CK3 is too easy

[benthjones]

It's the ai's inability to use the game mechanics to the same extent the player can that leads to the lack of challenge. Most obvious is fabricating claims. If the ai was using that as much as the player can the map would get chaotic pretty quickly, so it's good that they don't, but it does kind of break the immersion for me that there's no drawback to spamming this and the player can quite easily claim, conquer, wait for the truce to end and rinse/repeat. The fact that I know that the ai can never replicate the things that I can do by just using the game mechanics available to me is a real shame.

My preferred method of increasing difficulty wouldn't be to add stat or economy buffs, just to make the ai competent at using the same tools available to me. In this way you can keep the current level of challenge for those who like it, while adding improvements to the ai behaviour at higher difficulty levels. Also I would add optional game rules that can restrict or add costs/risks to certain actions, like fabricating claims.

 

[grommile]

Most obvious is fabricating claims.

Funny thing: the AI is just as bad at using the "marriage game" as it is at using Fabricate Claim. Effective use of either one requires long-term strategic planning, which is not a thing that any of Paradox's grand strategy game AIs do much of.

 

[benthjones]

Funny thing: the AI is just as bad at using the "marriage game" as it is at using Fabricate Claim. Effective use of either one requires long-term strategic planning, which is not a thing that any of Paradox's grand strategy game AIs do much of.

Yeah, unfortunately it does speak of the development priorities when an ai isn't capable of using the same mechanics as the player when the game is released and the responses I've seen that show devs talking about this issue in terms of whether or not to give hard stat buffs to ai suggests that improving the decision-making isn't a possibility.

 

[grommile]

Yeah, unfortunately it does speak of the development priorities when an ai isn't capable of using the same mechanics as the player when the game is released and the responses I've seen that show devs talking about this issue in terms of whether or not to give hard stat buffs to ai suggests that improving the decision-making isn't a possibility.

Good long-term planning is a huge project, and bad long-term planning might well be worse than no long-term planning.

 

[Elomire]

It's the ai's inability to use the game mechanics to the same extent the player can that leads to the lack of challenge. Most obvious is fabricating claims. If the ai was using that as much as the player can the map would get chaotic pretty quickly, so it's good that they don't, but it does kind of break the immersion for me that there's no drawback to spamming this and the player can quite easily claim, conquer, wait for the truce to end and rinse/repeat. The fact that I know that the ai can never replicate the things that I can do by just using the game mechanics available to me is a real shame.

My preferred method of increasing difficulty wouldn't be to add stat or economy buffs, just to make the ai competent at using the same tools available to me. In this way you can keep the current level of challenge for those who like it, while adding improvements to the ai behaviour at higher difficulty levels. Also I would add optional game rules that can restrict or add costs/risks to certain actions, like fabricating claims.

If your goal is to paint the map sure however you can totally avoid to use such tools (fabricating claims) and enjoy a complete game without it.

I personnaly go for the RP experience and leave the events lead my characters stories.

Also i'm using some mods to make the game harder : Dark Ages, Better Marriage (AI), Better education (AI)

 

[mario1789]

The difficulty slider in this game is not in the settings. It's in the strategies you chose to employ. You can make the game a lot harder by choosing different strategies, traditions, perk builds, educations, traits. I think it's like Rimworld in this way. Some people like singularity killboxes, heatboxes, etc. and some people won't play with those because they like a better challenge.

Some people really don't like this non-slider to difficulty, but I'm okay with it.

 

[Kimlin1004]

The difficulty slider in this game is not in the settings. It's in the strategies you chose to employ. You can make the game a lot harder by choosing different strategies, traditions, perk builds, educations, traits. I think it's like Rimworld in this way. Some people like singularity killboxes, heatboxes, etc. and some people won't play with those because they like a better challenge.

Some people really don't like this non-slider to difficulty, but I'm okay with it.

Purposely picking the worst choices isn’t game difficulty it’s a work around for a broken feature.

 

[peteoj]

The thing is even as a roleplayer the game simply does not give you enough push back in any meaningful way, no one in your family dies, you always have kids no matter what, traits are far too easy to inherit especially with the op dynasty boosts, and more importantly the ai is completely passive. There are so many times where i'd be playing as england and be in civil wars or wars for expansion in wales and France or Scotland do absolutely nothing to me. Then when i do inevitable conquer wales i become the most powerful nation between all three of us and they completely give up on fighting me, whatever happened to defensive pacts? why dont they join forces to stop my expansions? why dont they take advantage of my internal termoil to gain lands? Why dont they try to murder me, claim my titles and lands, get into advantagous marriages with each other. The issue with ck3 right now above everything is the player is never challenged by both the game and the ai and that needs to change.

 

[peteoj]

It's the ai's inability to use the game mechanics to the same extent the player can that leads to the lack of challenge. Most obvious is fabricating claims. If the ai was using that as much as the player can the map would get chaotic pretty quickly, so it's good that they don't, but it does kind of break the immersion for me that there's no drawback to spamming this and the player can quite easily claim, conquer, wait for the truce to end and rinse/repeat. The fact that I know that the ai can never replicate the things that I can do by just using the game mechanics available to me is a real shame.

My preferred method of increasing difficulty wouldn't be to add stat or economy buffs, just to make the ai competent at using the same tools available to me. In this way you can keep the current level of challenge for those who like it, while adding improvements to the ai behaviour at higher difficulty levels. Also I would add optional game rules that can restrict or add costs/risks to certain actions, like fabricating claims.

