Host army sizes are ridiculous

[Dracko81]

This.

It is in no way tied to your total troop strength, or anyone's total troop strength. It's just an arbitrary large number of troops that the game pulls out of its ass without regard to either realism or balance

If you compare it to say a Norse prepared invasion... the hosts get literally 10x the troops sometimes

where the hell is this guy with no land and no money, living in the middle of nowhere, getting the largest army and navy in the world? How is he paying them? What are they eating?

Makes zero sense and anyone defending it is just being dense

Oh really? So can you tell me where your levies come from? And when they die where do these new people come from? Where do the mercenaries come from? Troops numbers are not relevant to realism, because this is a game. If they were to actually take birth rates into account for reinforcing levies and mercs - not to mention the 1000's of retinues that get hired a month - we would need to install a few clone generating factories all over euroasia. Either that or we could actually severely limit troops growth rates, meaning you would wait for your neighbours to kill off their troops and hope you don't get attacked. Bringing the game into a simple game of attrition and who can hold onto their limited supply of troops the longest.

 

[Dracko81]

1) Someone trying to overthrow me is not a good enough reason to imprison?

2) My max levies were 6k, not 10k. For your reference, I had norway and sweden, and 2 provinces in finland, nothing else. So no, there's absolutely nothing I can do.

3) I'd be willing to accept losing titles if I made a mistake, or if the way I lost a war made sense. But when I lose because a game mechanic is broken, I'd rather do something else.

If you cannot see that 20k is utterly ridiculous, and that trying to imprison someone who's trying to openly overthrow you in your court is tyrannical, than there's nothing left to discuss.

The imprisonment tyranny malus is broken IMO, it often makes no sense at all. Invade england with William and imprison and banish an anglo-saxon lord to take his titles and give them to a norman? well that norman will hate you because of "tyranny"

absolutely ridiculous

If you are tyrannical and revoke or imprison anyone, there is nothing to say you will not do it to them.

Adventurers will not always attack, he could just be posturing so you grant him a title. Imprisoning him would indeed be tyrannical, thinking it is not is utterly ridiculous.

 

[Dukjlanin]

Oh really? So can you tell me where your levies come from? And when they die where do these new people come from? Where do the mercenaries come from? Troops numbers are not relevant to realism, because this is a game. If they were to actually take birth rates into account for reinforcing levies and mercs - not to mention the 1000's of retinues that get hired a month - we would need to install a few clone generating factories all over euroasia. Either that or we could actually severely limit troops growth rates, meaning you would wait for your neighbours to kill off their troops and hope you don't get attacked. Bringing the game into a simple game of attrition and who can hold onto their limited supply of troops the longest.

Thank you for illustrating my point by being dense.

The realism is not in absolute but in relative terms. I don't know whether or not it's realistic for the ERE to have 20k troops. Maybe they should have 10k. Maybe they should have 30k. Who knows which is "realistic"... that is a matter of academic debate.

But it is absolutely unrealistic for random landless adventurers to have larger armies than the ERE. Understand? It's not an adventurer having 30k troops that's inherently unrealistic, it's that that number of troops represents the largest army in the world relative to others

If you are tyrannical and revoke or imprison anyone, there is nothing to say you will not do it to them.

Adventurers will not always attack, he could just be posturing so you grant him a title. Imprisoning him would indeed be tyrannical, thinking it is not is utterly ridiculous.

If someone is actively raising an army against you, your vassals would not hold his imprisonment against you. It's just that the game arbitrarily doesn't accept that as a justification for imprisonment, which is ridiculous

 

[Raineh Daze]

Ah, the wonderful 'defence' of retinues: "If your attempts to dispose of the threat go wrong, costing you opinion, then you should be able to do it with retinues, mercenaries, all the levies in your realm, good generals, and a terrain advantage, after tactically allowing the siege of castles whilst not risking your army but not being too far away to prevent the assaulting climbing to 100% warscore."

A game mechanic isn't functioning if the way to defeat it when it selects one of the two 'more troops than your whole realm' options (out of three, with the levy rebalance making the third ALSO yield more troops) is 'play perfectly'. This is not how adventurers are meant to work; they weren't put in to be a vast threat on the level of the mongols where you're expected to have a huge empire and play well or lose the war.

