Hey all!

So today I felt that I was going to spoil some of the bigger stuff we are working on with the new patch, I thought Birken was a bit too mean keeping you guys on edge for so long. As several of you have noted we now have a Pacts tab in the character screen and I am going to tell you guys what it is all about.

So why it was changed is because we decided that we wanted to rewrite a bit how alliances worked in Crusader Kings making it much more predictable who will be in your war. No, as some of you tried to guess we have not made it no longer required to marry other rulers to forge an alliance, that is still a very big part of the core gameplay in the game. What we have done is that we have divided it up in two steps, Non-Aggression Pacts and Alliances.

Now now, don’t fetch your pitchforks yet! The idea we have is to make the marriage much more focused on its strategical nature than just finding your “soulmate” with impressive tracts of land.

Now when you first marry off your daughter or son you will be figuratively negotiating an agreement with the other ruler to come to terms over your issues with each other, resulting in a Non-Aggression Pact between your two mighty realms. This can later can be improved into a proper Alliance. This is an action done separately after the marriage as been finalized. You don’t have to wait until your family members have grown up however as betrothals also counts when formalizing these pacts.

This does mean that you do not have a Non-Aggression Pact with your close kins but they can still be made into allies without a marriage. Meaning you no longer get the penalties of attacking close kin unless you choose to make your them your ally.

Picture has been censored to not reveal undisclosed features​

With these changes the AI has also been changed a bit to be more capable in recognizing Realpolitik instead of purely going on opinions. It is not much but the AI is now capable of properly identifying threats and will try to form Non-Aggression pacts with these, or if they refuse, ally someone else with a common interest to contain the threat. The idea is also that the AI no longer wants to aid these threats, but instead only preserve the status quo and keep them off their back. They will refuse to ally these threats most of the time in order to not help them become stronger.

Since we now have a distinct action you can perform to ally someone we have also changed how they relate to wars to make it less of a guessing game.

Allies for both sides will be shown in the Declare War screen showing who will join the war on what side. Also important to know with these changes is that allies are now required to honor their alliance, meaning they can not refuse a call to arms. So now you know exactly who you can count on when the war starts. However if your ally is starting an offensive war against someone you have a Non-Aggression Pact with you have to stand out.

All of this is in the Free Patch that will be coming with the next expansion.

 

[Atlantians]

What is this post about ? As if rulers had cared about such. I guess they will still refuse if zealous.

Some rulers did, some did not.

Either way, I am not saying to not allow it; but what I am saying is that it should give an opinion penalty to your religious head and relatives of your religion, if your religion forbids it. Also costing piety.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Some rulers did, some did not.

Either way, I am not saying to not allow it; but what I am saying is that it should give an opinion penalty to your religious head and relatives of your religion.

Why ? I doubt very much that this was ever really relevant.
Can' recall anything like this.
The spouse usualy converted, potential issue solved.

Thus is not about commoners.
Rulers make rules, commoners follow.

She already gets an opinion penalty if she stays with her old religion and she would get a penalty because of her culture.

 

[Atlantians]

Why ? I doubt very much that this was ever really relevant.
Can' recall anything like this.
The spouse usualy converted, potential issue solved.

Thus is not about commoners.
Rulers make rules, commoners follow, remember ?

Rulers in Christian kingdoms make rules under the eye of the Church.
The Christians have always taught against marrying outside their faith.

Any action in the game that blatantly violates the teaching of their faith costs piety and has an opinion malus.

This would only effect the Catholic, Orthodox, and Miaphysite Christian faiths and the Jewish faith.

The same would need be true with concubines for the tribal Christians. They should have large opinion penalties with faith leaders when they take concubines, along with a large piety cost. Even potentially risking excommunication if the Pope or relevant Orthodox/Oriental Orthodox Patriarch dislikes them.

 

[Vishaing]

Boy when I read the title "Rules of Engagement" I was hoping this would cover an improvement to the Military System and the Deployment of Armies. Sigh.

Well this seems... Okay. I mean its not what I would like and is basically 'solving' the least important problem with the diplomacy and alliance system, but at least it is something and will hopefully be moddable so that The Pope can actually start, y'know, Forming Alliances with Italian States to drive out other powers such as the Holy Roman Empire. Cause that was Kinda a thing that happened which is currently impossible.

Of course the Real way to improve the game to allow things like this would be to modify Factions so they are no longer arbitrarily so purely Unilateral. Allow outside powers to join Factions, allow Nations to create Coalitions using the Faction System. It could be used for so much more and currently its potential is squandered due to a bunch of needless, pointless, ahistorical, arbitrary restrictions.

 

[TheDungen]

Rulers in Christian kingdoms make rules under the eye of the Church.
The Christians have always taught against marrying outside their faith.

Any action in the game that blatantly violates the teaching of their faith costs piety and has an opinion malus.

