"Sow dissent" is either bugged or useless - a petition for change

[Immortal88]

There is no reason whatsoever to use the sow dissent mission. That's because it doesn't work at all how most people would think it works, which I recently figured out by testing it extensively with console commands.

The problem with the sow dissent chancellor job is that it literally does exactly what it says: "Sow dissent between a local vassal and his liege".

So intuitively you would think that you will put the chancellor in the capital of the most powerful vassal to make him dislike his top liege whose realm you want to destabilize, right? Wrong - if you put him there then you only have a chance that ONE of the copper tier mayors and bishops and barons of the specific county you put your chancellor in will dislike their direct liege by -20 and their liege will also get a -15 angry at them modifier. Neither matters at all.

Surely then this is just a misunderstanding and instead, you put the chancellor in the capital of the top liege of the realm you want to destabilize because this will sow dissent between his direct vassals and him, right? Wrong. It will make the bishops and mayors and barons dislike their immediate liege. And baron levels can't even form factions, so it's a complete waste of time.

It's not even useful to increase plot assassination chance: If you can't make someone join with a bag of gold you almost certainly won't make them join with a -20 opinion penalty towards their liege. There is basically no reason to ever use this job at all, you always get much more utility out of making someone - almost anyone, even some random courtier - like you a bit more than to make some random baron dislike his direct liege. Because that's all this job ever does no matter where you put your chancellor.

My suggestion: Only ever make the successful event target baron tiers if those are the only vassals an independent ruler has. If you put the chancellor with the sow dissent mission in a county it should always sow dissent between the owner of the county and his immediate liege because everything else is completely absurd. And to make players understand how the job works either make it impossible to target counties of top lieges (unless they have no county+ tier vassals) or make it so that putting the chancellor in a top liege demsesne county will sow dissent between the liege and a random direct non-baron tier vassal (basically a random count+ person from the "vassals" tab, unless there are only baron tiers). Also, consider buffing it to a -25 opinion penalty to make it more attractive.

Edit: Also, while we are at it please make it so that the "Improve Religious Relations" Court Chaplain job only targets the highest tier religious character (of your religion) in the county you put him in. I'm pretty sure no one is ever interested in pleasing the bishop of a sub-holding temple instead of the actual Pope or the Prince-Bishop of a county.

 

[magriboy0750]

There is no reason whatsoever to use the sow dissent mission. That's because it doesn't work at all how most people would think it works, which I recently figured out by testing it extensively with console commands.

The problem with the sow dissent chancellor job is that it literally does exactly what it says: "Sow dissent between a local vassal and his liege".

So intuitively you would think that you will put the chancellor in the capital of the most powerful vassal to make him dislike his top liege whose realm you want to destabilize, right? Wrong - if you put him there then you only have a chance that ONE of the copper tier mayors and bishops and barons of the specific county you put your chancellor in will dislike their direct their liege by -20 and their liege will also get a -15 angry at them modifier. Neither matters at all.

Surely then this is just a misunderstanding and instead, you put the chancellor in the capital of the top liege of the realm you want to destabilize because this will sow dissent between his direct vassals and him, right? Wrong. It will make the bishops and mayors and barons dislike their immediate liege. And baron levels can't even form factions, so it's a complete waste of time.

It's hardly even useful to increase a plot assassination chance: If you can't make someone join with a bag of gold you almost certainly won't make them join with a -20 opinion penalty towards their liege. There is basically no reason to ever use this job at all, you always get much more utility out of making someone - almost anyone even some random courtier - like you a bit more than to make some random baron dislike his direct liege. Because that's all this job ever does no matter where you put your chancellor.

My suggestion: Only ever make the successful event target baron tiers if those are the only vassals an independent ruler has. If you put the chancellor with the sow dissent mission in a county it should always sow dissent between the owner of the county and his immediate liege because everything else is completely absurd. Also, consider buffing it to a -25 opinion penalty to make it more attractive.

Interesting,thanks for the info,in that case,i will no longer use it.I did not know it was worked like that.

 

[Avil]

At least, it doesn't sow dissent with courtiers, like converting vassals works with proselytizing job. Not saying that it's fine, of course.

 

[fr-rein]

I very much agree.

I also wish we had positions where besides a primary skill (diplomacy, stewardship, etc) a second skill would help.
Example - sow dissent. I want to send seductress into enemy court and actually make king and duke duel over her to death, not Emperor being upset with a local baron.

 

[Immortal88]

At least, it doesn't sow dissent with courtiers, like converting vassals works with proselytizing job. Not saying that it's fine, of course.

