Ideas to limit the BTB (Big Three Blobs)

Lord_P · Oct 28, 2014

Everyone has their favourite blob. For the most people, their favourites are the HRE, the ERE and the Abbasids/Generic Sunni Caliphate. In this thread I will describe my ideas on how to limit these world-conquering superblobs. Feel free to reply with constructive comments.

Warning, walls of text ahead.

Part 1: The Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known to every 1066+ players as 'the HRE', 'the Big Grey/White Blob' or 'Heinrich Salian'. Conqueror of Frisia and the enemy of every non-German in the entire world. The HRE has many problems and I will go through them one at a time.

Problem 1: Frisia
k_frisia, as everyone knows, is a de jure kingdom inside de jure HRE. The problem is, one part of k_frisia, Flanders, is part of France in 1066 and beyond. And everyone knows what that means to the bloodthirsty AI of CK2: Day One DoW. The HRE is, militarily, much stronger than France (we will get to that in a second) so it will always win the war for Gent. Here are some potential fixes to the problem:

Make Frisia de jure e_francia (a 'blunt fix', I would personally not favour this)
Move Flanders to k_france (perhaps also move Brabant to k_lotharingia to avoid odd-looking de jure borders) and keep rest of Frisia in e_hre (this is my favourite solution)
Remove de jure k_frisia entirely (because it hasn't existed for hundreds of years at this point) and make Flanders k_france and the rest k_lotharingia

Any of these ideas would limit the HRE's mad wars against France.

Problem 2: Government
I already made a thread about this. To make it simple, HRE vassals should have more autonomy.

Part 2: The Byzantine Empire
Also known as the Big Purple Blob, enemy of the South Slavs and the Bulwark of Orthodoxy (except when it turns Catholic). Byzantium, too, has loads of problems to deal with:

Problem 1: De jures
In every start date, Byzantium holds de jure claims on the following areas: Greece, Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Venice, Sicily. This is a tad excessive, seeing as the Byzantines have held no territory in most of these places for over 100 years at game start. Start date specific suggestions:

769: Remove South Slavic lands from e_byz
867: Remove Bulgaria from e_byz
1066: Remove Venice from e_byz
Beyond 1066: Remove Sicily from e_byz, but return Bulgaria to e_byz. Later remove it again, or something.

To replace these ideas, we could have a dynamic degrading de jure system, where Byzantium loses de jure claims on areas that it hasn't controlled for X amounts of years. Sicily and Venice could become part of e_italia and the South Slavic lands could create and empire of their own (or be completely free of de jure empires).

Problem 2: Byzantium is OP
Byzantium is very strong. Everyone knows that. Here is an idea to make byzantium weaker: Imperial Authority. It would act as an 'anti-decadence', where higher amounts of IA would result in more stable realm and lower amounts of IA would result in rebellious strategoi that are more likely to join factions and give you less troops. Imperial Authority would depend on many different things, here are a few examples:

Success in wars (victories increase, defeats decrease)
Revolts and rebellions (ongoing rebellions slowly decrease IA, because the Emperor can't control that part of his empire)
Traits of the Emperor (a very incompetent emperor will have a hard time controlling his lands)

Extra: Imperial Reconquest
This arose in the thread. Basically, take away Holy War from the Byzantines and replace it with Imperial Reconquest that allows them to take a bordering county that has historically been part of the ERE (e.g. the Slavic Lands, Holy Land, Egypt, etc) with certain limitations, ofc.

Part 3: The Abbasids
Fixing the Abbasids is simple; 1. make decadence more difficult to get rid of (as AI) and 2. make decadence decrease your vassal limit. That should break blobs.

Thank you for your time. TL;DR version coming soon!

AchedTeacher · Oct 28, 2014

Doing anything about Frisia will probably anger some (not all, not me for example) Dutch fans.

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

AchedTeacher said:
Doing anything about Frisia will probably anger some (not all, not me for example) Dutch fans.

Just make it a titular title like Cyprus.

AchedTeacher · Oct 28, 2014

darthfanta said:
Just make it a titular title like Cyprus.

I wouldn't say that fixes anything, Frisia wasn't some crusader state that existed for a couple of years.

