A Useful Tip I Thought I'd Share

Lessing said:

Fabricating claims at this cost is simply uneconomical. Yes, I have a big income, but what the heck, I could just revoke that county off of the holder and eat the penalty. Fabricating is a better tool at low income; as it is, the balance gets destroyed when I earn a lot of money.

Since a big part of my income has always been looting/sieging, the rise in cost hits harder and harder. 1200g, independent of my rank, the quality of the county/duchy in question, etc etc etc - it just makes fabricating claims a tool not to use anymore once I built a nice demesne. That's 11 or so months of income out of the window. I'm not complaining that I can't afford it. I can. I'm complaining because the fabricate claims tool has gotten worse and worse. That's not really an aspect of a good balance.

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Balance doesn't mean you can keep gobbling up provinces with a low cost-low risk fabricate claims mechanism. It's a tool in expanding, not the tool. If you've grown so large that FC costs have become prohibitive, then you'll need to find other means. As you should.

Blackluck said:

Balance doesn't mean you can keep gobbling up provinces with a low cost-low risk fabricate claims mechanism. It's a tool in expanding, not the tool. If you've grown so large that FC costs have become prohibitive, then you'll need to find other means. As you should.

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This.

Some people are just dead set on making an easy game so much more easier.

This is sort of a non-issue in that the gating factor for manufacturing claims has always been time not money. No matter your size, you're only going to be able to gain a claim this way about once a decade or so -- a little more or less depending. It really doesn't balance the game by making it more expensive, but then again it doesn't unbalance it by costing a percentage of income because you by definition can afford it.

Once I'm large, I tend to mostly use claimants anyway. I only manufacture when I really want something and can't find a claimant. It frees the chancellor up to do other things.

So, it really doesn't matter what it costs. That said, I'm with you that when it costs more than the cost of building a new city for one little claim it gets a bit silly and hardly worth it. I would cap the price for that reason alone, since it really doesn't affect gameplay either way. But its not a high priority to change for the very same reason.

Lessing said:

Stop for a second and think of the real world.

A service or goods does not cost more money because you're rich. Prices are fixed. Even when we're talking about bartering, a rise as seen in this game is frankly stupid. Who'd try to get rich if stuff just gets more expensive?

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That's not true. The cost to prepare a tax filing for a rich person with many investments, and maybe many businesses is many times that of one for a person working a single job. Similar factors can be though of applying here. When only a few important people know about your family, it is easier to fabricate paperwork than if you are a well known, and well studied, family on the rise.

Maizel said:

Some people are just dead set on making an easy game so much more easier.

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Or "some people" just feel like making derogatory comments, such as you.

With my empire, nothing is hard, neither fabricating claims and paying for it, nor conquering. I am pointing out how the fabricate claims tool becomes useless and blunt at a certain point. It doesnt justify the costs. That is the real balance issue here.

Keep your insulting comments to yourself. I'm trying to point out that it would be a better game experience without rising FC cost to ridiculous amounts.

Blackluck said:

Balance doesn't mean you can keep gobbling up provinces with a low cost-low risk fabricate claims mechanism. It's a tool in expanding, not the tool. If , then you'll need to find other means. As you should.

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I have tons of other means. Read my post and you'll realise I am complaining about the tool becoming worse the larger one grows, which makes no sense. Why accept that "you've grown so large that FC costs have become prohibitive" should happen?

As Valinn said, the prohibitive thing here is the time and the low success chance for FC. That already prevents abuse by rich players.

Amoral said:

That's not true. The cost to prepare a tax filing for a rich person with many investments, and maybe many businesses is many times that of one for a person working a single job.

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More effort, higher cost. More quality, higher cost. More quantity, higher cost. More speed, higher cost. Neither applies for fabricating claims.


I'll say it once again: punishing a player because he worked hard to make more money is a bad idea.

It's like giving you a raise in real life, and raising the prices of all goods at the same time. Why bother working for a pay raise?

So I learn two things today, that it's not a big deal if I misclick and accidentally fabricate claims on my own realm, especially if I happen to want that county added to my demesne, but it's gonna get very expensive as my income grows, so even Brugges with its seven holdings might not be worth using a chancellor on later in the game. Thanks guys!

Stolen Rutters said:

So I learn two things today, that it's not a big deal if I misclick and accidentally fabricate claims on my own realm, especially if I happen to want that county added to my demesne, but it's gonna get very expensive as my income grows, so even Brugges with its seven holdings might not be worth using a chancellor on later in the game. Thanks guys!

