Sat on my hands for decades waiting for threat to decay, went down to ~50%, I die, daughter takes over and now threat is 99.7%. This system is stupid. Christians defending pagans defending Muslims defending Christians. Dumb.
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Threat
- Thread starter redbloodedmalk
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Dumb? Yeah, I suppose, but not for the same reasons.
I think that threat escalates too rapidly (+50% for a single duchy?!) and that the mechanism encourages gamey tactics which I dislike (being a multi-king vassal of a powerless emperor; merc-rushing the primary target; jumping on civil wars).
Fortunately, you can turn off defensive pacts in game rules without disabling ironman/bronzeman.
If your playstyle without threat is hyper-aggressive-expansionism then turning off defensive pacts will probably make the game a lot easier - possibly even un-fun. But if you're a bit more chill about it, disabling defensive pacts can make warfare much less tedious.
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Yeah, I tend to agree. I think it's actually needed in the game to discourage over-aggressive expansion by human players, but it could be implemented a lot better IMO. It's also very opaque as to how it's calculated; the wiki doesn't really provide any detailed information on this point, and I've seen single counties give anywhere from 2% to almost 20%. It seems to be partly based on how many holding slots there are in the county, and how many of them actually have holdings (and possibly also on how many building are in the holdings?), and partly on how big you were before you took the county. That,, and the fact that it declines more slowly later in the game (and I'm not sure how that's calculated, either, but it certainly appears that it declines more slowly the bigger you are, and I suspect that it also depends on what tier your highest title is, and possibly on the game year) means that it makes it much harder to expand later in the game. Paradox might see that as a balancing issue, but it's artificial difficulty--it's the player wrestling with the system rather than with the situation or other realms.
I don't really have a problem with CK2's threat system. It's a more fine-grained and passive version of the badboy system from Paradox's golden age games (EU2, for example). You'll never be attacked for high threat in this game, you're just encouraged to stop attacking anyone for a while. Which is perfectly reasonable. A classic historical example would be William the Bastard; after Hastings, his threat was 50% (the maximum one can get from one source), and he spent the rest of his life putting down rebellions (letting threat decay). He didn't turn around and attack France or Norway or whatever crazy aggression a human player might try to pull in that situation in-game.
If a player persists in attacking neighbors despite high threat, that's ahistorical behavior that triggers an ahistorical response from the game, as all religions band together to try to stop the player. That's been a core feature of Paradox games going all the way back to EU1. Players should be used to it; either play such that their threat stays under control, or plan around defensive pact wars, or turn it off in the options.
I do agree that some of the details aren't perfect. The scaling can be a bit high as others have noted; in my Persia game, adding the Duchy of Jibal (six very rich provinces with 5-7 holdings each) gave me a surprising amount of threat, for example. And I really dislike the threat accumulation from vassal dukes attacking everyone in sight and conquering lots of territory I don't want added to my realm. Though my irritation is more for the addition of territory I don't want than for the threat per se.
The steep scaling does work both ways though. If you have a vassal you don't particularly want, granting independence reduces threat by significantly more than I expected.
I also rather liked CK1's mechanic where badboy decay scaled with piety. Though maybe that doesn't make sense in this game where potentially every religion is playable. Not sure a high piety character of a warlike reformed Germanic religion would justify threat decaying faster, for example.
If a player persists in attacking neighbors despite high threat, that's ahistorical behavior that triggers an ahistorical response from the game, as all religions band together to try to stop the player. That's been a core feature of Paradox games going all the way back to EU1. Players should be used to it; either play such that their threat stays under control, or plan around defensive pact wars, or turn it off in the options.
I do agree that some of the details aren't perfect. The scaling can be a bit high as others have noted; in my Persia game, adding the Duchy of Jibal (six very rich provinces with 5-7 holdings each) gave me a surprising amount of threat, for example. And I really dislike the threat accumulation from vassal dukes attacking everyone in sight and conquering lots of territory I don't want added to my realm. Though my irritation is more for the addition of territory I don't want than for the threat per se.
The steep scaling does work both ways though. If you have a vassal you don't particularly want, granting independence reduces threat by significantly more than I expected.
I also rather liked CK1's mechanic where badboy decay scaled with piety. Though maybe that doesn't make sense in this game where potentially every religion is playable. Not sure a high piety character of a warlike reformed Germanic religion would justify threat decaying faster, for example.
There's a better method than using threat, and that's to increase vassal discord.
Factions to weaken, overthrow, or declare independence on the liege should be more prevalent. Aka unruly vassals.
This better stimulates history since blobbers can blob as they please......just don't expect to keep your gains past two generations.
Meanwhile William could still take England, and then instead of now also taking France within his lifetime (possible to do in CK2 currently,) he actually does spend the rest of his life managing vassals and revolts.
Factions to weaken, overthrow, or declare independence on the liege should be more prevalent. Aka unruly vassals.
This better stimulates history since blobbers can blob as they please......just don't expect to keep your gains past two generations.
Meanwhile William could still take England, and then instead of now also taking France within his lifetime (possible to do in CK2 currently,) he actually does spend the rest of his life managing vassals and revolts.
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Although then you'll see more people go NK and make sure they never have vassals as they blob.
You can deactivate defensive pacts on the game rules, that helps a lot when you are making achievement runs.
Yeah, that's a problem Paradox needs to address.
Possible suggestions include increased revolt risk corresponding with the desmense over desmense limit of the player. So if the player has 100/9 desmense, it would increase revolt risk by 91% or something.
That way they'll be too busy putting out dumpster fires to continue blobbing NK style. After all NK mode means there's not really anyone administering the county.