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

AchedTeacher said:
I wouldn't say that fixes anything, Frisia wasn't some crusader state that existed for a couple of years.

Correct.The Kingdom of Frisia was a state that didn't exist at all during the time frame of the game,from 769 to 1453.It shouldn't exist at all. This is why making it titular is the best option. Ideally, Flanders should be joined to France while the West should go to Lotharingia.

AchedTeacher · Oct 28, 2014

darthfanta said:
Correct.The Kingdom of Frisia was a state that didn't exist at all during the time frame of the game,from 769 to 1453.It shouldn't exist at all. This is why making it titular is the best option. Ideally, Flanders should be joined to France while the West should go to Lotharingia.

What? There are numerous de jure kingdoms that didn't exist during the game's timeframe, that's what de jure is for.

chipmunx · Oct 28, 2014

Lord_P said:
2. make decadence decrease your vassal limit.

This idea intrigues me far more than anything else in the post.

Imagine all the vassals sloughing off when there's no more wars to be won.

Quaade · Oct 28, 2014

Make faction for destuction of empire or even king tier titles. Make an empire/kingdom splinter when you don´t have control than less than half when peace has been declared. Has suggested this before in more detail

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

AchedTeacher said:
What? There are numerous de jure kingdoms that didn't exist during the game's timeframe, that's what de jure is for.

Flanders was a de jure part of the Kingdom of France while the rest was a de jure part of the kingdom of Lotharingia.Even the people who lived there thought so.There's also no history of independent states in the region between 769-1453.

Thure · Oct 28, 2014

darthfanta said:
Flanders was a de jure part of the Kingdom of France while the rest was a de jure part of the kingdom of Lotharingia.Even the people who lived there thought so.There's also no history of independent states in the region between 769-1453.

But if I look at this map of the stem duchies 919-1125...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Central_Europe,_919-1125.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.../1000px-Holy_Roman_Empire_1000_map-en.svg.png

So at least the historical map makers trought that Frisia was a own stem duchy

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

Thure said:
But if I look at this map of the stem duchies 919-1125...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Central_Europe,_919-1125.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.../1000px-Holy_Roman_Empire_1000_map-en.svg.png

So at least the historical map makers trought that Frisia was a own stem duchy

Stem duchy is not a kingdom. If stem duchy makes one a kingdom then there should be two kingdoms of Lotharingia.And from the same source you gave me, wikipedia, it said that the Frisians never formed a stem duchy of their own.

Talq · Oct 28, 2014

Re topic of post:

Abbassids tend to get max bonuses for prestige and piety easily, which even without hajj makes their realms far more stable and unlikely to faction. Time to look at that piety bonus (of course emperor's basicly breaking the game with prestige and piety increases has been a day 1 problem). Caliphs also get a kingdom level subjegation CB. Thats pretty much asking them to blob. Also AI Byzantium has an obsession with castrating and blinding people, including its own vassals in faction wars. Giving everybody -40 to -80 then releasing them is, well, extremely dumb, and a good way to get more pain if they do get a faction war & in turn risks the muslims hitting them decisively.

Byzantium probably gets +10 from born in the purple, again great for stability. Its silly de jure has been discussed in depth, but its main problem is too many provinces, so too powerful. (oh yes, and a perversely powerful religion set up) That it blobs with the AI playing it so badly says volumes.

For all three, prestige increases silly quick on rule, and dynastic prestige tends to increase silly quick over time. Thats one area Paradox need to look at over time.

AchedTeacher said:
What? There are numerous de jure kingdoms that didn't exist during the game's timeframe, that's what de jure is for.

I'm not seeing the logic in that statement. Pulling random kingdoms from the depths of history, or your imagination is the function of a certain decision in the Charlemagne DLC. A number of the de jures exist only because the de jure map needs to be full - of course if they also detract from gameplay then 'filling the map' isn't a good excuse.

imperium3 · Oct 28, 2014

My replies to the suggestions:

1. HRE

- Why not just remove k_frisia from any de jure empire? It certainly shouldn't be in the HRE, but AFAIK there's no strict need for every kingdom to be part of a de jure empire.
- The Pope should have much greater opportunities to meddle in the HRE. For example, the Investiture Crisis. In any wars resulting from this, the Emperor's vassals could be given the choice of siding with the Pope, in which case they get de facto independence, piety and favour with the Pope if they win. The Italians in particular should be pretty keen on independence.

