Cultural Defensive Pacts and other rework suggestions

[fukujinpickle]

Hi all,

So I just started playing recently and was loving the experience until I got my first empire and hit the brick wall of defensive pacts and near permanent 100% threat. I love the idea in theory and I understand wanting to have some limitations to late game blobbing, but as it's currently implemented the mechanic is just not fun. So I tried a new game with it turned off, and it ended up being far too easy to just exploit the Holy War CB. But you all know this already and I'm not here to start another defensive pact complaint thread. Instead, I'd like to pick your more experienced brains for ideas on how to retool the system to turn it into a fun, challenging restraint to blobbing, while not turning the late game into a stagnant cycle of waiting, inheritance shenanigans, and blitzing down small territories. Some suggestions to get the ball rolling:

1) Defensive pacts should be initially cultural in nature. This should then upgrade with increasing threat to include cultural groups, then religion, and finally max at religious group including related holy orders. So if you're messing with Sicily and Tunisia, you first run into a Berber defensive pact, which upgrades to Arabic, then Sunni, and finally once you're way outta control, the pan Islamic defensive pact (which after having just barely survived a double jihad as crusader Jerusalem seems plenty challenging and potentially crippling). At no point should you ever have to face the medieval UN. This also means you can get into some interesting intermediate territory, where you're fighting a converted Greek Catholic as well as other Catholics and also Greek Orthodox realms, but not all Orthodox realms...yet. I'm not sure how this would translate to the 'pagan' section of the map as I haven't played up there yet, but keeping it at least initially in culture groups seems to make more historical sense. Given that cultural groups and spread are already in the game, I have no idea why this wasn't the default implementation for defensive pacts.

2) Threat should decay independently for each cultural or religious pact. Ideally this would be indexed to decay differentially for pacts within and outside of the corresponding max potential pact. So if you've recently attacked a Sunni caliphate, threat decays slowest for any Sunni pacts, then slightly faster for any Shia pacts, and finally far faster for any existing Christian and Pagan pacts. Ideally this could be implemented all the way down to cultural levels but barring that religious at least. I think this might make the mid-late game more dynamic by forcing you to switch your focus between regions and CB types, and by giving your recent victims a chance to regroup and counterattack you in between. Which leads to...

3) All members of a recently attacked pact should get a time limited CB to 'reconquer' any recently lost territory for their pact bros. This would function like a mini crusade or jihad (or full-on if you've pushed your threat levels high enough), and only apply to the counties that were taken in the recent conquests. Participants can include new members who were not in the pact when the territory was taken, however they are expected to hand any captured titles back to their original owners (kind of like crusade beneficiary), and receive gold, prestige and piety in return. They can also chose to keep any captured titles for themselves, but are immediately ejected from the pact, lose a lump sum of prestige, suffer a diplomatic penalty with pact members, and are banned from re-entering for a substantial length of time (10 or 20 years). Once the reconquest war has been resolved (win lose or draw), the CB is dissolved. I'm the least sure of this one as I haven't played enough to anticipate how this would inevitably be exploited, but it seems like an interesting and dynamic limit to late game blobbing, while not giving a player infinite leeway to just rotate their region of conquest until their threat levels had decayed elsewhere. At the least you'd have to balance new conquests with defense of recent ones. It also gives smaller sneaky ambitious players a new means of acquiring territory within their cultural sphere, albeit with significant penalties and risk.

4) Entering into a pact should cost a lump sum of prestige, and incur a montly prestige cost to maintain that scales with your prestige generation and titles. This doesn't need to be crippling, but it should act to noticeably slow down prestige generation for players or AIs that rely too heavily on external powers for their own defense. At the least, it should be balanced to make entering a pact a strategic decision, rather than just an auto-click.

So, what do you all think? Obviously some re-balancing would be required with threat generation and decay rates. I'm by no means an expert, but this is pretty much my ideal system based on my current experience with the game. I'm sure I'm missing something, what other suggestions or tweaks do you all have? More importantly, is this moddable, or is there some reason it can't work that I'm not thinking of? Cheers!

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

There shouldn't be very many pacts at all, just a more.....robust realm instability mechanic.

Basically right now realm stability is so easy even the AI can keep a large realm intact. For centuries.

Independence revolts need to be more prevalent and successful. Factioning should be more common.

Non aggression pacts blocking factioning should be disabled by default, with the option to change it removed. This is the primary method to keep a continent spanning realm stable regardless of any player behavior such as a reign of tyranny.

