Anti-Blobbing Mechanics

[Arcvalons]

What kind of anti-blobbing/snowball mechanics have been hinted at in CK3? I was just playing a few CK2 games and had forgotten how powerful Abbasids are at 769/867, with them getting like 50k levies within a few decades, becoming completely unstoppable by anything in the game. Also, the Christians in iberia finish reconquista within like 30 years in any post-1066 start, while in any pre-1066 start its the opposite and the Umayyads absorb the Christians immediately, etc.


Hopefully these situations won't repeat so much in CK3. Large realms should be more difficult to keep together, especially at the frontier regions, holy wars should probably be county-tier, and attacking armies in foreign culture/religion territories should always get huge attrition penalties, doubly so in difficult terrain. What are some other ways these issues could be fixed in CK3?

 

[Mike1984]

What kind of anti-blobbing/snowball mechanics have been hinted at in CK3? I was just playing a few CK2 games and had forgotten how powerful Abbasids are at 769/867, with them getting like 50k levies within a few decades, becoming completely unstoppable by anything in the game. Also, the Christians in iberia finish reconquista within like 30 years in any post-1066 start, while in any pre-1066 start its the opposite and the Umayyads absorb the Christians immediately, etc.


Hopefully these situations won't repeat so much in CK3. Large realms should be more difficult to keep together, especially at the frontier regions, holy wars should probably be county-tier, and attacking armies in foreign culture/religion territories should always get huge attrition penalties, doubly so in difficult terrain. What are some other ways these issues could be fixed in CK3?

I really, really hope they don't take your advice to make holy wars "county-tier". All that does is make it pointless for you to declare war on anyone who would be an even remotely difficult opponent, because the gain is simply not worth the cost. And ditto the idea of making it impossible to attack foreign culture/religion armies. It's bad enough that they've kept the old CK2 wargoal system, the last thing that they should be doing is making it worse.

As far as I can tell, you seem to want a game where people expand to form their local empire and then just sit around and do nothing for 400 years, which would be awful. There would be nothing to do. Alliances and political intrigue wouldn't matter because you wouldn't be fighting anyone, and your realm would be unchanging and, therefore, generally stable as long as you're half-way competent.

Anti-snowball mechanics which encourage you to sit there and do nothing do not make for a fun game. It shouldn't be difficult to expand quickly if you're strong enough to do so, because that's the only way to make the game actually fun to play. What should be difficult is stabilising such a large empire. It should be possible to grow quickly, but then your empire will be unstable and prone to collapsing.

 

[Tschobo]

For now, according to the devs, there is no proper system that wouldn't be grating at best and robbing you of all the fun in the game at worst.

What I have gotten so far is:

• Religions have been balanced with Frevor so they won't steamroll over another. (But pagans still have the advantage of only having the unreformed heresy, well pagan AI-reformation is rare but a player who is able to reform their religion has a huge advantage)
• Factions and Revolutions are still in, it really depends on how they stabilized it (making them a threat etc).
• According to some information the HRE in the 1066 as well as the ERE in the 867 starting date have a tendency to blob. Don't know about the Umayyads though, but I guess for them Frevor dampens it a bit because their counties are mostly catholic.

If you really want to make the large realms slow giants I would go for two things. The larger the realm is the more inward-driven it gets, being able to only sporadically conquer if it is stable. Which is managable, but it will be tough with a weak ruler. The second one is to force the feudal realms to develop their conquered tribal lands first to a managable feudal level. It just slows them down a bit, but doesn't completely stop them.

 

[Arcvalons]

I really, really hope they don't take your advice to make holy wars "county-tier". All that does is make it pointless for you to declare war on anyone who would be an even remotely difficult opponent, because the gain is simply not worth the cost. And ditto the idea of making it impossible to attack foreign culture/religion armies. It's bad enough that they've kept the old CK2 wargoal system, the last thing that they should be doing is making it worse.

As far as I can tell, you seem to want a game where people expand to form their local empire and then just sit around and do nothing for 400 years, which would be awful. There would be nothing to do. Alliances and political intrigue wouldn't matter because you wouldn't be fighting anyone, and your realm would be unchanging and, therefore, generally stable as long as you're half-way competent.