2. Byzantium

As far as I know, the way the de jure system is set up it's impossible for it to change across different start dates. With this in mind I'd propose the following:
- Completely remove Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Venice and Sicily from de jure Byzantium
- Instead of Holy War (which makes no sense for Orthodox who didn't do religious wars), give the Byzantines a "Reconquest" CB that allows them to take a single, bordering county in the kingdoms that form the historical ERE - Greece, Anatolia, Syria, Jerusalem, Egypt, Africa, Bulgaria, Serbia and Sicily. This would largely prevent uncontrolled expansion onto the steppes, and slow down the expansion of an empire that was almost always on the defensive historically.

3. Abbasids
Can't really comment on these guys since I never play Muslim.

Overall I think one of the biggest problemss CK2 has is that large empires are inherently very stable and much more militarily powerful than they historically were. Historically, a large empire could not call up as large a proportion of its manpower as a small kingdom could, because of the difficult logistics of handling huge armies, and the need to watch more than one border at a time. Yet in CK2 empires can easily focus all of their manpower on a single war. So some kind of intrinsic levy penalty might be appropriate, such that as empire size increases each new province contributes a smaller and smaller proportion of levies to the liege (total levies would never go down, they'd just find themselves reaching a ceiling). Additionally, small kingdoms tend to stand alone against an empire whereas in reality they might be more willing to put aside their differences and gang up to keep the big boys out.

Aethes · Oct 28, 2014

Well I think we can split k_netherlands from d_holland and d_gelre and k_flanders from d_flanders and d_brabant. Netherlands should belong to HRE and Flanders should belong to Francia. A dutch or frisian character that rules over both kingdoms should have a decision to create a titular e_frisia with cultural names Frisia for Frisians and something like greater netherlands for the dutch. and after 100 years it would be a de jure empire

2 Byzantium: Your ideas are good. Bulgaria should stay dejure Byz exept 867 bookmark and should get a empire of bulgaria in k_bulgaria.Georgia shoud be gone from dejure Byz not sure about armenia but they should get a empire of armenia.

3- Abbasids : I read it somewhere that all muslims had the idea of being independent and ruling over all muslims. So maybe we can add a opinion penalty for duke level vassals and make them more likely for ındependence factions

Malilk · Oct 28, 2014

imperium3 said:
As far as I know, the way the de jure system is set up it's impossible for it to change across different start dates. With this in mind I'd propose the following: alm.

You can change de jure status over start dates. Aragon in 867, Powys in 769, isle of man 769, austuras becoming Leon, middle Francia (lothangria) loses a duchy or two between 769 and 867. There is probably a few more that I'm not aware of. Pretty sure this is a recent change though. At least I never noticed it pre-cm

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

Before any of the vocal minority gives paradox the wrong idea, no, the ERE's de jure areas are good(maybe with the exception of Georgia).The ERE should still have holy wars. AI ERE is already nerfed enough. More than 50% of the time when it's left to the AI, they get obliterated by the Seljuks or the Abbasids.

NewbieOne · Oct 28, 2014

The Umayyads seem to be currently unstoppable by the incompetent French AI in CM. They have half the numbers of the Franks, they still go on an attack for k_Aquitaine, and they win.

They just dump a large unified stack in Dax and siege/assault the heck out of it and of one adjacent province while Francia keeps delivering small batches of troops up to them and botching the war score. Umayyad conquests of Aquitaine don't even last a big deal of time, they're relative short affairs for this reason.

At some point well before 800 AD they may also conquer Africa and create e_Spain (been there seen that).

Around 780 AD they also tend to be soundly beating the 7th Catholic uprising.

The OP has some seriously good suggestions for BYZ and Abbassids.