Basically it allows you to expand as you so choose. Keeping it however is a different story. This is much more realistic as most large empires usually expanded just as fast, only to collapse within two hundred years, usually less. HRE is about the largest non Chinese realm that lasted longer than a couple of centuries in this time period, and even they lost territory (Italy.) Byzantines may count also but they were in steady decline for centuries.

Paradox is a bit too keen on babying players though, so I doubt they would ever commit to splitting the player's realm. It really needs to be done however, as once you hit critical mass you have no external threats anymore, only targets. Internal threat therefore is the only challenge left, except internal threats are defused easily with a few marriages. Even without marriages, later game stat and opinion inflation means they often won't hit critical factioning mass unless you start a reign of tyranny.

 

[FifthMonarchy]

I like option 3 in the OP but as to the rest never really played in a style that has seen me generating such massive threat levels; even if I get to empire size I then usually try and play as a defender of the faith/my culture/dynasty etc and grant independence to realms I've conquered once they're strong enough to stand alone. Obviously not suggesting that's how everyone should deal with it.

 

[jwalche]

It reaches to 100% so fast I don't think it makes a big difference on how you eventually reach to the world's defensive pact against me, starting either with cultural or religious. I don't mind fighting against the world. But hope that,

1. When I declare against a defensive pact, I should be able to use multiple or at least 2~3 CBs at the same time, each direct for a different member of the pact.

2. When I won a war against world defensive pact against me, thoroughly destroying all of their armies, the pact should have some sort of limited function for a limited time. At least the target of the previous war shouldn't be allowed to join immediately. Or maybe declaring multiple CBs together against the pact members is temporarily allowed.

But that, or any possible change would make world conquest that much easier.

 

[fukujinpickle]

There shouldn't be very many pacts at all, just a more.....robust realm instability mechanic.

Yeah, I could absolutely go for this as well, especially with modifiers for distance from capital, foreign culture and a big one for different religion. I think these are actually in the game right now, they're just too insignificant to notice (-10 foreigner and -15 infidel? Okay have 40 gold and behave for 5 years, or just like me anyway because of feudal tech and high diplo/prestige). The opinion modifiers need to be more severe and there should also be a hidden increased likelihood of factionalism and plotting associated with them.

It would be interesting if they could somehow incorporate regional culture and religion as well to represent the difficulties in holding foreign territory far from your lands. Right now 'peasant revolt risk' seems more like a nuisance than anything, it would be cool if the local population could actually rise up and depose the Catholic Castillan count you just installed, and now you have to deal with a much more rebellious Sunni Egyptian count. Though if I'm to be honest with myself, I don't think this is really something that was likely to happen under a feudal contract system, as you'd probably have just cause to execute him and reinstall your guy, but something more dynamic than 'the peasants in Seville have revolted...again' would be nice. Maybe an increased likelihood that your vassal would convert religions or adopt local cultures under pressure from his subjects (the capital county religion and culture), or from his close relations (his wife, vassals, marriage ties, lovers, etc.) instead of it being a one way street in your favour. Then the Catholic Castillan guy you just installed is now actually a far more rebellious Catholic Egyptian, and his son went and married local and is now a very pissed off rebellious Sunni Egyptian.

All of this would also introduce design space for a more robust and interesting religious and cultural conversion system. Some more ways you could spread culture and religion beyond 'proselytize' or wait for your high stewardship vassal to roll a critical hit would be nice. Maybe the option to chose the culture and religion of new holdings from available existing ones in your realm (like establishing a new migrant settlement, or building a new monastery in Grenada). This could give a boost to culture and religious conversion in the county, but cause production or tax penalties at the county level (due to local friction or reduced trade ties), at least until the other holdings had flipped. You could even include some tyranny options for 'de/repopulating' holdings that would convert immediately but carry massive penalties to local taxes and levies, as well as global opinion and prestige. All of this to say that all these factors should only exacerbate rebellious vassals through opinion modifiers, and I agree that you should still have to contend with ambitious jerks in your own cultural and religious groups.

I'd still like to see the defensive pact ideas above implemented as well, I think these two systems could absolutely co-exist side by side (with options to enable and disable specific features of both), and even help to complement each other in the late game. But threat level generation and decay are currently a little ridiculous, it'd be nice if taking a few duchies as an empire didn't push you to 100% and take 40 years to decay. Still, if you're that big already maybe fighting the entire Christian world is something you can reasonably handle. Fighting the whole map is silly and I can't understand why it's there. I dunno, I feel like there's a dlc in all of this if you're listening Paradox.

