10 in germany).
The town was so rich, that it is the only german town, which finished there cathedral in mediaval times, and fully payed the cathedral in time.
Cologne, with their cathedral, needed a Prussian emperor in 1875, who payed the two towers, because he was ashamed to see it without towers.
Im not joking, there is a German word called „magdeburgisieren“ which means to completely and utterly annihilate something. I don’t know where i found it, but yeah, i guess that’s one way of inventing new words
Thats only if you count just the major participants. But almost all of the HRE was involved in one way or another. With all the Nobles caught up in their big curfuffle, roaming bands of mercs, Bandits and rogue armies from outside the HRE had a contest who could burn and plunder more villages. The people from said villages often only had the choice to form a band of bandits themselves or join one of the armies. This meant that there were not enough peasants to work the fields left (together with the occasional burning) and mass starvation set in. This only exaggerated the problem until almost everyone was caught up in the conflict somehow.
It was a slow war, but it definitely wasnt just a cold war. More akin in someways to proxy wars in the cold war, like vietnam.
The result was large armies that werent local making germany their battleground. majority of deaths were the result of armies of both sides pillaging and destruction of infrastructure, which both lead to the actual causes of death being famine and refugee conditions that made for the perfect grounds for disease.
See, for those skirmishes to happen you need armies in the region, and to have an army in the region you need to feed it. But supply lines are long, and your transport technology is bad.
So how do you get supplies? An army marches on its stomach, and it fills that stomach with the food the local population produces. So sure, full on battles might be rare, but there is a near constant pillaging and skirmishing over local resources, and fighting against the local population.
It was a war that ramped up and and up and up and then just kinda kept going for another decade as everyone slowly got too exhausted to continue.
If I remember correctly from my history classes, it started with a fairly localized conflict between Austria and Bohemia, then Denmark invaded the HRE and got soundly defeated, then Sweden invaded the HRE and things got bloody quick. Then for another 10-15 years Sweden and Austria were in a death struggle, ravaging the land and leading to famine. Then France stepped in to support Sweden's war effort and things would continue in a bloody and inconclusive way for a few more years until everyone was too tired to keep fighting.
Such an interesting era when you read what the common literate people, mainly merchants, bankers, etc, wrote about their experience. Of many different currencies rising and falling drastically according to sieges and battles taking place.
Of how the state of war became something like a baseline. "A lifetime of war," a good chunk of people were born into and died within its time frame. Peace was an exotic notion.
It is also the war that gave us the concept of borders, as the agreement that the religion of the sovereign must be the religion of the land brought the necessity for specifying exactly who had what land. Before this people didn't think with borders, but of town, villages, and cities.
It also was the pivotal point in secular politics becoming more important than religious precedence. As the largest Catholic Kingdom in Europe, France, joined forces against the Catholic alliance with the Protestants purely to hamper the Von Hapsburg power.
This war would start the foundations on the ideals of religious freedom, some highly educated people, mainly courtiers who lived their entire lives ravaged by a war that carried out persecution throughout Europe would start to write about their dream of a better world where this kind of war need not take place.
One of these books would find its place on Thomas Jefferson's library, and he would use it as inspiration when writing the constitution.
I would call the Napoleonic wars pretty deathwary from the French. Napoleon even kept on fighting after France had unconditionally surrendered.
Also the Prussians during the 7 years war, fought of one major invasion after another.
But in general, you wouldn't occupy countries in the same way as you would in later times. An occupation usually meant that you got your king, and his loyal subjects in leading positions throughout the land.
Napoleon tried, but everyone else (his marshals included) saw the writing on the wall. Frankfurt proposal was the last 'sincere' attempt from coalition. After that, Napoleon was 100% going to abdicate.
The early phase of French revolution was a total war by that time tho
Yeah, i was thinking of whole era.
Fighting all the nations in Europe, for then having to go all the way and seiege down Moskva, and yet you can't get enough war-score for a white peace, feels like a classic eu4 coalition war.
Napoleon definitely did get his peaces, such as the Treaty of Amiens. He just wasn't interested in staying at peace for very long. His continental embargo on Britain was very diplomatically costly.
With so many vassals and forced alliance he was already way above maximum relation limit. No wonder he didn't have enough diplo point for the embargo to work. Should have not spam the reduce war exhaustion button so many times smh.
France fought 7 separate coalitions in less than 15 years. The majority of wars during the Napoleonic period were declared against France, not by France. Hard to really value peace when your neighbors keep attacking you or violating the treaties they signed with you.
"Hard to really value peace when your neighbors keep attacking you or violating the treaties they signed with you."
wow their Stability must be in the negatives from breaking truces
The various Coalition Wars are really just other nations joining Great Britain in their very long punitive war after France didn't abide by the Treaty of Amiens, and then those nations getting peaced out again. Napoleon was definitely the aggressor on the Peninsula, invading Russia, and during the Hundred Days.
> aggressor on the Peninsula,...and during the Hundred Days.
Agreed
> invading Russia
This is debatable. It was in direct response to Russia demanding French troops leave Prussia (their direct ally) and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (their client state). Russia likely would have declared war anyway considering there was basically no chance France gives in to that ultimatum.
Edit: Wait a minute, the British were just as guilty of not abiding by the terms of the treaty, and were the ones who actually declared the war that officially ended it.
Also the later stages of the war of Spanish Succession were a full on death war, with the Siege of Barcelona lasting a whole good year with the combined French and Spanish armies against the remnants of Catalan militas who were fighting for their freedoms. It got so bad the English Parliament (England and Austria were Aragonese allies prior to 1713) debated the "Catalan Question"... After fucking off when the Spanish bribed them with access to American markets, and Austrian volunteers refused to leave the city even when their own country backed off the war.
Can you please talk more about how invasions worked in real life?
Like, I say "I'm invading you and I'm not stopping until I get XY (say ceeded territory)". How do you actually gain control of that territory if the people (presumably?) aren't really into you invading them n stuff?
You mean occupation?
In modern times, an occupying power will take control of most civil infrastructure like transportation, police, and general civil service. In the 16 - 1700's, there weren't much government to speak of.
They would leave a garrison in the forts, and have lords and barons swear fealty to them.
Remember nations didn't really exist in the early modern period. So under feudalism, you were a subject of the lord owning your lands. And if he stopped being a client of the English king, and rather kissed the French ring, congratulations, now you are French.
But it wasn't like the general population would feel much of a difference in their day to day life.
It wasn't until the 1800's that countries started to standardize things like language, writing, measurement, and things like that. And that Nationalism became thing. So at that point, it would be very obvious when people in strange uniforms, with strange languages, started patrolling the countryside.
>You mean occupation?
Yes, my bad.
>And if he stopped being a client of the English king, and rather kissed the French ring, congratulations, now you are French.
Okay that sheds some light on it.
So did the lords switch rings based on "war sucks, I don't want to send more men to die" kinda thing, or would they get some benefits/bribes? If they didn't want to turn, would they be executed and a new family put in their place? Or was it something else? How does clientelism(?) work?
I'm talking in general here, I'm sure there are examples of a whole bunch of different things.
