CK3 Dev Diary #60 - The Cost of Warfare

[Belth]

I am nervous to see how the mercenary prices are tweaked. Sounds like a cheap way to introduce inflation.

 

[Lollipop_but_rock]

That's fine. I'm just saying that not everyone plays CK2 Or 3 for the same reasons. Yes, some play to WC, and then complain because the Game's "Too easy". Others, like myself, tend to stay put in one place as mush as possible, barring unexpected inheritances and such.

Global nerfs tend to be ham-fisted, and very often harm the wrong targets. Game Rules tend to avoid that particular problem, and also allow the player to enjoy the Game however he/she sees fit.

I am not against difficult games per se. It's just that, not all of us WC...not all of us Powergame...not all of us want punishingly hard games.

Game Rules make it possible for everyone to have the Game they want, instead of forcing a uniform top-down experience on everyone...

You're right. But people who use this arguments of "we don't all want a difficult game" should perhaps stop seeing the problem from their own end only, and you perhaps need to take into consideration that every game rules in the current game (without mods) is about making the game easier.

And yeah, as stated above, why some people find the game too easy is not related to being a expensionist or not. It's as easy to expand or to stay calm in my own small piece of land.

 

[JackTheHat]

I know I've posted a lot of concerns already, but I have one more:

One of the most frustrating mechanics is that, when you are playing as a vassal, your liege can concede to the demands of a populist faction and give away some or all of your land without giving you the opportunity to fight it. Because the liege never goes to war, you can't help defend your territory, and potentially face an immediate game over, or at least the loss of a large part of your lands. Will this new way of calculating faction strength lead to an increase of the frequency of this? Is this mechanic something Paradox has on their radar as needing a second look?

I understand there should be a danger of having angry peasants sweep away your land, but the experience of just having your territory suddenly disappear with no opportunity to fight it is not a fun one (or realistic).

In general, the faction system has a lot of problems beyond how easy or hard it is for them to form. While I totally agree that factions should be more of a threat than they are, changing the frequency with which they fire without fixing their other underlying problems risks increasing the frequency of bad gameplay experiences.

On the subject of independence factions, compare the real world outcome of the collapse of the Seljuk empire with the outcome in game (see attached screenshots). In real life, the result of the collapse is a set of coherent realms. There are big ones and small ones, but each is its own clear state. The result in game is a mess - the Seljuq realm is left with over a dozen disconnected islands, and the independent realms are often a disconnected mess as well. This means that the AI will spend decades or centuries fiddling about trying to unify these realms - and probably failing. There will never again be coherent nations in this region, and a player in, for example, Byzantium, will never have rivals.

The reason that the real world looks so different is that independence-minded rulers don't just take whatever piecemeal holdings they have and strike out on their own - they seize what they can. If you're the ruler of Khorasan in the Seljuq empire, and there's a random county or two within Khorasan that aren't on board with your independence plan, you wouldn't just leave them as Seljuq enclaves - you'd claim them as part of your war.

To say it another way, the biggest thing that factions need is a path to achieving sensible goals and good gameplay experiences, not merely an adjustment to their frequency or strength calculations. Taking a system that leads to frustrating, unrealistic outcomes and turning up the dial on it is a dangerous change. Having blobs collapse is important, but it's equally important that they collapse into something that player an engaging experience (and is realistic, as well).

I know this dev diary is only one part of the changes that are coming in the patch, but I hope we'll see improvements to how factions function in a future diary.

I agree again. I hadn't thought about this... I rarely play as a vassal because my AI liege always tries revoking titles regardless of their traits and starting civil wars all the time. Even a humble, content and compassionate ruler will sooner or later try to revoke titles from their subjects if they're under their domain limit.
Even more frequent and powerful revolts will make it even worse to play as a vassal.
Fracturing a realm after a revolt is one of the reasons for border gore (as well as AI granting sons land they don't stand to inherit)

 

[naq29]

I know I've posted a lot of concerns already, but I have one more:

One of the most frustrating mechanics is that, when you are playing as a vassal, your liege can concede to the demands of a populist faction and give away some or all of your land without giving you the opportunity to fight it. Because the liege never goes to war, you can't help defend your territory, and potentially face an immediate game over, or at least the loss of a large part of your lands. Will this new way of calculating faction strength lead to an increase of the frequency of this? Is this mechanic something Paradox has on their radar as needing a second look?

I understand there should be a danger of having angry peasants sweep away your land, but the experience of just having your territory suddenly disappear with no opportunity to fight it is not a fun one (or realistic).

