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CK2 Dev Diary #52: Rhythm is a Lancer

Greetings all!

One of the great things about meeting our dear players - you folks - in real life (such as at PDXCON) is getting to hear such a lot of constructive, persuasive suggestions for improvements. For example, two things that were brought up last week were how annoying the “Fabricate Claim” job is, and the fact that Siege Assaults are rather overpowered when you have the numbers to just blitz down even heavily fortified Holdings. So, we decided to experiment with some changes…

First off, we’re going to deemphasize the “Fabricate Claim” job by giving all playable entities (including Christians) a form of “Unjustified War” Casus Belli that will allow you to seize a single County for an upfront cost of Piety, Prestige or Gold (depending on your Religion and Government Form.) Ideally, I’d also like to replace the “Fabricate Claim” job with something else (maybe something to do with foreign embassies and arranging marriages, or something to do with Laws. Suggestions are welcome!) However, we might decide leave it there as it is (it does still have some uses.)

Next, we’re adding a Game Rule for Siege Assaults. The options are “Unlimited”, which works like before, “On”, which disables Assaults against Holdings at Fort Level 6 or above, and “Off”, which disables Assaults entirely. We’re currently playing around with these changes, so the exact rules for the “On” setting might change. On a related note, the time it takes to siege down Holdings is also being tweaked, to make it quicker overall but also making the Fort Level matter more.

CK2 - Siege Assault Rule.png


When we sat down and talked about the above tweaks, we also decided to (rather dramatically) increase the “Ticking Warscore” rate for the attackers in wars. This necessitated splitting some defines (CONTESTED_TITLE_OCCUPIED_WARSCORE_BONUS, etc) into defender and attacker versions.

We are still evaluating how well these changes turned out. It’s likely we’ll tweak some numbers (or even backtrack on something.) So far though, it appears quite promising, positively altering the “rhythm” of warfare!

CK2 - Defender Morale.png


That’s all for now, stay tuned for the CK2 livestream, starting at 16:00 CET today. Until next time!
 
Interesting, how fast are you exactly going to make the ticking warscore for defender/attacker?

We're currently trying 2.5 years to max it out for the Attacker, with Defender Ticking unchanged.
 
Will the Unjustified war cause a higher threat impact compared to claims? Just wondering since it would make some sense since you don't have any claims on the land itself, I wouldn't mind seeing certain wars cause less threat compared to others
 
First off, we’re going to deemphasize the “Fabricate Claim” job by giving all playable entities (including Christians) a form of “Unjustified War” Casus Belli that will allow you to seize a single County for an upfront cost of Piety, Prestige or Gold (depending on your Religion and Government Form.)
This gives my inner warmonger a warm fuzzy feeling.
 
Can I assume this expansion will be the big one?
 
If "Unjustified war CB" HAS to be a thing, then I hope that Christians suffer VERY severe penalties for using it against Christians.
 
Will the prestige/piety cost increase with realm size? Prestige is practically unlimited at Empire level, and even piety comes in abundance.
 
Blitzing heavily fortified positions:........still make it possible BUT increase the attacker casualties to make it a true Grand Strategic Choice for the Attacker.

I like the Idea of two different ticking warscores. It might help the AI end its wars better. Unless you really want a 100 Years War...........

Unjustified War tweak.......not sure about this one.

Tweak Fabricating Claims job a bit........it was one of the only ways to slow down blobbing. It is a pain when waiting for the claim.......but the cost also needs to scale against fabricator. I think the RNG is off a little bit. Could be overcome with Chancellor shuffling.
 
First off, we’re going to deemphasize the “Fabricate Claim” job by giving all playable entities (including Christians) a form of “Unjustified War” Casus Belli that will allow you to seize a single County for an upfront cost of Piety, Prestige or Gold (depending on your Religion and Government Form.)

That makes no sense. Casus belli basically means "justification for war". You can not have an unjusitified justifiation for war as reason to go to war..

If that is supposed to be a thing, then it should be on a "crimes" action tab where all kind of manners of illegal actions can be taken. With serious repercussions for using them, such as being free prey for anyone, a near 100% case for excommunication, your titles being claimed by others, etc.

Not to mention that the game gets 2000% easier if you can just attack people without doing all the work required, such as marrying and building alliances..
 
I appreciate that you wish to replace the "Fabricate claims", that is indeed a good step in the right direction.

Perhaps it can be replaced with a function for finding and inviting suitors and potentials to your court to marrying off your sons and daughters.
 
It'd be cool if we could dedicate a percentage of our province levy to the holding's garrison.
If we can't defeat the enemy in open battle, at least we could bog it down with longer sieges.
 
Hope you will add impassable fortifications like in EU4, is something I miss in CK, and certainly I miss it in the Game of Thrones mod.
 
How far away can the provinces we claim in unjustified wars be?

Also have you considered how to make this work intuitively with the declare war screen? If you can declare war for any province, and each eligible province is listed as a separate CB, then the list of available CBs in the declare war screen will be rather cumbersome.
 
I find these proposed changes to be very good ideas, though reaching the exact point of balance will be hard!

If you are giving County Conquest to everyone, please make it VERY expensive, so that we (and the AI) still have to look for marriages to get good claims.

Finally, I like the idea of embassies. That can add a lot to the game, being like the Bussiness focus' trade route event chain.

What's the next diary about? Give us a teaser!