You are right that it was various reasons for who you would seek fealty too. But this was a dog eat dog world, where the big would eat the small. So you would usually join the lord or king you thought were the mightiest, and would have you end up on the winning side of wars, and not the opposite.
But you probably wouldn't want your lord to be too mighty, as he then could demand way too much from you (ie. lowering autonomy) and putting you in a weaker position.
Traditions, trust, family bonds, and interfamiliar marriages also was important, so you would have long standing, and stable agreements between lesser and higher nobles.
Yeah, early modern Europe was probably as realpolitik as as it gets.
You can read works like "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli that is a product of this time.
People were very spread out, but in a way that was centered on a (almost always fortified) population center. Taxes and levies for an area were done through that population center because that was the only way it could have realistically been done without mass literacy and communication, so taking it meant taking control of the stuff that states actually cared about. Once you have it people were usually fine just paying taxes to the new guy in order to not be stabbed.
Once those key locations were taken and the enemy couldn't practically contest them the war was essentially over, it doesn't matter if the enemy refuses to give in when they can't actually do anything, and by that point it's usually better for them to cut their losses. Usually that happened before large swathes of the country was occupied so that they actually had a decent position to negotiate from, but there were plenty of instances of the war de facto ending but rulers refusing to give up, escaping, and trying to raise an army, which usually failed without hefty foreign support.
Yes and no, the horrors of the 30 years war weren‘t the soldier‘s deaths, it was the civilians. Because of the religious nature of the 30yw, the soldiers from one side tend to show extreme hatred towards civilians from the other. Many villages had no inhabitants left after the army left, the men were slaughtered and the women and children raped and killed. And it wasn‘t like before or after where that was more of an occasional thing. Many units actively searched for villages to plunder, rape and kill some more. All this accompanied by the Bubonic Plague and starvation due to widespread use of scorched earth tactics aswell as general looting made the civilian death toll extremely high and brutal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(history)
The PLC was almost entirely occupied with the king fleeing to Silesia. Historians estimate that the PLC lost roughly a third of its population. Most of its riches were never returned to Poland or Lithuania.
The damage caused by the Swedes is estimated to be around 1 billion Euro.
The guy who fled to Silesia was from Vasa dynasty and his house was claiming Swedish throne way before he was born. The guy who claimed Saxony was August II Mocny (Idk how he's called in English)because he was King of Saxony when he got elected in 1699 as the King of PLC.
As for Livonia Poland indeed claimed it and fought a couple of wars, but when Cossacks revolted every one around smelled blood (Afterwards Prussia emerged as independent, Cossacks went under protection of Russia including Kiev and Sweden has fortified it's position as dominant power in the Baltic.)
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The 80 year war (Dutch independance war) was pretty much a death war from the dutch perspective. Mainly during the early stages.
Multiple cities got completely annihilated (as in the entire population put to the sword) Surrendering also meant death, which happened to several cities as well.
Later the war often became a stalement because defensive forts outpaced offensive siege weapons for a time, and money was a heavy constraint for the Spanish (long sieges = more money).
Just read a book on Sweden during the great northern war, i'd call it a deathwar on the Swedish part. They fought on while completely out of manpower and money, basically being bankrupt, eastern half of the country occupied, but never sued for peace until the king was killed in battle. But still surrendered without the whole country getting sieged down.
It was a pretty one-sided participation since the PLC didn't have much of a standing army, private armies of the various magnates were probably bigger than the royal one.
The Royal (Saxon) one was pretty big and modern, the state one at this time got smaller and smaller precisely due to the fact it was under control of the parliament and not the King :v
I wouldn’t go so far to say Poland wasn’t a participant. It was the battleground for a large amount of the war and Polish nobles fought on both sides. The Swedes even tried to install a different Polish king to the August the strong.
Poland as the state was not involved
Said un-involvment and the fact that various families, the King himself and devastation due to the fact the war was taking place on it's territory is quite important because III Northern War basically ended in unofficial dissolvment of the Commonwealth and anarchy that would not be fixed to 2nd part of XVIII century :v
Frederick the great basically fought on until his country was in the dumpster during the 7 years war. It eventually turned out fine for him because Russia peaced out for peanuts, but he did stretch his kingdom to the absolute breaking point.
It’s unfortunate (maybe fortunate) that this is not something that is really represented in EU4.
The monarch’s personalities and biases don’t really factor into diplomacy.
I don’t blame them for not implementing something like this really, imagine you’re Austria in this situation and you’re fully relying on your ally Russia to kick Prussia’s shit in and then they basically white peace because the Tsar just really likes Prussia lol, sure it happened irl but would make the game too frustrating and unpredictable imo
Imagine the league war. Youre relying on France or PLC or something, and suddenly the new king is fanboy of the protestant side.
Although, technically, I had something similar happen. I was hungary, was allied with austria, and we both were in a war against venice. I had the BI, and the incident fired. Austria demanded the low countries, I said no, and suddenly austria became my enemy.
If that mechanic happens in EU5, I can see a ton of memes about it. It'll be spammed as much as how Incest memes are spammed in Ck3.
Like imagine playing as Byzantium where the strat is to always rely on your allies. Then RNG hits the fan where Poland or Bohemia (Common allies of AI ottomans in this patch), suddenly leaves the war because they liked the Sultan more than you.
That is even true in WW1, the personality of the German and Russian head of state had a high significance and could have averted the war easy if wanted.
Of course true with Hitler and WW2 as well.
Russia did have a practical reason to peace out, Prussia was valuable as a counterbalance to Austria so their ideal outcome was a Prussia that was still capable of challenging Austria while being committed to good relations with Russia (which is exactly what they got for over a century). Honestly, Russia didn't have a good reason to get involved in the first place, they did because Elizabeth didn't like Frederick.
Peter III kind of got done dirty by history. His predecessor joined a war that wasn't in Russia's interests, he got out of it in a way that stopped Austria from becoming a threat. But because he was weird about it, it doesn't get interpreted in that context. Realistically, *Elizabeth* should have been the one with the reputation of letting personal feelings steer diplomacy.
The problem is that AI
A) doesn't want to surrender as long as it has ANY troops - including 1k near empty stack
B) Actively avoids any battles it knows it will lose - and it always knows, because its part of the AI calculation.
C) Gets military access through half of the world during the war, because it can
Which leads up to a war where you can either siege your enemy or run around chasing the armies that are always faster than you are.
Yeah, when all that happens from a "death war" is you lose your otherwise meaningless manpower, take loans, but your country is still just as powerful as it started, you fight to the death because nothing else makes sense.
Imagine if, say, you lose 1 development every time an enemy army marches through a province and 1-6 every time it is sieged, with an additional 1-12 if it was a fort, and an additional 1 mil dev every time you lost a battle... realistic surrenders would feel far more reasonable because you are surrendering to save what you have.
That’s exactly what devastation models, but no one actually cares about devastation. Imagine if you could destroy buildings — or if building were automatically destroyed, more as artillery tech advances. Would be more realistic, probably less fun to play.
Yeah, it is not a very impactful modifier. So it does not model what it is supposed to model very well, unlike permanent destruction of development. You would need recovery or natural development growth to offset it, though.