There is still no justification for the troop number or attrition resistance, either. "Behold, the largest army in the world!" "Why?" "I want to take over one county in Perm."

The realism is not in absolute but in relative terms. I don't know whether or not it's realistic for the ERE to have 20k troops. Maybe they should have 10k. Maybe they should have 30k. Who knows which is "realistic"... that is a matter of academic debate.

About 900AD, they should be getting 10k troops from Thracesia alone. A realistic number of available soldiers from them would obliterate the map.

 

[Woopzilla]

Oh really? So can you tell me where your levies come from? And when they die where do these new people come from? Where do the mercenaries come from? Troops numbers are not relevant to realism, because this is a game. If they were to actually take birth rates into account for reinforcing levies and mercs - not to mention the 1000's of retinues that get hired a month - we would need to install a few clone generating factories all over euroasia. Either that or we could actually severely limit troops growth rates, meaning you would wait for your neighbours to kill off their troops and hope you don't get attacked. Bringing the game into a simple game of attrition and who can hold onto their limited supply of troops the longest.

There needs to obviously be a balance between gameplay value and realism. A line has to be drawn somwhere to get the right balance between fun and challenging while avoiding frustration for the casual players. The game's rules simply do not allow anyone that isn't a major power to conjure up an army strong enough to defend themselves with without spending huge sums of money on mercenaries. It does now feel like the hosts calculate their strength on the correct number of troops that you can summon to fight for you... they assume you can pull almost 100% of your vassals troops and that your vassals can pull their own vassals troops for 100% - which is pretty much never going to happen. The absolute max a host can be is limited at 30k but you hardly ever see sizes smaller than 30k. You only see smaller 8k stacks when you spot a random pagan single county count getting invaded.

Some adjustments need to be done to the scaling... then they could even get rid of the upper 30k limit so that bigger realms could see adventurers as threats again and not walking bags of money after you stomp them and banish them.

 

[Dukjlanin]

Ah, the wonderful 'defence' of retinues: "If your attempts to dispose of the threat go wrong, costing you opinion, then you should be able to do it with retinues, mercenaries, all the levies in your realm, good generals, and a terrain advantage, after tactically allowing the siege of castles whilst not risking your army but not being too far away to prevent the assaulting climbing to 100% warscore."

A game mechanic isn't functioning if the way to defeat it when it selects one of the two 'more troops than your whole realm' options (out of three, with the levy rebalance making the third ALSO yield more troops) is 'play perfectly'. This is not how adventurers are meant to work; they weren't put in to be a vast threat on the level of the mongols where you're expected to have a huge empire and play well or lose the war.

There is still no justification for the troop number or attrition resistance, either. "Behold, the largest army in the world!" "Why?" "I want to take over one county in Perm."



About 900AD, they should be getting 10k troops from Thracesia alone. A realistic number of available soldiers from them would obliterate the map.

well, not really, because the muslim troop totals would also be correspondingly higher

again, it doesn't matter whether things like troop totals are reasonable in absolute terms (whether they are in line with real life historical totals), it matters whether they're reasonable in relative terms (whether they are comparable relative to other armies as the historical army would have been relative to others)

 

[Dracko81]

Thank you for illustrating my point by being dense.

The realism is not in absolute but in relative terms. I don't know whether or not it's realistic for the ERE to have 20k troops. Maybe they should have 10k. Maybe they should have 30k. Who knows which is "realistic"... that is a matter of academic debate.

