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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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Also, why would the empires, having the influential and rich ruler, that mercs would want to get attention of, in prospects of gaining more fame and influence, and the ruler which would have more mercs flock to him (because his realm is big and because they KNOW they will get paid, he's "extremely rich" after all), have more troubles hiring mercs that some random one-province no-name? That makes no sense
 
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Excellent idea to make mercenary hiring dependant on the client's size.
However i must say that the war declaration interface is perhaps too informative. I don't think a player should know (without the use of spies that is) the exact size of an enemies troop numbers and treasury amount. It makes things too easy and automatic. Perhaps you should have a close approximation of the troop numbers and treasury size, an approximation that will become more precise with the use of spies or some other mechanism.
 
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Question: This new UI shows possible recruitment of Holy Orders troops too? They are really sneaky right now, and you could lose a war if you don't consider them.
 
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Looks great! War declaration is cleaner. Any chance it will also not factor in allies that cannot be called to war (example: vassals of the defender & attacker) to make it more truthful?

A question tangentially related to this, does anybody know when characters join Independence Faction and what increases/reduces the pull other than the obviously stated 'many lands outside of primary title de jure territory'. Will giving them a lenient vassal contract make them less likely to join the independence faction? Offering them religious protection?
 
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How would you know your enemies exact number of troops and treasury? Feels like a difficulty nerf. Should look at the recent changes Imperator made to this, as their system is far better, with hidden numbers and spying opportunities.
 
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How would you know your enemies exact number of troops and treasury? Feels like a difficulty nerf. Should look at the recent changes Imperator made to this, as their system is far better, with hidden numbers and spying opportunities.
You could always do this...
 
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While we are talking about making the management of big empires more interesting: Is there a chance to change the default rebellion wargoal from "depose liege" to something more relevant? When a liege fails to imprison or revoke a title from someone, they should have the opportunity to declare independence or push a claimant instead.

Also, the war goals for independence wars still make no sense: The liege should not get ticking warscore for occupying one tiny island held by one of the rebels in a faction war while losing everything else, and in a direct independence war, the war target should be the rebel capital, not the liege capital.
 
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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

Im all for it but Please fix the problem when someone have 90-100 opinion of me they whil whil still Join the revolt...
 
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I do not know whether I like the mercenary scaling. It's one step closer towards making gold insignificant (AKA medieval moneyless society). When the cost of everything scales up with any growth, there is no point in growing at all. It was especially irritating in late CK2: 'oh, now I make 3x more money, awesome! nevermind, now almost everything costs 3x more too...'. It was even more irritating to guess which values are scaled, which are not, and what is the scaling algorithm. At moments I felt that it would be better to express prices in terms of '% of yearly income', instead of actual gold.

CK3 in its current state does a lot less price scaling - and its a great decision IMO. Naturally, it causes all the 'fat get fatter faster than the poor'. But I think the right way of counteracting those issues is to present incraesing challenges as a result of realm growth, not implicitly flattening all income.

Still, it's only mercenaries right now and it might work well. I'm just afraid that they will soon follow with MAA cost, building cost, etc. Hope not!
 
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I do not know whether I like the mercenary scaling. It's one step closer towards making gold insignificant (AKA medieval moneyless society). When the cost of everything scales up with any growth, there is no point in growing at all. It was especially irritating in late CK2: 'oh, now I make 3x more money, awesome! nevermind, now almost everything costs 3x more too...'. It was even more irritating to guess which values are scaled, which are not, and what is the scaling algorithm. At moments I felt that it would be better to express prices in terms of '% of yearly income', instead of actual gold.

CK3 in its current state does a lot less price scaling - and its a great decision IMO. Naturally, it causes all the 'fat get fatter faster than the poor'. But I think the right way of counteracting those issues is to present incraesing challenges as a result of realm growth, not implicitly flattening all income.

