Hello guys!

So today we will be talking about some changes we have made to make our combat less bloody, which has particularly been an issue since patch 2.4. We have also worked on making the outcome of entire wars not be decided in one stroke by whomever happens to have pissed off Lady Fortuna...

First off, we have adopted the “shattered retreat” from EU4, meaning when an army is defeated it will run back to somewhere relatively safe so that the enemy can’t keep ping-ponging it until it is annihilated. Peasant rabble that rises against your enlightened and glorious rule, however, will immediately disperse on defeat so you don’t have to chase them down. But nobles within your realm that betray you and revolt will try and run for a safe haven.

The second feature we have added is that while your damaged army is at home it will reinforce its levies directly (rather than the Holding garrison), meaning you can choose if you want to employ the garrisoned levies immediately by dismissing and re-raising your levies, or decide it is too risky (since your army will then be split all over your Kingdom and be easy pickings for the enemy) and instead choose to have your army stand back and rest for a while and be slowly refilled with troops instead.

The equation for how losses were calculated has also been changed. Before, it was based on the troops getting damaged by almost exponential amounts. This could, in some cases, cause really ridiculous damage like 2 million casualties, when it was armies of thousands fighting each other. This has been changed, and the associated values tweaked severely to prevent the crazy casualties yet still ensure that enough soldiers die in battles. For math nerds this is how it works now:

Spoiler

Defending means here the unit taking damage, both units will be defending and attacking at the same time and does not denote who initiated the combat. DamagePerMan is a value calculated as a even distribution of the total damage each soldier takes.

((DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue) * AmountOfDefendingTroops = LossesInTroops

Has been changed to

(DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue = LossesInTroops

Not a very big change but it does have profound effects on the result.

Beside simple combat mechanic changes there have been some improvements and bug fixes to the AI to give players a better challenge, focusing mostly on making allied AIs coordinate better between themselves. Oh, and the Mongol AI has been given its balls back, making them a lot more aggressive than they ever were before...

You asked for it….

 

[Cathal341]

New Combat Mechanics! Nice.

 

[Chief Iacid]

Thanks for the DD and especially thanks for the shattered retreat, a great improvement. The ping-ponging never made any sense to me because you always did it, per automatic. As it was, it could as well have being incorporated in the first battle itself, meaning a losing army would get automatically eliminated at the end of the battle. The shattered retreat makes much more sense.

 

[DmUa]

Well, first of all, there's no rebellion anywhere near 2 millions.

- thx captain!

They're just a few thousands, and they're always made of weak light infantry, so they're easy to defeat.

- peasant are just one of many luck based rebels, i just used them as example. And no, they are not easy to defeat if they rebel in mountain province just in the middle of troop gathering, destroying few of your traveling stacks and preventing others to come. Try to think out of the box plox.

If you get crushed by a peasant army, you were going to get crushed by the Abbasids anyway.

- kind of not if in before losing part of your army they had similar number to you, and again it could be whatever other country not just abbasids.

Secondly, you can already tell where rebels will spawn by looking at the rebel mapmode. You just don't know exactly when they will, or if they ever will. I find this system pretty reasonable. It makes way more sense than knowing almost exactly when there will be a rebellion.

- you really cant, it just shows RR, and RR doesnt mean that here will be rebellion you can pretty much sit on country wide +5RR for the rest of the game and never see any rebellion, even short +50RR doesnt guarantee rebellion. Or vice versa you could be hit with rebellion after rebellion just from one province with +1RR. The whole system of non-character based rebellions are currently based on just sheer luck.

EU4 system is much superior to CK2, it have its own shortcomings ( like separatist rebel armies having stronger and bigger forces than armies of their former parent countries ) but in comparison to current luck based BS its just better.

 

[Quaade]

for the shattered retreats.. if it's a defensive army will it receive the new defensive recruitment ability while running, Also will reinforcement be balanced by increased expenses like it is with retinue? I'm just already having nightmare images of what this may mean for trying to attack Abbasid if it isn't balanced against their blobby butts.

Since there isn´t added cost to reinforcing normally, other than retinues, I think not. Just because they are raised doesn´t mean they will cost more to reinforce, than if you had them deraised. The cost is increased due to being raised, so it will grow according to the numbers raised

- or it could be done like in other more modern Pdx game - EU4.

Or you could listen that, the point made were that the system there isn´t perfect and could add the element of surprise without being a lucky hunch. There´s a fine balance between this, but being in the extremes is not a very good solution.