But it is absolutely unrealistic for random landless adventurers to have larger armies than the ERE. Understand? It's not an adventurer having 30k troops that's inherently unrealistic, it's that that number of troops represents the largest army in the world relative to others



No, thinking it is is ridiculous. If someone is actively raising an army against you, your vassals would not hold his imprisonment against you. It's just that the game arbitrarily doesn't accept that as a justification, which is ridiculous

Now what you are saying here is not what you said or even implied in your previous post, that I quoted. But I will say it again, army size is not relevant this is a game. So lets say - I don't know how big it is off the top of my head - ERE is 400 realm size. You have a realm size of 200 but can field 14k in levies - using my current game in india as example taken from the realm tree & journal - what would be a reasonable force to invade this realm? The ledger says Byzantines have 350 holdings and 46k troops. So looking at this I immediately notice an issue. I have 70 troops per holding, compared to the Byzantines 131 troops per holding. Why is this? It is because non de jure holdings do not give you max troops, which means when the calculations made for your realm size come in they are not accurate. If your realm was completely de jure and you had perfect vassal opinion, your troop numbers would be in the wheel house.

If a foreigner declared war or someone of a different faith? My realm strength goes from 14k to 20k+ in 1 day. Plus mercs. So what would ba a reasonable sized army that they can muster against me? 15k? 20k? 30k?

Personally I'd be disappointed if it was under 20k at this stage. But I suspect it would be 30k or larger, and it still would not stand a chance against my 20k levies. The largest army in the game does not matter, these troops are given to the aggressor to ensure if they do win the war, they can actually hold it for longer than the day they took it. If adventurers and hosts had the same size as the aggressed they would never win and they would be a just a free cash bonus to whoever gets targetted. They are perfectly fine the way they are now and saying they should be nerfed because largest army in the world is stupid. ERE has less then 20k troops? I guess Catholics are getting early crusades.

The adventurers do scale with smaller realms, saying a small realm uncapable of defending itself against adventurers is not really an actual issue.

 

[Raineh Daze]

Now what you are saying here is not what you said or even implied in your previous post, that I quoted. But I will say it again, army size is not relevant this is a game. So lets say - I don't know how big it is off the top of my head - ERE is 400 realm size. You have a realm size of 200 but can field 14k in levies - using my current game in india as example taken from the realm tree & journal - what would be a reasonable force to invade this realm? The ledger says Byzantines have 350 holdings and 46k troops. So looking at this I immediately notice an issue. I have 70 troops per holding, compared to the Byzantines 131 troops per holding. Why is this? It is because non de jure holdings do not give you max troops, which means when the calculations made for your realm size come in they are not accurate. If your realm was completely de jure and you had perfect vassal opinion, your troop numbers would be in the wheel house.

If a foreigner declared war or someone of a different faith? My realm strength goes from 14k to 20k+ in 1 day. Plus mercs. So what would ba a reasonable sized army that they can muster against me? 15k? 20k? 30k?

Personally I'd be disappointed if it was under 20k at this stage. But I suspect it would be 30k or larger, and it still would not stand a chance against my 20k levies. The largest army in the game does not matter, these troops are given to the aggressor to ensure if they do win the war, they can actually hold it for longer than the day they took it. If adventurers and hosts had the same size as the aggressed they would never win and they would be a just a free cash bonus to whoever gets targetted. They are perfectly fine the way they are now and saying they should be nerfed because largest army in the world is stupid. ERE has less then 20k troops? I guess Catholics are getting early crusades.

The adventurers do scale with smaller realms, saying a small realm uncapable of defending itself against adventurers is not really an actual issue.

'Army size is not relevant this is a game'. What are you trying to say? Of course army size is relevant, this is part of the game. The problem is that the calculations were originally made to roughly match available troops, or a bit more. Then levies were changed, but the calculation--and all event troops in general--weren't. So adventurers are matching against a number that you can only achieve in an ideal scenario. This is a flaw, as it's clearly not what they were meant to do when designed.

Secondly: you don't get the 'defending against' bonus with adventurers, for some odd reason (this has been mentioned in the thread before), so you're still with 14k troops, +mercs, against adventurers matched against your full possible force.

Now, if we follow on from this: many people playing the game are going to lose this war-out-of-essentially-nowhere (especially with the 'fun' addition of being targeted from beyond diplomatic range) because they aren't prepared to deal with 2-to-1 odds against an enemy that doesn't face attrition. An event that is essentially 'be good at the game or get an enemy with a huge army right next door to your depleted lands' isn't fun for people in the second group, and those in the first are either temporarily annoyed or get free money. Bad design.

