CK2Plus - Balance improvements, more kingdoms and empires, more ambitions and plots

[von Sachsen]

For what it's worth, I've had multiple instances of the AI fabricating claims on me. That said, it was always some minor count or baron, and they never pressed their claims. On another note, I've seen a strange tendency for Spain (or rather the Castile+Leon+maybe-Galicia) to be inherited by France.

 

[NephilimNexus]

I found that you could make the world's most stable realm very easily just by appointing cousins to everything.

/approves

 

[Trashed]

Ran a test game untill 1254 with halved levy costs in defines.lua. HRE splintered mostly. France stayed the same. Kingdom of Aragon took over most of Spain with one large islamic state dominating the south. North Africa stayed stable. Italy was taken over in the south by the newly formed kingdom of Sicily. Northern Italy splintered into independent states that then went stagnant. Caucasus was constantly in war. Kingdom of Rus took over most of what is now Russia. Rest of Northern and Eastern Europe stayed rather stable. England had lots of civil wars but never splintered. Scotland never did anything.

Observed that there never were any more wars than could fit on page 1 of the ledger.

Again, the larger realms wage wars as expected. Smaller realms however seem to go stagnant. Something must be holding them back as my vanilla test run showed them waging wars as often as the larger realms.


Incidently, sorry to be a bother but what file have you modded to add death causes, Wiz? Your mod seems to be the only one to have done so and I'm really curious to where you can find that data.

 

[Callendor]

What are the differences between this mod and "the Prince and the Thane"?

 

[Trovador]

Some feedback from my last Duke of Provence -> King of Burgundy game:
--The HRE lost most of Burgundy (Provence, Savoy, Dauphine) and some of Italy (Toscana, Pisa, Urbino) in the first 15 years, but as these lands are not de jure part of the Empire, it's fairly acceptable. The Empire even reconquered some of the italian minors a few decades later.
--Pisa conquered Corsica, Sardinia, Salerno and the remaining coast of Toscana with little to no resistence; Sicily seems unable to retake Salerno either, even after two or three wars. I myself conquered Sardinia and Corsica rather easily from them, however.
--While Pisa (and, in my previous game, Genoa) went gallore on its conquests, I never saw Venice move a finger to conquer anything.
--Iberia is an interesting place: the Christian-Muslim dynamics are very good, with both sides moving the religious borders, unifying and breaking from times to times, but unable to conquer the other side. At the current moment, Navarra took over the former lands of Castille, Leon and Galicia after Toledo collapsed, and Al-Xarq and Aragon exchange a few provinces every couple of decades.
--The crusade results are bugged. There were two sucessful crusades for Egypt, and the Pope was the main contributor in both. The result: italian counts gained the provinces, but they stayed as vassals to the Duke of Alexandria or to the Caliph, being shortly after revoked.
--Some heresies had moderate success, but eventually failed to Holy Wars, conversions or muslims. Novgorod become Iconoclast, too, and they are resisting the other russians rather well.
--England, Scandinavia and France are pleasantly stable: they had few or no civil wars, however they had major wars against the greater powers, and the results are balanced too.
--Lotharingia formed in Lower Lorraine, and they are going to incorporate Bavaria very soon.
--The Rurikovich formed the Kingdom of Lithuania, and they are unifying Russia quickly now.

 

[Zaltys]

Dunno if these are of any use, but here's some further data:

Observer game, 1450.

Moral authority:
Catholic 100, Orthodox 81, Sunni 100, Shiite 58, Pagan, 54, Tengri 56, Suomenusko 42.

Largest realms:
Holy Roman Empire 805, Byzantine Empire 317, Kingdom of Rus 235, Kingdom of England 232 (part of HRE), Kingdom of Scotland 150, Republic of Aquitaine 148, Duchy of Cherson 139, Kingdom of Frisia 135 (part of HRE), Kingdom of Arabia 120, Kingdom of Croatia 115, Sultanate of Al-Xarq 108, Emirate of Esfahan 102

No heresies until the very end of the game, when Byzantine suddenly converted to iconoclast.
Kingdom of Ghana never formed Mali Empire, despite holding those provinces for most of the game (not enough prestige?).

