OK, so apart from the Seduction Orgy, What's with the Intrigue Foucs?

[MishaTX]

I agree that Seduction is absolutely ridiculous right now, but I won't spend time on that since it's already going to be addressed in 2.3.4 according to the devs. No point in complaining about something that's already acknowledged as being worked on.

But what's with the random assassinations from every NPC who chooses the Intrigue focus? Not to mention, and that's really what irritates me right now, my inability to do anything about it. In my current game, as the King of England, I have a Duke of East Anglia who just gets a kick out of abducting everybody at random, or so it seems. He's constantly imprisoning everybody and everything, never gaining anything from it except for the ransom gold (which would be an OK motivation, thinking about it), but there is bugger all I can do about it as he is "in hiding."

So he's immune to my attempts to imprison or assassinate him (the latter makes sense because he is, after all, "in hiding" which should, at the very least, make him a more difficult target or choosing to go into hiding wouldn't make any sense at all) and all I can do is to sit back and watch for him to die of old age. Because his realm surely doesn't seem to suffer from it, unlike mine if I ever try the same trick. It's just that the AI doesn't seem to care about the negative modifiers and doesn't seem to suffer from them either, the way I would if I chose to crawl under the coffee table.

I don't care how much effort I have to put into rooting the bastard out, but I just don't have that option because he's "in hiding."

 

[JSmith0730]

I agree that Seduction is absolutely ridiculous right now, but I won't spend time on that since it's already going to be addressed in 2.3.4 according to the devs. No point in complaining about something that's already acknowledged as being worked on.

But what's with the random assassinations from every NPC who chooses the Intrigue focus? Not to mention, and that's really what irritates me right now, my inability to do anything about it. In my current game, as the King of England, I have a Duke of East Anglia who just gets a kick out of abducting everybody at random, or so it seems. He's constantly imprisoning everybody and everything, never gaining anything from it except for the ransom gold (which would be an OK motivation, thinking about it), but there is bugger all I can do about it as he is "in hiding."

So he's immune to my attempts to imprison or assassinate him (the latter makes sense because he is, after all, "in hiding" which should, at the very least, make him a more difficult target or choosing to go into hiding wouldn't make any sense at all) and all I can do is to sit back and watch for him to die of old age. Because his realm surely doesn't seem to suffer from it, unlike mine if I ever try the same trick. It's just that the AI doesn't seem to care about the negative modifiers and doesn't seem to suffer from them either, the way I would if I chose to crawl under the coffee table.

I don't care how much effort I have to put into rooting the bastard out, but I just don't have that option because he's "in hiding."

If I start up a new game and anyone bordering my province has seduction or intrigue, I reload my master save. One of the worst things about intrigue, IMO, is on the random chance they fail to kill you and you find out who it is... nothing happens. No opinion hit, no retaliation options. Nothing. It's basically just "Oh well, let's try again." (though I never had it tried on me by a vassal so I'm not sure if that would change anything). I don't think having your spymaster around to uncover plots works either. I guess technically it's not a plot, but there should still be a way for them to uncover the attempt.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

Is the button to imprison greyed out, or does it just have a low success chance? If the latter, imprison him anyway -- he'll rebel, and after you beat him he'll be in your prison. If that doesn't work, revoke his land. You can always revoke without penalties if you have a claim, which you can just fabricate.

 

[yourworstnightm]

Seduction was the nost ridiculous, but in my opinion several other foci have some ridiculous side effect. For example, for some reason you become rivla with someone almost on the other side of the map (barely within your dip. range). You can just invite him to travel all over the World for a nice morning duel to the death at your castle. Yeah, kinda dumb. (all foci based diplomatic options should have much narrower dip range).

And yes, intrigue is very OP, while seduction breaks the game in ridiculous ways, intrigue is the win button.

 

[Lord_P]

And rulership is like casting dice. Sometimes you get insane stewardship, sometimes you get depressed after a month.

