CK2 Coalition System a Bit Excessive. Thoughts?

[randy47]

Yeah so I recently got the latest CK2 expansion...playing as a shia Muslim nation, usurped the throne from the Fatimids and began rapid expansion. Took Arabia, Mesopotamia, Africa, and parts of Syria and now my threat is like permanently in the 70-100% range.

Now I've literally got the entire planet in a united defensive coalition against me, including (but certainly not limited to) the East African kings of Nubia and Abyssinia, ALL the Moors and Catholics in Iberia (literally everyone in Iberia), France, Morocco, Venice, Papal States, Genoa, Pisa, Persia, Sicily, and the list goes on.

This new mechanic is a great way to add an element of realism to the game, but it's so unrealistic that it annoyed me enough to post something about it. Explain to me how the French AND the Persians AND the Ligurians AND the Abyssinians could all unite against me on the same day that I declare war, let alone coordinate a defensive pact across thousands of miles (this is a feudal world, not 1914!).

I understand the need to add unrealistic game mechanics to make the game more realistic. And, besides this, CK2 has unrealistic game mechanics that help us, too, like the whole teleporting commander thing. But what annoys me is that the coalition system doesn't seem to account for bot instability. Even when the bot is in a position where it couldn't at all mount a defense, or is occupied and losing a war against another bot, it seems to remain in the coalition anyway. I guess it's because they don't put in things like stability or war exhaustion, which would better encapsulate a realistic nation, but still, if you're at 0% strength, why the hell would you risk entering a new war against a strong enemy. I guess this leads into another issue with CK2: you don't have anything substantial to lose in wars besides (defensively) the wargoal and (offensively) some cash and prestige. If they did, they wouldn't be so quick to join a united coalition, and (in fact), if we did, we wouldn't be so inclined to invade all the things, and the threat wouldn't be so high all the time.

My ideal coalition system: the highest it gets is regional, and the amount of expansion you do in a single region should determine whether or not a coalition shows up in the region. And, if the states in that region have low relations with each other, the likelihood of a coalition forming should be much lower (note here that the Byzantines did not form a coalition with the Persians against the Arabs). There's no reason why some guy in Nobatia should be fighting me with another guy in France.

Thoughts?

 

[kmh42]

There were plenty discussions about this topic at the conclave release, so don't expect too much of commentary.
Basically you are right and many peoples share you thoughts about coalitions, sadly the devs didn't say anything about removal/tweaking about this somewhat strange mechanic. The only thing we get is the 'switch off' button in the next patch.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

(note here that the Byzantines did not form a coalition with the Persians against the Arabs).

Yes they did. Heraclius and Yazdegard formed an alliance in 635 to fight the Arabs; Heraclius married his daughter to the Persian Emperor and the two planned to launch a combined attack. Unfortunately, they weren't able to co-ordinate very well; Byzantium's army was destroyed at Yarmouk and thus couldn't help the Persians when their army was destroyed at Kadisiya. Then Persia ceased to exist.

 

[Prince Ire]

Yes they did. Heraclius and Yazdegard formed an alliance in 635 to fight the Arabs; Heraclius married his daughter to the Persian Emperor and the two planned to launch a combined attack. Unfortunately, they weren't able to co-ordinate very well; Byzantium's army was destroyed at Yarmouk and thus couldn't help the Persians when their army was destroyed at Kadisiya. Then Persia ceased to exist.

Fromed an alliance, not a coalition.

 

[Dahoota]

Fromed an alliance, not a coalition.

.....How does that make any functional difference? They allied against a common foe who was massively and quickly expanding with aggression the world had rarely seen at that point. Isn't that exactly how coalitions function?

The difference is semantic.

On topic, OP you should check out what the guys working on CK2+ have done with their version of balancing for coalitions. It's quite good - more limited to religion but also effective at stopping the target in its tracks to a point.

 

[Prince Ire]

.....How does that make any functional difference? They allied against a common foe who was massively and quickly expanding with aggression the world had rarely seen at that point. Isn't that exactly how coalitions function?

The difference is semantic.

In my mind, a coalition implies many different states while an alliance does not.

 

[Dahoota]

Were there actually any other realms in the region that could have formed a coalition? AFAIK the Persians and the Byzantines dominated the area, everything else to the south had been annexed by the early muslim conquests already.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

I like coalitions and I like the goal they have of making the game harder when playing a large empire, and I am playing between 70-100% threat all the time too.