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Brugge is the best money province in the game, and I paid about 700 gold for that claim. Worth it, I guess. I get 27.7g taxes per year from Brugge alone, and I have just upgraded it half way.

Captain Gars said:

I need to check the actual event but I'm not sure that you can fabricate a claim n someone that has you as his liege.

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It works, thats how I get the good counties from my vassals without enticing them to rebel in order to revoke the titles etc.

Brugge is no better than Venice.

You still don't seem to get that its a percentage of your income. Even though it feels like your paying more when your a king on 30+ gold a month it, it still takes you the same time to make the money for claims as when your a count on 1g a month. Its no worse. But other methods become better because its easier to get marriages into big families and claim holders are more likely to join your court. I don't see any problem with that though.

jpr123 said:

Brugge is no better than Venice.

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Venice has 2 castles (in my 1066 game), Brugge has 1. Brugge beats Venice for money purposes.

jpr123 said:

You still don't seem to get that its a percentage of your income. Even though it feels like your paying more when your a king on 30+ gold a month it, it still takes you the same time to make the money for claims as when your a count on 1g a month. Its no worse. But other methods become better because its easier to get marriages into big families and claim holders are more likely to join your court. I don't see any problem with that though.

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I get a lot more than you think, compadre. You just blatantly disregard 90% of what I wrote here. Read the part with the real life comparison and a pay raise.

And as I said above, one of my main money sources is looting and sieging. That part of my income does not rise.

Not sure what game your playing but in mine Venice has the 1 castle in 1066, exactly the same as Brugge. The income from holdings should definitely make up the vast majority of your overall income. If the money you make from ransoms/looting really does make up a huge amount then your playing the game very different from everyone else, and if that's the case then you need to accept that your so good at the game then extra cost of forging claims makes so little difference to you that there's no point complaining about it.

I could at least understand where you were coming from when you argued it wasn't very logical, because it is hard to explain role play wise. But game balance wise it definitely makes sense to me and helps you when your smaller and finding it harder to expand than if there was a set cost. You can't possibly argue that small low income countries are overpowered or anything just because they are getting cheaper claims. Not that they even are! As I said, its mainly a % of income anyway, so usually costs them just as much.

jpr123 said:

Not sure what game your playing but in mine Venice has the 1 castle in 1066, exactly the same as Brugge. The income from holdings should definitely make up the vast majority of your overall income. If the money you make from ransoms/looting really does make up a huge amount then your playing the game very different from everyone else, and if that's the case then you need to accept that your so good at the game then extra cost of forging claims makes so little difference to you that there's no point complaining about it.

I could at least understand where you were coming from when you argued it wasn't very logical, because it is hard to explain role play wise. But game balance wise it definitely makes sense to me and helps you when your smaller and finding it harder to expand than if there was a set cost. You can't possibly argue that small low income countries are overpowered or anything just because they are getting cheaper claims. Not that they even are! As I said, its mainly a % of income anyway, so usually costs them just as much.

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All right, the AI must have built it then.

For big realms, fabricating claims is a totally unimportant way of increasing your realm. So game balance is not even the point here. Everybody who says "its a game balance thing so big empires dont steamroll everybody else" is completely and utterly off. Who cares for FC if inviting a claimant IS FREE? Who cares for FC if you can press claims for a duchy, and FC could return a county claim only? And the time it takes! Why don't you fellas see that this argument is moot, moot, moot?

So... if you think FC is useless why are you complaining at all? Just don't use it.

Not that it is useless at all. Even when I'm playing as a large realm my chancellor is usually off forging claims somewhere, if it's not for new land I want to invade, its so I revoke the title of some annoying vassal without pissing the rest of them off. Nor are there claimants who will accept your invitation to court for every single title out there, so sometimes you have to forge claims if you want it. Also you can get Duchy claims when forging. I was playing earlier as Duke of Genoa, looking enviously over at the 3 province duchy that was Pisa. It was a city state so no claim holders whatsoever to invite, so I send my chancellor off to the capital, a couple years later he's manufactured a claim on the entire Duchy. I now have a claim on 3 provinces that I couldn't have got any other way. It was an entire Duchy so didn't come cheap, but even if I'd been playing as the count of Westmorland it would have taken pretty much the same amount percentage of my income to get that claim anyway, so it was completely worth it. If you have a better way of getting provinces like that I'd sure like to know.

