In this guide I’ll explain how to build war support, the types of wars you can declare and how to take cities and territories from your enemy once you are able to force them to surrender.

Fist, let’s start with how to build war support. The easiest way is by fighting skirmishes in neutral territories or territories that are not attached to cities. Winning battles builds the most war support, forcing retreats builds some war support and you can also lose war support by retreating or losing battles. You can also use grievances to build war support. The more unmet demands you have active, the more your war support builds per turn. During peace time you will naturally build or lose war support each turn towards 50 war support. This can be modified through the religion and picking certain cultures.

For declaring war you can chose between a formal war and a surprise war. A formal war requires a minimum of 80 war support, a surprise war requires at least 20 war support. However, you will loose war support per turn in a surprise war so you need to make up for that by winning quickly or forcing many retreats or defeats on your enemy.

To finish a war you have to get the enemy war support to zero. You can do this by winning fights, forcing retreats and holding their cities. You get a special bonus for occupying cities and their capital. Once you force their war support to zero you can enforce terms on your enemy based on the war support at the start of the war and the war support at the end as well as the number of cities you occupy and any existing demands. So, if you start with 80 war support and end on 100, you have 180 points to spend on taking cities and territories or money. To be able to demand a city, you must first occupy it. You will also need to demand both the city and any attached territories to get the whole city from your enemy.

So, in summary, to declare a war you first need to build war support through things like skirmishes. During a war you need to reduce the enemy war support to zero for them to surrender and then you can take any territories and occupied cities from your enemy based on you war support at the start and end of the war.