Oh snap. Are you saying the prosletyze mission doesn't actually convert the ruler of the target province but the courtiers in their court? Is is just completely random who converts inside that counties court? Is there even a chance to convert the ruler?

 

[Karlington]

The problem with the sow dissent chancellor job is that it literally does exactly what it says: "Sow dissent between a local vassal and his liege".

Interesting,thanks for the info,in that case,i will no longer use it.I did not know it was worked like that.

It uses "random_province_lord" to determine who it affects, which according to the Wiki "Scopes to a random landed character in the province."

The event excludes the chancellor's own liege, the chancellor himself, lords in his realm, and any independent lords (events\job_chancellor.txt lines 1374-1382) so it could affect the person holding the county, but also any of the sub-vassals. It'd be random: if there are five holdings and the count holds two of them, the chance should be 2/5 and so on.

So it's not entirely useless, but the random roll makes hard to use it effectively. It has a base MTTH of 120 months, which is reduced progressively with the chancellor's Diplomacy (just over 24 months at Diplomacy 22+) so that makes it unreliable. Even with top Diplomacy bonus, if the count has one out of five holdings, that's an average of 10 years to get an event that hits the count.

My suggestion: Only ever make the successful event target baron tiers if those are the only vassals an independent ruler has. If you put the chancellor with the sow dissent mission in a county it should always sow dissent between the owner of the county and his immediate liege because everything else is completely absurd. And to make players understand how the job works either make it impossible to target counties of top lieges (unless they have no county+ tier vassals) or make it so that putting the chancellor in a top liege demsesne county will sow dissent between the liege and a random direct non-baron tier vassal (basically a random count+ person from the "vassals" tab, unless there are only baron tiers). Also, consider buffing it to a -25 opinion penalty to make it more attractive.

Edit: Also, while we are at it please make it so that the "Improve Religious Relations" Court Chaplain job only targets the highest tier religious character (of your religion) in the county you put him in. I'm pretty sure no one is ever interested in pleasing the bishop of a sub-holding temple instead of the actual Pope or the Prince-Bishop of a county.

Based on that I fully support your suggestions. I'd recommend you re-post them in the official suggestions forum.

 

[Karlington]

Oh snap. Are you saying the prosletyze mission doesn't actually convert the ruler of the target province but the courtiers in their court? Is is just completely random who converts inside that counties court? Is there even a chance to convert the ruler?

It's possible to convert the ruler. It randomly selects any adult AI character in the province. The only ones that are immune are children, heads of religions, and people whose primary titles are a mercenary or holy order title. For this reason I usually only use that mission to convert provinces. It's only really worth using against rulers if they have very, very small courts.

 

[Chep]

Honestly, there are so many of the councillor-interactions that are essentially useless or only useful in very limited circumstances. I think those should pretty much all be reworked.

 

[Immortal88]

The event excludes the chancellor's own liege, the chancellor himself, lords in his realm, and any independent lords (events\job_chancellor.txt lines 1374-1382) so it could affect the person holding the county, but also any of the sub-vassals. It'd be random: if there are five holdings and the count holds two of them, the chance should be 2/5 and so on.

Sorry, but this is not the case. I spammed the event dozens of times, so I guarantee you that it never affects count+ level, only the barons.

 

[Karlington]

Sorry, but this is not the case. I spammed the event dozens of times, so I guarantee you that it never affects count+ level, only the barons.

Yeah, you mentioned through the console, right? That's apt to mess with the scopes and give different results from when the event triggers naturally. You have to make sure it's triggered in the right scope.

But rather than take my word for it, simply read the game file for yourself. I posted the actual lines (1374-1382) in my earlier post in this thread.

In case you or any other reader is not used to reading game files, I decided to test it for myself, but making sure to fire it in the right scope, and it worked exactly as I said: firing for a random lord in the province, including the holder of the county. I am attaching picture evidence:

If you or anyone else wants to reproduce this, the way to fire the event in the right scope (which is the chancellor himself) you need to type "event 916 <charid of chancellor>"

You need to make sure that the chancellor is posted in a province that is not independent, as it obviously cannot fire for an independent lord. In my example above I chose a count, as he had a duke-tier liege.

TL;DR Sow dissent can work for any local lord, baron or above, but console testing does not always give accurate data due to how the scripting language works. Sometimes you can work around this as seen above in my example.

 

[Immortal88]

If you or anyone else wants to reproduce this, the way to fire the event in the right scope (which is the chancellor himself) you need to type "event 916 <charid of chancellor>"

You need to make sure that the chancellor is posted in a province that is not independent, as it obviously cannot fire for an independent lord. In my example above I chose a count, as he had a duke-tier liege.

