A Swtich to turn off Temporary Titles for Faction Leaders

[SigurdStormhand]

More or less what the tittle says - with the patch attached to the Reaper's Due we'll be getting various settings we can change before starting a campaign to customise the experience. We'll be able to turn off Shattered Retreat and Coalitions (though the latter will also disable achievements).

Why not a switch to turn on one of the most divisive features, Temporary Revolt Titles?

For those not aware, these only came in with Rajas of India and opinion has been divided on them ever since. On the one hand they make it harder to devour a realm riven by Civil war; on the other hand many older players - myself included - feel that the mechanic makes the game easier by hobbling Faction revolts with reduced levies so that they rarely actually win.

So why not do for Temporary Revolt Titles what's being done for Shattered Retreat - let us choose?

It would be extra gravy if it was a three-position switch that included the option to allow revolters to call in your other vassals so that your realm could completely unravel if you didn't crush the revolt quickly, like in early versions of the game.

 

[Silversweeeper]

I like it. A big rebellion in an empire surrounded by significantly smaller realms currently does not risk any of its neighbours attempting to make opportunistic grabs due to the AI unwillingness to attack numerically superior realms, which generally makes it impossible for blobs to lose land during revolts, and the old system makes it possible for the revolt leader to make a marriage early during the revolt and use that to get an alliance with a powerful foreign realm to call in (with the added bonus that they still are of the same tier at the time, which makes the marriges reasonable). However, there are a few small issues with the old system that likely should be taken care of if it was restored:

- The event troop doomstacks would need to be reduced to less ludicruous numbers to avoid 100k+ rising up in some backwater county, but that is fairly simple to do (match_max = [reasonable value], or spawning smaller stacks for different rebels rather than giving everything to the faction leader), or removed entirely (as the rebel leader might be called into some other war and then might send this army to fight some random foreigner rather than their former liege).

- Calling in other vassals would be nice, provided the AI knew how to respond to the CtA (just checking if it likes the rebel leader more than the liege wouldn't make sense for quite a few wars), that it did not join/get called into wars it has no business being part of (your brother who wants your throne should not accept a call to arms to put someone else on the throne even if he hates you (though he definitely should help push his own claim), and a de jure duke of the same culture and religion should not support the independence of heathens and heretics on the far side of the empire), and that the rewards and punishments for vassals joining the rebels during the war matched those of the original rebels (imprisonment on defeat, independence on victory if that was the goal).

- The old tactic of declaring wars on several revolters at once to take lots and lots of land should likely be nerfed. The best idea I have for handling that would be to add a short cooldown to war declarations (a few months should be enough) and allowing the revolters to call upon one another, which would make it likely that you'd end up at war with several of them and make it impossible to spam wars on those rebels. Another idea is to automatically call upon all revolters if any of them are attacked, which might cause issues if the revolters send their forces across the empire to help another vassal against a foreign threat rather than fighting against their former liege.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

The raise some good points which I had overlooked.

In the case of event troops I'm inclined to say dispense with them entirely now that levies regenerate when sitting in friendly territory. If you are going to have them I'd say restrict them to 10-20% of the ruler's current troops. So, for example, if the Emperor/King has 6,000 troops left after a few fights then the event troops would be 600-1,200 strong. that's a significant change to the balance but it's not so huge to preclude the other side either hiring mercs or isolating the event troops and dispatching them before they can join up with other armies.

As regards calling in other vassals a simple fix is to restrict it to just certain factions - i.e. exclude the Independence and Claimant Factions. A better option would be if the AI received a general logic boost, and Doomdark has talked about that. Overall though I think restricting certain factions, or preventing certain characters from joining a revolt, is an acceptable option. On the other hand, it's not unreasonable that if your brother is going to join a faction to our you in favour of your cousin he'll then want to stab the cousin in the back later anyway. AI logic towards family has generally become more "friendly", so this might not be as much of a problem as it was pre-Rajas anyway.

As to nerfing the ability of outside realms to gobble bits of your Empire, that's more difficult. Part of the reason you want to remove temporary revolt titles is to allow that to happen. One solution though would be to have everyone in mutual alliances, that would dissuade others from attacking when the revolt starts but as it drags on (and it will drag on, hopefully, if you let it) your vassals will be weaken and, at an opportune moment, an external power would be able to bite off a good chunk. That would reduce the instance of day-1 carnage but still make it possible to "break" a realm riven by civil War.

It also makes sense in-universe, so to speak, for all revolters to be allied.

 

[Silversweeeper]

- I think that removing the event troops entirely or setting a maximum value would be better than just lowering the scaling as lowering the scaling itself still will run into problems at some point as a realm grows (at 100k realm levies after the revolt you'd have 10-20k troops spawn somewhere that may or may not make sense, such as Malta (where they might get stuck if that vassal isn't too powerful), Finnmark (low supply and likely low population), or deep in the steppes (good luck bringing them where it counts if the main realm isn't in the steppes)). Regardless of the method chosen, it might be a good idea to also increase the ultimatum threshold somewhat to make the AI wait until it has more of a numerical advantage before trying to press the issue to help it a bit.

