In EU3, you had various CBs which provided either 25%, 50%, or 75% discounts to infamy cost, also with different effects on prestige and claim cost during settlement.ĮVERY war declaration should have some base infamy cost, but some war goals should reduce that: reclaiming core territory, taking land from a non-civilized country, and so on, so the UK can't declare war after war in India with complete impunity, although their CBs should reduce the infamy to the point where it can easily be burned off in only a couple of months to a year or so.
Justifying a war was added in the V2 expansions, making it a random thing, and most of the previous war goals were removed, so we're stuck with paying something like 70-80% of full cost on average, with no way at all to tell in advance what the actual figure is going to be. Without a CB, you paid the full crushing cost. In V2 (original), if you got a CB, you could declare war with no infamy at all, which is ridiculous and gamey. I would have preferred a hybrid system, something about half-way between V2's "all or nothing" original system or the "justify" thing that replaced it, and the "discounts" in EU3.