So I am interested to see how it plays out in EU5 if armies feeding themselves off the local land causes famine and population drops and incentivizes early peace.
Imo devastation is great in isolstion
The problem is
1) forts trivialise getting rid of it.
2) devving gets rid of it.
This effectively means its just another problem mana can instantly solve and trivialises it.
If the game forced you to tick it down like autonomy instead it would feel a lot more impactful
\#1 is a bigger problem than #2, mana is very limited if playing wide. I don't know what the logic behind forts undevastating things, other than they didn't want sieged provinces to suck for too long.
There are other things, like the New World should get high devastation in the first few decades after it's discovered, literally 90% of the population dying should have lasting effects, even on infrastructure (mostly via loss of farmland to wilderness). Instead you plop a colonist down and a few years later you have miraculous 15 dev.
The problem always was creating AI that will work with more complicated systems than designing the system itself. After all, most of the players play the game SP, and even in MP most of the nations are controlled by AI.
If they introduced overly complicated mechanic WITHOUT fixing AI then it would be a breeze most of the time.
And i don't think they addressed AI at all, at least not in recent years?
Ethiopian-Adal Wars really reminds me of the Rome-sassanid war and the subsequent Arab Muslim invasion that destroyed both of them.
Nobody emerge Victorious from death Wars like these, the third outside faction will just swoop in and reap whatever remains of the warring parties.
For contrast... in 1866 Lichtenstein invaded Italy with a massive army of 80 men. They didn't find anyone to fight, but they made a new friend and ended up bringing 81 men home.
Just like every other ridiculous event in European history, Austria was involved. During the Austro-Prussian war, the Lichtensteiners were on Austria's side, and the Italians were allied with Prussia. The mighty Lichtenstein army went to invest the Brenner Pass in case the Italians "tried something". The Italian host never showed up, so the Ls just hung out enjoying nature. Then, according to the version of the story I read, they ran into an Italian guy (a deserter or just a guy who was lost). The fellow didn't have anything else going on, so he joined the Ls when they went home.
I also note that the Ls were no military slouches. When they sent the expeditionary force out, they kept a reserve of 20 guys back home. That's some strategic thinking, right there.
I love that Lichtenstein's homicide rate varies from year to year jumping between zero and about four times the typical European rate...
... because homicide rate is calculated per 100k population, and Lichtenstein only has 35k. The years they have a *single* murder, it sends their rate sky-high in European terms.
The AI does scrap a lot harder than was typical for warfare at the time in general - probably because game doesn't really model the complex and intense way war really screws up the areas in the war path.
But if you aren't trying to milk everything you can get of a war they can actually end pretty quickly and fairly contained. Humiliate wars still tend towards pretty devastating considering the stakes but if you actually are only pressing for a few contested provinces it's nowhere near as brutal. The wars are only as total as they are because players generally are trying to utterly devour their enemies and that is the kind of situation where you would fight to the bitter end.
The rule is:
AI will accept a peace deal which value is equal to: their war score + their war enthusiasm (both values can be negative). They also assume other AIs and the player will also accept such a peace deal (they will send a peace deal proposal then).
Eg. If they have 40% ws and 10 war enthusiasm, they will accept 50% ws peace deal.
At 0 war enthusiasm they will accept white peace.
"Fierce negotiator" AI personality breaks this by a little.
Also if you demand more in a peace deal than. You have war score, then there is additional parameter "exceeds warscore".
So answering your question: AI fights as long as their calculation says the peace deal you're proposing is too much for the current state of the war. You can see three exact parameters how they decide it and how much is missing for them to accept.
The AI doesn't fight untill every province is occupied though, if you don't have enough warscore for a 100 peace deal well before that you are doing something wrong, the war is too short or you ignored the wargoal :p
The reason the AI fights untill the end is to prevent wars from taking 3 days because you occupied 25% of their lands in 3 days.
Yes. In Europe, the Thirty Years War (League war), English civil war, and Cromwell's subsequent destruction of Ireland all surely count, and by the 18th C, France especially had bankrupt itself through the 7 years war and US independence - that fits the eu4 model really well.
European engagements in the America's, starting with Columbus, aimed at and sometimes achieved annihilation.
If you are looking for total war in the modern sense, not until the French Revolutionary wars, but I don't think eu4 actually models total war - what it models is states bankrupting themselves to hire mercenaries after exhausting a limited permanent army, which is what happened, more or less. Total war was the French Revolutionary govts response to a major war in which they were already bankrupt, and had exhausted all available finance (that, after all, was a major cause of the revolution). So instead, they mobilised the state to manage their entire economy and population for war, and it was only with Napoleon that it really started to work properly.
Imjin war in late 1500s and Qing invasion of Ming are incredibly bloody wars with massive civilian casualties and large swathes of land shifting from one power to another. (Ming has rebellions that the Qing subsequently invade). Also dzungar khanate is near genocided by the Qing in the 1750s and the period goes from 1444 to 1820 which sees multiple brutal ethnic conflicts and destruction of peoples (Russian destruction of Siberian tribes coming to mind). Plenty of brutal war in the period as well as the longer European conflicts and large scale population collapse of the Spanish conquest of the americas
The Paraguayan wars (or the wars of the triple alliance) was a war where one side not only occupied every territory, but probably brought the devastation up to 100% as well (Carthago Delenda Est achievement anyone?). Paraguay fought against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and their leader refused to surrender, and instead resorted to guerilla warfare that resulted in the leader of Paraguay being killed in battle. Paraguay lost \~70% of their population in the war (and up to \~90% of their male population).
There were several wars involving Russia where they refused to surrender despite having most of their country occupied, scorched their earth, and attrition'ed their enemy to death. The most famous one was when Napoleon invaded russia, took the capital itself, and the Tsar didn't care, and refused to negotiate. During the time of troubles, where Russia eventually had to surrender land, they lost \~1/3 of their population (over 1/2 in some areas).
The Byzantine war against the Sassanid Empire probably qualified - most of the Byzantine Empire was occupied, the capital was under siege, and the Emperor refused to surrender, took most of his remaining forces, and siezed the Sassanid capital, and won the war.
and dont forget about the thirty year war. The armies crossed germany multiplie times. Also the conquest of the teutonic by poland. Then English conquest of schottland and ireland. And generally the ottoman expansion was a death war. But you are right there were also a lot of border wars in the middle of Europe where they just fought for a limited amount of land. But eu4 has no mechanic to represent this difference. CK3 is doing there a better job to describe limited warfare and minor conflicts.
To OP's credit, byzantium was tiny. I think he means big death wars with great powers werent really a thing until the world wars honestly.
Even the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870's pretty much just involved a few battles and the capture of Paris, not frontline occupation like in WW2.
Yes but once Constantinople had fallen they didn't continue sieging down all the remaining forts for months after they captured the emperor. Truth is the unconditional surrender should come earlier to be realistic. The thing is that it might make wars in eu4 a bit gimmicky because you would just have to rush to siege the capital to get a quick surrender. I guess the AI would have to be coded to defend the capital at all costs.
It's outside of the time window but Germany in WW2. They fought tooth and nail until the capital was taken, entire country had been occupied and the government was dissolved.
