CK2 Dev Diary #52: Rhythm is a Lancer

[Doomdark]

Greetings all!

One of the great things about meeting our dear players - you folks - in real life (such as at PDXCON) is getting to hear such a lot of constructive, persuasive suggestions for improvements. For example, two things that were brought up last week were how annoying the “Fabricate Claim” job is, and the fact that Siege Assaults are rather overpowered when you have the numbers to just blitz down even heavily fortified Holdings. So, we decided to experiment with some changes…

First off, we’re going to deemphasize the “Fabricate Claim” job by giving all playable entities (including Christians) a form of “Unjustified War” Casus Belli that will allow you to seize a single County for an upfront cost of Piety, Prestige or Gold (depending on your Religion and Government Form.) Ideally, I’d also like to replace the “Fabricate Claim” job with something else (maybe something to do with foreign embassies and arranging marriages, or something to do with Laws. Suggestions are welcome!) However, we might decide leave it there as it is (it does still have some uses.)

Next, we’re adding a Game Rule for Siege Assaults. The options are “Unlimited”, which works like before, “On”, which disables Assaults against Holdings at Fort Level 6 or above, and “Off”, which disables Assaults entirely. We’re currently playing around with these changes, so the exact rules for the “On” setting might change. On a related note, the time it takes to siege down Holdings is also being tweaked, to make it quicker overall but also making the Fort Level matter more.

When we sat down and talked about the above tweaks, we also decided to (rather dramatically) increase the “Ticking Warscore” rate for the attackers in wars. This necessitated splitting some defines (CONTESTED_TITLE_OCCUPIED_WARSCORE_BONUS, etc) into defender and attacker versions.

We are still evaluating how well these changes turned out. It’s likely we’ll tweak some numbers (or even backtrack on something.) So far though, it appears quite promising, positively altering the “rhythm” of warfare!

That’s all for now, stay tuned for the CK2 livestream, starting at 16:00 CET today. Until next time!

 

[Doomdark]

Where is Dev Diary #52 ?!

Whoops.

 

[Doomdark]

Interesting, how fast are you exactly going to make the ticking warscore for defender/attacker?

We're currently trying 2.5 years to max it out for the Attacker, with Defender Ticking unchanged.

 

[Doomdark]

Doesn't this just exacerbate the case of fighting long massive wars with hundreds of thousands of casualties for a single county?

Hopefully not. Check out dev diary #50.

 

[Doomdark]

Will the prestige/piety cost increase with realm size? Prestige is practically unlimited at Empire level, and even piety comes in abundance.

Likely.

 

[Doomdark]

Will the Unjustified war cause a higher threat impact compared to claims? Just wondering since it would make some sense since you don't have any claims on the land itself, I wouldn't mind seeing certain wars cause less threat compared to others

That makes sense.

 

[Doomdark]

One thing I'm worried about with the possibility of losing fabricate claims is building up three or four claims, perhaps a duchy, and pushing them all at once.

Is there any thoughts among the developers with keeping this in place, or is it in the sights for getting cut in the name of rhythm?

Well, we are adding a bunch more CBs, mentioned in dev diary #50.

 

[Doomdark]

Why do you want to change the entire system now? It works very nice

It works, but IMO not very well. We're going to tread lightly though.

 

[rageair]

Will the Unjustified war cause a higher threat impact compared to claims? Just wondering since it would make some sense since you don't have any claims on the land itself, I wouldn't mind seeing certain wars cause less threat compared to others

Yes, this type of war generates 2x the Threat of a normal conquest. Though as it's only over one county it's not the end of the world.

Will the prestige/piety cost increase with realm size? Prestige is practically unlimited at Empire level, and even piety comes in abundance.

Yes, significantly. At King or Emperor rank you still have the option, but you're better off declaring pretty much any other kind of war. It's just a single county conquest after all, later in the game you've likely got claimants or such instead!

Please make a game rule which allows us to disable the "Unjustified war"

Of course.

How far away can the provinces we claim in unjustified wars be?

Also have you considered how to make this work intuitively with the declare war screen? If you can declare war for any province, and each eligible province is listed as a separate CB, then the list of available CBs in the declare war screen will be rather cumbersome.

It will work much like the Muslim conquest CB, so if you're used to that this will be familiar.

 

[Doomdark]

I don't like this change. It's going to be a lot harder for small feudal lords at the start (if you start next to a large power, or even moderate powers), as well as making it much easier for players who know how to exploit mechanics to blob more easily.

Well, we will be careful with the balance, and what the AI will do, etc. The Fabricate Claim job is bad for three main reasons:

• Unpredictable Time
• Unpredictable Cost
  
• Unpredictable Outcome

In this case, I prefer a solution that gives more direct player agency. (There will be appropriate penalties for using the new CB.)

 

[Doomdark]

Can we please get rid of the events that lower the troops of the sieging army ? Its easy to bypass but its annoying to do it for every siege.

A Siege Events Game Rule? Doable...