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CK3 Dev Diary #60 - The Cost of Warfare

Hello everyone!

I’m back with more info about what’s coming in the 1.4 Azure patch! Today we are going to cover improvements around Warfare. We prepared a few more things in addition to the starting Men-at-Arms. I hope you will find them interesting!

Declare War Window 1.4​

In addition to the Quality of Life improvements we presented last week, we also revisited the war declaration interface.

[Image of the new Declare War window]

[Image of the new Declare War window]

As you can see, the information has been restructured and it should be easier now to:
  • Compare your strength with your target
  • Estimate if your opponents will have the funds to hire mercenaries
  • Select an available objective

Dynamic Mercenary Cost​

When it comes to Mercenaries, we adjusted how their cost is calculated. The price of a company is now affected by a few parameters:
  • The primary title
  • The size of the Realm
  • The current Innovation Era

The dynamic price will make it easier for lower tier realms to rely on Mercenaries and fight back their bigger neighbours. And it will be harder for extremely rich emperors to deny access to mercenaries by hiring all of them for a small sum. After all, why would the Count of Ulster be expected to pay the same price as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire - if you're a mercenary captain and you see that your client clearly is rich, you might just increase your prices...

Dynamic Garrison​

Your upcoming war will have a quite different pace. From now on, the garrison will be depleted at the end of a successful siege. It means that a freshly captured territory will be defenseless for a while, making recapturing it faster. After a siege, the garrison will recover over months or years, and the speed can be increased by improving the Holdings.

It will thus be easier to counter-attack and recover territories you lost recently, or to continue a war which was invalidated if you have another valid casus belli. This change will encourage you to defend your wargoals and the strategic territory with your armies.

Factions update​

In order to make your life harder when you start conquering the world, we tweaked the logic behind the creation of factions, and they should be more threatening now.

One of the big changes is their ability to synchronise their declaration. The power they need before pushing their demand is now dynamic and reacts to the state of the other factions. If a faction is threatening you, or is already at war with a ruler, it will be easier for another faction to push their demands. It should create more challenging situations, and you might want to concede to some factions to avoid struggling with too many opponents.

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[Image: The faction is not strong enough to push their demands despite a lowered threshold due to existing factions]

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[Image: After one of the other factions declared war, the faction is now strong enough and will push their demand while their ruler is fighting the others.]

In addition to that, characters will be more inclined to join an Independence Faction if they own enough territories outside of the de jure area of the primary title of their Liege. Again, fast conquest will be more challenging, and consolidating your Realm will be more important.

And that’s it for today’s Dev Diary! But, before leaving you, a quick reminder: The PDX Con will be held this week-end! You can join us on our dedicated Discord Server! There will be a lot of nice streams and announcements; stay tuned for some news about Crusader Kings III !

Have a nice week, and see you soon!
 
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The dynamic price will make it easier for lower tier realms to rely on Mercenaries and fight back their bigger neighbours. And it will be harder for extremely rich emperors to deny access to mercenaries by hiring all of them for a small sum. After all, why would the Count of Ulster be expected to pay the same price as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire - if you're a mercenary captain and you see that your client clearly is rich, you might just increase your prices...
This is completely wrong, not only historically but also logically speaking.
Mercenary companies have never been rule-makers, but struggled to find employers asap; to buy today's bread and avoid 'unemployment infighting', either of that would soon bring the company's dissolution.

Saying that they would be able to overcharge an emperor is absurd.

If you need to tweak the mercenary system go ahead, but please remain within logic's boundaries.
 
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Will this allow the pope to hire even more mercenaries than they already can, on the basis of having a very small realm?
This is a good point. My first thought when reading that bit of the dev diary was that it'll nerf the Pope's "Spend some of his 100million warchest on mercs" strategy - but that's not neccessarily true.

The dev diary says the merc costs will be based on both realm size and primary title. I wonder what "level" the Pope title will count as?
 
