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CK2 Dev Diary #50: A Reason for War

Greetings!

The weather is slowly recovering from the chaotic mixture of snow/rain/hail/sun that has plagued the Swedish April and work is starting on the next, yet undisclosed, expansion! The next expansion is going to have a specific theme which most features will be focused around (we can unfortunately not go into any detail in this DD), though we also want to add some features that can be of use regardless of who or where you choose to play. One of these is planned to be a ‘Casus Belli Expansion’, where we want to add new and oft-requested CBs to the game. The Focus is going to be on CBs that enhance the early and late game (as well as a few more roleplay-focused CBs). While this is by no means a final list, it’s what we’ve made so far:


Forced Vassalization
This is a CB that can be used against neighboring realms to force them to become your vassal. To avoid making it too powerful it’s quite heavily limited, only realms that are of a lower tier, under 30 realm size and where the ruler is of either your culture group or religion are valid targets. It also has a direct cost (prestige). For example; this can allow England to, with time, extend ‘protection’ to the smaller Welsh and Irish realms.


De Jure Duchy Claim
This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.


Ducal County Conquest
At the very start of a game you might be stuck waiting for fabricated claims a very, very long time if you’re unlucky. This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder. The CB has a cost of prestige and gold, making it similar to a fabricated claim (as that’s essentially what it is). As an example, this gives count-tier characters in Ireland and the HRE an alternate way to claim a Duke-tier title, presuming that you can save up enough prestige and money.


Great Conquest
Unless you are playing as a Muslim, Nomad or Tribal-cultured ruler (who have access to invasions) you have no real way to expand in a meaningful way when you are playing as the ruler of a very large realm. While we still want expansion to be difficult, we also want to give players more static opportunities to expand. This CB is available to very powerful realms (at least 200 realm size) and can be used to claim an entire Kingdom from another character. Though the catch is that you have to fight someone that is as strong or stronger than you are, and using the CB itself costs a massive amount of prestige and piety.


Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).


Note that these CBs are by no means finished, and are currently being tested internally. Feel free to comment and feedback on them though, and also feel free to tell us what CBs you would like to see added!
 
How about a Take Hostages CB ?

Just ship over there and siege down his capitol. If successful, you imprison all his close family there. Then you can either ransom them for money or hold them as hostages, which would prevent him from declaring war on you, as well as making it impossible for him to raid you. This could double with the Stop Raids CB a couple of posts higher - I dont know if it's currently possible to raid someone who got hostages, but that should be impossible IMO.

War gets not prestige, no money. just the hostages, and you can declare victory whenever you have them, regardless of it being through siege or capturing commanders.
 
Warfare and diplomacy improvements?
Part of the next expansion?
Could it possibly be about Crusades?
DEUS VULT!
(2.0)

(I really need to stop thinking every expansion is about Crusades based on vague information)

In any case...
 
Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).

Note that these CBs are by no means finished, and are currently being tested internally. Feel free to comment and feedback on them though, and also feel free to tell us what CBs you would like to see added!

Sometimes, I marry off a daughter or sister for an alliance. Some time later, my sister gets captured as a hostage and is taken as a concubine. It would be great to have a CB that frees a close family member from being a concubine.
 
I think we need the ability to take ward hostages like in Game of Thrones.

Or just assign any imprisoned child as "ward hostage", making your responsible for its education, but having him as "just" a member of your court in a way so he can't be recalled away. However, without the imprisonment detriments on education or health.
 
I'm mostly ok with these changes so long as they come at a significant enough cost to be limited. One part of the game that I actually really like is scheming for claims (whether through marrying someone with an intention of getting a claim in the next generation, or through inviting a claimant and going that way. I do hope that that remains the primary method of expansion for Christian rulers (as it's one of the fun and different parts of CK2).

My other concern is the possibility that AI blobs will get even nastier (e.g. the ERE immediately launching duchy conquests on Croatia and Apulia; those starts are already precarious enough if you don't want to swear fealty to an empire on day 1).

That said, something to help counts be able to do things besides sit there and wait for the RNG to decide that their chancellor has succeeded in fabricating on their neighbor is appreciated, as is a way to punish enemies for abducting your kin.
 
Looks very promising ! I would also really like that you give us once a DLC where we can play as theocracies.
Who did not dream of waging war on the Baltic pagans as the Teutonic order, or to fight in the Guelfs-Gibelins leagues as the Pope, trying to expand your kingdom into Naples and the kingdom of Lombardia ?