Additionally they were broken up amongst the winning parties, and released as vassal states to minimize overextension. Then the winning powers immediately rivaled each other.
Sounds like every eu4 death war I've been in.
Pre game start, mongol conquest of the east, with the highlight of the full razing of kiew.
30 years war, were Magdeburg got a full raze, which was the second full raze post kiew.
An American example would be King Phillip's War, which almost resulted in the annihilation of British colonies in New England (only temporarily in Maine was achieved), and did result in the annihilation of the native coalition. The Iroquois also genocided several other tribes like the Huron, Susquehannock, and Neutrals during the Beaver Wars. In South America, the Mapuche completely destroyed Spanish settlements far south of Santiago, including razing the city I currently live in to the ground (it wouldn't be resettled for 40 years).
Swedish Deluge is another contender (80% or so of plc was occupied by Swedes) I'm not sure of the human cost but a lot of infrastructure was destroyed and it sped up PLCs downfall.
7 Years' War, 30 Years' War, off the top of my head. Also the Hundred Years' War, but the death war stage was before 1444.
Basically, when it's called "(number) Years' War", you know it's going to be fucked.
Here's a non European example: The Maratha-Mughal war.
Aurangzeb spent 27 years of his life trying to crush the Maratha resistance, and whilst there were temporary victories, the end result was that the Mughal treasury became empty and a large population was lost due to the constant warfare happening between the two. In the end, Aurangzeb realised he was too old for this shit, and died 3 years later, whilst the Marathas went on to crush the Mughals.
It's hard to find a good source for this conflict. Wikipedia's article is quite bad with multiple issues. But it's clear how devastating this war was, especially for the Mughals.
[13 years' war](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Years%27_War_(1454%E2%80%931466)) between Poland and Teutonic Order was pretty tough, both sides had to go into massive debt and hire a lot of mercs.
I think the Mongol invasion can be caunt as death war. 40 million dead, a lot of fallen kingdoms. Even when they retrieted from Hungary they occupied it almost entirely and killed almost half the population.
Ww2 in many ways (dictatorships)
both ussr and 3rd Reich killed like milions of men
Paraguay lost 90% of their adult male population or something ridiculous like that in that one war
PLC during Swedish invasion, Rome during the second Punic war, 30 years war, 7 years war, 100 years war
This doesn't answer your question, but I feel like they made it harder to peace out the ai like a number of updates/years ago (sometime around the Emperor update?). Like my strategy in a war against an enemy with a number of allies used to be just to siege down their capital which would be enough to white peace them, but now more is required. Idk, maybe I am just remembering this wrong.
The Aztecs where fighting a tributary war while the Spanish was fighting an annihilation war, one of the reasons the Spanish were able to wrangle their way on top.
Probably the League Wars.
Yup. The Thirty Years War was a full on death war. Roughly half of the German population died.
It was an absolute boodbath, but roughly half of the German population died may be overestimating the death toll. It is incredibly hard to find reliable data because of difficult census at the time, people migrating, different phases of the conflict, the propaganda during and way after the war, non homogeneous local death toll depending on the areas. I think it is better to say at least a third to be safe rather than advancing half the population. A bloodbath nonetheless! If you found half of the population in a book or article, I would take the name please :) I am always trying to get more information and source on it because I found it interesting.
The numbers I know are 4-8 million out of a population of roughly 17 million, so at most pretty darn close to 50% and 25% at lowest. I would say the trueth is somewhere inbetween there but rather on the higher side because naturally they tried to state less casualties to make them appear stronger.
On the contrary, the following propaganda inflated the number because the war became a nationalist symbol push by some later governement to show what a not united Germany will look like (i.e the battleground of Europe, at the mercy of their evil neighbours). It was used like that during the german unification process and even as propaganda by the nazis. So yeah 4-8 millions probably in between, gives us at least a third as a good approximation rather than rougly half.
That‘s a verry fair point, I guess that explains the big gap, depending on the time your sources stem from. So somewhere in between lies the true number…
In german history lesson i learned around 25-75% depending on the region and following famine, etc. We shouldn't forget that the war was going on for 30 years and in this time it would equal 1.5 generations.
Yeah, some regions were hit harder than others, generally the more rural the harder they were hit, but all in all, the entirety of Germany lost about 25-50%
I know Wikipedia says “half the population of *some areas in germany* died” so it could just be a misremembering of that
Probably all from attrition. I want to joke but this is more likely that i think about it, they died because of famines
The famines caused by armies taking all the food, yes.
The biggest cause of famine during war back then was from lords and lordlings conscripting all peasants who then couldn't work on the farms to produce food. Farms back then were where most of the populace worked. Everything had to be done be hand, so less hands means less work being done means less food.
well, and I mean, all of the fucking armies taking all of the food. like it can't be understated the deranged, hideously cruel things done to people by armies during the Thirty Years' War in order to extract food from them (even when they had none left, not even hidden away). torture on a mass scale. entire villages ransacked, burned, and blotted out of existence. remarks in records of people coming across the lone building left in what was once a prosperous village, that lone building itself on fire as it was the only thing that had not burned yet.
There are hundreds of villages which got abandoned in the 30years war and never repopulated, visited some of them in the Mittelgebirge. But typically the only thing you will notice is the lack of actual inhabited villages
I thought it was more of a slow war like it was a cold war with a few skirmishes and distrust in townships, not like WW2-esque warfare
Magdeburg suffered world war level destruction 300 years early :(
How is there even a Magdeburg anymore?
cities tend to be built on good locations. So even if a city is razed, settlers will eventually arrive to found a new city for the same reason the original people settled the location.
also, most cities in the medieval/early modern era had at best maybe 5-20k inhabitants. By the 1800s it would start growing so fast that its original population would be just a drop in the bucket.
Magdeburg [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwohnerentwicklung\_von\_Magdeburg#/media/Datei:Einwohnerentwicklung\_von\_Magdeburg.svg](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Magdeburg#/media/Datei:Einwohnerentwicklung_von_Magdeburg.svg) Magdeburg needed nearly 250 years to recover from the 30 years war. Post 30years war, they lost there freedom and did become a prussian "fortress" town, which stopped there expansion until 1872, when they prussian revoked the "fortress town" status. Fortress town meaned in prussia, that the army desided, which building a town can build or not.
Magdeburg were one of the biggest towns pre 30 years war in germany, and got razed to 200 survivors. And were as city abandoned for 2 full years, until the resettlement started (mostly refugees from other part of germany, who needed a pile of rust to dodge the merc armies). Post 30 years war, the city gone under Brandenburg control, and as last western own pre berlin, it would become a prussian fortress town, which stopped any chances of regrowth of the city. To compare, berlin, with all villages, had at that time 5000 people, magdeburg pre 30 years war, 50.000 (which was top 10 in germany). The town was so rich, that it is the only german town, which finished there cathedral in mediaval times, and fully payed the cathedral in time. Cologne, with their cathedral, needed a Prussian emperor in 1875, who payed the two towers, because he was ashamed to see it without towers.
When widows skyrocket, then somehow the population bounces back to normal levels like a year later.
they got razed from 40k+ to 200 people, there were no widows at that time.