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Will this allow the pope to hire even more mercenaries than they already can, on the basis of having a very small realm?
The DD said it's based on the title and the Pope has a kingdom tier title so there is presumably some increase in cost. Personally though, I think the Pope needs to be hard capped at like two companies of mercs but then is allowed a special kind alliance with either a kingdom or dynasty as "Defender of Rome" so he has some means of defense.

stay tuned for some news about Crusader Kings III !
What time zones are used for the PDXCon schedule and is the announcement show the only panel that will have details on upcoming CK3 expansions?
 
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Looking at the screenshots, it looks like most major countries in Europe have various independent counts and dukes carved out of them by 1103. Is this the result of the AI being unable to handle the new faction system? Is this really a desirable outcome?
 
Hello everyone!

I’m back with more info about what’s coming in the 1.4 Azure patch! Today we are going to cover improvements around Warfare. We prepared a few more things in addition to the starting Men-at-Arms. I hope you will find them interesting!

Declare War Window 1.4​

In addition to the Quality of Life improvements we presented last week, we also revisited the war declaration interface.

[Image of the new Declare War window]

[Image of the new Declare War window]

A suggestion: can you shorten those objective "banners" (rectangles etc, I don't know the right word)? They seem too long for now reason, you could double the number of visible objectives by cutting those banners in half.
 
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Looking at the screenshots, it looks like most major countries in Europe have various independent counts and dukes carved out of them by 1103. Is this the result of the AI being unable to handle the new faction system? Is this really a desirable outcome?
I've seen France lose parts of Aquitaine before in a 1066 start but England losing parts is new to me. Personally though, I would actually like to see more vassals attempt to be come independent if they and their liege have the right traits, regardless of de jure considerations. Ambitious vassals should want to become independent if they have enough strength to challenge their liege and don't have a claim on the title.
 
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I like that this is coming back. What's the opinion threshold?
The current threshold is set to 80.

What's the secret attachment? Why must you toy with us?
My bad! The preview correctly displayed the picture... It should be fixed now! And sorry to disappoint you, there is nothing fancy behind this attachment... It's a simple image of a square root function...
 
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I've seen France lose parts of Aquitaine before in a 1066 start but England losing parts is new to me. Personally though, I would actually like to see more vassals attempt to be come independent if they and their liege have the right traits, regardless of de jure considerations. Ambitious vassals should want to become independent if they have enough strength to challenge their liege and don't have a claim on the title.
I don't know if I agree with that. A single county in the middle of England does not stand to gain anything by becoming independent - they only have the strength to challenge their liege as a part of a faction coalition, and once they're independent, they'll have no room for growth because they can no longer attack other English vassals. Like look at the independent count of Kent in the screenshot - what are they going to do other than wait to be re-integrated by England?

Large powerful vassals who have secured for themselves a sizeable realm that have prospects as an independent power should declare independence. Small vassals who are doomed if they become independent should find another way to address their grievances, like a liberty faction or supporting a claimant.
 
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Not so sure about the "dynamic mercenary cost", unless it's a comparatively mild effect only. Yes, the mercenary band leader could hold out for higher prices - but the rich King could also shop around, and is anyway certain to remember who artificially lifted his price when it comes time to hire again.

Is there any historical justification for this, or is it a fix for a game mechanic?
 
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It will thus be easier to counter-attack and recover territories you lost recently, or to continue a war which was invalidated if you have another valid casus belli. This change will encourage you to defend your wargoals and the strategic territory with your armies.
If a war was invalidated and I have another valid CB, will I need to send everyone home and re-declare, or will there be a pop-up listing my other CBs, giving me the option to continue the war with one of them, or just let the war end? If there isn't, would my enemies garrisons have time to refill while I am walking back? Also, how good is the AI at re-declaring with a different CB?
 
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Not so sure about the "dynamic mercenary cost", unless it's a comparatively mild effect only. Yes, the mercenary band leader could hold out for higher prices - but the rich King could also shop around, and is anyway certain to remember who artificially lifted his price when it comes time to hire again.

Is there any historical justification for this, or is it a fix for a game mechanic?
It's a nerf to enhance Artificial Difficulty.
 