Problem 2: Byzantium is OP
Byzantium is very strong. Everyone knows that. Here is an idea to make byzantium weaker: Imperial Authority. It would act as an 'anti-decadence', where higher amounts of IA would result in more stable realm and lower amounts of IA would result in rebellious strategoi that are more likely to join factions and give you less troops. Imperial Authority would depend on many different things, here are a few examples:
Success in wars (victories increase, defeats decrease)
Revolts and rebellions (ongoing rebellions slowly decrease IA, because the Emperor can't control that part of his empire)
Traits of the Emperor (a very incompetent emperor will have a hard time controlling his lands)

Yeah, and, besides, I've been saying BYZ should be subject to the decadence mechanic ever since SoI/LoR. They should have a heap of aristocratic families competing for overwhelmingly non-hereditary titles. Emperors should be far less hereditary than they are now — essentially army + senate + popular acclamation + power/influence of current imperial family but always with more than a smidge of uncertainty, republic-style.

And the loyalty or army commanders (as opposed to only theoretical levy owners) should be more of a problem.

Part 3: The Abbasids
Fixing the Abbasids is simple; 1. make decadence more difficult to get rid of (as AI) and 2. make decadence decrease your vassal limit. That should break blobs.

Brilliant.

Zolotaya · Oct 28, 2014

darthfanta said:
Before any of the vocal minority gives paradox the wrong idea, no, the ERE's de jure areas are good(maybe with the exception of Georgia).The ERE should still have holy wars. AI ERE it's already nerfed enough. More than 50% of the time when it's left to the AI, they get obliterated by the Seljuks or the Abbasids.

Georgia and Armenia de jure is not "good". Georgia did not even exist as a created title (let alone de jure) for a lot of the CK timeline. Armenia was ruled by realms since the 650's other than the ERE. Most of that region was ruled by a Khazarian empire which Paradox ignores.

The ERE does not need additional nerfs, other than a reworking of the de jure, that we agree on.

NewbieOne · Oct 28, 2014

Zolotaya said:
Georgia and Armenia de jure is not "good". Georgia did not even exist as a created title (let alone de jure) for a lot of the CK timeline. Armenia was ruled by realms since the 650's other than the ERE. Most of that region was ruled by a Khazarian empire which Paradox ignores.

The ERE does not need additional nerfs, other than a reworking of the de jure, that we agree on.

Georgia was a patchwork of principalities ruled by either Arsacid or Sassanid offshots, much like what became of Armenia when the local Arsacid cadets finally gave in.

The place is choke full of Persian royals gone native and Christian (to a point they'd side with the locals over Persian admin). Literally everybody in Armenia in the 769 start is a patrilineal Arsacid or Sassanid with a changed dynastic name, expect maybe for one or two Bagratid or Mamikonian nobles. Nerse from Kartli (patrilineal Sassanid (Chosroid) with Arsacid blood through females) is the closest thing to a Georgian king at the time, as well as the only significant character with Georgian culture other than the Byzzie strategos in Abkhazia. In fact, Nerse should probably be localized as a petty king rather than a duke. The duke in Derbent has a very similar profile and is a cousin.

Let's say that putting Armenia in de iure BYZ represents the Roman tradition and a bit of a Eurocentric kinda view, but with e_Persia long uncreated this is probably for the best (barring an intrigue screen decision for a recreated Persia to lay claims, for example). Parts of Georgia were indeed ruled by Byzzies from time to time, but I'm not really a fan of making the whole of k_Georgia de iure part of BYZ on that account.

darthfanta · Oct 28, 2014

Zolotaya said:
Georgia and Armenia de jure is not "good". Georgia did not even exist as a created title (let alone de jure) for a lot of the CK timeline. Armenia was ruled by realms since the 650's other than the ERE. Most of that region was ruled by a Khazarian empire which Paradox ignores.

The ERE does not need additional nerfs, other than a reworking of the de jure, that we agree on.

Georgia and Armenia might not be ruled by the ERE, but the were more or less part of it's sphere of influence most of the time.

Ideas to limit the BTB (Big Three Blobs)

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Basileus Basileōn

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Recruit

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Chartularius Hamburgensis

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Fascist and disgusting

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Captain

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Basileus Basileōn