Also, I would be really interested that you fix the Salic law so that we don't get "ugly" borders (like in my game, Aquitaine capital being Paris while West Francia capital being in Italy, and west Francis splitting in Africa/burgundy/Italy, each of them getting land in each de jure kingdom... if Salic law was indeed based on the highest title you own (in case of a kingdom, Salic law sharing the Aquitaine/Burgundy kingdoms with every de jure vassal of one being automatically attributed to the de jure kingdom, instead of equally sharing the duchies as well.
 
I see both realism and oversimplification issues with these CBs.

Forced Vassalization: I (only) like this CB - but the name should probably be "subjugation". To force-vassalize someone would be to subjugate them (a real vassal tenure would imply consent from both sides). However, it seems to me like this will be less frequently used since most of the time you can offer vassalization successfully as long as you have decent opinions. In either case, it might actually make a little bit of sense.

De Jure Duchy Claim: "This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain." But this is what's so good! It slows down fast grab of large lands and prevents easy blobbing. One of the few countering effects of making the game too easy is that you do have to fight a succession of wars. Seeing England and France fight for 100 years over some Normandy counties is just great. If you do not want to pay the price of fighting the war, I think it should be avoided altogether. Or, that you have a proper claimant with a legal claim to the full duchy. It feels like now you can just side-step the whole issue of marrying and building up a claimant base that you can use for expansion, and that is at least supposed to be a challenge. It feels like we're making the game easier for no clear gain.

Ducal County Conquest: "This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder." So now we are bypassing the whole point of the claim system. I already disliked the "fabricate claim" mechanic since it is such a simple way of expanding your realm (and hence modded it out), but also since it's a bit too abstracted - claiming false lineage or something like that should really be more involved if it should exist. Now we're just side-stepping that old, beautiful time when you have two nearby counties that try to outmaneuvre eachother by marriages, an angry claimant uncles.

Great Conquest: This sounds like a really bad CB. First of all, the Christian world should use the pope's blessed invasion, if anything. England wouldn't invade France without even a claim or some sort of entitlement. Feels like we're confusing Islam and Christianity here. Secondly, the king expansion of an empire by pressing entire kingdom claims is one of the parts that makes blobbing too easy. And then I include the part about finding a claimant.

Free Hostages: The reason you have hostages (or marriages) is to avoid wars from happening in the first place. If you'd declare war on your ally (to which you have a marriage) or on your enemy (who holds hostage), they'd simply kill those people on the first day of war. For this to make sense there'd have to be some "terror balance" in the sense that you yourself also hold similiar family members hostage to your enemy where you care less about the hostages that your enemy has than vice versa, e.g. your own hostages would have some good claim or so.

It feels like on many accounts, you're just trying to skip all the difficult parts about the game.
 
True, true. Maybe the problem is that there is no difference between hostages and captives in the game. Implementing such a distinction might not be overly problematic, and would help to still maintain the diplomatic aspect of hostages.

No, it really isn't. I once made a mod in which truces are replaced by a system in which close relatives are handed over as hostages. These hostages have a modifier which expires in five years, as long as they have this modifier they cannot be ransomed.
 
It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).

I read that wrong the first time.

I think generally it is a compelling little aspect of the game as it stands now and doesn't need to be changed generally.

But for this CB I would find it understandable to bypass it.
 
It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB?
Make it so you can't go to war if it is a close kin only but if it is same dynasty but distant like a cousin or aunt than it is allowed.

BUT make an option to override and break the hostage treaty at a cost of prestige (or opinion modifier) so that if you have 19 children and your 5th son is held hostage you can pay the prestige to get him killed by going to war.
 
How about if you declare war at someone who has your close kin hostage, you will have an event with a high chance of becoming Stressed/Depressed (especially if the hostage owner decides to just kill them)? Plus a big opinion malus from the court, though perhaps a bonus from the family, at least the Kind and Ambitious family members.
 
I like the direction in which this DLC is going! Instead of adding some flashy gimmicks that won't work for a few post-release patches, this seems to be some solid gaps filling and upgrading core mechanisms of the game. Respect, devs!
 
