Almoravids and Almohads in Iberia (lack of)

[Eltener]

CK2

CK2 they almost always end up getting eaten by a combination of Italians, Iberians and sometimes Germans..

 

[Vityviktor]

You're giving me the idea to try just adding "Practiced Pirates" to Butr culture. That might be a lot of fun, especially since now it will only be smaller rulers who will be allowed to raid.

Would the piracy tradition be better for Butr, Baranis or both?

 

[Comrade_Boris]

Would the piracy tradition be better for Butr, Baranis or both?

There's a few advantages to limiting it to Butr.

1. The Berber leaders in Iberia are Baranis, I don't think we want to give them access to raiding.
2. This plays into the dynamic established by Butr and Baranis unique MAA, Baranis are given anti light cavalry skirmishers to prevent raiding Butr horsemen
3. This prevents an over saturation of raiders on the north African coast. Algiers and Tripoli will be raiders, while Morocco and Tunis will not. (Though a Maghrebi player could hybridize with Butr to pick up practiced pirates for a Tunisian Pirate play through.)
4. Many Butr remain Tribal in 1066 but cannot raid because they have an organized religion. Baranis are typically Clan by this point. Makes Saharan gameplay more fun.

Making it as a self mod as I type. I have half a mind to throw the tradition on Cisalpine too just to see the Venetians go crazy with it.

 

[Rubidium]

CK2 they almost always end up getting eaten by a combination of Italians, Iberians and sometimes Germans..

Sometimes the French got involved too, to be fair.

 

[Wokeg]

Almoravids are mostly missing in the Iberian struggle, despite all these claims held by Abu Bakr at the beginning. Having them invade or vassalize the Taifas is very rare.

The Almohads, on the other hand, don't even show up or they're too weak to win, let alone invade the Peninsula.

I think both should be buffed and reworked in order to have them fit within the Struggle system. Their absence is not only ahistorical but also makes the region feel more boring than it should.

Underpowered and underrepresented. The only bit of dedicate content or flavor they ever received was the Mare Nostrum DLC for EU4, with the pirates and that stuff.

I understand the main focus of Fate of Iberia was, of course, Iberia. But that was also a good moment to give at least some flavor to the dynasties that actually managed conquer vast extensions in Iberia, halting Christian expansion.

Almoravids and Almohads played a significant role in Iberia, I honestly was expecting them to be also involved (or at least interloper) in the 1066 start date when I first saw the dev diaries.

Ibn Tashfin, the heir to the Almoravid in the 1066 start, was one of the most influential rulers in both Iberian and Moroccan story, it's kind of sad to see the Almoravids barely doing much in Iberia.

You're entirely correct and, if it helps, we did originally plan for this. We didn't have time for it in the end, and I think it shows — similarly affected areas include Occitania/France affecting Iberia (though admittedly France generally plays better than much of North Africa for obvious reasons, so this is a bit less noticeable) and Unite the Spanish Thrones/invalidating the struggle. Which. I have had some cause to regret not scrounging the time for from somewhere.

After we cut added content, I'd hoped our existing Almohad emergence systems would make them aggressive enough to appear and get involved but that just didn't even slightly pan out. Getting North Africa involved in the struggle is perpetually on my to-do list, filed under the category of "Unlikely to Get Official Time for Ages, Might Have to Blackmail Someone".

My go-to here is the Hautevilles in Sicily in 1066, who historically should be a major threat to Byzantium, but in-game are a joke (to the point that Paradox had to ahistorically give them Bari rather than leave it in Byzantine hands, because otherwise they'd never take all of Sicily).

That's more to do with the game having what's essentially mass mobilisation imo. The game currently models the Byzantines as being able to field the same number of troops against the Normans in Sicily as they can against the Seljuks in Asia-Minor.

An on-going and recognised problem, for sure. It's a deep irritation to several members of the team that every war is fought like a total war, and every county defended to the last drop of blood. We've got a few possible solutions that we're looking into for this, but they'd all radically affect game balance so they're fairly long-term.

If we ever do. It still baffles me that they've never bothered to give North Africans the cultural tradition to be able to raid. And they never reform to have it without player intervention

That... is a very good point. Honestly I only added that tradition because QA asked real nice and then registered a blistering series of Jira tickets I wanted to dispose of. I'll do a bit of investigating and see if it's worth adding for them; if it's not, there might well be a different version we could make that is. Thanks for the note!

(preemptively for anyone seeing this and preparing other pirate culture requests: it's very deliberate that we don't give overseas raiding access to every culture that ever practiced piracy, or else literally every coastal culture would get the ability and tradition. It has to be Viking/Barbary pirates-tier to even be seriously considered)

 

[Silesian Burd]

You're entirely correct and, if it helps, we did originally plan for this. We didn't have time for it in the end, and I think it shows — similarly affected areas include Occitania/France affecting Iberia (though admittedly France generally plays better than much of North Africa for obvious reasons, so this is a bit less noticeable) and Unite the Spanish Thrones/invalidating the struggle. Which. I have had some cause to regret not scrounging the time for from somewhere.

After we cut added content, I'd hoped our existing Almohad emergence systems would make them aggressive enough to appear and get involved but that just didn't even slightly pan out. Getting North Africa involved in the struggle is perpetually on my to-do list, filed under the category of "Unlikely to Get Official Time for Ages, Might Have to Blackmail Someone".


An on-going and recognised problem, for sure. It's a deep irritation to several members of the team that every war is fought like a total war, and every county defended to the last drop of blood. We've got a few possible solutions that we're looking into for this, but they'd all radically affect game balance so they're fairly long-term.

