CK3 Dev Diary #19: Factions and Civil Wars

[Morrowind3]

The progress bars that let you keep an eye on exactly when factions are gonna revolt is a bit game-y but I like how popular revolts and peasant revolts are handled.


I assume if you're a different culture as your lord you can join in with a cultural revolt just like the AI? If you're the only (or most powerful) landed vassal in a popular revolt, do you take leadership (and thus the titles) after the revolt instead of becoming vassal to a random rowdy nobody generated for the rebellion?

 

[Agamidae]

Suggestion: can you show the actual attrition number instead of the skull icon?
I assume the skull is attrition, correct?

 

[Kadanz]

So will we finally see a somewhat stable byzantine empire this time instead of one that's constantly hopping from one civil war into the other?

 

[Morrowind3]

Love all of this!
Really like that you can marry your family to your vassals now, adds a lot of fun diplomacy to the game and is historically accurate (I believe?), it's one of the main features I always wanted in ck2 and should make it more interesting when managing a large realm.

You could already marry family to vassals and keep them out of factions with a non-aggression pact in CK2, actually

 

[Baron von Shoes]

In the dev diary you said that the populist (By the way, why aren't they called nationalists or something along those lines? At least they seem to be all about that...) faction's new realm get a fancy generated character. Is that always the case? I think that if the faction has any landed character as a member, it would be much more interesting to have him (or the most powerful one) to become the ruler, since its a 'familiar face'.

Nationalism as a concept didn't really exist yet in our time period, and the Populist Faction is somewhat different in that regard. It's not necessarily about unifying all [culture] peoples into a single realm, but rather about a group of disgruntled peasants being unhappy with foreign or infidel rulership and deciding to do something about it. They don't particularly care about making a single unified realm for all [culture] or [religion] peoples, they just want to change their own situation.

We initially toyed with letting landed characters become leaders of the Populist Faction (and the eventual rulers of the splinter-realm) but that ended up causing a myriad of problems as landed characters make/break alliances, join/leave factions, gain/lose hooks, and ultimately create way more edge cases than we could reasonably account for. However, if an existing unlanded claimant is floating around in the character pool somewhere (for example, a displaced King of Castille if the Umayyads manage to subjugate all of Spain) they will become the Populist Leader instead of having the game generate a new one.

What is the stance of populist factions against other realms, and would it possible to interact with them if you are ruler of their religion and culture?
A very illogical and frustrating situation in CK2 was to invade the Umayyads in Spain as the Kingdom of Asturias, be winning the fight against all odds, and suddenly have a visigothic catholic rebellion against the Umayyads spawn on top of your armies and destroy them. So at least, if it is not possible to interact with them, could they be not hostile towards every single entity in the world?

I completely understand what you're saying, but unfortunately the realities of our warfare system require all parties in competing wars to be hostile to each other. Otherwise you can end up in the extremely frustrating situation where as Asturias you have occupied half of the Umayyad's territory, the Catholic rebellion has occupied the other half, and neither of you can earn enough war score to actually win the war.

Can I use a hook to persuade a fellow vassal to join my faction?

Absolutely!

 

[LordofLight]

Absolutely!

But what if you use a hook on a character to not join a faction while someone is using a hook on them to join a faction?

I can see this happening in multiplayer. Or if AI uses hooks.

"Oh no they know I committed mass murder and are having me join this faction. But this other guy knows I committed mass murder and wants me to not join this faction."

 

[Denkt]

I completely understand what you're saying, but unfortunately the realities of our warfare system require all parties in competing wars to be hostile to each other. Otherwise you can end up in the extremely frustrating situation where as Asturias you have occupied half of the Umayyad's territory, the Catholic rebellion has occupied the other half, and neither of you can earn enough war score to actually win the war.

Have you consider allow two sides to make an Alliance as long as they don't have similar wargoals, like the Catholic rebels would want independence for the Catholic territories while for example a ruler want to take Control over a non catholic duchy. In such case maybe the two sides could make an Alliance and press both their wargoals in one Peace deal and combine their warscore.

 

[lozikk]

gone are the days of “Duke McPeasantFace has declared the 19th Orthodox Uprising on you.”

But does it? Even though it's in a form of a faction now, what will prevent it from forming again and again? Will there be some kind of "exhaustion" in counties to prevent endless rebellions?

 

[LordofLight]

I always wished I could join in and support rebels. Especially when playing zealous characters.

 

[Andrzej I]

However, if an existing unlanded claimant is floating around in the character pool somewhere (for example, a displaced King of Castille if the Umayyads manage to subjugate all of Spain) they will become the Populist Leader instead of having the game generate a new one.

Excellent! I'm glad to hear that this will be the case. Definitely fits with the CK3 declared focus of making individual characters matter more

I'm curious, though, is there a way the game determines which character will be the leader if there are multiple possible candidates? Random? By Fame? Some other means?

 

[Callid]

Hmm, I might have missed something, but I couldn't see anything saying that multiple populist factions are possible. Does that mean that, if there's a populist Muslim faction around, no populist Christian faction can form (assuming you're Norse or whatever)? Or can they "replace" one another?

 

[grzegorz444]

Unlike in CK2, when a civil war is declared faction members do not form a new temporary realm. While they nominally remain vassals of their liege, they will immediately stop providing taxes and levies to them, and their liege will lose access to certain powers (such as imprisonment).

So, faction member fight separately - similar AGOT Mega war system ?

