8 new Casus Belli! Any plans on how you are going to use them? Esp Great Conquest / Border Dispute

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El-Daddy

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First, one comes with the patch, and seven with the DLC. This is the free one -

- Free Hostages

A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

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As for the other seven -

- Forced Vassalization

This is a CB that can be used against neighboring realms to force them to become your vassal. To avoid making it too powerful it’s quite heavily limited, only realms that are of a lower tier, under 30 realm size and where the ruler is of either your culture group or religion are valid targets. It also has a direct cost (prestige). For example; this can allow England to, with time, extend ‘protection’ to the smaller Welsh and Irish realms.

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- De Jure Duchy Claim

This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.

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- Ducal County Conquest

At the very start of a game you might be stuck waiting for fabricated claims a very, very long time if you’re unlucky. This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder. The CB has a cost of prestige and gold, making it similar to a fabricated claim (as that’s essentially what it is). As an example, this gives count-tier characters in Ireland and the HRE an alternate way to claim a Duke-tier title, presuming that you can save up enough prestige and money.

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- Great Conquest

Unless you are playing as a Muslim, Nomad or Tribal-cultured ruler (who have access to invasions) you have no real way to expand in a meaningful way when you are playing as the ruler of a very large realm. While we still want expansion to be difficult, we also want to give players more static opportunities to expand. This CB is available to very powerful realms (at least 200 realm size) and can be used to claim an entire Kingdom from another character. Though the catch is that you have to fight someone that is as strong or stronger than you are, and using the CB itself costs a massive amount of prestige and piety.

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- Establish Tributary State

The old Tributary system is now changed into two different CBs (maybe more?), with this one being the more different. The current ingame description is
Through war you can force and realm that you or one of your Tributary States border to pay you 20% of their income and 15% of their levy reinforcements as tribute.
Will only break free if the Suzerain has negative Prestige, is NOT Independent, has less Realm Size than the Tributary State or declines a defensive Call to Arms from the Tributary State.
This Type of Tributary can NOT be called to war.


Also when you declare war, the target has the option to "a peaceful resolution", ie: surrendering immediately and becoming a Tributary State. This war costs neither gold nor prestige.

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There is also the other old reworked Tributary CB -

- Extort Tribute

Through war you can force any realm that you border to pay you 40% of their income as tribute.
This type of Tributary will break free upon the death of the Suzerain.
This type of Tributary can be called to war.


Similarly, the target can choose to surrender immediately. This war costs neither gold nor prestige.

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This is the controversial one, which people were worried was going to fully replace Fabricating Claims.

- Border Dispute

When declaring a Border Dispute over a County you first and foremost have to pay an upfront cost of Piety and Gold scaled to your tier (in the case of Pagans, prestige is used), but you also take an opinion hit (-15) from both your religious head (if you have one) as well as any landed characters of the targeted religious group in both your realm and the one you’re attacking. Note that these opinion modifiers stack! This makes the border Dispute CB dangerous to use on characters of your own religion, especially if you have a religious head capable of excommunicating you. You will primarily want to use this CB to expand early on when drawing the ire of your co-religionists is worth the risk, or against characters not of your religion.

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As "Extort Tribute" is essentially a renaming of the old Tributary CB, maybe there is another 7th one added in the DLC.

Good ideas for some of these include Ducal county conquest in the early game. You could cheese it a little by staying as a duke, and trying to get single counties in as many other duchies as possible, and then getting as many duchies out of it as possible before you become King.
Forced Vassalisation sounds like a great way to unify a lot of smaller realms that have the same religion or culture - think early start dates in Ireland or Scandinavia. Other people have thought about using them on Merchant republics or the Pope, assuming they are usable on them. Great Conquest sounds very situational, if anyone has any suggestions I am all ears.. I can only think of taking a bit out of the Abbasids as the ERE.
One more potential one they could add is to seize all (or more than one of) the holdings of the target that are inside your realm. Currently you can only take one at a time, which is a bitch when there are like 5 and every one causes a ten year truce.
 