 

[timetogetaway]

Well, for what i've seen in 1.08 version of CK2+ AI rulers does not assign any job to their chancellors. Maybe it was bad luck, but i've played for 80 years with 2 characters as polish count.
Both of them were chancellors of Kingdom of Poland, and for those 80 years they were unemployed all the time, while in previous versions my chcarcter with chancellor position were fabricating claims all the time.

And also I've noticed (or maybe it was blocked) that in new version AI king don't want to push his vassals claims. I've gained claim on Marienburg and my king preffered to declare holy war on pruthenians then push my claim.

Well I can definitively say that I tend to see AI forging claims as much as me. Every couple of years I'm presented with either the event that goes "Dude, DUDE. Some HRE goon is forging a claim on your province!" "Well that turd-face better not!" "Welp. He did it. Time to start stockpiling cash for mercenaries." -25 Relationship.

Or the one that goes "Dude, DUDE. Some HRE goon is forging a claim on your province! You can either bribe him, kill him, or ignore him." "...Why are you even asking me the question? This game isn't called Cuddle Kings. Off the sucker, I'll take the piety hit." -10 piety.

I tend to play contested border provinces, though, so I see a lot of hate from various people. Hanging onto Forez+Lyon as an independent is rough unless you meticulously orchestrate a French civil war via stabby-stabbing or just holding off the hordes of Franks with mercenaries. :C

Long story short, yeah I think the AI are using their chancellors. What I CAN see being a problem is whether or not they press it. I halved the maintenance costs for troops as per what Wiz said earlier to try and my Europe's never looked more piecemeal.

edit: Also screw the HRE and their doomstacks.

 

[Rylock]

Muslims are winning in Spain...only Leon is left

This is the thing I see most often: the Muslims picking away at Spain until there's maybe a bit of Castile and Aragon left, if they don't actually push into southern France. Perhaps it might be worth examining why this happens? I've heard people say that the Catholic Spanish states do sometimes win... but in the last four or five games of CK2Plus that I've played the Muslim states always dominate, even when Crusades are called against them. Seems like they have the advantage.

From my (outside) perception, it seems like the Catholic states spend more time fighting each other than co-operating to fight the Muslims. They all have claims on each other's territories, so as soon as a ruler dies suddenly they're at war... and the Muslim states will swoop in with a Holy War. Rinse and repeat and suddenly the Muslims have won.

The in-fighting isn't entirely a-historical... but why did the Catholics win, exactly, if the Muslims had better technology and were more united? I rarely see them fighting with each other, or at least not the major ones like Cordoba and Beja. Or, if they do, the Catholic states aren't in a position to take advantage of the fighting (perhaps they're just too weak by that point).

 

[zeress]

Historically? A lot of factors that can't be reflected in the game i.e. El Cid making friends/alliances with some muslims so that they'd help him bash other muslims etc. It's not like the iberian muslims were much friendlier to one another than the iberian kings where. I believe even once Spain was essentially formed there we still several muslim vassals that had simply subjugated to christian rule as well.

The Muslims WEREN'T more united, in fact if you just skip through the game start time you'll notice pretty much a deadlock for a very long time until the Iberian kings finally win out due to things not reflect able in current game mechanics (i.e. El Cid etc).

Note the time span required for the entirety of the reconquesta, specifically the time range that the game takes place in.

 

[Wizzington]

I take it there is no way to have different relationship modifier depending on the closeness of the relative?

Nope.

 

[timetogetaway]

Potential bug here. So the Pope just won a crusade called for Egypt (yet again--the pope always wins the crusades without fail for me), but instead of creating an independent Crusader State there are now just a bunch of Catholic Prince-Bishops and one sad-sack count who are under the rule of the Emir of Aswan & Alexandria, ultimately making them part of the Shiite Caliphate!

Is the pope being devious and seeking to undo Islam from the inside? He's not being very subtle about it.

 

[Wizzington]

Yeah, that's a bug that's fixed for next version.