- I personally feel that the Independence faction should be joinable by vassals that might want independence (and that could have joined the faction before the war) as it would make things interesting if you have a big empire and more and more parts of it seek to secede unless you decisively stamp out the revolt very quickly or take steps to ensure that the other vassals remain happy with you (e.g. a large HRE containing France, Italy, Poland, and Hungary in addition to its 1066 de jure might risk the French and Italian vassals joining the revolt if the Polish-Hungarian independence war drags on and the Kaiser is unloved). Claimants might make sense to restrict, as the AI's long-term planning isn't terribly good (in the example with the claimant brother supporting his cousin, the AI would not necessarily carry out the "Backstab my cousin" stage of the plan, or might backstab the cousin by joining the war to restore its brother).

- I like the idea of some vassals (or the ruler himself, if unlucky) losing some land during a revolt, and the fact that that generally doesn't happen at the moment is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of the revolt titles. However, the old system sometimes went too far in the other direction, as you could declare a number of holy wars on multiple revolters on the same day and then take multiple duchies with relative ease during the revolt (particularly as the revolt leader was unable to surrender if any revolter's land was occupied), which is why I think that it should be restricted in some manner. It could be through mutual alliances, inability to declare war on someone if you are fighting someone with the same pre-war liege, or something else, but the exploitability of declaring on multiple revolters at once was significant. Sure, if the civil war drags on you should be able to make multiple land grabs in the area, but if it is possible to do so at once it would mean that players with the old faction system would have a massive advantage with the land they could grab during a civil war over those with revolt titles.


A couple more problems I have noticed that might need to be looked at if the old system was added back:

- Revolting viceroys currently turn their titles into normal titles with the old system modded in. It makes some sense if it happens upon victory as you could write that off as the faction members making that part of the peace treaty, but it happens upon war declaration and gives the pre-war liege claims on the titles. This results in the liege wanting to revoke the titles (tyranny free as he has claims) even if he loses the war (with the other rebels not caring at all until it is their turn) and sometimes results in the pre-war liege forgetting to revoke duchies/kingdoms (possibly due to not wanting to have too many duchies), meaning the traitorous ex-viceroys' heirs inherit the titles. I suspect that the best way to handle that would be to remove the liege's claims on the revolters if they force through their demands and programming the AI so that it revokes the titles more quickly if it wins (though it should of course avoid getting too far above the duchy limit for a long time).

- Aside from the leader, revolters who die currently have their heir instantly re-join the pre-war liege's realm. It is a bit of a problem if a revolt consisting of old vassals fades out because they die natural deaths, and with the viceroyalty issue it could have the suddenly loyal vassal lose his titles anyway after the war as the liege sees a claim and wants it. Some kind of coding to fix this (or to give the heir a choice about either continuing to rebel or joining the loyalists) should probably be implemented to handle the issue (I don't think it was a problem back before RoI, but it has been a while). The suggested ability to join ongoing civil wars might go some way towards solving this issue.


I don't think that any of these issues are insurmountable, but it might be a good idea for the devs to look at them if they add a switch as it might cause some unintended consequences otherwise.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

- I'm fine with cutting event troops entirely. However, in order for 20,000 men to spawn the Top-Liege would need to have 100,000 troops available at the time - i.e taking into account losses. Here's another option - set a relatively low maximum, say 5,000, but base the frequency on realm size. So that no more than 5,000 troops would ever spawn at a time, still scaled, but if you have a large realm you might have multiple sponaneous uprisings.

- I'm not sure a Free-For-All on factions is bad, really. The idea that you're so hated everybody wants Independence doesn't necessarily mean they'll all be nice to each other after, and likewise I'm not sure that just because your brother has a claim it doesn't mean he wants to press it. On the other hand the "Overthrow Ruler" Revolt that's triggered when a vassal refuses title revocation or avoids imprisonment needs to be able to call in other vassals or it will almost always fail. Currently winning that revolt is just a free bonus to opinion with other vassals.

Overall - this is an issue for the AI logic, you can place some restrictions on what's permissible by disallowing some characters from joining a revolt but the AI will do screwy things anyway if it has bad logic.

- I'm torn between wanting to be able to tear realms apart and wanting to prevent the player from having an unfair advantage over the AI. This can also be a problem in the current game in certain starts where a large realm has a number of closely clustered targets it can attack before they can call in any allies. I think it's fairy to institute a general 7-10 days pause between war declarations. That will allow for allies to be called, and you can't attack someone if they're already allied against you in another war. It would still be possible to demolish a realm, but it would require more planning, and more luck.

- The issue with Viceroys should be a simple fix. Currently the Viceroy flag is cleared from a title if the holder becomes independent and it is their highest title, or if they are an Emperor. This could lead to the bug you describe in Horselords, and sometimes a title could be inherited during a revolt and because Feudal even if there was a top liege. The fix is to check if the title holder is in revolt before clearing the Viceroy flag, which is code that should be added anyway as a safeguard against glitchy behaviour.

- The best way to handle the issue of heirs is, I think, to keep them in revolt. If you implement the above code to ensure that they remain Viceroys then you shouldn't have a problem. As revolters their titles will be forfeit if they lose anyway.

