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CK3 Dev Diary #19: Factions and Civil Wars

Hello kings and queens, dukes and duchesses! I am back with another Dev Diary, and today we’re going to be talking about Factions and Civil Wars in Crusader Kings III!

Much like in CK2, vassals who are unhappy with the current state of affairs in the realm will create a Faction that other vassals can then join. Factions that grow large enough will eventually deliver an ultimatum to their liege, demanding certain concessions in exchange for continued peace.

Anatomy of a Faction
DD_WM_ExampleFaction.png

[A screenshot showing a Claimant Faction with Faction Members, Discontent, and Military Power displayed]

All Factions have a Military Power rating, which is a ratio between the combined military strength of all members and the military strength of their liege. Factions also have a Discontent score, which gauges how close the Faction is to sending their ultimatum.

Factions will begin accruing Discontent once their Military Power goes over a certain threshold, typically 80%. Stronger Factions acquire Discontent rapidly in an attempt to seize the moment, while weaker Factions hem and haw a little in the hopes that more supporters will join their cause. Either way, once Discontent reaches 100% the Faction will soon deliver their ultimatum; at that point, their liege must either accept their demands or fight all joined faction members in a civil war.

Civil Wars
DD_WM_CivilWarBorders.png

[A screenshot of the map showing several Faction Members at war with their liege, who is the player]

Unlike in CK2, when a civil war is declared faction members do not form a new temporary realm. While they nominally remain vassals of their liege, they will immediately stop providing taxes and levies to them, and their liege will lose access to certain powers (such as imprisonment).

During a civil war the faction members turn hostile to both their liege and all non-faction vassals, though they will focus on fighting their liege. The exact war goal varies depending on the Faction type, but both sides earn war score by defeating hostile armies and sieging down hostile provinces.

Once one side emerges triumphant, they will enforce their demands. A victorious Faction will enforce their ultimatum with some additional concessions thrown in, while a victorious liege will imprison all faction members and gain title revocation reasons against them. If a white peace is agreed to, things largely go back to the way they were, though the liege gains an imprisonment reason against all the rebels. Actually imprisoning the rebels is another matter entirely, as a failed imprisonment attempt can trigger another rebellion.

Types of Factions
There are currently 5 distinct types of Factions, each of which has its own goals.

  • The Independence Faction, seeking to gain independence from their liege.
  • Claimant Factions, seeking to replace their liege with a new one.
  • The Liberty Faction, seeking to reduce Crown Authority in the realm.
  • Populist Factions, seeking to form a new realm of their religion and culture.
  • The Peasant Faction, seeking to pay fewer taxes to their liege.

Vassals only join The Independence Faction if they feel like they do not belong in their liege’s realm. This can be due to a variety of reasons, but it generally boils down to a combination of three major factors: not being a de jure vassal of their liege, not sharing their liege’s culture [group], and their religious hostility towards their liege (more on that in a future Dev Diary!). As a result, Independence Factions tend to be ‘clumpy’, forming distinct regional blocs within a realm.

DD_WM_IndependenceWarTerms.png

[A screenshot of an ongoing Independence Faction War against the HRE, showing the clustering of rebels within Italy]

Claimant Factions, on the other hand, are all about opinion. Vassals who personally dislike their liege while still feeling like they belong to their liege’s realm will favor this type of Faction. Of course, Claimant Factions are also an area where opportunistic vassals can push to acquire titles for themselves or their relatives!

The Liberty Faction is the place for vassals who are almost happy with the current state of affairs. They want to lower either the realm’s crown authority laws or their obligations to their liege, and are typically the easiest Faction to manage.

Populist and Peasant Factions are special in that they are not created by unhappy vassals. Instead, they are created by unhappy counties.

DD_WM_CountyFactions.png

[A screenshot of the Faction Tab showing an active Kurdish Apostolic Populist Faction and a Peasant Rabble Faction]

Much like vassals, counties have an opinion of their holder which is influenced by culture, religion, events, and war. When the opinion of a county drops too low, they will join one of these two factions. Like the other factions, if these factions gain enough Discontent, they will send an ultimatum, and will revolt if the ultimatum is refused. This completely replaces the random province revolt chance that existed in CK2 — gone are the days of “Duke McPeasantFace has declared the 19th Orthodox Uprising on you.”