Still, it's only mercenaries right now and it might work well. I'm just afraid that they will soon follow with MAA cost, building cost, etc. Hope not!
It depends on the scaling is done. Is there a flat % added based on title tier or realm size, or do the mercenaries send in accountants to go over your books and charge you more based on having better stewardship and building bonuses?

Dev diary implies it's the first kind. CK2 made the mistake of abusing the second kind.
 
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I think he had awkward wording. The game should of course be fun, and the fun should come from being challenging.
Yes, I think "not fun" is meant here from the perspective of the players ingame character - ruling over an empire should be no cakewalk and a struggle to keep things stable. Stressful for the players character however does not equal stressful/unfun for the user.
 
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Also, why would the empires, having the influential and rich ruler, that mercs would want to get attention of, in prospects of gaining more fame and influence, and the ruler which would have more mercs flock to him (because his realm is big and because they KNOW they will get paid, he's "extremely rich" after all), have more troubles hiring mercs that some random one-province no-name? That makes no sense
If demand is low, one needs to lower their prices. Empires aren't always at war, but mercenaries do need to eat. :p

Excellent idea to make mercenary hiring dependant on the client's size.
However i must say that the war declaration interface is perhaps too informative. I don't think a player should know (without the use of spies that is) the exact size of an enemies troop numbers and treasury amount. It makes things too easy and automatic. Perhaps you should have a close approximation of the troop numbers and treasury size, an approximation that will become more precise with the use of spies or some other mechanism.
I wouldn't mind a game rule that disabled precise numbers, approximations keep things a little more ... surprising and exciting. I quite like the idea of basing their accuracy on your ruler's attributes: the higher their diplomacy/marshal/stewardship/intrigue/learning, the better your knowledge of other rulers' prestige/army/treasury/dread/piety—all of which could matter in warfare.
 
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Would be nice if we could refill garrison from our armies, so it's not all constant flip-flopping. Maybe unlock it with a martial perk? (I assume it's too late to for this patch)
Good mechanic, in general.
It won't be available in the patch but it's on our list of future improvement!

Brilliant changes all round.

Is there CK3 announcements planned for this weekend?
Yes, there will be :)

Question: This new UI shows possible recruitment of Holy Orders troops too? They are really sneaky right now, and you could lose a war if you don't consider them.
It will not, but I'll make sure to add that to our improve list!

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

Im all for it but Please fix the problem when someone have 90-100 opinion of me they whil whil still Join the revolt...
I didn't mention it but now characters will never join a faction if they have a high opinion of their Liege.

I do not know whether I like the mercenary scaling. It's one step closer towards making gold insignificant (AKA medieval moneyless society). When the cost of everything scales up with any growth, there is no point in growing at all. It was especially irritating in late CK2: 'oh, now I make 3x more money, awesome! nevermind, now almost everything costs 3x more too...'. It was even more irritating to guess which values are scaled, which are not, and what is the scaling algorithm. At moments I felt that it would be better to express prices in terms of '% of yearly income', instead of actual gold.

CK3 in its current state does a lot less price scaling - and its a great decision IMO. Naturally, it causes all the 'fat get fatter faster than the poor'. But I think the right way of counteracting those issues is to present incraesing challenges as a result of realm growth, not implicitly flattening all income.

Still, it's only mercenaries right now and it might work well. I'm just afraid that they will soon follow with MAA cost, building cost, etc. Hope not!
It depends on the scaling is done. Is there a flat % added based on title tier or realm size, or do the mercenaries send in accountants to go over your books and charge you more based on having better stewardship and building bonuses?

Dev diary implies it's the first kind. CK2 made the mistake of abusing the second kind.
We do not plan to modulate the cost of MAA or building in a similar fashion in the future. We actually did a test for the men-at-arms and it was not satisfying and was thus reverted.

We indeed increase the price by having a multiplier affected by the realm size and the tier title. We do not look at the actual treasury or any other variables. I suppose it's worth mentioning that the impact of the realm size is non-linear but use a square root function.

square_root.png

Cheers,
 
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