Rebels randomly popping up, without means to avoid it and understanding why is senseless, but that´s also the case with knowing exactly when they rise. My guess is that only a few rebels actually let their liege know that they are about to rebel against him, they usually are also more likely to do so when he´s too tyrant or too weak. Nothing that the "modern" titles portray, and perhaps should be doing.

As stated, I like having the info about when, where and why but not to the extent where the rebels let me know that they are about to test my rule in a letter. It´s awfully nice of them, but seeing as this doesn´t happen... The knowledge of a possible rebel starting is most likely to be known, and perhaps by adding a few mechanics to further detail it, spies and police are a great source of telling the king that someone might be planning something, but they rarely know when without being funded properly.

- in CK2 revolt risk does not diminishes in time, it ether present or not, game doest even differentiate between provincial RR and realm wide RR, for now you can literally sit on realm wide +5 RR and never see a rebellion or be literally decimated by liberation rebellion that started from +1RR province and were reinforced 3 time in a row in a matter of few month.

And that´s really a shame... The rebel and faction system in CK2 are so great currently, really portraying the difficulties in managing large empires in the era

- its a casino were you either get hit in the balls or if you got lucky - not.

I would like to have it more like a casino, but not directly. In my view, rebels should be handled with a bit of gambling. You can play it safe and do much to prevent it, perhaps even doing to much than is needed which would then be a loss. Then you can take your chances and hope that it will pass away by itself, since in EU4 I find myself not caring for some rebels, since my math is improved enough to know that they won´t rise in 4 years and by that time, nationalism has dropped to the point where it goes into negative.

The point is, adding decisions, like gambling, while telling you when and where there is a problem you might need to look at. But giving it all away is really plain stupid... You can actually tell when another nation is supporting rebels, then where´s the point of it being covert? Funding rebels should be discovered with a risk, if I can´t see it and know this, they might jump me by surprise but the reasons are still there and quite logical. At least better than knowing someone is supporting before actually knowing it.

- sure, those 2 millions of peasant rebels that appear out of thin air and destroy your army just when you were preparing to fight against abbasids is super unexpected, especially if it was the only province with unrest. Dont bullshit me, please, here are difference between something truly unexpected and plain bullshit. Claiming that ruler somehow did not knowed that here are peasant uprising brewing in realm when at the same time he is perfectly knows that nobles conspire against him via faction menu is second.

Yeah because that happens exactly when in the game??? Besides players who don´t do jack about RR and go overboard with conquests and such. Rebels in EU4 are limited by development, actually mostly taxes if I remember correctly. So having that number is quite unplausible unless player errors are in effect, which make it a bad arguments against changes to the system.

 

[Johuotar]

More aggressive mongols is welcome.

 

[Quaade]

- peasant are just one of many luck based rebels, i just used them as example. And no, they are not easy to defeat if they rebel in mountain province just in the middle of troop gathering, destroying few of your traveling stacks and preventing others to come. Try to think out of the box plox.

Thinking outside the box in this case, means constructing rare cases that should be applied in general... Bad idea, since they rarely happens and they shouldn´t limit the effect elsewhere

 

[DukeDayve]

How about the game's terrible performance? I no longer play CK2 because it's slow, stuttery, cumbersome. Which is a shame because it's possibly my favourite strategy game of all time (and easily in my top 10 games of any genre of all time). Anything being done about this?

 

[Aries666]

This is a much needed change. It has always annoyed me how every war in CK2 goes like this; both sides raise and gather up army, armies search for one another, armies fight, side with most men wins, remainder of defeated army chased down and destroyed, war over.

 

[melkor88]

Looking forward to test the battle mechanics out. And really excited to defend against the new Mongol invasion.

 

[DmUa]

Or you could listen that, the point made were that the system there isn´t perfect and could add the element of surprise without being a lucky hunch. There´s a fine balance between this, but being in the extremes is not a very good solution.

Rebels randomly popping up, without means to avoid it and understanding why is senseless, but that´s also the case with knowing exactly when they rise. My guess is that only a few rebels actually let their liege know that they are about to rebel against him, they usually are also more likely to do so when he´s too tyrant or too weak. Nothing that the "modern" titles portray, and perhaps should be doing.

As stated, I like having the info about when, where and why but not to the extent where the rebels let me know that they are about to test my rule in a letter. It´s awfully nice of them, but seeing as this doesn´t happen... The knowledge of a possible rebel starting is most likely to be known, and perhaps by adding a few mechanics to further detail it, spies and police are a great source of telling the king that someone might be planning something, but they rarely know when without being funded properly.

- Pdx should immediately listen to you and made plots and factions invisible too! More surprises to the god of surprises! More random luck based crap to the god of random luck based crap!