Populist Factions are the more dangerous type of county faction and form when counties wish to be governed by a ruler of their own culture and/or religion. While Populist Factions are created by and primarily consist of counties, sympathetic vassals in your realm may also pledge loyalty to their cause. A successful Populist revolt will cause all member counties and vassals to break away and form a new realm!

While an Independence Faction causes all members split off into their own separate realms, a Populist Faction will create a single realm with all members united under one ruler. That ruler will always share the Faction’s culture and religion, and as a hero of the liberation war they will almost always be a competent commander. In addition, a successful Populist Faction will automatically usurp or create an appropriate title for their leader to hold, which can even generate new Kingdom-tier titles in certain circumstances!

DD_WM_SuccessfulPopularRevolt.png

[A screenshot of the Kingdom of Jüterbog, split off of the HRE by a successful Polabian Popular Revolt]

All of this taken together means that any realm formed by Popular Revolt will end up being a formidable foe that likely has several De Jure claims on its neighbors. This can substantially alter the balance of power in your region — even if you weren't the initial faction target!

On the other hand, Peasant Rabble are the simplest and least dangerous type of Faction. Unlike all other Factions, there is no minimum Military Power requirement for the Peasant Rabble to revolt, and its Discontent will always tick upwards at a constant rate. When the Rabble inevitably revolt, they will almost certainly be weaker than the liege they are targeting — but don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security! Every time the Rabble’s forces occupy a county, all of that county’s levies will immediately join them. What started as a minor uprising can quickly balloon out of control if left unchecked! Luckily their only demands are to pay reduced taxes and provide fewer levies to their liege, which is an annoying if manageable setback.

Faction Management

So as a ruler, how do you manage all of these Factions? Well, there are several ways!

For starters, any alliances you have made with your vassals will prevent them from joining a Faction against you. This makes arranged marriages within your realm valuable even if you don’t benefit as much militarily as you would from a foreign marriage.

Adding to this, any vassals you have a hook on will be unable to join a Faction against you, whether that hook is due to them owing you a favor or due to blackmail.

You can also attempt to intimidate vassals away from their Faction, as a high Dread will lower their willingness to be in one. If the threat of imprisonment and torture doesn’t work, actual imprisonment will — vassals in your dungeons can not be part of any Faction. Just be careful, as an unjust imprisonment attempt may provoke a powerful Faction into revolting early, regardless of their Discontent!

DD_WM_FactionRetaliation.png

[A screenshot warning the player that imprisoning this vassal may trigger a Faction Revolt]

Finally, if all else fails you can actually address the grievances your vassals have with you. Vassals who are happy enough will never join any kind of faction, which means improving their opinion of you and fixing structural issues in your realm will ensure that nobody challenges your rule!

That is all for this week, but I have an extra special treat in store you next time when we finally begin diving into how religion works in Crusader Kings III!

Blooper Reel: The Extremely Popular Revolt
Very early on in CK3's development, I started looking into ways to make Popular Revolts more challenging. No matter how large a revolt got, their forces would always be spread out across all of their member counties, making it trivial to pick off their armies one at a time.

To help remedy this, instead of letting each county spawn its own army I made it so each duchy would spawn a single army based on the combined military power of all faction counties inside of it. However, I made a mistake — instead of adding up the military power of all counties in a duchy, I accidentally added up the military power of all counties in the world... per duchy.

DD_WM_Blooper_RevoltingPeasantsCut.png


It turns out that no matter how many knights you have or how good of a commander you are, 8.8 million angry peasants will overwhelm you in battle every time.
 
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So, succesfull pupulist can create always not existed or random realm, or also curretly established for example king of France hold Duchy of Normandy as secondary and normandy populist want his own, local ruler ?

