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Forced Opium War

Forced Opium War (FOW) is a simple mod that gives the AI an easier time to fire off the Opium War. Certain mods out there may, for some reason, make the Great Britain AI decide that beating up China is actually not worth their time even if they reacted angrily to the opium ban.

FOW aims to fix that by adding a hidden decision that only the Great Britain AI can take if China bans opium that will immediately start a diplomatic play for a treaty port.

Be aware: this mod may not do anything for vanilla or very lightly modded games.

This mod adds one new file that adds one simple, AI-only decision, so it should be compatible with every other mod.
However, this mod may break if Great Britain and/or China are removed from the game.

This mod works alone and may be placed anywhere.

This mod does not rely on any DLC features, so you should not need any DLCs.

• YES, you may include this mod in any modpacks/collections/whatever.
• YES, you may use this mod as a base to create your own. Credit and a link back here would be very much appreciated!

As stated above, FOW adds a decision that is visible only to the Great Britain AI. This decision is available only if they have the vanilla Opium War journal entry, itself only available if China bans opium as per vanilla design and then Great Britain responds angrily to the ban. This means in a playthrough where, through sheer luck, that either China does not ban opium or Great Britain responds passively, the AI will not fire off the Opium War through this mod.

Additionally, if the Great Britain AI in your playthrough fires off the Opium War by itself as normal, this mod will not fire it off again.

The AI can only take the decision if they are not already at war or committed to another diplomatic play. It will also be disallowed from taking the decision if China somehow no longer exists.

Assuming the conditions above are met, the AI will have a very small chance of firing the Opium War off early in an attempt to mimick vanilla behavior.

If the date is on or after May 25, 1839, the AI will get an extremely significant incentive to take the decision. Taking the decision around this date will allow the diplomatic play to escalate to war on or very close to September 4, 1839, the historical start date of the First Opium War, if no country adds extra war goals or sways someone to join the play.

Upon taking the decision, a diplomatic play will immediately start with the goal of taking a treaty port. The logic is explicitly written such that this war goal will target Shaozhou if it is able to be, thus allowing Great Britain to take Hong Kong as it did historically in the First Opium War.

If for some reason Shaozhou is already unavailable as a treaty port target, the game will pick the next available coastal Chinese state for the treaty port target. The random treaty port target will explicitly avoid Beijing (or wherever the current capital state is, if it happened to be moved) unless if no other state is available.

As a part of assisting the Great Britain AI to actually fight the war, Great Britain will get a new diplomatic AI strategy that is equivalent to the vanilla Economic Imperialism strategy they start with in every way (as of 1.3.4), except they get a boost in their confidence calculations specifically for the diplomatic play started through this mod. When the play is ended (either through either side backing down or through ending the war), Great Britain will get the original Economic Imperialism strategy back. This technique is used to minimize any conflicts or downstream consequences with other parts of the game or any mods.

Great Britain may have a war reparations war goal added. This is not done by the decision. If this happens, it is the AI working on its own and may be subject to other mods that influence AI decision-making.