In general, the faction system has a lot of problems beyond how easy or hard it is for them to form. While I totally agree that factions should be more of a threat than they are, changing the frequency with which they fire without fixing their other underlying problems risks increasing the frequency of bad gameplay experiences.

On the subject of independence factions, compare the real world outcome of the collapse of the Seljuk empire with the outcome in game (see attached screenshots). In real life, the result of the collapse is a set of coherent realms. There are big ones and small ones, but each is its own clear state. The result in game is a mess - the Seljuq realm is left with over a dozen disconnected islands, and the independent realms are often a disconnected mess as well. This means that the AI will spend decades or centuries fiddling about trying to unify these realms - and probably failing. There will never again be coherent nations in this region, and a player in, for example, Byzantium, will never have rivals.

The reason that the real world looks so different is that independence-minded rulers don't just take whatever piecemeal holdings they have and strike out on their own - they seize what they can. If you're the ruler of Khorasan in the Seljuq empire, and there's a random county or two within Khorasan that aren't on board with your independence plan, you wouldn't just leave them as Seljuq enclaves - you'd claim them as part of your war.

To say it another way, the biggest thing that factions need is a path to achieving sensible goals and good gameplay experiences, not merely an adjustment to their frequency or strength calculations. Taking a system that leads to frustrating, unrealistic outcomes and turning up the dial on it is a dangerous change. Having blobs collapse is important, but it's equally important that they collapse into something that player an engaging experience (and is realistic, as well).

I know this dev diary is only one part of the changes that are coming in the patch, but I hope we'll see improvements to how factions function in a future diary.

I think the problem is populist factions only be created against the top liege, thus only declare war on them. Maybe if they also declare war against the holders of the rebelled counties as well, the player can do something to put them down.
Anyway, one strange thing in CK is that vassals do not join their liege wars, even when the target is their own fief.

 

[JackTheHat]

When is this update? I've read the dev diary 3 times and Googled it but can't find out when the update is actually being applied.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Totally agree. A random mishmash of disconnected counties is not terribly interesting to interact with. I want to see the largest blobs collapse, but I want to see them collapse into something interesting, and I want new powers to arise from the ashes. Instead it feels like the game tends inexorably to chaos, and after a hundred years or two, there's nothing left. I want to build a rivalry with my neighbors over the course of generations, but if all my neighbors are stuck in an endless cycle of collapse, there's no one to be my rival.

The AI tends to take forever to wage a single war because it mills around and abandons sieges. This makes it almost impossible for the AI to re-unify a shattered region. Even the Mongol invasion is completely hamstrung - Genghis Khan can barely get out of Siberia before he dies, because he has to re-raise his army for every little conquest and struggles to efficiently conduct sieges and battles.

You don't need ever larger rivals when your own internal rivals grow stronger the larger you get.

This is why giving factions more teeth is great all around. Internal instability generates politics. If you manage to get large, that's fine. Spend most of your time focused on maintaining what you have.

If you want to look to fight external rivals anyways and ignore your internal ones, why should it be a surprise when you fracture like all the other historical realms of old? Nearly all of those great conquerers in this time period lost their greatest extent by the second generation, some within the great conqueror's own reign.

Justinian, Seljuk, Tuhqlaq, Karling, Cnut, and so on, and so on.

 

[Herennius]

When is this update? I've read the dev diary 3 times and Googled it but can't find out when the update is actually being applied.

No release date yet. They said that they will try to deliver before summer vacation (which would be early June), but it is possible that - depending on how development goes - it will not go live until late summer.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

You are basically eliminating the fog of war and the uncertainty element, did you think Kings going for a crusade had excel spreadsheets at their disposals with all the infos they needed about the enemy?
How can people upvote and be fine with this foolishness?

 

[Herennius]

You are basically eliminating the fog of war and the uncertainty element, did you think Kings going for a crusade had excel spreadsheets at their disposals with all the infos they needed about the enemy?
How can people upvote and be fine with this foolishness?

Because these changes don't provide any new information - they just present you everything you already can access by countless clicks at one glance. Which is an improvement. If a espionage system would be beneficial for CK3 is a completely different (and valid) topic to discuss though.

 

[Voy]

There was a qualified Reddit post about CK2 on r/askhistorians and they basically said that rulers didn't even know their own full capacities let alone the enemies'. CK would be a different game if we didn't know any stats other than our own.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

There was a qualified Reddit post about CK2 on r/askhistorians and they basically said that rulers didn't even know their own full capacities let alone the enemies'. CK would be a different game if we didn't know any stats other than our own.