That... is a very good point. Honestly I only added that tradition because QA asked real nice and then registered a blistering series of Jira tickets I wanted to dispose of. I'll do a bit of investigating and see if it's worth adding for them; if it's not, there might well be a different version we could make that is. Thanks for the note!

(preemptively for anyone seeing this and preparing other pirate culture requests: it's very deliberate that we don't give overseas raiding access to every culture that ever practiced piracy, or else literally every coastal culture would get the ability and tradition. It has to be Viking/Barbary pirates-tier to even be seriously considered)

Um, admitting that something is broken and will never be worked on...

...that's a choice.

The CK2 devs never did that.

 

[WolfClaw]

Yeah, I noticed that. Probably related to the numerous alliances (probably affecting AI strength calculations). There's also very little infighting between Taifas, unlike the Christian kingdoms (claim wars).

I used to think the struggle mechanic would be a big cycle, opened by conditions, not the accumulating numbers, such as entering the hostile phase when capturing 20% of other religions' territory for a short time and independent lords number greater than 10, with a special resolution: with the consent of most of the independent lords of the same faith, one can invite protection or jihad from powerful neighbors, just like in history.

 

[Wokeg]

Um, admitting that something is broken and will never be worked on...

...that's a choice.

The CK2 devs never did that.

Broken =/= cut before being worked on. The struggle doesn't need North Africa or Occitania's involvement to work, it'd just be cool polish & add historical authenticity, but the feature isn't broken without it. Cutting stuff is something that literally every team ever has done, most definitely including CK2's, it's just a sad reality of game development — I imagine most creative projects outside of games too but I won't speak for industries I haven't worked in. The above was just my trying to be honest & transparent about prior reasoning and future likelihood with people expressing an interest in a subject we gave consideration. You're at liberty to be upset with that if you like, of course, but the alternative here is either me not telling y'all or else being dishonest about the chances of it getting made in a schedule I don't control and which neither can nor should spend time polishing every area to perfection anyway, even if it'd be personally satisfying.

To my mind, keeping shtum here doesn't really help or inform anyone, so where I can safely talk about the choices we've made during development, I try to. Even where, though they may be necessary, they're kinda sucky, as here.

 

[Ebrelian]

When the flavor pack that covers North Africa is being developped, if not happened earlier, that would be the perfect opportunity to have previously cut Almoravid involvement in Iberia approved and double as Iberian soft update.

 

[Allahui]

You have the offer fealty option during the struggle which is clearly meant to simulate almohad and almoravid intervention and yet we just never see it. Much like how the ai now sends us marriage requests, itd be very useful if ai was to use the mechanic more, especially until we get tributaries added back, as then you might get Castile reaching as far south as it did irl so soon after game start

 

[Blodhevn]

They might return to it in a few years, or there's a dev with a special interest in the Almoravids that might do something with it. No one saw the Jewish stuff coming with 1.9.1.

Yeah, its their "pet project/personal time project" so far ive only noticed the favouritism/extra effort in india. They've gotten a lot of attention that is "outside" the scope of any dlc or patch. Updates to land structure,borders & unique traditions (more tailored than others - besides byzantine) , they got several MaA's added in royal court as well, and changes kept on coming. now recently they also got the unique buildings. Personally i love that, but i wish other cultured/areas did too. until the jews i havent seen any of that for anyone else.

 

[LAF1994]

An on-going and recognised problem, for sure. It's a deep irritation to several members of the team that every war is fought like a total war, and every county defended to the last drop of blood. We've got a few possible solutions that we're looking into for this, but they'd all radically affect game balance so they're fairly long-term.

I think this is a known problem with practically every PDS game. However, solving it would probably require a substantial overhaul of the core game mechanics.

 

[Silesian Burd]

Broken =/= cut before being worked on. The struggle doesn't need North Africa or Occitania's involvement to work, it'd just be cool polish & add historical authenticity, but the feature isn't broken without it. Cutting stuff is something that literally every team ever has done, most definitely including CK2's, it's just a sad reality of game development — I imagine most creative projects outside of games too but I won't speak for industries I haven't worked in. The above was just my trying to be honest & transparent about prior reasoning and future likelihood with people expressing an interest in a subject we gave consideration. You're at liberty to be upset with that if you like, of course, but the alternative here is either me not telling y'all or else being dishonest about the chances of it getting made in a schedule I don't control and which neither can nor should spend time polishing every area to perfection anyway, even if it'd be personally satisfying.

To my mind, keeping shtum here doesn't really help or inform anyone, so where I can safely talk about the choices we've made during development, I try to. Even where, though they may be necessary, they're kinda sucky, as here.

You're misrepresenting what I said. The stuff you have for the emergence of the Almohads is essentially broken in that it doesn't work; that's what I was referring to.

 

[grommile]

You're misrepresenting what I said.

What you said was imprecise, because you quoted the whole post. It's not a surprise that it was misinterpreted.

If you wanted to be correctly interpreted, trimming the quote down to highlight the thing you were reacting to would have greatly improved your odds.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Um, admitting that something is broken and will never be worked on...

...that's a choice.

The CK2 devs never did that.

No, CK2 advertised features and then backpedalled and cut them before release and never talked about them again (Gnostics in Monks&Mystics)

This veneration for CK2 as some golden standard and perfect game is a huge disservice for everyone.

 

[Allahui]

No, CK2 advertised features and then backpedalled and cut them before release and never talked about them again (Gnostics in Monks&Mystics)

This veneration for CK2 as some golden standard and perfect game is a huge disservice for everyone.

Monks and mystics was terrible for initial advertising vs final release, however Monks and mystics was very much the exception not the rule. Ck2 for how far into release it was vs ck3 now is a golden standard

 

[Taritu]

@Silesian Burd I really appreciate a dev reply that detailed and honest. Thank you.