You seem to think that all ways of farming claims should be equal. They aren't. If they were, why would there be different ways of getting them in the first place? You can get them by marrying the daughter or heir of a title, but that takes time, and the woman could die before she's had any kids. You can get them by inviting a claim holder, but it requires you to surrender a county/barony beforehand if you want them to remain a vassal, and they aren't always around when you want them. If both of those fail, you can rely on the good ol' FC, it may be expensive and time consuming (although usually less time than waiting for marriage claims to mature), but if you have the gold and time it will always work eventually, unlike the other 2 methods. Plus it allows you to get claims that are impossible to get any other way, like in the example I gave.

Personally, I really like the claim system as it is, and it seems pretty balanced to me. In certain situations different methods will always be better and that's suggests good game design.

What I'm wondering is, is the current ducal claim system working as designed, or is it an exploit?

While the idea behind ducal claims seems to be that to press it and have the claimant become your vassal, the duchy must be in your de jure realm or the claimant must be of your dynasty, otherwise they become independent. Of course, if you give the claimant a landed title first, then they stay your vassal and anything they get with the claim press becomes part of your realm.

In other words, give up one county, gain a duchy, repeat til you're a monster blob. Once you're a king this make expanding as easy as any other Paradox game. Which is ok I guess, I just thought in CK2 it was supposed to be nearly impossible to do the ol "conquer the world" thing.

It does actually feel like an exploit at the moment, so I never really use it

I think it would be better if they actually stopped him remaining a vassal just because you handed him a castle in the middle of nowhere. To keep him as a vassal he should have to be of your dynasty or in your de jure territory, then it couldn't be used as a free conquest CB against most of the world.

jpr123 said:

So... if you think FC is useless why are you complaining at all? Just don't use it.

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Aaargh... why do you think I post here? Because I care about the game's quality. The FC aspect of the game doesnt scale well with realm size. A good tool becomes bad.

jpr123 said:

Personally, I really like the claim system as it is, and it seems pretty balanced to me. In certain situations different methods will always be better and that's suggests good game design to me.

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Ok, I can dig this. In certain situation different methods will be better. Ok. I will acknowledge that FC is the only way to get access to no-claimant regions. But... why make it uber expensive if time is already the more prohobitive factor? If money isnt stopping a big realm, and time already does, then why the cost?

jpr123 said:

You seem to think that all ways of farming claims should be equal.

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I seem to think I am playing a pretty realistic game, where the price of services doesnt go up miraculously and without justification when I earn more money, which is defended under the pretext of game balance although the time it takes is a much better brake for abuse.

So money isn't a factor but you still want to complain about it? I'm sure if you dig around the game files you can find the cost of claims and change it if it really bothers you. Better yet every time you get the option to forge a claim, open up the console and use the money cheat, problem solved.

Lessing said:

Aaargh... why do you think I post here? Because I care about the game's quality. The FC aspect of the game doesnt scale well with realm size. A good tool becomes bad.

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Its not a bad tool. It's just that one of the other tools just seems to be slightly overpowered at the moment and I feel that's the main issue here. Rather than reducing the cost of FC's they need to make inviting claim holders more restrictive.

Lessing said:

I seem to think I am playing a pretty realistic game, where the price of services doesnt go up miraculously and without justification when I earn more money, which is defended under the pretext of game balance although the time it takes is a much better brake for abuse.

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Well I hate to break it to you, but the game is wildly unrealistic in so many different ways. Feudalism didn't really work like it does in CK2, wars weren't fought like they are, people wouldn't have acted like they do, the whole thing is far more simplistic and tidy than real life actually was. You know why that is? Because its a game. Its not to replicate exactly what being a medieval ruler would have been like. Only once I've perfected my time machine will you be able to experience that. But for now you have to put up with it. There are unrealistic and quite frankly stupid mechanics in it, but they are there for game balance in an effort to make this game more enjoyable. If your enjoyment is ruined because its not 100% accurate well then I'm afraid CK2 probably isn't what your looking for.

jpr123 said:

So money isn't a factor but you still want to complain about it? I'm sure if you dig around the game files you can find the cost of claims and change it if it really bothers you. Better yet every time you get the option to forge a claim, open up the console and use the money cheat, problem solved.

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I post here because I try to point out things that could work better in my opinion. Would I do what you suggest here, I wouldnt need to use this forum at all, or stop posting bug reports.

But not only are you complaining about the wrong thing, but your arguing your points pretty poorly. If you were complaining about how overpowered inviting claim holders to your court is, then I'd be 100% behind you. But I rather feel this isn't something you would complain about since you strike me as a "power gamer" who just wants more and more options to "win" the game as fast as possible and most of your problems with the game seem to be things that make it more challenging instead of things that make it too easy.

But obviously your free to express your opinions here, just as I'm free to point out why they are wrong. Yes, opinions can be wrong.