 

[Poliut]

And then there's the worst part of DPs - when your own religion sides with the heathens in a holy war.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Fighting the whole map is about the only challenge left on empire size, which is why I would rather have you (the player/ai) lose that empire more frequently, rather than requiring more of the world to pile on you.

At say, 2 de jure Empire size not even a worldwide pact is enough to stop expansion. Simply declare and siege everything down before they can even mobilize. Defensive pacts just don't work that well, though I understand your frustrations with decay. I mitigate that these days by playing the marriage game, so that when I do declare every one or two generations it's for king tier to empire tier realms. Keep myself busy in the meantime by changing religions constantly depending on which religion I reformed is currently undergoing a GHW. And in between that finding out ways to vassalize mercenaries.

 

[Saphire]

And then there's the worst part of DPs - when your own religion sides with the heathens in a holy war.

Well, it makes a lot of sense doesn't it? No way will your catholic neighbors be happy about your getting more land, even if you claim to be fighting "for god". The only group that shouldn't be joining defensive pacts against you are holy orders when they are your religion. They shouldn't even be engaging in politics at all, and they want you to win that war.

 

[fukujinpickle]

It reaches to 100% so fast I don't think it makes a big difference on how you eventually reach to the world's defensive pact against me, starting either with cultural or religious.

That's sort of what I was getting at with #2 in my OP. At its most most simple, I'm suggesting hard religious limits to pact cooperation, so Christians don't start invading you for holy warring in Arabia. I believe there's already a mod that does this by increasing the 'gank' thresholds past 100% so they never activate:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1522115176

The only downside of this (aside from no ironman saves) is that your threat level is still global, meaning you're always going to be at 100% everywhere no matter what you're doing. So instead of perma-UN gank, you just get perma-Christian/Muslim/Pagan gank. What I'd like to see is a more dynamic system that represents different levels of religious (and if possible cultural) alarm. I'll try to describe it using religion as a base unit for simplicity's sake. Basically, you'd have an independent threat level with each separate religion. Threat would also have three separate values, each generated in its own way, each with its own decay rate. Any threat generated from attacks on the same religion is the primary value, and decays at the standard rate. At 100% the other two values are ignored. Attacks on other religions within the same religious group generate secondary threat, which is only added as excess threat available to the primary threat level, and decays at a faster rate. Any attacks on others outside of the religious group generate tertiary threat, which decays much more quickly. It is only added to any excess available threat from the sum of the primary and secondary values, and can only contribute up to a 70% threat total, after which excess is discarded (i.e. tertiary threat alone can never push total threat past 70%).

So for example if you have 10% primary threat to a Sunni pact, and 40% secondary threat (from attacking Shia realms), you end up with 50% total threat to the Sunni pact, but the 40% (secondary) portion decays more quickly. If you were to attack a Sunni realm, you'd push up the primary threat (which decays at standard rate), but if you kept attacking Shias, you'd only be pushing up the secondary portion (which decays more quickly). At this point, any attacks on Christians or Pagans can add at most 20% more tertiary (fast decay) threat (up to the 70% tertiary max), after which it is ignored. Now, if you somehow immediately pushed your primary Sunni threat to 80%, the 20% excess secondary (Shia) threat would be discarded, because they're more concerned with what you're doing to them right now. Any threat you now generate from attacking Christians (tertiary threat) is entirely ignored because hey who gives a shit we've got bigger problems over here. Threat would now start to decay with the 20% portion decaying more rapidly and the 80% portion at the standard rate. Not until your combined primary and secondary portions went under 70% would anyone in the Islamic world relax enough to care or even notice what you were doing up in Lapland (obviously all of this is still subject to diplo range).