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The Azure patch has been getting some great dev diaries! These are really thoughtful balancing changes.

Interestingly, the cost-scaling of mercenaries should be a huge buff to factions as well. On paper, a faction with even ~80% strength could be a real threat to the liege because of how Men-at-Arms caps work (e.g., a single 15k army from an emperor-tier character can't field as many Men-at-Arms as a 15k stack merged from 10 dukes). In practice, hiring a bunch of cheap mercenaries circumvents the MAA limits and can win faction wars >100%. Too often I find myself skipping the step where you try to dismantle factions with the sway/bribe/befriend interactions because the cost/benefit of hiring mercenaries and then revoking titles seems too good to pass up. Scaling mercenary costs would definitely make me think twice about finding a more peaceful route to realm stability.

Wait. Army strength doesn't take quality into account, only numbers?
 
The DD said it's based on the title and the Pope has a kingdom tier title so there is presumably some increase in cost. Personally though, I think the Pope needs to be hard capped at like two companies of mercs but then is allowed a special kind alliance with either a kingdom or dynasty as "Defender of Rome" so he has some means of defense.
It sounds like it's based on tier but also realm size, so the Pope would be paying less than a unified Wales, for example.

I bet this system will also cause problems in the future if we get more fleshed out merchant republics. Imagine Venice swimming in gold from trade posts and also getting cheap mercenaries for having a realm size of one tiny island...
 
If a war was invalidated and I have another valid CB, will I need to send everyone home and re-declare, or will there be a pop-up listing my other CBs, giving me the option to continue the war with one of them, or just let the war end? If there isn't, would my enemies garrisons have time to refill while I am walking back? Also, how good is the AI at re-declaring with a different CB?
Presumably if you could just continue the war with a new CB, this change would have no effect, because you wouldn't lose your occupied forts. I share your skepticism that this alleged benefit is ever actually going to come into play.

A more likely scenario is that once the AI loses a war, they start being gobbled up by all their neighbors. Imagine trying to fight a war with no garrison in your capital - the enemy will just walk up to it and capture half your family, possibly including your king, and win the war on the spot. Then the next enemy will get to do the same.
 
Presumably if you could just continue the war with a new CB, this change would have no effect, because you wouldn't lose your occupied forts. I share your skepticism that this alleged benefit is ever actually going to come into play.

A more likely scenario is that once the AI loses a war, they start being gobbled up by all their neighbors. Imagine trying to fight a war with no garrison in your capital - the enemy will just walk up to it and capture half your family, possibly including your king, and win the war on the spot. Then the next enemy will get to do the same.
Using a war as a pretense to weaken large blob monsters so they can get eaten by others (or from within) was a common strategy for me in CK2. I can't say I'm upset to see it come back.
 
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I don't know if I agree with that. A single county in the middle of England does not stand to gain anything by becoming independent - they only have the strength to challenge their liege as a part of a faction coalition, and once they're independent, they'll have no room for growth because they can no longer attack other English vassals. Like look at the independent count of Kent in the screenshot - what are they going to do other than wait to be re-integrated by England?

Large powerful vassals who have secured for themselves a sizeable realm that have prospects as an independent power should declare independence. Small vassals who are doomed if they become independent should find another way to address their grievances, like a liberty faction or supporting a claimant.
Sure, there definitely should be a bias towards powerful vassals wanting independence instead of weaker ones but ambitious also doesn't mean smart so I don't have a problem with a count joining an independence faction only to reabsorbed a few years later.

It sounds like it's based on tier but also realm size, so the Pope would be paying less than a unified Wales, for example.

I bet this system will also cause problems in the future if we get more fleshed out merchant republics. Imagine Venice swimming in gold from trade posts and also getting cheap mercenaries for having a realm size of one tiny island...
It's an inelegant fix but hard capping the number of mercenaries certain rulers can recruit is probably going to be the only realistic fix. There could then dynastic or possible government bonuses that allow you to recruit more mercenaries.
 
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