But I would like to see more realistic and challenging coalitions... Something like coalitions of religious groups only, but with additional event troups scaling with threat/army size to keep the coalition challenging.
Right now, the only thing coalitions do when you're a very powerful empire, is send small stacks of troups of different realms, which often fight each other, occupy territories in all the frontiers of your empire, and just diminish to almost nothing the warscore gained from battles. This makes the wars boring. I get that you can avoid them by waiting for a revolt to pop, and conquer the territories controlled by the revolt and I do that a lot. Problem is, I don't do that by fear of the coalition (which would be a good thing), but to avoid long and boring wars (instead, fighting a revolt is so easy that it also gets boring... but at least quicker). Instead of gaming with the system like that, I would like coalitions to make the wars more challenging and interesting, not more boring.

Maybe event troups would do the trick as they allow fighting interesting battles and actually gaining warscore from it. Plus, they would concentrate the war in a more focused area. Depending on the scaling, it would also make me think twice before engaging in a war while at 100% threat, as I could be drawn back.
Additionaly realms near a threatening neighbour should have an increased likelihood of forming alliance with other religious groups (this is not completely unrealistic since France tried to ally with the Mongols against the Muslim empires at some point).

 

[Alfy]

There were plenty discussions about this topic at the conclave release, so don't expect too much of commentary.
Basically you are right and many peoples share you thoughts about coalitions, sadly the devs didn't say anything about removal/tweaking about this somewhat strange mechanic. The only thing we get is the 'switch off' button in the next patch.

This. It has been rehashed and rehashed, and it comes down to this: if you like to blob, coalitions might be great. If you like playing a historical simulation, they just suck. (and if you like doing both, I would point out CKII as a whole sucks at doing both and always has)

Me, I can't wait for the off button. It's been a long wait for a button that basically cancels a feature that in fine, not even the blobbers had asked for. I just can't wait to see what the next big patch will drag in, it's like some kind of perverse reverse Christmas where you dread the presents and keep hoping for coal...

 

[Alcadizzar19]

Were there actually any other realms in the region that could have formed a coalition? AFAIK the Persians and the Byzantines dominated the area, everything else to the south had been annexed by the early muslim conquests already.

The Khazars were powerful enough to sometimes be a tri-polar situation in the Fertile Crescent but for the most part, it was a bi-polar political world.


The main problem with coalitions for me is the amount of threat gained from a war when you're already a big realm. A 25% gain for a duchy won in holy war by an empire is ridiculous, plus when you're only losing ~.25% a month it takes FOREVER to actually expand and to gut a powerful rival.

 

[Ultranoob]

It's not that big of a deal. When you are small, infamy goes away very fast and major kingdoms wont join the coalition, so it's pretty easy to keep expanding. When you are big enough to have a large retinue, you can just end any war before the coaliton even shows up

 

[Greybeard0815]

On topic, OP you should check out what the guys working on CK2+ have done with their version of balancing for coalitions. It's quite good - more limited to religion but also effective at stopping the target in its tracks to a point.

There was balancing done? I don't have exact numbers, but for me it seems the same as before, with everyone and their mother from Ireland to Cathay joining the Coalition at 70% threat.
To make matters worse the cooldown is much lower than in vanilla, lowering threat at 0.06 per month. Which means 0.72 threat loss per year. So to loose 72% threat would take 100 years in my case, where I played as ERE and exclusivly got threat from holy warring the Muslims.
In the end I just changed the feature by changing the cooldown to higher values and lowering the amount of threat gained per province, so I could loose 70% threat in 20 years instead of 100.

 

[Dahoota]

There was balancing done? I don't have exact numbers, but for me it seems the same as before, with everyone and their mother from Ireland to Cathay joining the Coalition at 70% threat.
To make matters worse the cooldown is much lower than in vanilla, lowering threat at 0.06 per month. Which means 0.72 threat loss per year. So to loose 72% threat would take 100 years in my case, where I played as ERE and exclusivly got threat from holy warring the Muslims.
In the end I just changed the feature by changing the cooldown to higher values and lowering the amount of threat gained per province, so I could loose 70% threat in 20 years instead of 100.

From what the group I play MP CK2+ with have observed, the threshold for cross-religion coalitions is considerably higher but the distance for members is greater. One player was pushing hard into Christian Europe and got stopped in their tracks while having almost no Muslim coalitions on their other border. This could also be a product of the way religions are setup in CK2+.

The 0.06% thing seems to be some kind of graphical bug and not represent the actual decay - the decay appears to be exponential rather than linear and speeds up over time. The result being the full coalition will stay in effect longer, usually most of that character's lifetime, then drop off more quickly later.