For the Shias the situation would be reversed. They'd start at 40% primary threat, 10% secondary, and when you pushed the Sunnis up to 80%, they would discard the excess 20% as secondary threat as normal. The difference is that now Shia total threat, while still at 100%, is composed of 40% primary and 60% secondary, meaning it would decay more quickly overall.This means that when they dip below whatever threshold you've established for the pan-Islamic gank (let's say 70% so your Pagan escapades don't constantly trigger pact merging and splitting), they would leave the pan-Islamic pact before the Sunnis. If there were other Islamic faiths still in the pact at this point (like Ibadis or even heresies), it would carry on without Shia support, if not it would fracture back into a separate Sunni pact and Shia pact. It would not re-coalesce until you kept attacking one or both of them to drive their combined primary-secondary values back over 70%. If you instead kept attacking Pagans, the Sunni-Shia values would sit just under the threshold, as the tertiary threat generated can't contribute anything more than a 70% total. Basically they would be alarmed at your expanding power, but not alarmed enough to completely band together until you attacked one of their religious group again. Also, that (tertiary threat) alarm would decay rapidly, because honestly who cares he's not messing with us anymore right? In gameplay terms, this just means that if you were to spend some time fighting the forces of Paganism or Christendom (until they too were upset enough to form pan-religious pacts), you could then turn around and get one good war in on the Sunni world before the Shias jumped back in. Or you could just let the tertiary threat decay quickly until their pacts started to split up completely (depending on how much primary and secondary threat you still had accumulated with them).

Ideally I'd like to see this sort of thing implemented all the way down to the cultural pact level I talked about in OP point #1, but I also realize it might be too complex. You'd be dealing with at least 5 threat types (cultural, culture group, religion, religious group, foreigner/infidel) and all kinds of threat thresholds for merging and splitting defensive pacts, not to mention tracking I don't know how many different threat levels for each realm. It'd be a lot of balls to juggle. Maybe at the cultural level just keep it simple and use the existing global threat system up to the point at which religious pacts emerged. So at 5% threat you'd get cultural pacts emerging, then at 15% cultural pacts would band together in their cultural groups, then at 30% the religious pact would emerge, it would assign 30% to the primary value and start tracking secondary and tertiary threat. If your combined primary-secondary-tertiary threat to a specific religion ever dropped collectively below 30%, it would fracture back into cultural group pacts and go back to global tracking and decay. I realize that my example figures above don't work in this scenario but I'm really just throwing numbers out there to illustrate the concept.

The other thing to consider is that culture and religion don't map one-to-one, so there are probably logical (not to mention historical) issues I haven't really considered trying to get the to layers to work in a single system. Like what happens to a Greek cultural pact when the religious ones form, does it get folded into the Catholic pact, the Orthodox pact, both, or split depending on realm cultures? It'd be really cool though to be fighting against a Greek Catholic realm, run into a Greek defensive pact, then a pan-Byzantine one, then have the Catholics jump in because you're messing with our tithes bro, and finally have all of Christendom (including some probably very confused Russians and Miaphysites) come screaming down on your head. This would still result in some historical weirdness though due to the whole pan-Pagan thing, and who even knows if a converted Christian Norse realm would realistically enter a pact with their Pagan cousins. Anyway, sorry, this was way, way longer than I meant it to be. I could have conquered half the map in this time even with standard pacts turned on.

 

[fukujinpickle]

1. When I declare against a defensive pact, I should be able to use multiple or at least 2~3 CBs at the same time, each direct for a different member of the pact.

Can't you just declare multiple wars before you unpause / raise levies?

 

[_Perun_]

I somewhat like your idea but still feel that it wouldnt be impactful enough to make the DP mechanics attractive. For some time now I have been thinking about my own idea for the DP rework and then, suddenly, reading about your idea of the special reconquest CB something clicked and I decided to make a proper suggestion myself:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ifferent-approach-to-defensive-pacts.1161712/
Thank you for your motivation and inspiration, fukujinpickle

 

[jwalche]

Can't you just declare multiple wars before you unpause / raise levies?

No because declaring one of the pact member instantly lets the other to join, blocking you from declaring to the others.

There are some exceptions. If two of the members are fighting each other, only one of them can join. If any member is your ally in another war, because you offered to join his war, then he can't join the fight against you.

There is a cheap bug that I have no intention to exploit; when you reload a game, sometimes bunch of members leave and rejoin the pact, allowing you to declare to them during that short window. I only want to exploit design flaws, and not outright programming bugs.

 

[fukujinpickle]

No because declaring one of the pact member instantly lets the other to join, blocking you from declaring to the others.

There are some exceptions. If two of the members are fighting each other, only one of them can join. If any member is your ally in another war, because you offered to join his war, then he can't join the fight against you.

There is a cheap bug that I have no intention to exploit; when you reload a game, sometimes bunch of members leave and rejoin the pact, allowing you to declare to them during that short window. I only want to exploit design flaws, and not outright programming bugs.