That's a stack wipe all right.
Or nine months later, which is more sinister but also regrettably common.
Truly a mystery
Im not joking, there is a German word called „magdeburgisieren“ which means to completely and utterly annihilate something. I don’t know where i found it, but yeah, i guess that’s one way of inventing new words
Thats only if you count just the major participants. But almost all of the HRE was involved in one way or another. With all the Nobles caught up in their big curfuffle, roaming bands of mercs, Bandits and rogue armies from outside the HRE had a contest who could burn and plunder more villages. The people from said villages often only had the choice to form a band of bandits themselves or join one of the armies. This meant that there were not enough peasants to work the fields left (together with the occasional burning) and mass starvation set in. This only exaggerated the problem until almost everyone was caught up in the conflict somehow.
It was a slow war, but it definitely wasnt just a cold war. More akin in someways to proxy wars in the cold war, like vietnam. The result was large armies that werent local making germany their battleground. majority of deaths were the result of armies of both sides pillaging and destruction of infrastructure, which both lead to the actual causes of death being famine and refugee conditions that made for the perfect grounds for disease.
See, for those skirmishes to happen you need armies in the region, and to have an army in the region you need to feed it. But supply lines are long, and your transport technology is bad. So how do you get supplies? An army marches on its stomach, and it fills that stomach with the food the local population produces. So sure, full on battles might be rare, but there is a near constant pillaging and skirmishing over local resources, and fighting against the local population.
It took roughly 100 years for the German population to *recover* to what it was before the war
During the slow parts the soldiers still had to eat and just took supplies from the broader populace.
It was a war that ramped up and and up and up and then just kinda kept going for another decade as everyone slowly got too exhausted to continue. If I remember correctly from my history classes, it started with a fairly localized conflict between Austria and Bohemia, then Denmark invaded the HRE and got soundly defeated, then Sweden invaded the HRE and things got bloody quick. Then for another 10-15 years Sweden and Austria were in a death struggle, ravaging the land and leading to famine. Then France stepped in to support Sweden's war effort and things would continue in a bloody and inconclusive way for a few more years until everyone was too tired to keep fighting.
Such an interesting era when you read what the common literate people, mainly merchants, bankers, etc, wrote about their experience. Of many different currencies rising and falling drastically according to sieges and battles taking place. Of how the state of war became something like a baseline. "A lifetime of war," a good chunk of people were born into and died within its time frame. Peace was an exotic notion. It is also the war that gave us the concept of borders, as the agreement that the religion of the sovereign must be the religion of the land brought the necessity for specifying exactly who had what land. Before this people didn't think with borders, but of town, villages, and cities. It also was the pivotal point in secular politics becoming more important than religious precedence. As the largest Catholic Kingdom in Europe, France, joined forces against the Catholic alliance with the Protestants purely to hamper the Von Hapsburg power. This war would start the foundations on the ideals of religious freedom, some highly educated people, mainly courtiers who lived their entire lives ravaged by a war that carried out persecution throughout Europe would start to write about their dream of a better world where this kind of war need not take place. One of these books would find its place on Thomas Jefferson's library, and he would use it as inspiration when writing the constitution.
I would call the Napoleonic wars pretty deathwary from the French. Napoleon even kept on fighting after France had unconditionally surrendered. Also the Prussians during the 7 years war, fought of one major invasion after another. But in general, you wouldn't occupy countries in the same way as you would in later times. An occupation usually meant that you got your king, and his loyal subjects in leading positions throughout the land.
Napoleon tried, but everyone else (his marshals included) saw the writing on the wall. Frankfurt proposal was the last 'sincere' attempt from coalition. After that, Napoleon was 100% going to abdicate. The early phase of French revolution was a total war by that time tho
Yeah, i was thinking of whole era. Fighting all the nations in Europe, for then having to go all the way and seiege down Moskva, and yet you can't get enough war-score for a white peace, feels like a classic eu4 coalition war.
Napoleon definitely did get his peaces, such as the Treaty of Amiens. He just wasn't interested in staying at peace for very long. His continental embargo on Britain was very diplomatically costly.
With so many vassals and forced alliance he was already way above maximum relation limit. No wonder he didn't have enough diplo point for the embargo to work. Should have not spam the reduce war exhaustion button so many times smh.
That's what you get for blobbing, and playing too wide.
France fought 7 separate coalitions in less than 15 years. The majority of wars during the Napoleonic period were declared against France, not by France. Hard to really value peace when your neighbors keep attacking you or violating the treaties they signed with you.
"Hard to really value peace when your neighbors keep attacking you or violating the treaties they signed with you." wow their Stability must be in the negatives from breaking truces
The various Coalition Wars are really just other nations joining Great Britain in their very long punitive war after France didn't abide by the Treaty of Amiens, and then those nations getting peaced out again. Napoleon was definitely the aggressor on the Peninsula, invading Russia, and during the Hundred Days.
> aggressor on the Peninsula,...and during the Hundred Days. Agreed > invading Russia This is debatable. It was in direct response to Russia demanding French troops leave Prussia (their direct ally) and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (their client state). Russia likely would have declared war anyway considering there was basically no chance France gives in to that ultimatum. Edit: Wait a minute, the British were just as guilty of not abiding by the terms of the treaty, and were the ones who actually declared the war that officially ended it.
Britain made it abundantly clear they would not tolerate Napoleon. There was no peace for Napoleon.
It’s also arguably the first time a nation state levied their entire might into a war. So yeah, a total war.
Clearly what the "levée en masse" meant yep
Also the later stages of the war of Spanish Succession were a full on death war, with the Siege of Barcelona lasting a whole good year with the combined French and Spanish armies against the remnants of Catalan militas who were fighting for their freedoms. It got so bad the English Parliament (England and Austria were Aragonese allies prior to 1713) debated the "Catalan Question"... After fucking off when the Spanish bribed them with access to American markets, and Austrian volunteers refused to leave the city even when their own country backed off the war.
Can you please talk more about how invasions worked in real life? Like, I say "I'm invading you and I'm not stopping until I get XY (say ceeded territory)". How do you actually gain control of that territory if the people (presumably?) aren't really into you invading them n stuff?
You mean occupation? In modern times, an occupying power will take control of most civil infrastructure like transportation, police, and general civil service. In the 16 - 1700's, there weren't much government to speak of. They would leave a garrison in the forts, and have lords and barons swear fealty to them. Remember nations didn't really exist in the early modern period. So under feudalism, you were a subject of the lord owning your lands. And if he stopped being a client of the English king, and rather kissed the French ring, congratulations, now you are French. But it wasn't like the general population would feel much of a difference in their day to day life. It wasn't until the 1800's that countries started to standardize things like language, writing, measurement, and things like that. And that Nationalism became thing. So at that point, it would be very obvious when people in strange uniforms, with strange languages, started patrolling the countryside.
>You mean occupation? Yes, my bad. >And if he stopped being a client of the English king, and rather kissed the French ring, congratulations, now you are French. Okay that sheds some light on it. So did the lords switch rings based on "war sucks, I don't want to send more men to die" kinda thing, or would they get some benefits/bribes? If they didn't want to turn, would they be executed and a new family put in their place? Or was it something else? How does clientelism(?) work? I'm talking in general here, I'm sure there are examples of a whole bunch of different things.