Populist Factions prefer to usurp an appropriate existing title if possible. For example, if the Umayyads conquers all of Spain and then lose to a Castillian Catholic Revolt, the new King will take the title of the King of Castille, either usurping it from the Umayyads (if they hold it) or creating it (if it has been destroyed). Only if that is not possible will they generate a new dynamic revolt title, which will be named after the most powerful county in the faction.
 
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Will foreign powers have the ability to influence a faction or civil war? The Encourage Dissent council task in CK2 was pretty limited to a single county, and I can only give so many gifts to rebels while they stockpile it for their ransom. Or maybe have your spymaster be able to find out rebel factions and their dissent, so you have the perfect time to strike.
One famous example was how Philippe Augustus encouraged Hal and Richard's rebellions against Henry II (while Geoffrey died from an injury during a tournament on one such diplomatic missions), I disliked watching independence rebellions get put down by a rival that I'd like to see humbled.

Not currently, but that is an excellent idea. Probably won't make it in for release, but hopefully we can add it in a future patch?
 
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Not currently, but that is an excellent idea. Probably won't make it in for release, but hopefully we can add it in a future patch?
It is quite needed to give the smaller realms a fighting chance against empires. It should be possible for foreign realms to lend their support to factions thus make them revolt quicker.

Also there should probably be factions that is not directly about weakning the liege but like stuff such as forcing the liege to press a vassals claim and maybe all kind of other stuff. I think that would work quite well with the hook system and such, allowing a more diplomatic way for a vassal to grow stronger.
 
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Not currently, but that is an excellent idea. Probably won't make it in for release, but hopefully we can add it in a future patch?
It is quite needed to give the smaller realms a fighting chance against empires. It should be possible for foreign realms to lend their support to factions thus make them revolt quicker.
Thanks, but I do want to make sure it is a balanced measure. While it's all good as France to support Scottish independence against England, it would be annoying if the Kaiser can carpet siege your borders because his cousin, a Baron in Brittany, has a vague claim to the throne. For foreign lords to offer assistance, maybe they can gift the rebels a number of Men-at-Arms, or pay for a mercenary band? That way, it still is an investment for the people supporting the rebels, but it means that large kingdoms/empires can't just ransack any country they want.
Of course, if the rebels fail, there should be a way of extracting payment (either through the peace terms or a cassus belli) from those foreign lords who aided your rebels, earning a 10 year truce to prevent them from backstabbing you again, or stopping them from supporting other rebellions in other Kingdoms for a decade or so.
 
Thanks, but I do want to make sure it is a balanced measure. While it's all good as France to support Scottish independence against England, it would be annoying if the HRE can carpet siege your borders because his cousin, a Baron in Brittany, has a vague claim to the throne. For foreign lords to offer assistance, maybe they can gift the rebels a number of Men-at-Arms, or pay for a mercenary band? That way, it still is an investment for the people supporting the rebels, but it means that large kingdoms/empires can't just ransack any country they want.
Of course, if the rebels fail, there should be a way of extracting payment (either through the peace terms or a cassus belli) from those foreign lords who aided your rebels, or earning a 10 year truce to prevent them from backstabbing you again while stopping them from supporting other rebellions.
That sounds quite a lot like what happened historically. E.g. Mieszko II of Poland regained the throne and re-established the kingdom thanks to the host of knights provided by the HRE nobles. He effectively carpet-sieged the Western Poland...
 
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I hope there is a family rivalry system in game :) Family gotta stick together

Types of Factions
There are currently 5 distinct types of Factions, each of which has its own goals.

  • The Independence Faction, seeking to gain independence from their liege.
  • Claimant Factions, seeking to replace their liege with a new one.
  • The Liberty Faction, seeking to reduce Crown Authority in the realm.
  • Populist Factions, seeking to form a new realm of their religion and culture.
  • The Peasant Faction, seeking to pay fewer taxes to their liege.