The ERE doesn't actually have that many troops at the absolute beginning of 867. MTTH for a claimant is 50 years, which is halved by ambitious, further reduced by proud, and cut into a quarter if refused a title--reducing it with just the first and last to 6 years. Similar scenario for random claim-less guys, with the bonus that it isn't even you refusing a title here (it starts off at 100 years, but this is promptly cut in half if Norman or North Germanic--so norse). Now, these second guys are only supposed to have 3/4 the number of troops of the guy they're attacking--but as previously discussed, the calculation is wonky, and they can get up to the 30k before their target does.

What this means is, at the beginning of the game, any landless guy could randomly start an adventure for basically anywhere else, or claimants could get grumpy, and they pull armies larger than the ERE (as infrastructure and the like hasn't built up at all) out of essentially nowhere, with no indication of early crusades at all.

The mechanics aren't doing what they're meant to. This needs fixing. Even though it's an adventurer nerf, the fact some people are quite happy to deal with them as they are now doesn't mean they're working as they were supposed to.

 

[Emoskri]

If you are tyrannical and revoke or imprison anyone, there is nothing to say you will not do it to them.

Adventurers will not always attack, he could just be posturing so you grant him a title. Imprisoning him would indeed be tyrannical, thinking it is not is utterly ridiculous.

First point is not at all in keeping with history and is something that's annoyed me immensely - the bookmark even mentions William putting his own men in positions of influence. Yet doing so bogs you down in all manner of issues where every single person now hates you.

Second point ... the tower of London held many people who plotted against the King to push claims of themselves or others, and I don't think many people not also plotting against them held it against the King when he imprisoned people who were trying to put themselves on the throne. Someone, without the backing of the Pope, has declared they're going to usurp the rightful ruler and is standing there in your court every day - I can't think of a situation where anyone would hold it against a ruler if they imprison them.

I mean if you stood next to the modern-day Queen of England and declared you were raising an army of mercenaries to invade and conquer England, I'm guessing you'd be arrested and questioned, and virtually no one would think it was tyrannical. Let alone a thousand years ago.

 

[Raineh Daze]

On an odd note, random non-claimant adventurers spawn their troops as a block of three. Claimants split them into six. Both can have a max of 30k, yet the claimant can split theirs into two 15k armies, or six 5k ones.

 

[KingNothing]

First point is not at all in keeping with history and is something that's annoyed me immensely - the bookmark even mentions William putting his own men in positions of influence. Yet doing so bogs you down in all manner of issues where every single person now hates you.

Second point ... the tower of London held many people who plotted against the King to push claims of themselves or others, and I don't think many people not also plotting against them held it against the King when he imprisoned people who were trying to put themselves on the throne. Someone, without the backing of the Pope, has declared they're going to usurp the rightful ruler and is standing there in your court every day - I can't think of a situation where anyone would hold it against a ruler if they imprison them.

I mean if you stood next to the modern-day Queen of England and declared you were raising an army of mercenaries to invade and conquer England, I'm guessing you'd be arrested and questioned, and virtually no one would think it was tyrannical. Let alone a thousand years ago.

Would you like it to be more historical? They can make adventurers who spawn in your court come with no warning, and if they successfully siege your capital you lose. Once again I use the example of Alexios I Komemnos. He lived in Constantinople, he left his mother there to distract the emperor while he went around raising armies, his mother swore to the emperor he was innocent. Alexios returned and quickly overthrew the emperor. Game over for that family.

 

[Raineh Daze]

Would you like it to be more historical? They can make adventurers who spawn in your court come with no warning, and if they successfully siege your capital you lose. Once again I use the example of Alexios I Komemnos. He lived in Constantinople, he left his mother there to distract the emperor while he went around raising armies, his mother swore to the emperor he was innocent. Alexios returned and quickly overthrew the emperor. Game over for that family.

More plotting, less random events would be nice. Needing to actually gather support. Intrigue and diplomatic skill being needed. Not 'and suddenly, guy with terrible stats, who is a coward* and trained as an administrator, has raised an army!'

Byzantine court politics don't accurately reflect the 'landless adventurer' idea this is supposed to be, though.