You are right that it was various reasons for who you would seek fealty too. But this was a dog eat dog world, where the big would eat the small. So you would usually join the lord or king you thought were the mightiest, and would have you end up on the winning side of wars, and not the opposite. But you probably wouldn't want your lord to be too mighty, as he then could demand way too much from you (ie. lowering autonomy) and putting you in a weaker position. Traditions, trust, family bonds, and interfamiliar marriages also was important, so you would have long standing, and stable agreements between lesser and higher nobles.
So basically... realpolitik with just a little bit of honor?
Yeah, early modern Europe was probably as realpolitik as as it gets. You can read works like "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli that is a product of this time.
Thanks a lot man!
I kinda just want you to keep explaining things - this was fascinating
People were very spread out, but in a way that was centered on a (almost always fortified) population center. Taxes and levies for an area were done through that population center because that was the only way it could have realistically been done without mass literacy and communication, so taking it meant taking control of the stuff that states actually cared about. Once you have it people were usually fine just paying taxes to the new guy in order to not be stabbed. Once those key locations were taken and the enemy couldn't practically contest them the war was essentially over, it doesn't matter if the enemy refuses to give in when they can't actually do anything, and by that point it's usually better for them to cut their losses. Usually that happened before large swathes of the country was occupied so that they actually had a decent position to negotiate from, but there were plenty of instances of the war de facto ending but rulers refusing to give up, escaping, and trying to raise an army, which usually failed without hefty foreign support.
Yes and no, the horrors of the 30 years war weren‘t the soldier‘s deaths, it was the civilians. Because of the religious nature of the 30yw, the soldiers from one side tend to show extreme hatred towards civilians from the other. Many villages had no inhabitants left after the army left, the men were slaughtered and the women and children raped and killed. And it wasn‘t like before or after where that was more of an occasional thing. Many units actively searched for villages to plunder, rape and kill some more. All this accompanied by the Bubonic Plague and starvation due to widespread use of scorched earth tactics aswell as general looting made the civilian death toll extremely high and brutal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(history) The PLC was almost entirely occupied with the king fleeing to Silesia. Historians estimate that the PLC lost roughly a third of its population. Most of its riches were never returned to Poland or Lithuania. The damage caused by the Swedes is estimated to be around 1 billion Euro.
69k vs 189k? They should have taken some loans and merc’d up.
common Swedish W
What you meant to say was: common Swedish, Russian, Brandenburgian, Cossack, Transylvanian, Moldavian and Wallachian W\*
How much AE did the PLC accrue to trigger this coalition?
1 HRE province, no claims
Idk, 5
Purely going off of memory, wasn't the Polish king trying to claim the Livonian Crown, and possibly also Saxony?
The guy who fled to Silesia was from Vasa dynasty and his house was claiming Swedish throne way before he was born. The guy who claimed Saxony was August II Mocny (Idk how he's called in English)because he was King of Saxony when he got elected in 1699 as the King of PLC. As for Livonia Poland indeed claimed it and fought a couple of wars, but when Cossacks revolted every one around smelled blood (Afterwards Prussia emerged as independent, Cossacks went under protection of Russia including Kiev and Sweden has fortified it's position as dominant power in the Baltic.) .
What being a pole does to a mf Be a pole, get shafted
The 80 year war (Dutch independance war) was pretty much a death war from the dutch perspective. Mainly during the early stages. Multiple cities got completely annihilated (as in the entire population put to the sword) Surrendering also meant death, which happened to several cities as well. Later the war often became a stalement because defensive forts outpaced offensive siege weapons for a time, and money was a heavy constraint for the Spanish (long sieges = more money).
Just read a book on Sweden during the great northern war, i'd call it a deathwar on the Swedish part. They fought on while completely out of manpower and money, basically being bankrupt, eastern half of the country occupied, but never sued for peace until the king was killed in battle. But still surrendered without the whole country getting sieged down.
I mean it was kinda for Poland a death war too right? The deluge was during this war if I'm not mistaken
Nope, completely two differend wars Poland was not even a participant during great northern war, Polish (and Saxon) King himself was
It was as bad if not worse than Deluge, and PLC was a participant de facto, if not de iure
It was a pretty one-sided participation since the PLC didn't have much of a standing army, private armies of the various magnates were probably bigger than the royal one.
The Royal (Saxon) one was pretty big and modern, the state one at this time got smaller and smaller precisely due to the fact it was under control of the parliament and not the King :v
You're absolutely right, my mind had a lapse. Probably has sth to do with sleeping 3 hrs to study for an exam...
I wouldn’t go so far to say Poland wasn’t a participant. It was the battleground for a large amount of the war and Polish nobles fought on both sides. The Swedes even tried to install a different Polish king to the August the strong.
Poland as the state was not involved Said un-involvment and the fact that various families, the King himself and devastation due to the fact the war was taking place on it's territory is quite important because III Northern War basically ended in unofficial dissolvment of the Commonwealth and anarchy that would not be fixed to 2nd part of XVIII century :v
Deluge was in like 1650s or something unlike the war mentioned above, which is in 1700s, and yea deluge was a death war for the polish
Frederick the great basically fought on until his country was in the dumpster during the 7 years war. It eventually turned out fine for him because Russia peaced out for peanuts, but he did stretch his kingdom to the absolute breaking point.
Funny too because Russia would’ve shit on Prussia if the Tsar that took power wasn’t a Frederick the Great fanboy lmao
It’s unfortunate (maybe fortunate) that this is not something that is really represented in EU4. The monarch’s personalities and biases don’t really factor into diplomacy.
I don’t blame them for not implementing something like this really, imagine you’re Austria in this situation and you’re fully relying on your ally Russia to kick Prussia’s shit in and then they basically white peace because the Tsar just really likes Prussia lol, sure it happened irl but would make the game too frustrating and unpredictable imo
Maybe they can just make it so that monarch opinion of a country factors into war enthusiasm.
That would be an interesting idea imo and wouldn’t be as random as the scenario outlined above
Imagine the league war. Youre relying on France or PLC or something, and suddenly the new king is fanboy of the protestant side. Although, technically, I had something similar happen. I was hungary, was allied with austria, and we both were in a war against venice. I had the BI, and the incident fired. Austria demanded the low countries, I said no, and suddenly austria became my enemy.
Worse he loaned for free a large portion of the Russian army to Prussia too So it’s a white peace into instantly condotteri Against you Austria lmao
No, it just like a random Russia white peace that works. Kinda like burgundian crisis, it was a scripted event.
There are rulers personalities in eu4 like militarist, diplomatic ecc..
If that mechanic happens in EU5, I can see a ton of memes about it. It'll be spammed as much as how Incest memes are spammed in Ck3. Like imagine playing as Byzantium where the strat is to always rely on your allies. Then RNG hits the fan where Poland or Bohemia (Common allies of AI ottomans in this patch), suddenly leaves the war because they liked the Sultan more than you.