 

[Salje]

Can new rulers join in the ongoing rebellion? Or if I keep being tyrannical towards my non-rebelling vassals during the rebellion will they just start a second rebellion?

 

[Baron von Shoes]

But does it? Even though it's in a form of a faction now, what will prevent it from forming again and again? Will there be some kind of "exhaustion" in counties to prevent endless rebellions?

Crushing a Peasant or Populist Revolt will give all counties in the faction a substantial opinion boost of their holder for 10 years (subject to change, balance, and of course modding) which heavily disincentivizes them from creating or joining new factions. This gives you time to address whatever problems were making the counties unhappy in the first place (including converting their culture or religion to yours, if that is how you want to solve it).

Hmm, I might have missed something, but I couldn't see anything saying that multiple populist factions are possible. Does that mean that, if there's a populist Muslim faction around, no populist Christian faction can form (assuming you're Norse or whatever)? Or can they "replace" one another?

Multiple Claimant and Populist Factions can exist at a time, though the AI generally prefers to join existing ones if the faction's goals are similar enough to their own.

There can only ever be one Independence, Liberty, and Peasant Rabble Faction at a time.

 

[Baron von Shoes]

Can new rulers join in the ongoing rebellion? Or if I keep being tyrannical towards my non-rebelling vassals during the rebellion will they just start a second rebellion?

Second rebellion. That said, since Factions will only revolt if they think they have a good chance of beating you in battle, having two Factions revolting at once is generally a bad idea...

 

[aantia]

However, if an existing unlanded claimant is floating around in the character pool somewhere (for example, a displaced King of Castille if the Umayyads manage to subjugate all of Spain) they will become the Populist Leader instead of having the game generate a new one.

This is brilliant! I can forsee lots of actual historical situations working far more logically now.

I completely understand what you're saying, but unfortunately the realities of our warfare system require all parties in competing wars to be hostile to each other. Otherwise you can end up in the extremely frustrating situation where as Asturias you have occupied half of the Umayyad's territory, the Catholic rebellion has occupied the other half, and neither of you can earn enough war score to actually win the war.

Couldn't you (not necessarily on release) do something similar to how EU4 handles this? In EU4 you can 'Support Rebels', where you send cash to rebels in a country and this makes their troops non-hostile to yours, as well as giving their revolt a boost if/when it occurs. I think that's quite plausible in the situation Kukumarro described.

 

[grzegorz444]

Populist Factions are the more dangerous type of county faction and form when counties wish to be governed by a ruler of their own culture and/or religion. While Populist Factions are created by and primarily consist of counties, sympathetic vassals in your realm may also pledge loyalty to their cause. A successful Populist revolt will cause all member counties and vassals to break away and form a new realm!

While an Independence Faction causes all members split off into their own separate realms, a Populist Faction will create a single realm with all members united under one ruler. That ruler will always share the Faction’s culture and religion, and as a hero of the liberation war they will almost always be a competent commander. In addition, a successful Populist Faction will automatically usurp or create an appropriate title for their leader to hold, which can even generate new Kingdom-tier titles in certain circumstances!

So, succesfull pupulist can create always not existed or random realm, or also curretly established for example king of France hold Duchy of Normandy as secondary and normandy populist want his own, local ruler ?

 

[Lordy's]

[Can I use hooks to persuade a fellow vassal to join a faction]
Absolutely!

Nice. Can one also use a hook to get another vassal under our common liege out of a faction that I don't want him to be in?

Multiple Claimant and Populist Factions can exist at a time, though the AI generally prefers to join existing ones if the faction's goals are similar enough to their own.

So they do care about their opinion of the claimant when considering whether to join or not?
And can a liege join a vassals war to help him in his fight against a faction? So that you can defend your fellow dynasty members against unreasonable claimant factions.
And the other way around: Can (and do) vassals help their liege fighting against rebellion?

 

[Choorus]

Until now CK2 looks more like an RPG-themed revamp of CK2 with some 3D graphics put onto it rather than a new game. I keep hearing that the big hurdles of CK2 decade old engine are going to stay. AFAIK the terrain won't ever change, while it really should over four centuries of intense settlement. An area was a virgin wood devoid of humans in 1066? Well, it would be a shame if it had to stay that way...
Factions getting at least on par with HIP? Not gonna happen-somehow it's too taxing for modern computers. So instead of reworking them , so they become meaningful and engaging, we're going to prioritise compatibility with potato PCs. Great.
Then we're supposed to get the ridiculous religion re-moulding while we don't have any dynamic to the existing ones. Unimportant stuff like the Great Schism, celibacy of the clergy, investiture of bishops, scholastics, Gallic church autonomy, inquisition, way of electing the pope, mendicant orders, flagellants.
There's a lot of stuff to be fixed in CK2 and until now the RPG part and hooks are the only two I can recall. What do we actually get from upgrading from CK2 to CK3 apart from this one aspect?

 

[Alssadar]

Will foreign powers have the ability to influence a faction or civil war? The Encourage Dissent council task in CK2 was pretty limited to a single county, and I can only give so many gifts to rebels while they stockpile it for their ransom. Or maybe have your spymaster be able to find out rebel factions and their dissent, so you have the perfect time to strike.
One famous example was how Philippe Augustus encouraged Hal and Richard's rebellions against Henry II (while Geoffrey died from an injury during a tournament on one such diplomatic missions), I disliked watching independence rebellions get put down by a rival that I'd like to see humbled.