Anti-snowball mechanics which encourage you to sit there and do nothing do not make for a fun game. It shouldn't be difficult to expand quickly if you're strong enough to do so, because that's the only way to make the game actually fun to play. What should be difficult is stabilising such a large empire. It should be possible to grow quickly, but then your empire will be unstable and prone to collapsing.

County-tier is several provinces now, so it'd be okay. Didn't say to make attacking foreign culture-religion armies impossible, just that the attacker should get bigger attrition penalties while attacking foreign culture-religion provinces. So:

• Attack Same Culture/Religion province: Minimal Attrition (but still higher than CK2), around 5%-10%.
• Attack Different Culture Province. Moderate Attrition, around 10%-20%.
• Attack Different Religion Province. Moderate Attrition, around 10%-20%.
• Attack Different Culture/Religion province: HugeAttrition, around 10%-20%.

These attrition penalties would stack with terrain ones from things like forest, hill, desert, mountains, etc. So for example attacking a mountainous realm of a different culture/religion (Persia, Iberia, etc.) would have the attackers have like 40-50% attrition which seems realistic to me.

 

[Skales]

Make it that some lands are simply not worth conquering.

 

[Tuo]

I'd like to see titles break more - typically in Ck2, independent duchies disappear quick and stay subject to kings and emperors until the end of the game. Spitballing a mechanic that is unlikely to be implemented as proposed - how about Authority as a measure of your control over your top title, and if it drops too low, your top title (if you have multiple, each is tracked separately) is destroyed, and direct vassals under it released. How easily the title breaks depends on the tier - a duchy would be extremely unlikely to break, while keeping an empire together takes some effort.

So, how would the authority drop? Overextending by expansion might leave your administration thin, causing a dip in authority. Losing wars would probably do it as well (especially revolts), perhaps unhappy vassals should slowly erode your authority too.

As for bolstering authority, defeating revolts, happy vassals and specific actions for that goal might do it. Perhaps defending against a foreign invader might give a temporary buff to authority for the duration of the war?

The aim being, the bigger you get, the harder it is to keep it all together, and the efforts to keep it together limit the amount of force the state can project outwards.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

What kind of anti-blobbing/snowball mechanics have been hinted at in CK3? I was just playing a few CK2 games and had forgotten how powerful Abbasids are at 769/867, with them getting like 50k levies within a few decades, becoming completely unstoppable by anything in the game. Also, the Christians in iberia finish reconquista within like 30 years in any post-1066 start, while in any pre-1066 start its the opposite and the Umayyads absorb the Christians immediately, etc.


Hopefully these situations won't repeat so much in CK3. Large realms should be more difficult to keep together, especially at the frontier regions, holy wars should probably be county-tier, and attacking armies in foreign culture/religion territories should always get huge attrition penalties, doubly so in difficult terrain. What are some other ways these issues could be fixed in CK3?

Holy wars are nerfed in general, I don't think this is going to be as much of an issue, or at least it can be balanced out. As far as we understand it, successful holy wars *reduce* fervor, the rough equivalent of moral authority. Catholics don't get any extra fervor for holy sites (that's an orthodox thing, apparently), so a very active reconquista will damage the catholic's ability to convert provinces, characters, and even prevent crusades (which kind of makes sense, if Iberia is going so well).

Conquering undeveloped land may not be all that worth it, as converting to your culture will slow it down, or you will be limited in what you can build there because of a tribal or at least low innovation culture. Developed land with plenty of buildings from advanced cultures is going to be valuable to conquer (as it should be), but the popular revolt system might make blobbing out reasonably costly.

In the end, part of this is that the rulers of this era didn't want to beeline to form various kingdoms that we as players like to build towards. I would prefer that the AI react to player blobbing, because it is just *going* to happen. The defensive pact system was ... well let's be honest it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way (including me). I'm not sure what the best solution for CK3 is, however.

I'd like to see titles break more - typically in Ck2, independent duchies disappear quick and stay subject to kings and emperors until the end of the game. Spitballing a mechanic that is unlikely to be implemented as proposed - how about Authority as a measure of your control over your top title, and if it drops too low, your top title (if you have multiple, each is tracked separately) is destroyed, and direct vassals under it released. How easily the title breaks depends on the tier - a duchy would be extremely unlikely to break, while keeping an empire together takes some effort.

So, how would the authority drop? Overextending by expansion might leave your administration thin, causing a dip in authority. Losing wars would probably do it as well (especially revolts), perhaps unhappy vassals should slowly erode your authority too.