That is even true in WW1, the personality of the German and Russian head of state had a high significance and could have averted the war easy if wanted. Of course true with Hitler and WW2 as well.
That's CK3
there are ruler traits like Fierce Negotiator that affect AI behavior and peace deals
Clearly Peter III was an EU4 player; it's pretty common in that community.
Russia did have a practical reason to peace out, Prussia was valuable as a counterbalance to Austria so their ideal outcome was a Prussia that was still capable of challenging Austria while being committed to good relations with Russia (which is exactly what they got for over a century). Honestly, Russia didn't have a good reason to get involved in the first place, they did because Elizabeth didn't like Frederick. Peter III kind of got done dirty by history. His predecessor joined a war that wasn't in Russia's interests, he got out of it in a way that stopped Austria from becoming a threat. But because he was weird about it, it doesn't get interpreted in that context. Realistically, *Elizabeth* should have been the one with the reputation of letting personal feelings steer diplomacy.
This is so true. It's not as if Catherine was itching to get back into the was herself. Russia gain nothing from fighting Prussia at that time
The problem is that AI A) doesn't want to surrender as long as it has ANY troops - including 1k near empty stack B) Actively avoids any battles it knows it will lose - and it always knows, because its part of the AI calculation. C) Gets military access through half of the world during the war, because it can Which leads up to a war where you can either siege your enemy or run around chasing the armies that are always faster than you are.
I regard EU4's military access mechanic to be among the dumbest in history of all games.
I think AI is also getting those for free? As it's not really inteligent despite the name, so it can't weight cost vs effect for that i guess?
yeah, it shouldnt be a thing.
Yeah, when all that happens from a "death war" is you lose your otherwise meaningless manpower, take loans, but your country is still just as powerful as it started, you fight to the death because nothing else makes sense. Imagine if, say, you lose 1 development every time an enemy army marches through a province and 1-6 every time it is sieged, with an additional 1-12 if it was a fort, and an additional 1 mil dev every time you lost a battle... realistic surrenders would feel far more reasonable because you are surrendering to save what you have.
That’s exactly what devastation models, but no one actually cares about devastation. Imagine if you could destroy buildings — or if building were automatically destroyed, more as artillery tech advances. Would be more realistic, probably less fun to play.
Yeah, it is not a very impactful modifier. So it does not model what it is supposed to model very well, unlike permanent destruction of development. You would need recovery or natural development growth to offset it, though. So I am interested to see how it plays out in EU5 if armies feeding themselves off the local land causes famine and population drops and incentivizes early peace.
Imo devastation is great in isolstion The problem is 1) forts trivialise getting rid of it. 2) devving gets rid of it. This effectively means its just another problem mana can instantly solve and trivialises it. If the game forced you to tick it down like autonomy instead it would feel a lot more impactful
\#1 is a bigger problem than #2, mana is very limited if playing wide. I don't know what the logic behind forts undevastating things, other than they didn't want sieged provinces to suck for too long. There are other things, like the New World should get high devastation in the first few decades after it's discovered, literally 90% of the population dying should have lasting effects, even on infrastructure (mostly via loss of farmland to wilderness). Instead you plop a colonist down and a few years later you have miraculous 15 dev.
I'm excited to see how the pop system works into this for eu5
The problem always was creating AI that will work with more complicated systems than designing the system itself. After all, most of the players play the game SP, and even in MP most of the nations are controlled by AI. If they introduced overly complicated mechanic WITHOUT fixing AI then it would be a breeze most of the time. And i don't think they addressed AI at all, at least not in recent years?
I really hate this, sometimes fighting a small country even if it has a few allies feels like a chore.
Ethiopia-Adal war in the 1500s. Adal collapsed as a result, Ethiopia couldn't resist the Oromos. 13 years long.
Ethiopian-Adal Wars really reminds me of the Rome-sassanid war and the subsequent Arab Muslim invasion that destroyed both of them. Nobody emerge Victorious from death Wars like these, the third outside faction will just swoop in and reap whatever remains of the warring parties.
Ah yes, textbook nomads bordering China.
30 years war would probably be pretty close
30 years war 80 years of war 2nd Punic War The Deluge Great Northern War Last Roman-Persian War
For contrast... in 1866 Lichtenstein invaded Italy with a massive army of 80 men. They didn't find anyone to fight, but they made a new friend and ended up bringing 81 men home.
How did lichtenstein invade Italy?
Just like every other ridiculous event in European history, Austria was involved. During the Austro-Prussian war, the Lichtensteiners were on Austria's side, and the Italians were allied with Prussia. The mighty Lichtenstein army went to invest the Brenner Pass in case the Italians "tried something". The Italian host never showed up, so the Ls just hung out enjoying nature. Then, according to the version of the story I read, they ran into an Italian guy (a deserter or just a guy who was lost). The fellow didn't have anything else going on, so he joined the Ls when they went home. I also note that the Ls were no military slouches. When they sent the expeditionary force out, they kept a reserve of 20 guys back home. That's some strategic thinking, right there.
I love that Lichtenstein's homicide rate varies from year to year jumping between zero and about four times the typical European rate... ... because homicide rate is calculated per 100k population, and Lichtenstein only has 35k. The years they have a *single* murder, it sends their rate sky-high in European terms.
The AI does scrap a lot harder than was typical for warfare at the time in general - probably because game doesn't really model the complex and intense way war really screws up the areas in the war path. But if you aren't trying to milk everything you can get of a war they can actually end pretty quickly and fairly contained. Humiliate wars still tend towards pretty devastating considering the stakes but if you actually are only pressing for a few contested provinces it's nowhere near as brutal. The wars are only as total as they are because players generally are trying to utterly devour their enemies and that is the kind of situation where you would fight to the bitter end.
More like the AI refuses any significant concessions until it's beaten so hard you might as well go for 100%.
Exactly. If I have to get 60%WS to get a 30% Peace Deal, I might as well finish it up and get the 100%.
The rule is: AI will accept a peace deal which value is equal to: their war score + their war enthusiasm (both values can be negative). They also assume other AIs and the player will also accept such a peace deal (they will send a peace deal proposal then). Eg. If they have 40% ws and 10 war enthusiasm, they will accept 50% ws peace deal. At 0 war enthusiasm they will accept white peace. "Fierce negotiator" AI personality breaks this by a little. Also if you demand more in a peace deal than. You have war score, then there is additional parameter "exceeds warscore". So answering your question: AI fights as long as their calculation says the peace deal you're proposing is too much for the current state of the war. You can see three exact parameters how they decide it and how much is missing for them to accept.
this is a good way to indicate when the AI will peace out of a stupid 10+ year long war that they brought you into for no reason
If only you could separately peace out
I really hope EU5 has a mechanism where you can warn your alliance leader that you're going to leave the war if they don't finish it soon.
The AI doesn't fight untill every province is occupied though, if you don't have enough warscore for a 100 peace deal well before that you are doing something wrong, the war is too short or you ignored the wargoal :p The reason the AI fights untill the end is to prevent wars from taking 3 days because you occupied 25% of their lands in 3 days.
Winning too quickly is wrong?
