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Dev Diary 11: Stopping The Snowball

Hey! So today we will talk about some mechanics we’ve added to make other rulers react to what happens in the world. We want to slow down the snowball and prolong the time it takes to conquer the world, so it shouldn’t be as easy to do. Snowballs are pretty evil, just like medieval rulers.

Just as with the shattered retreat mechanic we took inspiration from Europa Universalis 4 in our decision to add Coalitions. Our coalitions however are based on an Infamy value instead of Aggressive Expansion. You might recognize the name Infamy from our old games, but even though it shares the name it will work quite differently.

Infamy is limited to be within the range of 0 to 100% and will slowly decay over time based on how strong your max military potential is. When you hit 25% infamy, coalitions will be unlocked and AIs will start joining them based on how threatened they feel.Your infamy will serve as a hint on how aggressive and dangerous other rulers think your realm is. You gain infamy primarily by conquering land through war or by inheriting a fair maidens huge tracts of land.

The amount of Infamy you gain is based on the action you do, how much land you take and how large your realm already is. So for instance the Kaiser of the HRE declaring a war for Flanders and taking it is going to make the neighbours more worried than if Pomerania manages to take Mecklenburg.
capture(56).png


Coalitions themselves are mostly defensive in Crusader Kings, if any member gets attacked by the target of the coalition they will automatically be called into the war. If a member starts a war against the target they only get a normal call to arms which they can choose to decline.

For an AI to join a coalition they will consider the relative strength between the target and themselves, how threatened they think they are and how much infamy the target has accrued. You can view the current coalition someone has against them by the diplomacy field on the character screen.

capture(54).png


But it might not be the easiest way to view it so we also added a mapmode to more easily visualize Coalitions. A nation which turns up white is the nation you have currently selected, blue will be targetable for coalitions, yellow means they have a coalition against them and Red means they are members of the coalition against the currently selected one.

capture(55).jpg
 
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Why are you so set against giving internal problems? Those should arguably the biggest reason for empires to be restrained, or for their bloating, weakening, and collapse. The HRE diluted because the Emperors tried to wiggle some concessions from a horde of vassals and ended up giving too much; the ERE started creaking when the old governors lobbied for hereditary rule, and got it; the Anarchy at Samarra, the English Anarchy, the dissolution of Al-Andalus, and the near collapse of France, were all movements that started on the inside. Sometimes they got a final push from outside, but those were pushes that a sane country of their size would have born without difficulties. So, why? Why add coalition, which are iffy but workable in EU4 but make absolutely no sense in CK2?
 
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If a vassal conquers stuff outside the realm you gain 50% of the infamy he generates. (this propagates up so if a count of a duke conquers something, the duke gets 50%, the king 25%, the emperor 12.5%)

And no, Infamy stays over generations. You can't be a dick then die and think you will get away with it.
 
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WeissRaben said:
Why are you so set against giving internal problems? Those should arguably the biggest reason for empires to be restrained, or for their bloating, weakening, and collapse. The HRE diluted because the Emperors tried to wiggle some concessions from a horde of vassals and ended up giving too much; the ERE started creaking when the old governors lobbied for hereditary rule, and got it; the Anarchy at Samarra, the English Anarchy, the dissolution of Al-Andalus, and the near collapse of France, were all movements that started on the inside. Sometimes they got a final push from outside, but those were pushes that a sane country of their size would have born without difficulties. So, why? Why add coalition, which are iffy but workable in EU4 but make absolutely no sense in CK2?
Click to expand...
I tend to agree. The balance of power theory had no real place in Europe until at least after the 30 and 80 Years' Wars. It's a step beyond tribal thinking which lasted a very long time and still persists in many areas today. Not only that, but from a gameplay point of view, EU4s coalitions have been pretty bad. So this all points to the fact that we shouldn't have coalitions in CK2. Oh well.
 
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Groogy said:
If a vassal conquers stuff outside the realm you gain 50% of the infamy he generates. (this propagates up so if a count of a duke conquers something, the duke gets 50%, the king 25%, the emperor 12.5%)
Click to expand...

This part sounds like it has the potential to break the game. Or at the very least permanently bog down players of a certain size. I mean do you even consider how aggressive vassals can be, especially germanic ones. I mean on the one hand I get that by doing this your kind of saying its the infamy of the whole realm but why am I being judged for their actions. Your constricting me based on things I can't control, and don't stand there and tell me crown authority controls them all.

Groogy said:
And no, Infamy stays over generations. You can't be a dick then die and think you will get away with it.
Click to expand...

But thats completely inconsistent. I'm a person not a nation this isn't EU4.
 
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I have a question. Does this infamy only apply to your ruler, for example if you do a crusade and take all of Mesopotamia, and then the next day your ruler dies, do you start with 0 infamy (unless your heir did some conquering alone)? Also, if your vassals go conquering outside your realm do you get any AE from them?
 
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Yikes.