*Only increases MTTH. This can be roughly cancelled by, e.g., proud and Born in the Purple. Then refuse to hand out a title...

 

[Dracko81]

'Army size is not relevant this is a game'. What are you trying to say?

Ok so what you are saying is that the heavy infantry of India at the same tech level is the same as English at the same time period? Archers too right? What about light cavalry?

Army size is not relevant because true troop compositions can not really be represented. Which means armies larger than the ERE should be expected to occur, and 20k is not that big especially if you hold 100 holdings+. Army size is not relevant because troops experience and the knowledge need to be taken into account. Making holdings completely different for every culture and religion would be chaos and is not really possible with the current system. So everyone gets generic troops with special troops now also an option, which means refering anything in regards to history and army sizes is pointless, can not realisticall be represented in the game.

Can you show me evidence to prove that match_mult does indeed point towards a value from pre levy reduction? I'd love to see this evidence, I am pretty sure that this was changed and fixed not long after the initial release of the levy reduction. But if you can prove that it is still the case I'd love to see it. This was directly a result of the rebellions becoming harder to beat.

Are you sure you don't get the bonus for defending against adventurers? I am sure I got the +50 defending against foreigners in my jewish with that Italian catholic invasion. Might not work with religion though now that I think back to it.

You always say mechanics are not working as designed, but never really provide any actual evidence to show this assessment. So as usual if you are going to make that statement Raineh Daze, please actually provide evidence of it, not just the constant whining that it is too hard and needs to be easier.

So adventurers are matching against a number that you can only achieve in an ideal scenario. This is a flaw, as it's clearly not what they were meant to do when designed.

This statement in particular seems really wrong. Adventurers should only spawn against what you have currently available? Not against what you could possibly field? Your logic here is really flawed, and as far as I know that is exactly what they are supposed to do and thus what they are designed to do.

 

[Raineh Daze]

You always say mechanics are not working as designed, but never really provide any actual evidence to show this assessment. So as usual if you are going to make that statement Raineh Daze, please actually provide evidence of it, not just the constant whining that it is too hard and needs to be easier.

Better still: go ask a dev how it works so we can actually settle this once and for all, as the implementation of it would be hard-coded. The regularity with which people say 'I could call on X soldiers, and the AI had 2X event troops' and the like (or 'I'm Ireland, and the AI pulled out more troops than the ERE') strongly suggests it's not matching against the correct number, in any case.

Not saying it's too hard, I'm saying it's not working how it should work.

This statement in particular seems really wrong. Adventurers should only spawn against what you have currently available? Not against what you could possibly field? Your logic here is really flawed, and as far as I know that is exactly what they are supposed to do and thus what they are designed to do.

Adventurers should spawn independent of the realm they're attacking, rather than this stupid size-matching. A poor OPM's seventh son fields an army to challenge the ERE because the ERE is big? This makes no sense.

If they're going to spawn against what the realm 'could' field, it should be what the liege can draw on. Not on the combined forces of liege and every vassal and vassal's vassal. One is theoretically possible to match. The other is literally impossible within the confines of the game.

 

[Dracko81]

First point is not at all in keeping with history and is something that's annoyed me immensely - the bookmark even mentions William putting his own men in positions of influence. Yet doing so bogs you down in all manner of issues where every single person now hates you.

Second point ... the tower of London held many people who plotted against the King to push claims of themselves or others, and I don't think many people not also plotting against them held it against the King when he imprisoned people who were trying to put themselves on the throne. Someone, without the backing of the Pope, has declared they're going to usurp the rightful ruler and is standing there in your court every day - I can't think of a situation where anyone would hold it against a ruler if they imprison them.

I mean if you stood next to the modern-day Queen of England and declared you were raising an army of mercenaries to invade and conquer England, I'm guessing you'd be arrested and questioned, and virtually no one would think it was tyrannical. Let alone a thousand years ago.

Yea have you played the invasion of England? You go in take all the county capitals and when you finish the war all the holdings come into your control. Don't need to control the baronies just the county capitals. This means you can place your own mean in positions of power. So yes this is in the game and does not cause tyranny.