Forced Vassalization: Sounds good in theory, though I'm a bit worried that this will end up being too powerful. Using the England example, given that they generally are the strongest realm in Britannia and that Scotland tends to be the other kingdom, it seems quite possible that England (and possibly Scotland) will gobble up everyone else within a rather short amount of time (though if the prestige cost is very steep it might take a while). However, I'm also thinking that perhaps the "neighbouring" limit should be "neighbouring, within holy war range, or my de jure vassal/in the same de jure kingdom as me" to allow a bit more freedom (e.g. England vs. Britanny, Italy vs. Venice, Irish dukes vs. Irish counts), as a land border requirement could be a bit restrictive at times. I also think that there might be a need to be disallowed against anyone you can holy war, as you'd otherwise be able to get around co-religionists joining in and could revoke all titles from the vassal relatively effectively after the war.


De Jure Duchy Claim: I definitely like it for empires as it can get rather silly if two empires fight over counties rather than duchies or kingdoms, but I'm not quite sold on it for kingdoms as it seems like it will lead to quite effective blobbing by getting 51 % of a de jure kingdom and then using duchy claims to quickly take the rest. I also think that restricting it to targets that you cannot holy war would be a good idea, as you'd presumably be able to go around co-religionists joining the target otherwise and any wrong religion vassals can generally be revoked rather quickly if you get them. I'm also curious as to whether this means that the De Jure County Conquest will be removed.


Ducal County Conquest: I think there probably needs to be a realm size limit for it, as you'd otherwise be able to blob quite far as a superduke if you are in a part of the map where a bunch of duchies aren't created. However, I also think that it might be good to allow you to use the CB if the duchy exists as there are some places (e.g. Ireland and Wales in 1066, England pre-1066) where there are dukes that don't control their whole de jure and that could be unseated rather easily by an ambitious count using the CB.


Great Conquest: While I think that an expensive invasion-style CB for non-Muslim/-nomad/-Tengri realms could be good (though perhaps not for the Jains, because pacifists), it seems a bit problematic to have it tied to having a large realm, as a large realm generally will blob quite easily and will do so even better with a kingdom-tier CB. It also seems like it would be useful to have that kind of CB for small realms if you e.g. want to unite the Catholic kingdoms in Iberia or the like. I also think that perhaps there needs to be a time restriction on using the CB, so that you can't use it against several realms at the same time and get a massive amount of land (because it is quite possible to get a lot of piety and prestige if you have a realm with 200 or more holdings).


Free Hostages: I think that there probably should be an event that fires when the war is declared that allows the defender to hand over the hostages in exchange for the war ending with a white peace so that you don't have to give a counter-hostage of some value for a rather unimportant hostage you'd be willing to release. I'm also a bit concerned about the counter-hostage, as it seems like someone could declare a war to save an unimportant hostage and end up with a far more valuable hostage of their own (e.g. saving your second daughter under Agnatic and getting the target's spare as a hostage). I also hope that the AI, at the very least, will have a distance limit on the CB, as it really shouldn't be sending its armies far from home to try to free a hostage.

As for prisoners, I think that you probably should suffer an opinion hit with your dynasty members (and the dynasty members of the prisoners) for putting the prisoners at risk, and possibly lose some prestige, but that you should be able to declare war when the target has a prisoner. The AI probably should be rather reluctant to do so unless it dislikes the prisoner in question, but if you hold someone's rival half-brother prisoner they shouldn't be overly reluctant to attack you (with the Free Hostages CB or another CB). I also think that the loser in a war should be required to release any prisoners/hostages they have in general, instead of just the other party and their heir, as it is rather silly if you utterly crush someone in a war and they still get to keep your children imprisoned and periodically torture them.

In general, a more robust hostage system would be good. For example, the ability to offer to release some vassal from prison in exchange for their child becoming your hostage would be nice, as would the ability to have a mutual hostage exchange of some kind to have a pseudo-NAP. I also think that the hostage taker should be required to treat the hostage well as long as the hostage's relatives refrain from taking hostile action against the hostage taker's family (though if the hostage should be discovered to be plotting against someone of the hostage taker's family you should probably be allowed to imprison them), as taking a hostage should be a way to threaten someone with harming the hostage if they move against you rather than a way to get a new prisoner to torture/throw in the oubliette. House arrest should probably be the expected form of imprisonment for hostages you are treating well, and if the hostage is married their spouse should probably be allowed to visit from time to time.


As for other CBs that would be nice, here are a few suggestions:

- A CB for nomads to subjugate another nomad realm (or posibly just to subjugate a vassal clan). This would probably help keeping some cultures in the steppes from being destroyed very early. Should probably be rather costly and have a time limit to keep someone from quickly absorbing a large part of the steppes (though the Mongols might get an exception to allow them to quickly move towards Russia).

