Byzantium ridicilously UP compared to other countries?

[matan]

In SMWH, I often see byzantium in 867 date with around 10 imperial decadance, but 4-5 monthly income, compared to west francia who usually gets 8 monthly income and around the same amount of levies, for example. in my opinion either the west european forces should be really nerfed or byzantium should get EXTREMLY buffed, because they were quite rich.
It is not even an empire thing of less levies, because the HRE at 1066, with a lot of land that isn't de jure has around 50,000 levies and pretty good income, byzantium has around half of it.

 

[DorlasAnther]

I would rather have them find a way to extremely nerf (not)Holy (not)Roman Empire rather than buff Roman Empire.
I know, it was extremely rich, but we should remember that in CK2, being rich only means you can have personal levies raised for longer time and support mercenaries, not more complex things from reality like actually using that money to run your country. If it was "extremely buffed" in this regard, it would just get thousands upon thousands of retinues and mercenaries, plus extremely OP personal demesne of emperors. Sad thing about this game is that if you are big, you are also stronger, even though it was not always the case in reality. Roman Empire is already far more powerful than it sometimes was (due to AI´s ability to react to everything and also unwillingness to surrender before 100%, meaning those small guys who managed to conquer parts of the Empire can´t do that, because doomstack will arrive in 5th year of the war and wipe them out) and unless faced with stronger enemy (meaning: another huge empire/scripted events like Seljuk invasion), it becomes more and more and more powerful due to slow increase of its size and therefore troops available to the emperor.

 

[Toa Kraka]

unwillingness to surrender before 100%

This could be adjusted. See, e. g., common/00_cb_types.txt/tributary_cb/defender_ai_defeat_worth, which has a bunch of modifiers that (inter alia) make the defender more willing to surrender if he's much weaker than the attacker.

 

[DorlasAnther]

This could be adjusted. See, e. g., common/00_cb_types.txt/tributary_cb/defender_ai_defeat_worth, which has a bunch of modifiers that (inter alia) make the defender more willing to surrender if he's much weaker than the attacker.

That would not solve the problem with ERE, because the problem is that defender is actually stronger than the attacker and always wins. Problem here is that huge empires use their whole armies to defeat small counts on their borders who only want to grab one county. Technically speaking, it would not be such a big problem in times of peace, but this can happen while huge empire is attacked by 3 other countries and is in the middle of civil war. Instead of fighting more important wars (like defending against faction which wants to replace the current monarch), they march towards the little guy and crash his entire army.
Basically, AI in CK2 does not have the "I can´t be bothered with this right now" modifier. If the army was destroyed by Seljuks, AI still marches entire remnants down to some pointless county on the opposite border of the empire just to defend against that one guy who wants it. It doesn´t matter that they are going bankrupt, it doesn´t matter that there are threats capable of obliterating the empire, it doesn´t matter that there is huge independence and overthrow liege faction, they still do it.
But I can´t complain that much, overall CK2´s AI is amazing compared to the other games like Civilization (I DENOUNCE YOU FOR REASONS!) or Mount and Blade (I raided all of your villages, not because it was convenient, but because developers thought I should always raid player).

 

[theKing1988]

The ERE guy on the SWMH team here, and someone who knows a lot about the Empire's strenghts and who is absolutely not negatively inclined towards the Empire.

I still consider the Empire to be one of our better balanced realms tbh. But yeah, the HRE area could use some tweaking and/or some mechanics that keep the rulers busy internally rather than giving them their full levy for Foreign Campaigns over and over

 

[Toa Kraka]

That would not solve the problem with ERE, because the problem is that defender is actually stronger than the attacker and always wins. Problem here is that huge empires use their whole armies to defeat small counts on their borders who only want to grab one county. Technically speaking, it would not be such a big problem in times of peace, but this can happen while huge empire is attacked by 3 other countries and is in the middle of civil war. Instead of fighting more important wars (like defending against faction which wants to replace the current monarch), they march towards the little guy and crash his entire army.

Basically, AI in CK2 does not have the "I can´t be bothered with this right now" modifier. If the army was destroyed by Seljuks, AI still marches entire remnants down to some pointless county on the opposite border of the empire just to defend against that one guy who wants it. It doesn´t matter that they are going bankrupt, it doesn´t matter that there are threats capable of obliterating the empire, it doesn´t matter that there is huge independence and overthrow liege faction, they still do it.

This still sounds fairly moddable. If any character has negative warscore in a "major" war (kingdom invasion, major revolt, primary-title claim, etc.) and in a "minor" war (county claim against a kingdom or empire, duchy claim against an empire, etc.) simultaneously, an event forces the character to surrender in the minor war immediately.

 

[zijistark]

The ERE guy on the SWMH team here, and someone who knows a lot about the Empire's strenghts and who is absolutely not negatively inclined towards the Empire.