So you want to put the representation of one realm as example and apply it to the whole of CK2 and say it happen in this one realm therefore it is cannon and all realms must follow this rule?

Also to the comment earlier about someone heir pressing a claim, I am calling shenanigans. I just actually looked at the event, and so long as someone is set to inherit anything they can not go on an adventurer/host claim war. Which makes your entire claim about what happened questionable.

 

[Raineh Daze]

Yea have you played the invasion of England? You go in take all the county capitals and when you finish the war all the holdings come into your control. Don't need to control the baronies just the county capitals. This means you can place your own mean in positions of power. So yes this is in the game and does not cause tyranny.

This is an inaccurate reflection of what happened--the war was won and William took control. It wasn't until afterwards, as the Anglo-Saxon Earls resisted his rule and rebelled that their land and titles were confiscated.

Though taking the land of rebellious vassals is something in the game. They just need to rebel more, I guess.

Also to the comment earlier about someone heir pressing a claim, I am calling shenanigans. I just actually looked at the event, and so long as someone is set to inherit anything they can not go on an adventurer/host claim war. Which makes your entire claim about what happened questionable.

Removed from the line of succession somehow (e.g., Elective switching target)?

 

[Dracko81]

Better still: go ask a dev how it works so we can actually settle this once and for all, as the implementation of it would be hard-coded. The regularity with which people say 'I could call on X soldiers, and the AI had 2X event troops' and the like (or 'I'm Ireland, and the AI pulled out more troops than the ERE') strongly suggests it's not matching against the correct number, in any case.

Not saying it's too hard, I'm saying it's not working how it should work.

Adventurers should spawn independent of the realm they're attacking, rather than this stupid size-matching. A poor OPM's seventh son fields an army to challenge the ERE because the ERE is big? This makes no sense.

If they're going to spawn against what the realm 'could' field, it should be what the liege can draw on. Not on the combined forces of liege and every vassal and vassal's vassal. One is theoretically possible to match. The other is literally impossible within the confines of the game.

The devs typically only respond if someone proves an issue in the calculations. Since this was done after the rebellion and faction reinforcement issue back with the levy reduction, I am sure this was also looked at at the same time. There is also alot of people making random claims and not actual proof of these claims, I unfortunately didn't take screenshots or make savegame copies at any relevant point because I only make them for bug reports. For example that claim earlier about their heir preparing to invade, which should not happen because the event stops it. Then getting 20k (which seems reasonable for Norway and Sweden) which is the largest army in the world claim. Unfortunately I planned to put a few hours in tonight to see if I could document some events, but other things come up. Will try to observe some tomorrow, but I am not going to go running test games because that means I need to mod the game to allow me force adventurers to occur.

You have no evidence of how it should work, you are making an assumption and putting forward that this is the only way. You should assume mechanics are working as designed, unless you can show they are not. If you think it can be improved then you put forward suggestions, not state that it is not working right.

I agree adventurers should not spawn in the realm they are attacking - unless that is the only realm - but they should be size matched. Otherwise all adventurers will always fail except against OPM's. If you limit it to what the Liege can field then he should not be able to call in mercs and not be able to raise vassals. Otherwise again free cash cows for large realms. They are there to add flavour and to help break up realms, making them always fail would not be what they are designed to do.

 

[Raineh Daze]

You have no evidence of how it should work, you are making an assumption and putting forward that this is the only way. You should assume mechanics are working as designed, unless you can show they are not. If you think it can be improved then you put forward suggestions, not state that it is not working right.

With the regularity of these threads, I'm not going to assume they're working right. There's one or two every damn week; something needss to be done.

I agree adventurers should not spawn in the realm they are attacking - unless that is the only realm - but they should be size matched. Otherwise all adventurers will always fail except against OPM's. If you limit it to what the Liege can field then he should not be able to call in mercs and not be able to raise vassals. Otherwise again free cash cows for large realms. They are there to add flavour and to help break up realms, making them always fail would not be what they are designed to do.