I hope the AI will not join factions for the sake of joining factions, it feels fake IMO in CK2 to have vassals randomly join factions to demand for lower crown authority. It feels like they exist just to break your realm. Here's to hope more depth is added in CK3 :)
 
Thanks, but I do want to make sure it is a balanced measure. While it's all good as France to support Scottish independence against England, it would be annoying if the Kaiser can carpet siege your borders because his cousin, a Baron in Brittany, has a vague claim to the throne. For foreign lords to offer assistance, maybe they can gift the rebels a number of Men-at-Arms, or pay for a mercenary band? That way, it still is an investment for the people supporting the rebels, but it means that large kingdoms/empires can't just ransack any country they want.
Of course, if the rebels fail, there should be a way of extracting payment (either through the peace terms or a cassus belli) from those foreign lords who aided your rebels, earning a 10 year truce to prevent them from backstabbing you again, or stopping them from supporting other rebellions in other Kingdoms for a decade or so.
I think there would need to be limit who can join a faction, if you have an Alliance with the HRE you should probably be able to invite them, Assuming the liege don't have a non aggression pact with them. Vassals who are part of Another de jure should probably be able to invite their de jure liege so English vassals in France could invite the king of France for certain factions, maybe a faction about becoming vassals to the de jure liege.

How support would work I don't know, if factions had war treasury, other realms could donate to it, leding men at arms could work and maybe even join in a war in the most extreme case, which maybe will happen anyway with Alliances.

All Factions have a Military Power rating, which is a ratio between the combined military strength of all members and the military strength of their liege. Factions also have a Discontent score, which gauges how close the Faction is to sending their ultimatum.
How are military Power caculated between vassal and liege, do it just consider the quantity of armies or is quality factored in, also do it consider Alliances or not?
 
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Good dev diary.

Is there any trigger that addresses the Discontent of a faction?

Something like :

Code:
faction_xpto = {

    discontent = x

}


Thank you!
 
have you considered having the winner of a populist cultural revolt get an ethnarch title if they get enough of the in game provinces with that culture? E.g. "King of the Lombards" / "Kingdom of the Lombards" rather than "Kingdom of Lombardy"? A lot of early medieval titles are properly rendered as ethnarchic rather than geographic. Similarly it would be great to get hybrid titles if the winner doesn't have the majority of that culture's provinces, i.e. create the "Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia".
 
Are multiple claimant factions possible at the same time?
 
Yes, very close to that but it is called 'faction_discontent'. We also have triggers for 'faction_power' and 'faction_power_threshold'.

Ah excellent!

Keep up the good work!
 
Not currently, but that is an excellent idea. Probably won't make it in for release, but hopefully we can add it in a future patch?
On the subject of manipulating revolts, I'm really surprised there isn't the option to be a rabble rouser as a noble. Plenty of nobles used peasant unrest to their advantage to get extra soldiers for their own ends. Either to weaken their rivals or to support their claims. Also, any chance of directly supporting foreign civil wars?
 
A few things.
So how does a vassal or vassals leaving a faction with over 80% military affect growing discontent?

If a claimant is placed on the throne, will members of the faction that placed them there like the ruler more and be liked by them more? I think that'd be a good idea.

Can people not of the populist faction's religion/ethnicity join it and then become part of the new realm? Eg. can Matilda of Tuscany join the Juterbog revolt and if she does will her part of Italy become part of the new realm? Also, can the player become the new ruler of the new state (if they have sufficient martial) and how is the new ruler decided?

Finally (I think I'm forgetting something) you wrote counties join factions based on disliking their holder (rather than the realm head). If you're the realm head it seems you then have no control over these rebellions happening because they are caused by your vassals being unlikable screw ups, so will you as a realm head have any ability to deal with growing discontent with your vassals by their counties or no? ie. to prevent these rebellions before they happen.

Edit: Remembered what I forgot. If unlawful imprisonment can force a faction to go to war immediately, surely that's a very powerful tool of the player (or ai) because you can use it to destroy otherwise too powerful factions before they get too big for you to deal with. It seems to be a very good thing rather than a bad thing.

Further edit: Can you join rebellions that are ongoing in your realm? Both when they begin if you're not in the faction or/and after some time has passed.
 
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