And that´s really a shame... The rebel and faction system in CK2 are so great currently, really portraying the difficulties in managing large empires in the era

- huh? Not sure if trolling or... CK2 faction system is actually completely transparent, which is contrary to you weird "surprise moth-er" desired hit in the balls.

I would like to have it more like a casino, but not directly. In my view, rebels should be handled with a bit of gambling. You can play it safe and do much to prevent it, perhaps even doing to much than is needed which would then be a loss. Then you can take your chances and hope that it will pass away by itself, since in EU4 I find myself not caring for some rebels, since my math is improved enough to know that they won´t rise in 4 years and by that time, nationalism has dropped to the point where it goes into negative.

The point is, adding decisions, like gambling, while telling you when and where there is a problem you might need to look at. But giving it all away is really plain stupid... You can actually tell when another nation is supporting rebels, then where´s the point of it being covert? Funding rebels should be discovered with a risk, if I can´t see it and know this, they might jump me by surprise but the reasons are still there and quite logical. At least better than knowing someone is supporting before actually knowing it.

- im sorry but this is just irrelevant BS you talking about, your "points" dont address anything that i talk. Let me get this straight for you - current RR luck based system is shit, EU4 on launch had same luck based RR shitty system, than it got changed with superior unrest/faction system, now when CK2 imports more and more superior EU4 futures i want to see current BS RR rebel system replaced with superior faction/unrest system similar to EU4 one. What you desire i dont care. Here are zero points of you to quote my posts and argue with me. If you want different luck based rebels implemented instead of current system just post in suggestions subforum, you have no reason of arguing with me in that case.

Yeah because that happens exactly when in the game??? Besides players who don´t do jack about RR and go overboard with conquests and such. Rebels in EU4 are limited by development, actually mostly taxes if I remember correctly. So having that number is quite unplausible unless player errors are in effect, which make it a bad arguments against changes to the system.

- players cant do jack about RR now at all, dont pretend that they can and number that i used i description are irrelevant, i pretty much can write over 9000 or +100500 instead of 2mills.

Thinking outside the box in this case, means constructing rare cases that should be applied in general... Bad idea, since they rarely happens and they shouldn´t limit the effect elsewhere

- nope, thinking outside of the box in this case means that i could use fabrications and exaggeration and not literal examples from "mah ruined games". Unless you want to say that like Ilyasviel said that rebels are always easy to defeat because they are always peasants just because i called them peasants? In that case both of you still would be wrong because even 2k peasant rabble would be enough to kill leaderless small stacks of levied troops that are coming to the front. For a man that is claiming that he wasnt listened you are surprisingly unlistening.

 

[richvh]

- players cant do jack about RR now at all, dont pretend that they can

The marshal has a task that reduces revolt risk, so your argument is demonstrably false.

 

[Nirmara]

While were at it, could we get that armies can't abort movement when they have moved halfway to their destination?

 

[Quaade]

- Pdx should immediately listen to you and made plots and factions invisible too! More surprises to the god of surprises! More random luck based crap to the god of random luck based crap!

I´m not sure if you are reading my post or simply unwilling to read it or understand it... Said quite clear that I didn´t want it to be surprising and purely luck based, but in between... When picking among the lesser of two evil, the middlepoint is actually the best at times.

But apparantly you will only listen to what you want to hear, would suggest rereading and then come up with something more constructive and closer to my points than what you just did, I´m sure your able to

- huh? Not sure if trolling or... CK2 faction system is actually completely transparent, which is contrary to you weird "surprise moth-er" desired hit in the balls.

The faction system is too transparent and way too simple, make the guy like you enough and he just simply quits, nevermind his ambitions, past actions or even the factions power collectively to actually threathen the liege. "Oh... now I like you, of course I won´t join this faction that will further my goals". And the defense modifier when being attacked makes little sense in some cases, like independence. "Oh shit, a war was declared on the other side of the empire... Well now is not a good time to declare independence, let´s help our liege instead with all our troops".

This could be done in so many other ways, where you would have to estimate the strength of the faction due to the number of members, that factions had longer term goals, that to avoid them you should do something drastic like negotiating with vassals, forcing them out, marrying them.

A simply way to avoid them, imprison even without a cause, if he rebels you still weaken the faction and you can strip him of a title and give it to someone else who will love you for it. I would say the bette approach would be to have the faction as a whole react to such a tyrannical act.

Also, factions could be done more heavily with inter-marriage securing them as members in the form of alliances. This is actually what the equavailant to factions in reality did. Even with an old king, many still conspired against him, tried to impact the succession or gain more power through laws. Nothing that´s being reflected on this simple system and the system as a whole is way too easy to navigate and avoid.