  • Great Conquest should probably be used to break the Holy Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire. Wait until they get caught in a civil war or multiple wars, then blow a Crusade-size hole in them. Still, it's more niche than it sounds, you need 1) to be stronger than your foe, and 2) more than 200 realm size. 1066 France has about 170, so in practical terms, we are talking about an empire attacking a stronger empire.
  • Force Vassalization sounds like it will replace Fabricate Claim in the early game. Culture groups are fairly small (empire-sized or less), so this is about mopping up independant counts and dukes during the unification of your kingdom/empire.
  • Border Dispute is easy to use but -15 opinion modifier hits very hard, especially since it affects your religious group: if you are a Catholic and use it against the Byzantine, your vassals will still hate you. I like the balance. It can be used as an instant fabricate claim with massive drawbacks, or as a low-risk low-reward holy war: you only get a county but other realms can't interfere.
  • As far as I can see, De Jure Duchy is there for realms that are too large for Force Vassalization and too small for Great Conquest. There is considerable overlap on both ends.
  • Ducal County will be exactly what the description says: a way to save time when you have nothing to do except waiting for Fabricate Claim to trigger. But it can't be used against the de jure duke, which is an important limitation.
If one of those is going to replace Fabricate Claim in my games, it's probably Force Vassalization. Border Dispute effectively has a cooldown, and the others are useful in rather specific situations.
 
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I feel Forced Vassalization should be only for people of your culture because I know I will abuse this against nations that are in the middle of revolts or something.

The idea about taking the holdings of your target is a great idea.
 
TBH, I don't like Great Conquest. In the current incarnation of CKII, the only effective way to deal with blobs is to be a blob. This means that blobs only die because bigger, scarier blobs take over. Sure, there are plenty of methods to destabilize them, but they always bounce back. Even Empires that shrink significantly are still powerhouses until the player devotes him or herself to eradicating them completely... and to do this, you typically have to be a blob.

Great Conquest is going to encourage the collapse or reduction of blobs by making other blobs bigger. That's all it will accomplish. It's kinda neat for high-stakes multiplayer games, but CBs should never be designed with MP in mind.

At least they're adding a true anti-blobbing mechanic: the Chinese invasion, which can actually be used to destroy Empire-tier titles. A less niche version of this CB is needed game-wide, though.

I approve of all the others. The new Tributary system and Forced Vassalization in particular are fantastic.
 
The tributary state CB seems to be a useful tool to use on Asturias. While it will hurt them a bit, the ability to come to their defense will help with keeping them alive until one can go reconquista on the Umayyads.
Generally speaking I could use it on any realm which I want to survive but not directly control.
Good to use if I want to stall Mongol or Aztec onslaughts.

The de-jure duchy CB is going to make playing ERE even easier and should allow blobbing into the Balkans and Sicily even faster, while Great Conquest may be great to use against the Abbassids in the early start dates.
 
:( No Revenge CB where you declare war to kill someone who murdered your close ones.
 
As "Extort Tribute" is essentially a renaming of the old Tributary CB, maybe there is another 7th one added in the DLC.
Yes, there's another one - Nomad Tributary. :) It's a type of Tributary specifically tailored for use by Nomads. It's much more powerful than the other Tributary types, it takes 50% of their income and saps some prestige from them to you. It persists through death like a Tributary State, and unlike Tributary States the suzerain does not have to defend them if they don't want to.

One more potential one they could add is to seize all (or more than one of) the holdings of the target that are inside your realm. Currently you can only take one at a time, which is a bitch when there are like 5 and every one causes a ten year truce.
I like this idea... I'll note it down for the future.

I firstly will mod out Free Hostages... hostages were taken to prevent war not to force a war... If somebody declares war to you to free a hostage... you should be able to execute the hostage without malus.
Who's said that you can't execute them without a malus? :p Using the CB is a gamble, for obvious reasons.
 
Who's said that you can't execute them without a malus? :p Using the CB is a gamble, for obvious reasons.

I hope execution doesn't end the war inconclusivly though. Not sure if its possible to make it more dynamic, but in the case of execution taking just a random close relative as hostage wouldn't be enough.

Personally I think this should be a plot and not something you go to war over.
 
These are going to make my planned Matilda of Tuscany run much more interesting. The plan is to first grow inside the empire before striking a critical blow to it from the inside. After that the dissolution of Sicily and other neighbours shall commence. The destiny of Italy belongs to the Italians, not to any German, Norman or Muslim!
 
If Tributary persists through death, how do you get rid of it? Rebellion?
 
- Extort Tribute

Through war you can force any realm that you border to pay you 40% of their income as tribute.
This type of Tributary will break free upon the death of the Suzerain.
This type of Tributary can be called to war.

I don't get the urge of making tributary states better than vassals.
  • They pay better than vassals.
  • They contribute all their levies.
  • They will not join factions.
  • They will not demand council seats.
Therefore its more effective to be a hegemon of confederation than a ruler of centralized realm. I would change that type of tributary into "forced ally", that contributes no revenue.
 
That type of tributary is the one we have now. The advantage of vassals over tributaries
1. They don't leave if one of you dies
2. Vassals will help if you're called in to a war as an ally, but tributaries won't
3. You have more control over vassals
4. It's generally harder to take vassals away from you than tributaries.
Tributaries are stronger in the short term, but vassals are better long-term.