I still consider the Empire to be one of our better balanced realms tbh. But yeah, the HRE area could use some tweaking and/or some mechanics that keep the rulers busy internally rather than giving them their full levy for Foreign Campaigns over and over

The dynamic levies system in EMF was designed to keep hugely OP empires like the HRE effectively in check, but while that may be effective in EMF+Vanilla, I think EMF+SWMH may require some further debuff to the HRE [and west of it]. I've not really any good idea what would be a plausible new debuff that's not totally HRE-specific (though if it comes to it...) besides simply tweaking the existing dynlevy (dynamic levies) system's parameters to be more punitive on large realms.

EDIT:

Sorry, did get off the original track a bit, which was about their tax income being so much higher than the ERE's (cannot confirm, but I assume so) when the ERE had better developed financial systems throughout most of the era.

This ultimately comes down to the fact that there are simply so many more baronies/provinces in the HRE and Western Europe than the ERE. It is, of course, also a function of opinion, since nobody pays taxes below 0 opinion, and only pay a percentage scaled over 0-100 opinion even then. The ERE tends to have fewer loyal vassals, and that may be relevant.

Ideally, there would be a 'dyntax' system in EMF that models feudal realms' lack of scalability of tax income over large distances, but as the game's limitations still remain which prevented me from creating this in the first place (unnecessarily computationally intensive to actual model this, whereas dynlevy is more straightforward about realm size rather than per-vassal distances), I've no plan to try and do it for now.

 

[G.Strategos]

The dynamic levies system in EMF was designed to keep hugely OP empires like the HRE effectively in check, but while that may be effective in EMF+Vanilla, I think EMF+SWMH may require some further debuff to the HRE [and west of it]. I've not really any good idea what would be a plausible new debuff that's not totally HRE-specific (though if it comes to it...) besides simply tweaking the existing dynlevy (dynamic levies) system's parameters to be more punitive on large realms.

The ERE guy on the SWMH team here, and someone who knows a lot about the Empire's strenghts and who is absolutely not negatively inclined towards the Empire.

I still consider the Empire to be one of our better balanced realms tbh. But yeah, the HRE area could use some tweaking and/or some mechanics that keep the rulers busy internally rather than giving them their full levy for Foreign Campaigns over and over

Ιt'll be great if you could nerf both ERE and HRE a bit. They are quite OP in EMF+SWMH setup. I believe HRE is far more OP than ERE though, cause they have Pechenegs and Rum to keep them under pressure. Ι agree with @theKing1988 ERE is more balanced. HRE is just unstoppable.

 

[zijistark]

Ιt'll be great if you could nerf both ERE and HRE a bit. They are quite OP in EMF+SWMH setup. I believe HRE is far more OP than ERE though, cause they have Pechenegs and Rum to keep them under pressure. Ι agree with @theKing1988 ERE is more balanced. HRE is just unstoppable.

Ideally, the HRE should get some special mechanics, as the Ottonian empire [aside from when you "pull an Otto" via an 867 start, which is clearly already amusing enough to have been worth my attention in several playthroughs] should be fun for a player to actually play (even as their first ruler/pick). [ EDIT: And being OP even as an AI from the moment you press Play is not fun IMHO. ]

I'm not suggesting anything super ambitious, but perhaps we could come up with something that can start small (e.g., low on interactive events) but still make an impact.

E.g., this is a case where I might employ a small series of laws to reform in order to become the unhindered & unstoppable beast that they are at present. Starting small, this ultimately is just more hoops that the player/AI must jump through in order to stop getting a malus to a large crop of things, but it feels a lot less mechanical than that in-game once properly "immersified."

Now, while I think that the HRE *does* warrant special mechanics (the greeks have more than enough, really), it'd be cool if the same kind of solution used here could be easily adapted to larger groups of titles with similar characteristics throughout the timeline; perhaps some of those should be part of Imperial Decay in general.

So we have to go to the drawing board here, though: what are the historically plausible reasons behind the HRE having some special maluses by default? [feedback welcome, as specific as you like]

 

[mgjh]

My suggestion for the HRE: nerve elective succesion. It should be harder to keep one dynasty on the throne, the second and third in the vote should try to take the throne from time to time and the AI should attempt to switch to a hereditary government form, if this is moddable.

 

[matan]

Ιt'll be great if you could nerf both ERE and HRE a bit. They are quite OP in EMF+SWMH setup. I believe HRE is far more OP than ERE though, cause they have Pechenegs and Rum to keep them under pressure. Ι agree with @theKing1988 ERE is more balanced. HRE is just unstoppable.

More like harshly nerf all feudal kingdoms compared to byzantium in my opinion, because france and other kingdoms are not OP exempt

 

[theKing1988]

More like harshly nerf all feudal kingdoms compared to byzantium in my opinion, because france and other kingdoms are not OP exempt

Doing any major nerfing to the Feudals as a whole would be overkill and not necessary, but we are looking into Central European balance specifically.

Besides, Byzantium is not underpowered buddy, i can't really agree with you on that

 

[Farbolo]

Me neither, both the ERE and the HRE tend to expand without end in sight - unless the Mongols perform well. Right now, I try to counter them by making some of their most threatened neighbours "lucky rulers" (a great feature bzw.). This helps more than often.