 

[Tufto]

And rulership is like casting dice. Sometimes you get insane stewardship, sometimes you get depressed after a month.

That one kinda makes sense though.

 

[Woifee]

I reale love Intriguefocus as a vassal. Imprisson King or Emperor and everet faction you lead is a win. Sadly the chances to catch him are too low. Even as Spymaster I hardly got any event.

I wish there were more Events to every Focus.

 

[MishaTX]

Is the button to imprison greyed out, or does it just have a low success chance? If the latter, imprison him anyway -- he'll rebel, and after you beat him he'll be in your prison. If that doesn't work, revoke his land. You can always revoke without penalties if you have a claim, which you can just fabricate.

It's greyed out. Doesn't seem to slow HIM down, though. He can still do whatever he wants, but nobody can do anything about it.

Anyway, thanks! I hadn't thought about fabricating a claim on his land, silly me

Well, I'd thought about it, sure, but then dismissed it for being silly. But at this point, I really don't care. I just want him gone

 

[DukeDayve]

Yeah, it's a pain. One particularly nasty game I had when playing as Byzantine Empire, just after Way of Life released, pretty much every count and duke in my realm (even the ecumenical patriarch) were constantly getting blinded and/or castrated simply because AI players choose intrigue focus and think it's fun to arrest/blind/castrate people. It's outrageous.

 

[Jankmaster98]

In my Bzyantine game the EP always get assassinated or imprisoned by someone at some point. Poor guy has king title but almost no power so I guess he's a prime target.

 

[MishaTX]

Yeah, it's a pain. One particularly nasty game I had when playing as Byzantine Empire, just after Way of Life released, pretty much every count and duke in my realm (even the ecumenical patriarch) were constantly getting blinded and/or castrated simply because AI players choose intrigue focus and think it's fun to arrest/blind/castrate people. It's outrageous.

That's what I'm saying. It's enough to make me want to just disable Way of Life and I have done that several times, just to not have to be aggravated by the lack of balancing or, dare I say, rationale behind what the AI does? One of the things that I love about CK2 is how, say, plots will pop up and I'll initially go "what the fark? Why???" And then, upon further digging into bloodlines, history and so on, I see just why they're trying to do what they're trying to do. That's brilliant and no other game out there does that!

But with WoL, it seems to me that the AI is picking actions and foci based more on "because I can" than anything else. Or even worse, a pure RNG decision. "Sure, I really don't have any bloody reason to want to kidnap this dude or kill this dude, but I randomly chose the Intrigue focus, so that's what I'm gonna do." "So this chick who's the Queen of West Francia is halfway across the map from me and the RNG decided I should choose the Seduction Focus, so I'll just go ahead and spend the rest of my life trying to bang her until she squeals like a pig. Not because I want to get a claim to her throne from one of the bastards, but because I can."

So then I disable WoL, and that's a real shame. Not because I give two hoots about the 8 bucks I spent on it, I don't really think that anybody honestly give a tinker's cuss about 8 wasted bucks other than the principle of having bought something that doesn't quite work, but because I see so much potential in it. Fleshing out characters, adding more roleplaying, more events, more stuff that happens, those are all things that I want more of, but if all it is amounts to Duke Horndog of Armenia wants to dip his wick in the Queen of Scotland because RNG, then it just doesn't work for me.

The 8 bucks they can have, they've given me more than enough enjoyment over the years than what 8 bucks would have bought me otherwise, and if it keeps them in business churning out stuff that I'll love just as much then sure, have 'em. I do disagree with the principle of paying for something that you can't use without degrading your enjoyment of what you already have, and it does lower my respect and makes me more hesitant to spend more money in the future until I've seen if what I'm paying for actually works, but my main disappointment is the loss of potential.

WoL could have been one of the greatest expansions ever and I hope that it will turn out to be just that eventually, but it sure as hell isn't now.