Birthright: Chimaeron

As written, things are a bit odd.

Losing 3 holdings 0s matters, losing 7 levels of holdings but nothing removed (so still holding 0s) has no effect.

"Forceful Divestiture" ... is agitate/contesting a province a forceful divestiture? Maybe?

Agreed. As written it is confusing.

Losing a level 2 down to a 0, should be more important than losing a level 0. That said, that makes contest a brutal weapon -- or occupation even more significant. Same with pillaging.

Forceful divestiture to me implies occupation driven divestiture. A full turn of occupation, followed by the divestiture. A coordinated Agitate/Contest is powerful already, throwing in major blood loss on top seems like salt in the wound.

If it is like that though, that's fine. Losses of holdings should be penalized fully as well then though (whether from province levy, pillage, occupation, contest, etc).

Holding levels go up and down for various reasons, including province owner levying a province. The harder part is removing the holdings totally. That reflects the loss of all the levels and finally being driven out of the province. So I think it's set correctly.

In my oppionion the whole occupation and pillage is going way to fast. In 9.2 and 9.3 two provinces are taken castle destroyed and all holdings run down to 0. Remember that this happened because of the overpowered defection. To get a major blood loss on topp of that is just stupid.

Contesting a province is definitely a forceful divestiture. The only kind of divestiture that isn't forceful is voluntarily ceding the province, the regent has to attend a ceremony to voluntarily give the holding away, according to a settled agreement. That's the only way to save face when losing holdings or provinces.

I'm fine with losing holdings being the way it is. It's not easy to force someone to lose more than one holding in a turn, it requires them to be incautious or for the aggressor to be very prepared. And even when it does happen, it's the smallest possible penalty regardless of how many holdings are lost at once, so it's not that serious.

Loosing level 0 could be the same as losing 2 levels of holding perhaps?

Or maybe losing a set amount of holding should be what matters, 10 % of your total holdings should equal a lvl 0?

I still think loosign lvl 0 should matter, as that represent being driven out from somewhere completely, not just a possible loss that could be recuperated.

Contesting should count.

Losing a single level 0 in a turn is considered negligible, and doesn't cause regency loss, as it is. It's only losing more than one that causes minor regency loss.

Provinces are much harder to divest, so that seems to be working as intended. There's every opportunity for a province regent to agree to a peace treaty before the province is divested. Even if it happens in a single turn, they can concede when they see the province become rebellious. In this game so far everyone has been spectacularly unwilling to either seek or accept peace agreements, normally we'd be making peace settlements left and right to avoid regency loss. But here the heat is up way too high for whatever reason. Partly because the realms are small, I imagine.

Perhaps realms are small enough that no meaningful concessions can be made without completely gutting yourself.

Partly... If your definition of 'meaningful concessions' is restricted to a large pile of guts. But there's plenty of other things that can be conceded aside from all of those, and there's got to be another reason why those guts are even being put on the negotiating table.

Anyway, regency loss is not a punishment for losing a war, it's a punishment for failing to protect the people and organizations a regent leads. It happens when the regent refuses to accept the punishments for losing other regents offer to them as peace or surrender terms. If it happens often, that must be because either the winners are overestimating how appealing their offers are, or because the losers perceive forcing their enemies' hands to be worth the pain.

Or because the losers are not personally invested enough in what they have. Either lack of roleplay connection or because they have not really built much yet to speak of.