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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.

capture(49).png


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:

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.
Code:
((DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue) * AmountOfDefendingTroops = LossesInTroops
Has been changed to
Code:
(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….
 
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Now this is going to be a nice patch/expansion. I wanted stronger Mongols since Horse Lords.

Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.
 
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Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.

I really hope that this increased AI aggressiveness is a tweak that's available to more than just the mongols -- there are other cultures/rulers that also shouldn't sit on their laurels once they reach a certain age. I realize it's unlikely that Paradox will ever give modders true access to the decision-making process the AI uses to evaluate when it goes to war, but if this is an improvement we could also use for things other than the mongols that would be appreciated.
 
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Let's go back to this hint (at least I think it's a hint). What do we asked for? I'm sure this is a hint for the DLC!
Or simply because people complained about Mongols not doing historically enough but ended up staying in the first conquered lands :)
 
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I really hope that this increased AI aggressiveness is a tweak that's available to more than just the mongols -- there are other cultures/rulers that also shouldn't sit on their laurels once they reach a certain age. I realize it's unlikely that Paradox will ever give modders true access to the decision-making process the AI uses to evaluate when it goes to war, but if this is an improvement we could also use for things other than the mongols that would be appreciated.

Yes. most of the map is too docile.
 
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Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.

It would be really nice if the age at which the AI reduces agressiveness (for non-horde cultures, anyways) was exported to defines
 
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Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.

This is great. Old men who lived their entire life on horseback should keep invading and raiding the world - retirement and old-age care is for pampered weaklings!
 
Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.

This is great. Old men who lived their entire life on horseback should keep invading and raiding the world - retirement and old-age care is for pampered weaklings!

Does this or shouldn´t it also affect vikings? They seemed to take it as a great deal of dying in the battlefield, instead of their hall of old age, due to the immideate acces to Valhalla... At least when they are not reformed :)
 
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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….

Make sure not to forget about the Turks as well M'lord!
Their invasion of India/Byzantium is a little underwhelming.
 
what about cosmetic dlc's ?
have no information about that
OP6Z9pS.png


Тhat's from the CK2 SteamDB page. There are 9 unknown apps, as you can see for yourself. Whether all of them are DLC or not, I don't really know...
But I'm pretty sure that cosmetic content will arrive with the next expansion. And for some reason, it usually gets announced when the expansion is released. So, we'll probably not going to hear about it anytime soon.
A while ago, we would get teasers on that DB page, or even names for that content before the official announcement. However, I heard that we got a new administrator of that page, and he seems to be of the silent type.
 
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