I think the whole mechanic should be reworked and adventurers should be able to be anywhere on a scale from 'barely any' to 'overwhelming force', and generally integrated with everything else rather than being Alien Space Bats.

They don't do a very good job of breaking things up. Claimant adventurers are more likely to take everything over, changing nothing. The others are either going to carve a huge kingdom with their event troops, or get ground out of existence. Nothing really falls apart.

 

[stuka80]

Unless you are a count, none of these myriad of scenarios mean "game over."

They either mean some loss of land and/or a title, or you becoming a vassal.

Also stop it with this bullshit argument of "magically appearing." Things appear out of thin air all the time in this game, I can fly in thousands of mercenaries from England in one click to Venice, magically fly in women, nobles, holy men, holy orders, levies, and so on. Nearly everything in this game magically appears out of thin air, it is a needed abstraction that also takes place when it comes to adventurer hosts.

I seriously have the feeling that some people want to play a game where it is impossible to lose anything ever. This game has already become laughable easy since they caved in to people whining about levies, and now I spend a whole game not having one single faction revolt, the faction system basically does not exist anymore, nobody plots, and this is somehow exciting for people?

Completely agree with you, did any of these people not grow up with video games from the 80s and 90s? They dont want to ever have trouble with anything, Adventurers are stomping out your guts because you're just a lowly count? a weak ruler? involved in other wars? instead of preparing? nerf adventurers and use the excuse as ahistorical.

And you're spot on when it comes to the faction system. I've made threads on this subject before, its probably my biggest complaint about the recent nerfs. Your relationship with your vassals, which is the bread and butter of this game, has essentially been taken out, because now they're all ass-kissers. Even if you play a bad ruler, hardly anyone joins factions let alone start one. Most of the time i look at the faction screen and its a blank page. Managing vassals was suppose to be the main feature of this game, instead you're just sitting around twiddling your thumbs because everyone loves you and the only other thing to do to cure your boredom is to go on conquests. I've said it before, CK2 has basically become EU4 but much much shallower because the core of the game has been gutted.

Yeah, no. Sorry, but being attacked by more troops that you'll ever be able to raise as a count and without warning is not a challenge, it's a game-ender and no amount of skill is gonna save you. THAT is why people complain about adventurers. Unless you're a king or an emperor there's often no chance at all to beat them. Is a person who spent several hours on a save, managing his domain only to be roflstomped by a "lulz I haz thousands of troopz, jajajajaja" moneyless beggar out of nowhere really an idiot if they rage?

This is a perfect example of what i'm talking about. Why the hell would you ever expect to beat an adventurer if you're a COUNT?!? Games like this are always subject to luck and timing, I had the 3rd strongest military in a previous game and completely lost my kingdom because i was involved in a life and death struggle and right in the middle of that, an adventurer host was comming which i thought i could handle so did not end my current war, then months before the adventurer army was going to arrive, a crusade was called against me. It sucked but it was fun because there's always that element of unpredictability and also it was due to bad planning on my part. But i did not storm over to the forums to bitch about adventurers just because they showed up with a large army that i normally could've handled.

 

[Raineh Daze]

This is a perfect example of what i'm talking about. Why the hell would you ever expect to beat an adventurer if you're a COUNT?!? Games like this are always subject to luck and timing, I had the 3rd strongest military in a previous game and completely lost my kingdom because i was involved in a life and death struggle and right in the middle of that, an adventurer host was comming which i thought i could handle so did not end my current war, then months before the adventurer army was going to arrive, a crusade was called against me. It sucked but it was fun because there's always that element of unpredictability and also it was due to bad planning on my part. But i did not storm over to the forums to bitch about adventurers just because they showed up with a large army that i normally could've handled.

The inverse: why the hell would someone get so much support to take a random county? Why would an adventurer target a county? Why is there an event that is simply 'game over' whenever it targets you as a count or de-jure-only duke? It would be like playing Mario, and the game was designed so occasionally half the ground would disappear randomly, with no links to level or your performance. Challenging in some levels, easy in others, and an unavoidable lost life in some more.

The AI's total inability to deal with it is problematic. Especially as the game is playable as a vassal, and they will lose a war for your duchy if it happens.