Plus, how do you build a workable AI under those conditions?

 

[Voy]

Plus, how do you build a workable AI under those conditions?

It seems silly to say CK4, but it's probably something you have to build the AI around from scratch.

 

[demondragon24]

These changes are great! Lots of stuff that I have been wanting be lacking skill/knowledge to mod for. Really happy to see it being added to the base game.

One thing for thought on the garrisons is maybe a button or decision to refill a garrison with some of your own troops temporarily during the war as a defense option.
Example:
Garrison capacity is 1000 troops

Current Values after seige
Your army: 10,000
Current Garrison: 0

Make decision to fill the garrison from your troops to become this:

Your army: 9,000
Current Garrison: 1,000

This would allow you a little more time to maneuver and effectively "guard" what you take as you move to your next target which maybe far away or across water.

Once the war is over the troops are removed and the garrison starts to refill like normal to still leave the other side with room for counter-attack.

 

[Tiax]

You don't need ever larger rivals when your own internal rivals grow stronger the larger you get.

This is why giving factions more teeth is great all around. Internal instability generates politics. If you manage to get large, that's fine. Spend most of your time focused on maintaining what you have.

If you want to look to fight external rivals anyways and ignore your internal ones, why should it be a surprise when you fracture like all the other historical realms of old? Nearly all of those great conquerers in this time period lost their greatest extent by the second generation, some within the great conqueror's own reign.

Justinian, Seljuk, Tuhqlaq, Karling, Cnut, and so on, and so on.

To be clear, I'm totally in favor of internal instability, and I don't want ever-larger rivals. What I do want, though, is that if I don't go grinding my neighbors into dust and form a mega empire, that there still exist coherent states in the world. If I'm playing as, say, a relatively historical Poland, I don't want Hungary, Ruthenia, and Sweden to all collapse into a jumble of disconnected counts and never recover. That makes expansion trivial and means that, if I am having internal issues, I do not need to balance external security against internal management - I can devote all my resources to reigning in my vassals because my neighbors are helpless.

 

[Lollipop_but_rock]

One thing for thought on the garrisons is maybe a button or decision to refill a garrison with some of your own troops temporarily during the war as a defense option.

Someone else said that earlier in the thread and a dev answered that it wont be in the patch but it's in their todo list.

 

[merulaalba]

While I agree that it should be more difficult, I find the idea that holing a large realm should not be fun completely absurd.

check history. Holding a large kingdom or empire was a challenge. It could work. It did. Byzantium is the best example. But even they had civil wars that several times threatened the unity of the Empire.

HRE is another example of a functioning large state. But there is nothing at the level of the ancient Roman Empire or Sassanids. It is just difficult to control a huge territory, with premodern communications, and ineffective administration.

If someone wants to play WC there is EU IV (and even there WC should be difficult)

 

[merulaalba]

I think he had awkward wording. The game should of course be fun, and the fun should come from being challenging.

yup. My bad. I should rephrase it. Now is too late

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Generally liking this changes, especially making factions more dangerous. The only one I don't really like is the cost scaling for mercenaries. While something along these lines isn't necessarily a bad idea, the way it's currently proposed feels like it's basically just an indirect buff to small realms and a way to make wars artificially longer. Also, I generally agree with the criticism that the new war declaration menu shouldn't show you absolutely everything about an opponent. Maybe have a game rule where this can be allowed, or this information could be hidden unless you have a spy in your enemy's court?

While you guys are reworking wars, are you considering modifying the way alliances work? Currently it feels like it's a bit too easy for rulers, especially those of small realms, to abuse alliances with larger ones to use them as a "wrecking ball" for conquest. This is especially annoying if you play as a large realm, as allying with a small realm generally means endless call-to-arms requests to help them conquer random islands on the other side of the world and a huge prestige hit if you refuse.

 

[merulaalba]

I'd say blobbing should be rewarding if done right, but yes it's too easy now.

But why? Why to blob at all, if we are not talking about few historically larger empires like Byzantium or HRE (and even here expansion should be not easy)

This is not the game of WC; but about the dynasties and prestige. Some of the most powerful medieval rulers ruled over smaller but influential states. Just check Matilda of Tuscany. it should be fun playing as a liege of a king (or emperor), and being able to be more powerful, having smaller territory, and bigger connections

 

[Scanz]

any plans for new achivments with 1.4 ?