- A "Punitive War" CB, for use e.g. if someone castrates you or a close family member, kills your heir, mistreats a hostage without reason, etc.. On success, the defender pays a large amount of money to the attacker, loses a large amount of prestige, and, if they inflicted some kind of mutiliation on you or your family member, the attacker gets to inflict it on them (if it is possible to inflict that particular mutiliation). The latter should probably be an event choice that only Cruel or similar AI characters take.

- An "Adventurer Expansion" conquest (probably duchy-tier) that adventurers that successfully conquered a duchy can use to expand a bit further. This would hopefully make adventurer realms more prone to using their remaining event troops to carve out a larger realm instead of sitting around hoping for claims if they didn't end up where they could holy war stuff to expand further.


Also, a few suggestions for existing CBs (and related things):

- Give holy wars a tech-related distance limit (e.g. bordering counties only at the start, counties sharing a sea zone at Mil Org/Shipbuilding 2, and up to two sea zones away at Mil Org/Shipbuilding 4; this would probably be a good idea for pagan ones as well, though the Norse, being seafaring, might be permitted an exception) and a piety cost (e.g. 100 piety, as for the pagan version). Doing the former should help prevent e.g. Lombard North Africa happening consistently in 769, and doing the latter should slow down the initial attacks on Semien, Asturias, etc.

- Make the Imperial Reconquest CB check for the duchies/geographical regions that make up the old Roman Empire rather than the kingdoms, as checking for the kingdoms can lead to some strange things if something de jure drifts (e.g. Lombardy being impossible to target because it de jure drifted into Germany, or Medina being a valid target because it drifted into Egypt). It isn't usually a big concern (especially since the Roman Empire generally doesn't form without player intervention), but it can be strange if it forms and it can/can't reconquer land it should/shouldn't have a CB for.

- Since we are getting more CBs allowing us to take a large amount of land, perhaps the conditions for Liberation revolts should be relaxed so that they can happen in any kingdom except for the top liege's capital kingdom instead of requiring that the kingdom has the proper culture and that there was a previous holder.

- Speaking of revolts, Religious and Heretic revolts currently are one single realm-wide revolt and take all occupied land, which can lead to some strange scenarios with the rebels forming a new realm that's going to fall apart because of the sheer distance between the provinces they take and also makes it relatively safe to have a large number of provinces following a specific heretical/heaten religion as you only will have a single revolt to worry about from those provinces. Perhaps they should instead happen on a duchy-by-duchy basis so that the resulting realms are more logical and so that you can get several revolts if you expand too quickly into wrong-religion land.

- De jure county claims currently have no distance limit, which sometimes leads to the AI using it against targets that are rather far from their current borders. Perhaps they should have a similar restriction to the one I suggested for holy wars above, as it makes far more sense for e.g. the Abbasids to go after Sanaa than Tangier if they have their 769 or 867 borders. Of course, this limit would punish Norway/Scandinavia a bit more due to there being three sea zones between Norway proper and the duchy of Orkney, but I'm sure something could be done to fix that (e.g. removing a sea zone or having an exception treating that particular case as being two sea zones rather than three for the purpose of that CB).

- Adventurer conquests can lead to e.g. the Pope getting attacked by a heathen or heretic without anyone lifting a finger to help. To counteract this, perhaps they could be split into a CB vs. co-religionists (with specific targeting logic preventing people from going after their rel head's capital duchy unless they are secular) and a CB that counts as a holy war that is used if the target has a different religion. In general, the Pope (and other non-secular rel heads) could really use a panic button that he can press if someone attacks him that calls basically all Catholics without an antipope to his side, as an attack on the Pope (especially by someone following another religion) probably should cause a reaction.

- Speaking of adventurers, raiding adventurers probably should be hostile to any realm they enter, as it can get quite silly when they aren't. I semi-frequently see nomadic raiders from the steppes ride all the way to Rome/Constantinople without anyone stopping them despite them riding through Catholic Italy/Lombardy in the former case or a strong ERE in the latter case, which doesn't make much sense.