- im sorry but this is just irrelevant BS you talking about, your "points" dont address anything that i talk. Let me get this straight for you - current RR luck based system is shit, EU4 on launch had same luck based RR shitty system, than it got changed with superior unrest/faction system, now when CK2 imports more and more superior EU4 futures i want to see current BS RR rebel system replaced with superior faction/unrest system similar to EU4 one. What you desire i dont care. Here are zero points of you to quote my posts and argue with me. If you want different luck based rebels implemented instead of current system just post in suggestions subforum, you have no reason of arguing with me in that case.

My "points" are that CK2 and EU4 have each different extreme methods of handling rebels, they are not very good either of them since CK2 show too little and gives you no real impact on them and understanding towards it, EU4 is too transparent and makes you able to know exactly when and where within a very limited timeframe that the rebels will rise, making you plan your wars around it. And on top of that, EU4 even give you knowledge about when they go into negative, so you can now when not to do something about it.

It´s both awful ways to deal with it, and could have been done differently.

And yes, I do have reason to argue you with you, since you brought the rebel system of EU4 on the table, you even now called it superior. So I´m allowed to critize in a constructive way against your points. Only thing you forget, is that I don´t say it´s a totally bad idea, I´m only saying doing the exact same is a bad idea since you get no surprises and can plan too much around it. (notice i say no surprise, meaning that it´s not random but that you can be surprised for misjudging the situation).

- players cant do jack about RR now at all, dont pretend that they can and number that i used i description are irrelevant, i pretty much can write over 9000 or +100500 instead of 2mills.

There is a huge difference from 9.000 to 2 mio and you know it, your argument were that they rise to many for you to handle. However the argument fall flat, when there never is such cases of rebels rising. Have played CK2 extensively and I never had any trouble with rebels I can´t handle, only when I played Zunist I had a small period where they scared the shit out of me... But then again, I made the achievement so it wasn´t that much of a game-breaker of having those rebels, they were more of a nuisance really.

And to repeat myself, so the chance of you not misreading me again, I´m not saying this system shouldn´t be changed. I dislike that generic rebels don´t coordinate better, that you have ways of trying to appease them or anger them, that they have no knowledge at all as to when they gathered enough men and an estimate of how many, they will rise with. Braveheart is what I classify as "generic rebels" and they did an uprising somewhat coordinated.

And I´m sure you will point out how wrong I´m there, but at least try to get the points and address them constructively.

- nope, thinking outside of the box in this case means that i could use fabrications and exaggeration and not literal examples from "mah ruined games". Unless you want to say that like Ilyasviel said that rebels are always easy to defeat because they are always peasants just because i called them peasants? In that case both of you still would be wrong because even 2k peasant rabble would be enough to kill leaderless small stacks of levied troops that are coming to the front. For a man that is claiming that he wasnt listened you are surprisingly unlistening.

Rebels are easy to defeat, they are more of a nuisance. And since when do you keep attacking with leaderless, small stacks of troops? I get that you can lose a few units if they were in the province when they rose. But if you lose that many that it becomes a real problem, you should might consider stopping your troops movement into that province and gather them elsewhere instead of wasting men going into the rebels in small stacks. That´s a player mistake, not a mistake of the game

 

[Angeleyed]

Why does groogy have more icons than me?

 

[Quaade]

Why does groogy have more icons than me?

He has more games than you I guess

 

[Finnway]

What about adopting movement lock and rebellion/unrest mechanics now? Those AI army dancers and luck based rebels appearing out of thin air are annoying as hell in CK2 if you compare those with much more controllable mechanics of EU4.

Problem is you need a way to control it. In EU4 you control it with Monarch Points. I suppose in CK2 you could control it with events, and based on the decisions you make the chance for rebellion may increase in a few provinces.

 

[Finnway]

Really glad the devs are polishing CK2 in this next patch. I'm sure whatever you guys are working on will be worth the wait.

 

[Groogy]

Why does groogy have more icons than me?

Because I am pro.

 

[Aleus]

I'm kind of confused on what shattered retreat is, could someone care to explain it to me? I have 150 hours in CK2 but I've never touched EU4.

 

[Quaade]

I'm kind of confused on what shattered retreat is, could someone care to explain it to me? I have 150 hours in CK2 but I've never touched EU4.

When army is defeated and have morale below a certain point, it will retreat some provinces away that are deemed safe. In EU4 this can be some 8-10 provinces away or simply 3.

It's done to prevent the stackswipe by following, but it's not impossible, you just need to travel farther