 

[Silversweeeper]

- Lowering event troop scaling might work (though the AI still might waste them in an unrelated war). Haven't really tried that out myself (I initially set a cap for them and then removed them entirely as I sometimes saw the AI mismanage them or saw them get stuck on islands (which could be resolved by spawning ships as well)).

- I agree that Overthrow wars are silly right now, particularly with the relation bonus. As you say, joining revolts could probably be allowed with proper AI logic (though that may be difficult to implement; I suspect that some quirkiness always will ensue, no matter how much logic you add, but at some point it becomes a bit too much).

- 7-10 days might be a bit too short (I believe the old/soon-to-be-restored CtAs had a period of 2 months for you to reply; the AI generally replied very quickly, so the grace period probably doesn't need to be much longer than the message delay), but something like that might work.

- Solving the viceroyalty issue by keeping revolters as viceroys seems like a very good idea (though it is unclear if the underlying code would be easy to change to do that; hopefully it would work).

- Keeping the heirs of revolters as part of the revolt makes sense (particularly due to their predecessor technically having forfeited one or more titles by revolting, assuming the revolters lose).


Another small issue I just remembered is that it currently is possible for the rebel leader to peace out even if another rebel is partially occupied. As that wasn't the case before (and it definitely is strange to just ignore the fact that someone might have a lot of warscore towards another rebel) I believe that it would be a good idea (and hopefully not too difficult) to restore the old condition that all the revolters must be unoccupied for the war to end with anything other than the surrender of the pre-war liege.


Just to be clear: I'm definitely in favour of the idea of having a switch for revolts. I'm only bringing up the issues I'm aware of from modding them in (and the one I suspect would crop up with callable vassals as I suspect that the AI logic for that is roughly the same as it was for allies in the past) as it probably would be good to handle them (in one way or another) before adding a switch so that the system has as few bugs and balance issues as possible at release.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I think all of this is actually doable with the current engine.

The scripting engine has an "in_revolt" condition, so it should be possible to prevent removal of the Viceroyalty flag using that. I haven't worked on CKII scripts but I believe the AI is moddable to a degree using conditions. MTTH and max troops for the event troops are certainly moddable.

Some quirkiness is forgiveable as long as it doesn't lead to frequent absurdity.

 

[Azarias59]

This.

This SO FUCKING MUCH, please.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

So, been thinking a bit more about this issue of realms being "eaten" too quickly by neighbours.

I think 7-10 days should be adequate, AFAIK the AI responds to requests instantly and given that at least two of his revolt-allies should be adjacent 10 days should be adequate. We don't want a Coalition-style dog pile on the attacker, we just want to prevent player or AI from being able to immediately declare war on three or four adjacent revolters and eat a Kingdom's worth without any of them having a chance to call each other into the war. This is a more general problem, the Conclave-patch tried to fix it with the forced CTA and Coalitions but that just resulted in small realms getting drained by constant warfare.

The biggere difficulty will be setting up the Aliiiance. The game will need to check if a character is in revolt, then ally it with every character that is also in revolt who has the same liege. I suppose when the revolt is declared that script can be called on the revolt leader, but it would need to be called again for anyone joining the revolt once it started.

Then you have to think about how to handle this "Grand Alliance" once the revolt ends. It should decay automatically, because of a lot of the revolters won't like each other. On the other hand it makes a sort of sense for those revolters who like/respect each other to remain allied, having overthrown their King together.

This then raises a more general question about whether you should have the opportunity to form an alliance with your ally's allies, if you fight a war together.

 

[Silversweeeper]

A relatively easy way to do it would be to automatically send a CtA to all people with the same pre-war liege who are fighting in the same war if one of them gets attacked (as that would skip the "Set up an alliance" and "Hope that the CtA is sent before the next war is declared" steps). Of course, that would either have to be hardcoded in order to interact with the normal AI CtA acceptance logic (and should probably ignore the "Fighting in another war" factor) or would have to result in some event with proper AI logic for joining all wars (or a specific war, if it becomes possible to scope to a specific war for joining) that needs to strike a balance between "All rebels join all wars" and "Everyone refuses to defend their fellow rebels". Proximity, religion of the two sides, and WS vs. pre-war liege should likely be valued rather highly when it comes to acceptance to avoid having distant revolters join the defence of religious enemies or vassals diverting their troops to the defence of another vassal when they are losing the civil war already but might be able to push back if they focus on their former liege.

As for post-war alliances, it could probably be handled by allowing alliances to be formed if you have an opinion modifier like "Fought beside me" (for allying allies of allies; though it might also be possible to rarely get events during wars that allow you to try to ally an ally's ally if you are fighting together instead of negotiating the alliance after the war) or "Fought for freedom together"/"Same liege before independence" (for newly independent rulers; the latter option would work better to allow the people who gained indepenence through an ultimatum to ally so that their former liege cannot gobble them up one by one). Of course, the AI should still take various other considerations into account to avoid breakaway vassals in Persia deciding that the breakaway vassals in Sicily make great allies.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

All good ideas, I hope the Devs are taking some of this on board, because right now I want this feature more than I want almost anything else in the game.