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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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No it doesn't. EU4 has a checkbox on an army's window that tells the AI to attach their armies to that army. All that CK2 has is a button that attaches your army to someone else's.
A checkbox like that wouldn't work very well. You have 3 allies with 10k troops and you have everyone losing troops to attrition. It might work for small scale wars but for a coalition war where you're looking at 60k+ troops you are handicapping the defenders by forcing them into one province.
 
That can depend on what the coalition has as its' goal. If their target has expanded rather much quite rapidly, than at once every neighbouring ruler can get worried and at least wants to show, that there's a limit to expansion. So that they all share the same concern seems valid, but a coordinated coalition wouldn't always be possible.

This is my take as well. I have a feeling that the changes involved with this dlc deployment will both be deeper and more far-reaching than we (as in the ck2 community) are seeing right now. Right now, most people see the trees but not the forest.
 
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We know precious little about the pope's motivations for calling the crusade, so if you want to headcanon that then be my guest.
 
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It comes down to balance, if you have it that a few realms form a coalition against a every large realm, it would do nothing at all. If more people can join then it would make the war more difficult.

If the mechanic is to have any use what so ever, you will need to allow anyone who feels threatened to join.

Even then who really cares, it's not going to stop people from expanding.
This is very true. According to my analysis, the strength of the Seljuk's in those screenshots is 21K. The strength of the coalition against them is 40K. When you consider that...
  • The Seljuk's get a "defending against invaders" manpower bonus.
  • Not all coalition members will join an offensive war.
  • The Seljuk's can form non-aggressive pacts with coalition members.
  • The Seljuk's can form alliances with realms in North Africa and Spain to help defend themselves.

...you realize that if Paradox made coalitions any weaker they'd be practically useless.

And an FYI to critics. In 1066 start the Seljuk's are the 2nd largest country in the game. It's not like 40K coalitions are going to drop on everyone and the slightest sign of aggression.
 
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This is very true. According to my analysis, the strength of the Seljuk's in those screenshots is 21K. The strength of the coalition against them is 40K. When you consider that...
  • The Seljuk's get a "defending against invaders" manpower bonus.
  • Not all coalition members will join an offensive war.
  • The Seljuk's can form non-aggressive pacts with coalition members.
  • The Seljuk's can form alliances with realms in North Africa and Spain to help defend themselves.

...you realize that if Paradox made coalitions any weaker they'd be practically useless.

And an FYI to critics. In 1066 start the Seljuk's are the 2nd largest country in the game. It's not like 40K coalitions are going to drop on everyone and the slightest sign of aggression.
Also, the coalition's armies won't start off together, while the AI for the Seljuks will group theirs up right off the bat. Depending on how good the AI becomes at coordinating, the Seljuks might be able to defeat the coalition armies piecemeal without much difficulty.
 
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And no, Infamy stays over generations. You can't be a dick then die and think you will get away with it.

How did you know what I had planned for real life?

This made me laugh. It describes the real attitude of probably way too many people.

"Haw, haw! Good luck fixing all of this shit while I'm safely dead"
 
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Also, the coalition's armies won't start off together, while the AI for the Seljuks will group theirs up right off the bat. Depending on how good the AI becomes at coordinating, the Seljuks might be able to defeat the coalition armies piecemeal without much difficulty.

The ai Seljuks should group all its troops together somewhere then pick off the attackers before they can join up but this being ck2 they will probably send half their forces into the desert to starve and the other half to lay siege to an island county owned by one of the attackers.
 
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Also, the coalition's armies won't start off together, while the AI for the Seljuks will group theirs up right off the bat. Depending on how good the AI becomes at coordinating, the Seljuks might be able to defeat the coalition armies piecemeal without much difficulty.
Also, defensive armies got a buff. Levies now auto-reinforce in home territory like retinues do.
 
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How about a perma-bonus for granting independence to some of your conquests? Perhaps this would also lower infamy? For example, if I, as Britain, take over all of Spain, and then keep it, obviously I'm going to rack up infamy... but if I voluntarily seed control instead of creating a vice-royal kingdom or what have you...hmm? (Maybe make this calculable with historical borders or something?) But ultimately a trade-off the player or AI can make for some perma-bonus to... well... something.
 
How about a perma-bonus for granting independence to some of your conquests? Perhaps this would also lower infamy? For example, if I, as Britain, take over all of Spain, and then keep it, obviously I'm going to rack up infamy... but if I voluntarily seed control instead of creating a vice-royal kingdom or what have you...hmm? (Maybe make this calculable with historical borders or something?) But ultimately a trade-off the player or AI can make for some perma-bonus to... well... something.
Groogy already said that you can lower infamy by granting independence to your vassals.
 
Just throwing my support out there for internal conflict to weaken larger realms. I don't mind the AI using some sort of Infamy system (it's essentially AI that mimics player decisions anyway), but there absolutely needs to be more internal issues added first. Re-claw factions (hell, give them gatling guns), make cultural/religious revolts stronger, change the way vassals are so easily placated, etc. I have two minor ideas, easily-coded using existing game systems, that can help this in the suggestion forum right now:

Festival cost scaling to realm earnings: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...stival-cost-scaling-to-realm-earnings.900981/

Cascading revolts: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...evolt-chance-in-neighboring-provinces.900976/

Oh, and make more beneficial education decisions tied to Learning. Also, make a minor's education trait (Brilliant Strategist, etc.) tied to the length of time they spend under vassals with those traits and those vassals' Learning.
 
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Having a large realm - should be punished by internal conflict.

Making yourself more powerful in other ways should have consequences too. Taxing your subjects heavily shouldn't just reduce levies, but permanently harm your economy (http://www.jstor.org/stable/725804). Centralisation should make councillors more dangerous; these are the people who you're giving power to enforce your will. The standard medieval parable of an evil Sheriff of Nottingham or nefarious Vizier is all about grasping state officers misusing the power accumulated by an absolutist monarchy.
 
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The game already has a snowball-stopping mechanic in a form of VASSAL MANAGEMENT. Just make it harder in an interesting way to hold on to conquered lands (and have them give you profits), it'll add another layers into the game rather than a cockblock mechanic that should never be in it! There are plenty of historical situations which support that, like Poland siding with the Pope to get out of HRE's influence.

I can see it working in some way, like unification of Poland to resist western influences in 960 by creating a nation, but this? :/ Can't you do something like lower crown authority in some areas so that a BIG nation might not necessarily mean a STRONG one? This will be both in spirit in the game and won't introduce super annoying simple mechanics at all!
 
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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.

This used to be a thing?! I don't know why it was removed as I only started playing last week, but I would love for this to be in. Makes perfect sense.
 
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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.

No. The 'distance raises revolt risk' makes even less sense... distant vassals mostly revolt less. Look at the HRE. For a short time the capital was in Naples. Which vassals did revolt? The ones in Italy. Some in Southern Germany. And Nothern Germany was very peaceful.

Mostly distant leads to less revolts because distance mean less controll for the ruler. Distance alone is NOT a reason for revolts.
 
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