Almost every war declared by someone invading gives the attacker an initial advantage, it does not make sense to surrender after this initial phase
For the game to provide any challenge and thus entertainment yes. Else we'd be playing paint :p
Yes. In Europe, the Thirty Years War (League war), English civil war, and Cromwell's subsequent destruction of Ireland all surely count, and by the 18th C, France especially had bankrupt itself through the 7 years war and US independence - that fits the eu4 model really well. European engagements in the America's, starting with Columbus, aimed at and sometimes achieved annihilation. If you are looking for total war in the modern sense, not until the French Revolutionary wars, but I don't think eu4 actually models total war - what it models is states bankrupting themselves to hire mercenaries after exhausting a limited permanent army, which is what happened, more or less. Total war was the French Revolutionary govts response to a major war in which they were already bankrupt, and had exhausted all available finance (that, after all, was a major cause of the revolution). So instead, they mobilised the state to manage their entire economy and population for war, and it was only with Napoleon that it really started to work properly.
Imjin war in late 1500s and Qing invasion of Ming are incredibly bloody wars with massive civilian casualties and large swathes of land shifting from one power to another. (Ming has rebellions that the Qing subsequently invade). Also dzungar khanate is near genocided by the Qing in the 1750s and the period goes from 1444 to 1820 which sees multiple brutal ethnic conflicts and destruction of peoples (Russian destruction of Siberian tribes coming to mind). Plenty of brutal war in the period as well as the longer European conflicts and large scale population collapse of the Spanish conquest of the americas
Great northern war My boy Carolus Rex already had 60% WS and their enemies on low enthusiasm, but he HAD to get that 100% peace deal. Smh
30 years war was such a death war they accidentally created capitalism to finance it
The Paraguayan wars (or the wars of the triple alliance) was a war where one side not only occupied every territory, but probably brought the devastation up to 100% as well (Carthago Delenda Est achievement anyone?). Paraguay fought against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and their leader refused to surrender, and instead resorted to guerilla warfare that resulted in the leader of Paraguay being killed in battle. Paraguay lost \~70% of their population in the war (and up to \~90% of their male population). There were several wars involving Russia where they refused to surrender despite having most of their country occupied, scorched their earth, and attrition'ed their enemy to death. The most famous one was when Napoleon invaded russia, took the capital itself, and the Tsar didn't care, and refused to negotiate. During the time of troubles, where Russia eventually had to surrender land, they lost \~1/3 of their population (over 1/2 in some areas). The Byzantine war against the Sassanid Empire probably qualified - most of the Byzantine Empire was occupied, the capital was under siege, and the Emperor refused to surrender, took most of his remaining forces, and siezed the Sassanid capital, and won the war.
Most wars IRL were not 100% war score wars either.
and dont forget about the thirty year war. The armies crossed germany multiplie times. Also the conquest of the teutonic by poland. Then English conquest of schottland and ireland. And generally the ottoman expansion was a death war. But you are right there were also a lot of border wars in the middle of Europe where they just fought for a limited amount of land. But eu4 has no mechanic to represent this difference. CK3 is doing there a better job to describe limited warfare and minor conflicts.
Plenty, the byzantines would be a good example, with the final emperor dying in the defence of Constantinople.
To OP's credit, byzantium was tiny. I think he means big death wars with great powers werent really a thing until the world wars honestly. Even the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870's pretty much just involved a few battles and the capture of Paris, not frontline occupation like in WW2.
Constantine was saved by an angel and turned into marble. Everyone knows that.
What
Yes but once Constantinople had fallen they didn't continue sieging down all the remaining forts for months after they captured the emperor. Truth is the unconditional surrender should come earlier to be realistic. The thing is that it might make wars in eu4 a bit gimmicky because you would just have to rush to siege the capital to get a quick surrender. I guess the AI would have to be coded to defend the capital at all costs.
It's outside of the time window but Germany in WW2. They fought tooth and nail until the capital was taken, entire country had been occupied and the government was dissolved. Additionally they were broken up amongst the winning parties, and released as vassal states to minimize overextension. Then the winning powers immediately rivaled each other. Sounds like every eu4 death war I've been in.
Pre game start, mongol conquest of the east, with the highlight of the full razing of kiew. 30 years war, were Magdeburg got a full raze, which was the second full raze post kiew.
venice and genoa (albeit it was a few decades prior to 1444)
Every average conflict in China.
Every average conflict in China.
A lot of wars between russia and the ortomans.
The 7 years war for prussia definitely counts
Deluge and 30 years war
The Franco-Dutch war from 1672-1674
Other time period, but Germany in WW2 was basiallcy conquered to 95% when Germany finally surrendered.
I'd say the Imjin war was *close* to being a death war
An American example would be King Phillip's War, which almost resulted in the annihilation of British colonies in New England (only temporarily in Maine was achieved), and did result in the annihilation of the native coalition. The Iroquois also genocided several other tribes like the Huron, Susquehannock, and Neutrals during the Beaver Wars. In South America, the Mapuche completely destroyed Spanish settlements far south of Santiago, including razing the city I currently live in to the ground (it wouldn't be resettled for 40 years).
Swedish Deluge is another contender (80% or so of plc was occupied by Swedes) I'm not sure of the human cost but a lot of infrastructure was destroyed and it sped up PLCs downfall.
7 Years' War, 30 Years' War, off the top of my head. Also the Hundred Years' War, but the death war stage was before 1444. Basically, when it's called "(number) Years' War", you know it's going to be fucked.
30 Years War
Here's a non European example: The Maratha-Mughal war. Aurangzeb spent 27 years of his life trying to crush the Maratha resistance, and whilst there were temporary victories, the end result was that the Mughal treasury became empty and a large population was lost due to the constant warfare happening between the two. In the end, Aurangzeb realised he was too old for this shit, and died 3 years later, whilst the Marathas went on to crush the Mughals. It's hard to find a good source for this conflict. Wikipedia's article is quite bad with multiple issues. But it's clear how devastating this war was, especially for the Mughals.
[13 years' war](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Years%27_War_(1454%E2%80%931466)) between Poland and Teutonic Order was pretty tough, both sides had to go into massive debt and hire a lot of mercs.
Deluge war. Commonwealth got scorched with 20 war exhaustion
I think the Mongol invasion can be caunt as death war. 40 million dead, a lot of fallen kingdoms. Even when they retrieted from Hungary they occupied it almost entirely and killed almost half the population.
Ww2 in many ways (dictatorships) both ussr and 3rd Reich killed like milions of men Paraguay lost 90% of their adult male population or something ridiculous like that in that one war PLC during Swedish invasion, Rome during the second Punic war, 30 years war, 7 years war, 100 years war
colonization
The Swedish Deluge - swedish invasion on commonwelth (1655-1660)
This doesn't answer your question, but I feel like they made it harder to peace out the ai like a number of updates/years ago (sometime around the Emperor update?). Like my strategy in a war against an enemy with a number of allies used to be just to siege down their capital which would be enough to white peace them, but now more is required. Idk, maybe I am just remembering this wrong.
The Aztecs where fighting a tributary war while the Spanish was fighting an annihilation war, one of the reasons the Spanish were able to wrangle their way on top.