As for bolstering authority, defeating revolts, happy vassals and specific actions for that goal might do it. Perhaps defending against a foreign invader might give a temporary buff to authority for the duration of the war?

The aim being, the bigger you get, the harder it is to keep it all together, and the efforts to keep it together limit the amount of force the state can project outwards.

Interesting, but I think this would be better implemented as an ultimatum/revolt where your vassals can decide to break your top title rather than it just disappearing from some number. This would let the play and AI intervene against the troublesome vassals (or simply grant them a lot of autonomy with the new contract system, but not independence).

 

[Arkangelus]

There's a built in system that could potentially help lots, although I've never seen it explicitly laid out as such - the desire and penalties associated with strong vassals demanding council seats. If the idea of what counts as a strong vassal doesn't scale, then the bigger you get, the more unhappy scheming dukes or extremely powerful vassal Kings you get vying for only 5 places.

This could give most sprawling empires plenty of increased challenge to keep together, and for cases like the HRE or caliphates that you don't want to be too unstable you can have the religious head title or elector rights help to pacify the vassals.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I wish they would re-implement opinion penalties for distant vassals. Or perhaps instead, dread penalties, along with making it much harder to negotiate higher-tier vassal contracts with distant vassals. So, you can hold onto your conquests on the other side of the map if you keep everyone happy, but the moment they don't like your ruler they're gonna want to revolt... and you won't get much out of them even if they stay loyal. And beyond a (very distant) point, vassals should either be locked into a special very low-tier vassal contract, or just receive a modifier that reduces tax and military obligations to the point of virtual independence.

Of course, the penalties could be reduced by higher technology or certain government forms, but the soft limits for even the biggest empires should be something like Rome or peak Caliphate or the old Persian empires at their height. The soft part is important - nothing I've outlined would make world conquest impossible. It would just make it pointless outside of cheevo runs, and make WC players have to think really hard about where to center their empire (potentially making it more interesting).

 

[Chlodio]

All that does is make it pointless for you to declare war on anyone who would be an even remotely difficult opponent because the gain is simply not worth the cost.

This is because Paradox insists on making every war a total war which goes on five years.

• Byzantines shipping troops from all the way from Crimea to defend Sicily shouldn't happen, perhaps they should only be able to raise troops from Crimea when that region is under threat itself.
• Armies should be swifter; the default speed by day in Imperator is 5 km per day, I reckon it's similar in CK2, it should be at least 20 km per day.
• Wars should be representative of campaigns, not full wars, so the war score should tick to 100% or -100% within 12 months, and one should not be expected to defeat the entire enemy strength to conquer a single province unless that province is within their capital kingdom.

 

[Limbojack]

CK2 already has the best idea for an anti-blobbing mechanic of any game out there, namely the internal stability caused by conflicts between the nobles and the rulers. They just have to improve upon this aspect for CK3, and make it so that it's not always possible to keep your empire together, especially during foreign aggression.

 

[Raelo]

I think it might be a good idea to make sieges a bit more involved, since those were what 90% of the wars consisted of. Maybe take some inspiration from EU4, where sieges are already a bit more interesting than in CK2. Also it might be worth thinking about how the very supply mechanics could be expanded without making them tedious... if you can stop large realms from amassing all their military might into a single doomstack that will give smaller realms a better chance to defend themselves. Perhaps also have a mechanic to simulate the constant border raids that happened in history, so that countries would be forced to keep defensive forces on the borders even when campaigning elsewhere.

Other than that I agree with the suggestions about keeping vassal management in large realms more difficult and stepping away from every war being a total one. Power is not just about having the biggest stick but also about the deals you manage to strike with both your enemies and your allies, and this is doubly true for the middle ages. Negotiation should be an important part of the game and I'm glad the developpers seem to be going that way with the new vassal contracts.

 

[Limbojack]

if you can stop large realms from amassing all their military might into a single doomstack

This. Perhaps increase the opinion penalty for raising vassals' levies in offensive wars (unless you're pushing their claims) by quite a lot. They could even make it so that offensive wars increase unrest where levies have been raised. That way, large realms might just summon a fraction of their potential army if they're having issues with internal stability.