TL;DR Sow dissent can work for any local lord, baron or above, but console testing does not always give accurate data due to how the scripting language works. Sometimes you can work around this as seen above in my example.

That is extremely weird, because this is exactly how I fired the event as well. I just tried it out again and for some reason it worked as you describe now. I'm pretty damn sure I picked a non-independent person before and used the charid of the chancellor, so I have honestly no idea why it only targeted barons earlier - I fired the event like 20 times and it always hit barons.

I would still argue however, that this is poor design. Even in relatively poor counties with just 2 barons, that means your chance is already down to 1/3 to gain something potentially useful out of the chancellor job event firing.


Edit: I modified my bug report as I can't retract it completely, but hopefully someone in the bug forum will decide that this is not WAD and should be changed.

 

[Duuk]

I've always assumed sow dissent didn't work as advertised.

I really, really wish it worked the way it SOUNDS. You should place the Chancellor in a capital province and it has a chance to reduce relations between the province owner and one of the province owner's random vassals. In a large realm the MTTH and the number of vassals would make the mission low-value and not over powered, but it could be quite useful inside the Byzantine and HR Empires for destablizing neighbor duchies/themes for expansion.

If CK2 had another expansion coming, I'd love it to be a rework of all counselor jobs.

 

[Immortal88]

I've always assumed sow dissent didn't work as advertised.

I really, really wish it worked the way it SOUNDS. You should place the Chancellor in a capital province and it has a chance to reduce relations between the province owner and one of the province owner's random vassals. In a large realm the MTTH and the number of vassals would make the mission low-value and not over powered, but it could be quite useful inside the Byzantine and HR Empires for destablizing neighbor duchies/themes for expansion.

If CK2 had another expansion coming, I'd love it to be a rework of all counselor jobs.

Personally, I think that is exactly the wrong way around because it would still make the mission almost useless. I'm not interested in lowering the opinion of a RANDOM vassal. I want to look at the realm view of my opponent, pick out a specific powerful and borderline unhappy vassal and then place my chancellor in the demesne of that specific dangerous vassal with a chance to sour relations between him and his direct liege and nothing else. The event already takes a long time to fire and -20 opinion is not really all that much so to be useful at all you at least need to be able to target it precisely.

 

[Duuk]

Personally, I think that is exactly the wrong way around because it would still make the mission almost useless. I'm not interested in lowering the opinion of a RANDOM vassal. I want to look at the realm view of my opponent, pick out a specific powerful and borderline unhappy vassal and then place my chancellor in the demesne of that specific duke with a chance to sour relations between him and his direct liege and nothing else. The event already takes a long time to fire and -20 opinion is not really all that much so to be useful at all you at least need to be able to target it precisely.

See, and that's why the mission is unclear. Two different opinions on how it reads and what it should or could do.

Also... a fifth counselor mission slot for each counselor would not be out of line.

Sow dissent with liege, so dissent with vassals. Problem solved.

 

[BrokenSky]

It might also be nice if it increased local revolt risk (either as well or instead)?

 

[Immortal88]

It might also be nice if it increased local revolt risk (either as well or instead)?

The Monks and Mystics dlc adds a fourth job to all councilors and the Spymaster job does exactly that. It fires fairly frequently if you have a decent spymaster and one of the three or four possible negative province modifiers your enemy gets from it is +10% revolt risk.

 

[BrokenSky]

The Monks and Mystics dlc adds a fourth job to all councilors and the Spymaster job does exactly that. It fires fairly frequently if you have a decent spymaster and one of the three or four possible negative province modifiers your enemy gets from it is +10% revolt risk.

True. If it were attached to this action, presumably something would need to replace the spymaster one. Not sure whether it's worth the dev time at that point or not.

 

[Ruisuki]

yeah youd think the devs would address stuff like this by now. specially since they added 4th councilor jobs. come on paradox it aint 2012 no more

 

[faiuwle]

Oh snap. Are you saying the prosletyze mission doesn't actually convert the ruler of the target province but the courtiers in their court? Is is just completely random who converts inside that counties court? Is there even a chance to convert the ruler?

Well, if the owner of the county is an unreformed pagan, proselytizing starts the missionary event chain, but that's 100% experienced by the targeted pagan. The only thing that might happen on your end is that the pagan imprisons your court chaplain during one of the early events. Also, proselytizing can convert counties, which is useful.

 

[AlexArgos]

I usually only use the job when I want to get rid of an evil Chancellor. Either by sending him in a diseased province or to a very hostile realm and hope he gets found and arrested.

So I also hope they make it more targeted and useful, like the new Spymaster job.