Oh damn, well that puts a damper on things. I agree you should be able to push multiple claims in a case where you're fighting everyone anyway. I know what you mean about exploiting the system feeling bad, it's why I started thinking about the DP rework in the first place. I even feel bad about exploiting the ruler death --> leave/rejoin pact window, or the whole blitz strategy, they both feel gamey and out of place for what the game is trying to do. Hopefully Thanks for the input!

 

[fukujinpickle]

I somewhat like your idea but still feel that it wouldnt be impactful enough to make the DP mechanics attractive. For some time now I have been thinking about my own idea for the DP rework and then, suddenly, reading about your idea of the special reconquest CB something clicked and I decided to make a proper suggestion myself:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ifferent-approach-to-defensive-pacts.1161712/
Thank you for your motivation and inspiration, fukujinpickle

Thanks, I'm glad you found it helpful! Would you mind copy/pasting it here, I'd like to read your suggestions but the link isn't working for me (says I have to link my Steam account but I already have) and I didn't see it in the CK2 recent posts. New idea threads are great! Hopefully paradox picks up a few ideas, or at the very least someone with more free time and better modding skills than me

 

[_Perun_]

Would you mind copy/pasting it here

sure
(its in the suggestion subforum, above the regular forum threads)

Spoiler

I dont think I will be wrong by saying that defensive pacts as they are now, are one of the least popular features of CK2. A mechanism preventing rapid conquest is much needed but when your fellow brothers and sisters in faith join wars against you while you are successfully uprooting heathen believes by sword and fire is pure absurd. However, taking neighboring realms of the same faith from a defensive pacts would rather render the pact useless as it would simply lack enough punch.
It always puzzled me why the current design is built around inviting foreign rulers rather than engaging the full force of the attacked realms.

So, long story short, why not to, in the first place, mobilize vassals of the attacked realm to defend lands of their liege?

It could go like that:

At the Threat Level 1 all the vassals of the attacked kingdom would get an option to join the liege's defensive war, similarly to how it works with great holy wars.
For example, if the King Philippe of France, at the Alexiad bookmark (1181) got attacked by a ruler presenting the level 2 threat, apart from the 8,36k of levies he has from his own demesne and vassal obligations, he could be joined by total of 34,37k soldiers of all his dukes, counts and archbishops.

At the Threat Level 2 the offer to join the defensive war is extended to all the nearby rulers of the same religion group (independent and vassals alike).
I am not in a mood for such an extensive counting but if the Kingdom of France and all her vassals can field 42k of levies, imagine how much more there would be from the HRE, England, Scandinavia, the Eastern Europe and, of course, ERE. Sound like a great challenge for anyone who would play as, lets say, the Arab, Zoroastrian or Zunist empire, and that is without the absurd of fighting the own brothers in arms and getting backstabbed by the Indians, who couldnt, by any mean, have had any business by joining the Christian defensive pact.
Additionally, at this point all the independent rulers who lost their lands to the threatening realm could get a special reconquest CB that can bring all their vassals to that offensive war as well. This way, the additional level of strategy and preparation is needed, when it is not only important to conquer but also defend the conquered lands.

At the Threat Level 3 the pact is no longer extended but every neighboring realm could get a punitive invasion CB against the threatening realm, that can be joined by all the rulers (independent and vassals) of the same religion group, ideally allowing multiple invasions to take place at once. Exaggerating with conquest to this very point would probably make every player feel like the last Roman Emperors felt.
AI rulers with Threat Level 2, unless lunatic, would be highly reluctant to wage wars that would bring their Threat to the level 3.

The above idea means an end of nonsense pacts between hostile religions and would probably be more of a challenge (and prevention of rapid conquest, depending on a perspective), since combined forces of all the rulers of a single realm will probably surpass combined forces of neighboring independent realms.

 

[jwalche]

Oh damn, well that puts a damper on things. I agree you should be able to push multiple claims in a case where you're fighting everyone anyway. I know what you mean about exploiting the system feeling bad, it's why I started thinking about the DP rework in the first place. I even feel bad about exploiting the ruler death --> leave/rejoin pact window, or the whole blitz strategy, they both feel gamey and out of place for what the game is trying to do. Hopefully Thanks for the input!

I mean, after a while, you can be more powerful than the rest of world combined. World's pack is not a problem because it is too strong, but because you have to declare only one at a time, significantly slowing down painting the map in your color.

 

[fukujinpickle]

sure
(its in the suggestion subforum, above the regular forum threads)

Thanks, that's actually a much simpler overhaul. I'd definitely be down to try this!