 

[Skales]

I'd like to see titles break more - typically in Ck2, independent duchies disappear quick and stay subject to kings and emperors until the end of the game. Spitballing a mechanic that is unlikely to be implemented as proposed - how about Authority as a measure of your control over your top title, and if it drops too low, your top title (if you have multiple, each is tracked separately) is destroyed, and direct vassals under it released. How easily the title breaks depends on the tier - a duchy would be extremely unlikely to break, while keeping an empire together takes some effort.

So, how would the authority drop? Overextending by expansion might leave your administration thin, causing a dip in authority. Losing wars would probably do it as well (especially revolts), perhaps unhappy vassals should slowly erode your authority too.

As for bolstering authority, defeating revolts, happy vassals and specific actions for that goal might do it. Perhaps defending against a foreign invader might give a temporary buff to authority for the duration of the war?

The aim being, the bigger you get, the harder it is to keep it all together, and the efforts to keep it together limit the amount of force the state can project outwards.

I would rather see peripheral territories simply slipping out of the empire, rather than the empire just collapsing. Think about Byzantium losing Sardinia.

 

[Tryvenyal]

It must be harder to keep empires larger than De Jure together. More independence factions etc. Make an empire where a recent claimant- faction was victorious be extra vulnerable. Make not all vassals providing troops for wars, but only those close to the conflicted area(How close? I don't know. Bordering the embattled region.) And this should be true for defensive wars as well, giving huge emperes vulnerable areas. THere could be some mechanisms that let emperers invite vassals after a certain point, when it´s going bad. Should be costly if it´s an offensive war.

Some possible mechaniscs for internal conflicts:

• During internal conflicts, let vassal opinion go down.
• Let rebels access passive ticking warscore, not the opposite.
• Have mechanisms to destroy or downgrade toptier titles when certain conditions are met(IE long time of missmanagement)

Some possible mechanics for loosing an offensive war:

• All vassal dukes bordering the target goes independent.
• Vassals gives less troops for X years.

 

[Woifee]

This. Perhaps increase the opinion penalty for raising vassals' levies in offensive wars (unless you're pushing their claims) by quite a lot. They could even make it so that offensive wars increase unrest where levies have been raised. That way, large realms might just summon a fraction of their potential army if they're having issues with internal stability.

Or to use the full potential of vassals in offensive wars you must ally them as well with a marriage. This would make realm intern marriages way more common

 

[viola]

The problem isn't blobbing per se but rather that realms are too stable and would only rarely break up.

And then, when you finally make realms that are unstable, expect players to complain about it, either because they can't accept losing territory and being screwed from time to time, even though that's what the game is supposed to be about, or asking "why are the Byzantines constantly in civil war now?" when Paradox made a succession law that successfully caused instability in one of the undying blobs of CK2.

 

[Gremper]

CK2 already has the best idea for an anti-blobbing mechanic of any game out there, namely the internal stability caused by conflicts between the nobles and the rulers. They just have to improve upon this aspect for CK3, and make it so that it's not always possible to keep your empire together, especially during foreign aggression.

This is the approach I like most, because it makes sense: Vassals in small realms should worry about foreign invaders and thus cause less headaches to their liege, because by destabilising the realm, they would jeopardise their own safety. Vassals in larger realms are more confident that no foreign powers will invade them, so they should be more likely to start/join factions et cetera.

The big advantage of this anti-blobbing mechanic is that it's permanent rather than temporary. In e.g. EU4, the integration/converting/cultureflip mechanic doesn't stop exponential expansion, it just slows it dows sufficiently to avoid premature world conquest.

 

[mandalor123]

This is because Paradox insists on making every war a total war which goes on five years.

• Byzantines shipping troops from all the way from Crimea to defend Sicily shouldn't happen, perhaps they should only be able to raise troops from Crimea when that region is under threat itself.
• Armies should be swifter; the default speed by day in Imperator is 5 km per day, I reckon it's similar in CK2, it should be at least 20 km per day.
• Wars should be representative of campaigns, not full wars, so the war score should tick to 100% or -100% within 12 months, and one should not be expected to defeat the entire enemy strength to conquer a single province unless that province is within their capital kingdom.

Maybe good idea is to make powerful vassals act more independent during wars. Like call to arms system for tribal vassals from CK2, and that would last until you have high CA.

 

[Slime99]

I hope they integrate administration to the game. I also want crises to crumble my realm. I hope the control and popularity mechanics play a big role. That is all.