I'm not sure I like the approach of basically inventing a series of arbitrary bossfights. A lot of it's just annoying. "Ho hum, I've got to slaughter all these tiny armies before I do the same siege". It's sort of like in a first person shooter where they repeat a fight but twice the enemies with twice the health bar. Except while the enemy got twice the health the player got a gun that does five times the damage so the new fight is a pushover.

What creates the snowball is that the blobs just get too many goodies and there are no downsides to being big. Alp Arsan is shown with 16k levies in that screenshot. Add onto that 4k from the Gilmen which aren't raised right now because he is at peace. I think his levies are probably depleted, I ran a handsoff game to the same year and he had 16k troops with the same demense but his levies were depleted by another 7k (plus the Gilmen). So we can expect Alp Arsan to bring 20k-27k troops to a fight! With these resources, Alp Arsan simply is not in danger of suffering a reversal. His vassals wont dare go against that massive levy (and they love him anyway). He can't be invaded. Even if he leads his troops into a couple of stack wipes he will be able to summon new troops by the time the first wave are done dying. He just has too many resources for the normal limitations to matter. So paradox invented a bossfight called a coalition.

Of course Alp Arslan should be a terror which undermines the example. However the problem is that it's not Alp Arslan who is the terror, the terror is that Persia has 250 holdings and can bring all that might to bear against a one province count. If Alp Arslan died and was replaced by a twit, that twit could also bring all that might to bear against a one province count. The solution should not be to make all the surrounding realms bail out the one province count. The solution should be that hypothetical Sultan Twit Seljuk cant just automatically crush a one province count with all the realm levies, while having his vassals love him and having no fear of rebellion.

Ponder the wisdom of Notorius BIG. Mo money, mo problems. An empire shouldn't run itself.
 
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I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks the Buy Hedgehog button needs to be removed. It's just way too gamey for a rich Emperor to be able to hammer away at the Buy Hedgehog button until he has an impenetrable wall of spiky cuteness. The button needs to be replaced with a Seduction focus event chain, where the number of hedgehogs you attract scales with the total egg production of your realm.
 
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The concept of 'this guy has more pointy sticks than me, so I will get everyone who hates him to poke him with their pointy stick's was invented about roughly the same time as the pointy stick.

No coalitions are not something humans invented because we created nation states.
 
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Please don't do this. The idea should stay in EU4 where it belongs, in a context where more centralised nation states and the idea of the balance of power makes sense.

Blobs in CK2 should be punished by things that make sense for the time period - increased corruption, difficulty of administration for large realms, that kind of thing. Make there be some actual difficulties inherent to being a blob, rather than punishing people for expansion.
 
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Asiak said:
But thats completely inconsistent. I'm a person not a nation this isn't EU4.
Click to expand...

Just because you switch to your heir doesn't mean that suddenly all the conquests the father did magically disappears. Neighbors would still be worried about you even if you are a 18 year King.
 
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I don't like this.

Instead of this, I'm almost in favour of bringing back the old "distance raises revolt risk" modifier.
 
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2012 - "Badboy won't appear in CK2"

2015 - "Badboy mechanics!"
 
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For the Gods sake... When are You going to understand, that WC is too easy, because wars are too simple? Your response to everyone who complains about difficulty is increasing AI ability to gang against player. When medieval ruler wanted to go to war, even against weaker and smaller opponent, he didn't simply send declaration of war and called upon his banners-men. He had to prepare everything- supplies for army, organize his troops into single force, prepare border for troubles, design regent (if he wanted to be present), raise taxes for upkeep...

How is it in CK2? DOW-> raise levies->single pitched battle->occupying provinces until warscore hits 100%. Great.
 
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THIS WILL BE WORST CHANGE EVER, BUT CK2 IS NOT F***ING EU4 (WTF Invincible defeated army and AE)
The core of CK2 is CHARACTERS , BUT AE is bound to COUNTRY? This puts the cart before the horse.
 
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Seeing what kind of mess EU4 became after coalitions were introduced, I fear the worst.
Serious bugs survived many patches and hotfixes, while poisoning the gameplay for months.

To get what?

Limitations who punish the successful player?

...aside for the fact not everyone plays to "Conquer the World" (and should not, in turn, be forced to learn new game mechanics), paid customers should be able to have fun if they want, no matter if that means painting half the map with your color...

Besides, "The Core of CK2 is Characters" has already been written in this topic (stated from years by you devs, to explain the main differences with EU4), why do nations suddenly get this spotlight?

If you insert new features, you could make the game more interesting for Characters.
 
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I like this idea as a secondary measure to prevent snowballing, but not as a primary one. The reason is that if it were to have enough bite to prevent snowballing, it will need to be ridiculously unrealistic: for example all of Europe going to war against the HRE because it attacked a tribe in Poland.

Having a single coalition per target will lead to situations where the game is just one world war after the other. That could stop snowballing, but at what expense? Realism and fun out the window.

My suggestions:

1) Make it possible to have multiple coalitions per target. And make rulers join coalitions that are geographically/culturally/religiously close to them.

2) Like others said above, consider internal mechanics as primary means to stop snowballing.

Thanks to the devs for this excellent update!
 
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