- In general, the AI tends to be quite eager to expan into nomadic land in the steppes (though this seems to have gotten better recently), and the nomads semi-frequently expand into Perm/Rus/Ruthenia to a great extent. The former can often lead to the AI grabbing lots of land that it fails to upgrade enough to keep after the succession (particularly if it is a tribal realm that takes the land, as they tend to be short on money), or to e.g. the ERE blobbing its way to Mongolia instead of focusing on retaking formerly Roman land, neither of which is very sensible, and the latter can lead to the nomads spend a lot of time taking relatively worthless land instead of heading somewhere they might settle down. I think that it might be a good idea to make the AI extremely reluctant to take nomadic land unless it is de jure or it is rich (and thus able to upgrade the tribal land it gets), doesn't have too many counties with Nomadic Agitation already (as it should pacify land before moving on), and it has rather high (Mil Org) tech (as organizing an invasion of the steppes seems like it would be a hassle unless you are familiar with that kind of terrain), while the nomads (except for the Mongols) being taught to generally ignore tribal north of Carpathia and Tartaria unless the land in question is Magyar/Altaic.
 
currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!

Yes. Absolutely. But if you declare war on someone who has your child as a hostage, the AI should possibly execute them--that's the implied threat currently abstracted by the forbidding war declaration if they have a hostage. Allow players to choose the gamble and risk their family--have the AI decide whether to execute based on its traits, though with percent weighting rather than something like: if kind, 0 chance of executing. Rather, if kind, .5 chance of executing, if cruel, 2 times chance of executing. Etc.
 
Stop Raids

Response to a target raiding you, if you win you get some money and prestige, and the target (inc. vassals) cannot raid you while both you and they still live.

Related to this, a Danegeld system (or something with a more generic name, if it would cover basically all nomads, pagans, and other raiders) where you could get an NAP and protection vs. raiding from the other party (and possibly their vassals) in exchange for paying them off.
 
De Jure Duchy Claim
This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.

About time! Seeing France and he HRE fighting for one county at a time has always felt ridiculous.
 
I'm probably going to be in the minority, but I really don't like most of the proposed CBs. Forcing Christian rulers to rely on claims to expand emphasizes the importance of the marriage game, which is one of CK2s most interesting features. Expanding the number and power of CBs will dilute the importance of the marriage game and reduce interest in the game's characters.

In general, I like the slowed rate of expansion. it encourages a relative level of stability Christiandom that serves to make even small changes to the map interesting. And I can always play a Muslim ruler if I want to play a game where expand rapidly.

The only proposed CB I support is Free Hostage, which is a much-needed addition to the game. Though I don't think you should be able to use it if the target is willing to ransom their prisoner(s).
 
I see both realism and oversimplification issues with these CBs.

Forced Vassalization: I (only) like this CB - but the name should probably be "subjugation". To force-vassalize someone would be to subjugate them (a real vassal tenure would imply consent from both sides). However, it seems to me like this will be less frequently used since most of the time you can offer vassalization successfully as long as you have decent opinions. In either case, it might actually make a little bit of sense.

De Jure Duchy Claim: "This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain." But this is what's so good! It slows down fast grab of large lands and prevents easy blobbing. One of the few countering effects of making the game too easy is that you do have to fight a succession of wars. Seeing England and France fight for 100 years over some Normandy counties is just great. If you do not want to pay the price of fighting the war, I think it should be avoided altogether. Or, that you have a proper claimant with a legal claim to the full duchy. It feels like now you can just side-step the whole issue of marrying and building up a claimant base that you can use for expansion, and that is at least supposed to be a challenge. It feels like we're making the game easier for no clear gain.

Ducal County Conquest: "This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder." So now we are bypassing the whole point of the claim system. I already disliked the "fabricate claim" mechanic since it is such a simple way of expanding your realm (and hence modded it out), but also since it's a bit too abstracted - claiming false lineage or something like that should really be more involved if it should exist. Now we're just side-stepping that old, beautiful time when you have two nearby counties that try to outmaneuvre eachother by marriages, an angry claimant uncles.

Great Conquest: This sounds like a really bad CB. First of all, the Christian world should use the pope's blessed invasion, if anything. England wouldn't invade France without even a claim or some sort of entitlement. Feels like we're confusing Islam and Christianity here. Secondly, the king expansion of an empire by pressing entire kingdom claims is one of the parts that makes blobbing too easy. And then I include the part about finding a claimant.

Free Hostages: The reason you have hostages (or marriages) is to avoid wars from happening in the first place. If you'd declare war on your ally (to which you have a marriage) or on your enemy (who holds hostage), they'd simply kill those people on the first day of war. For this to make sense there'd have to be some "terror balance" in the sense that you yourself also hold similiar family members hostage to your enemy where you care less about the hostages that your enemy has than vice versa, e.g. your own hostages would have some good claim or so.

It feels like on many accounts, you're just trying to skip all the difficult parts about the game.
i dont know why paradox want to change the claim system for this :(
 
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