 

[Dawkins]

A couple of possible bugs:

1) Win a war ambition doesn't seem to be working all the time. As Byzantines in a 1077 start I pressed a title claim on the duchy of Armenia Minor, and a Ducal claim on a county in cherson and it didn't trigger.

2) Byzantine honoury titles which have in their description "can only be given to close relatives" can actually be given to anyone.

 

[timetogetaway]

Yeah, that's a bug that's fixed for next version.

So in the current version do crusades not result in the creation of Crusader States?

Also I am beginning to see what players are mentioning about stagnation. It's about 1200 in my game and:

+France's only wars have been minor ones to reclaim Normandie from an independent duke
+Germany's only wars have been abortive attempts by various vassals to fight the tyranny of the HRE
+Iberia has settled into a mexican standoff between Cordoba, Castille+Leon+Galacia, and Beja
--Curiously enough Aragon has done 0 expanding despite a handful of independent, Muslim OPM's. Perhaps this is the AI being smart and not doing a holy war due to the likelihood of a muslim dogpile?
+Southern Italy has done nothing since forming Sicillia about 150 years ago.
+Northern Italy is awash with independants who seem content to live in harmony with each other and the monstrous France/German kingdoms right at their borders
+No idea what is going on in eastern europe as eastern europe is a mystery to me.
+As mentioned above, the silly First Crusade resulted in prince-bishops joining the Shiite Caliphate. They promptly had their titles revoked.
+The Middle East in general is just a bunch of happy muslim princes sitting on their hands


Only Byzantium has done stuff, and that stuff stopped about 50 years back after they took bits and pieces of territory around the northern Black Sea. Also Byzantium (and the HRE, to a lesser extent) is very stable and successful. Too stable and successful IMO.

edit: And this is after I halved maintenance costs. I'm starting a new game to try and see what happens/if this trend continues.

 

[Wizzington]

I will look into the whole stagnation thing, run a few handsoff games and make my own assessment. If necessary I will restore female inheritable claims or do something else to spice things up.

 

[Pitt The Elder]

Stagnation might also depend on how long you play in one sitting. Generally a resign-reload will stir the AI pot a little bit; been that way since EU3, also happened in Vic2.

 

[DrixDZanth]

Hello!

So I've managed to sort out the empire bug I was having before.
Now I'm having a new problem which, apparently, ISN'T a new problem and was supposedly patched.

I keep getting this, whenever I try to press a claim:
(it may keep the old attached image, please only refer to the image with MS painted text )

I've tried everything. Giving the claimant a county in order to make certain he is a vassal, appeasing him. Even winning using the pictured victory conditions grants the guy his duchy, but attempts to have him accept vassalization fall flat.

What gives?

-I've patched both CK2+ and CK2 to most current versions.
-Ignore the attached thumbnail
-This occurs when I'm trying to press a claim after inviting the claimant to the court.

 

[Wizzington]

You can't just press any claim on behalf of a vassal in CK2+. It has to be a claim of a lower title than the vassal's own title, to avoid the whole invite claimant, give barony, press claim exploit. So if you have a vassal Duke you can press County or Barony claims on his behalf, a vassal King you can press Duchy claims and so on. Otherwise it has to be someone of your dynasty or a de jure title.

 

[DrixDZanth]

Thank you so much Wiz!
This makes a lot of sense.

So to clarify... let's say I want to acquire the Duchy of Provence the following method is invalid:
1. Invite courtier with claim on Duchy of Provence
2. Declare war using the courtier's claim.
3. Win war and he becomes a landed vassal under my reign.

So, this is NOT what's supposed to happen, correct? (I was mislead by the fact that when I moused over the declare war options, it promised me that he WOULD become my vassal).

Instead, in order to press the claim of a duchy he needs to be a Duke or King under my reign already?

 

[Wizzington]

To press the claim of a Duchy he would need to be a King. I'm planning to change it in the future so you can also press claims on behalf of vassals that have been your vassals for a long time - I'm mainly just trying to plug the invite claimaint -> give title -> press claim -> revoke title (rinse repeat) exploit.

Are you sure it said he would become your vassal? Can you screenshot that?