This would only effect the Catholic, Orthodox, and Miaphysite Christian faiths and the Jewish faith.

The same would need be true with concubines for the tribal Christians. They should have large opinion penalties with faith leaders when they take concubines, along with a large piety cost. Even potentially risking excommunication if the Pope or relevant Orthodox/Oriental Orthodox Patriarch dislikes them.

And yet there were several byzantine emperors who married heathens.
Not to mention that roman noble woman who amrried atilla.

 

[Sunspawn]

No of course not. What I meant was that the whole "Must not marry an infidel thing is stupid because there was always the option of one of the to be spouses converting to the religion of the court that he/she would be living in after the marriage. Most such scenarios I know of is with pagans marrying into christian households and getting baptised.

And I whole-heartedly agree. I raised the whole issue of Trebizond exactly BECAUSE marrying for NAP to something like Fatimids an Seljuks as early KoJ sounds like a logical move. Perhaps even (if AI is smart enough to realize it) allying Fatimids and double-teaming the Seljuks.

 

[Tapio]

Yeah, think about it, if your friends, then you're probably past hating each other based on religious views.

This is great news! I'm hyped

 

[klopkr]

Please let us allow friendships to lead to alliances in the defines.lua! These types of alliances are important for some of our mods!

 

[Will Steel]

This is great. Finally the real alliance feature returns from CK1.

Also, 'threats'...this sounds similar to the opinion and rivalry system of EU4. That's even better.

 

[Steel_atlas]

If it means the end of being spammed with call to arms that bleed prestige I am happy.

 

[KhaineFH]

It sounds as promising as chronicles were, back when Charlemagne was being developped.
I simply hope this time you won't waste this new feature (like you did with chronicles), by letting AI marry lowborn every time.

 

[YwLyan]

I hope for some mechanics for me to kill my family (wife and children) and courtiers.
With the removal of assassination the game is just not fun anymore. You turned A game of thrones into Seven heaven.

 

[Khezef]

Long-term alliances between strong and weak powers should have the option to transform into tribute-vassalage. Like external march vassals in EU4, which could lead to integration. Alliances weren't always so solidified IRL, sometimes it was just a vaguely diplomatic blob of tribes that banded together during wartime, and eventually turned into kingdoms.

 

[Lumpy]

Will the prerequisites for forming an alliance be moddable?

 

[Sirrobert1]

There'll be events that make sure allies participate, else they'll suffer consequences.

What does that mean? I understand you won't just tell us, but a hint would be cool.
Like, what would be recognized as 'not participating'. Not raising troops? Not getting any warscore?
What if I'm fighting for my life in the mother of all faction rebellions, and my ally covets his neighbours county. Would I get punished for not being able to spare troops?
What about Count Nobody who somehow got an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor? Would his 20 soldiers count?

 

[TheWolfe]

The CB system won't be remade for Crusader Kings 2

you could also have a system of relationship penalties for war leaders that don't pull their weight, meaning that next time your ally is less likely to help you. This sort of thing could also be used to encourage people to actually aid their allies in defensive wars rather than just accepting a call to arms and then not doing a thing. The game already has a system for figuring out your net impact on a war, take that and the comparative strength of each member of the alliance and you might be able to work out an interesting set of positive and negative relations modifiers.

 

[Khezef]

you could also have a system of relationship penalties for war leaders that don't pull their weight, meaning that next time your ally is less likely to help you. This sort of thing could also be used to encourage people to actually aid their allies in defensive wars rather than just accepting a call to arms and then not doing a thing. The game already has a system for figuring out your net impact on a war, take that and the comparative strength of each member of the alliance and you might be able to work out an interesting set of positive and negative relations modifiers.

So if the Abbasids come to the aid of Venice during a war, they have to do 99% of the work because they are 100x larger?

 

[Sirrobert1]

I always like filling my Empire with King level vassals of my own Dynasty, to make them all super powerfull.
Whenever one of them declares war on something outside, all my vassals would dog pile them, being way more powerful than I could be alone. I like that this is changing, it was a little to powerful (also made them immune to revolts, as they are basicly like the Karlings in that situation

 

[Jorlem]

Will an alliance persist if the marriage ends? It appears that the actual alliance will now be a relationship directly between rulers, while the NAP will depend on the marriage/betrothal/(other conditions that we will hopefully be able to mod in), so it seems possible that the alliance could still exist even if the relationship that was used as the basis for the NAP does not.

 

[TheWolfe]

So if the Abbasids come to the aid of Venice during a war, they have to do 99% of the work because they are 100x larger?

If Paradox were to decide to implement a system like I suggested they would of course have to figure out how to balance it, just like they do for any other mechanic they add to their games. I'm not a game designer so I don't know what that balance would be. What I posted was just an idea about how to deal with one of, for me anyway, the biggest problems with the game, the ease with which you can abuse alliances. I don't find there's ever really any reason to actually help an ally, and I think a system like this might provide one.