The ai doesnt need to fabricate claims on each other, i think they just need to do it to you far more often. The players ability to get claims also needs to be nerfed heavily i agree, in ck2 im not saying it was hard but there was far more barriers to claiming huge tracts of lands in a quick amount of time.

 

[Haze88]

The thing is even as a roleplayer the game simply does not give you enough push back in any meaningful way, no one in your family dies, you always have kids no matter what, traits are far too easy to inherit especially with the op dynasty boosts, and more importantly the ai is completely passive. There are so many times where i'd be playing as england and be in civil wars or wars for expansion in wales and France or Scotland do absolutely nothing to me. Then when i do inevitable conquer wales i become the most powerful nation between all three of us and they completely give up on fighting me, whatever happened to defensive pacts? why dont they join forces to stop my expansions? why dont they take advantage of my internal termoil to gain lands? Why dont they try to murder me, claim my titles and lands, get into advantagous marriages with each other. The issue with ck3 right now above everything is the player is never challenged by both the game and the ai and that needs to change.

This is the real issue. None of your decisions truly have consequences no matter which button you press in those events and even just playing the game competently makes you overpowered to your neighbors to the point of them never attacking you. The AI seemingly has no foresight to plan nor any ability to react to what's happening in real time, even to each other. It always astounds me when I am in a war for no reason because my vassals have been chewing up lands unfettered for years with no pushback

 

[Gobla]

I think a major factor here is also the absolutely massive power-differences that are possible.

The difference between a MaA regiment with full numbers stationed in a holding with several buildings buffing it and a MaA regiment halfway to capacity either not stationed at all or in a holding with little to no bonuses is staggering and no amount of levies can compensate for that.

How do you balance a game where an experienced player can have a military might that's likely near hundreds of times more powerful by consistently expanding their MaA and upgrading holdings compared to a less experienced player that's still overwhelmed by CK3s many mechanics and thus hasn't paid much attention to their MaA?

You can't. If the AI is a challenge to the experienced player they'll completely crush less experienced players. If the AI is a challenge to less experienced players they'll get completely crushed by experienced players as they are now.

The difference between a military with full and stationed MaA and a military without needs to be vastly reduced.

I think that goes for many of CK3's mechanics. The difference between a player whose learned the mechanics and a player that hasn't been interacting with them as they're still learning is way too big.

The only way to make the AI more of a challenge is by greatly reducing the vast gulf in power that's currently possible.

 

[Silens]

The difference between a military with full and stationed MaA and a military without needs to be vastly reduced.

I think the easy availability of experienced elite troops with high-end equipment has to change.

It's just too easy to buy elite warriors with years of training and experience for a bit of gold, and to have them equipped, trained and ready to teleport deploy within weeks. In reality, sourcing iron was expensive, making quality steel was expensive, having craftsmen working those materials was slow and expensive, outfitting one single knight was expensive, getting several horses - especially warhorses - was expensive and not easily available. Even a realm like France couldn't equip all its knights, nor did they reach the quality of i.e. Milanese steel. That's why they had to buy it from Italy and other places with expert artisans. It was slow and expensive.

The game needs some form of resource management, MaA should draw from a limited manpower pool, reinforcement/training rates have to account for how long it takes to train certain troops. Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that you can just buy "Varangian Veterans" or Cataphracts? Just have a tradition, some money, and voila, there you have a full army of experienced veterans.

The issue is that those things are not only simplified in the game, the historical problems around building a military are completely removed from the game. If you have the money, you can even sit on a small island in the ocean and just conjure up 20k fully trained and outfitted knights out of thin air. Because why not?

The next problem I see is how you can just teleport your troops around, summon them everywhere in your realm, and leave your hinterlands unmanned and unguarded. Any realm can just throw its entire military weight around, disregarding the historical reasons for why troops were stationed throughout the realm, to guard borders, to keep regions safe. That strategic aspect is completely missing from the game.

Big empires historically had access to a lot of good troops, yet they lost against smaller foes. Because they couldn't just summon the entire realm's worth of troops at one place within 2 weeks as one huge doomstack. They had to guard their borders, after all, even if they had a war going on the side of the empire.

Just reducing values of MaA units and removing buffs wouldn't address the issues at hand. It would merely hide them, without solving the fundamental mistakes.

 

[mario1789]

Purposely picking the worst choices isn’t game difficulty it’s a work around for a broken feature.

I don't see it as a work around. I see it as exploring other viable ways of playing the game. You're entitled to your opinion ofc.

I take it you don't play Rimworld then.

 

[Hydra360ci]

I just had a situation where my Empire broke into 2 Empires.
My character lived to the age of 103 years old. She outlived her kids and their grandkids, so when she died the Heir had no claims to get the Empire back. The Faith had no Head because I was experimenting, and my "No one comes to Flika" goal, didn't allow me to re-diverge the Culture or Hybernize it; so I wan't able to acquire the Egypt Tech boost.

Got me thinking... if they gave us more Rules and more achievements for activating rules. It would give us (the users) a lot more challenge with the current AI.

I mean reacquiring that land turned into a real chore.

I'm currently one county away from triggering the Fika Achievement (would have been sooner, but I Reformed the first time not realizing that it needed to be Diverged), I've slowly reacquired a good portion of what I lost... but I'm 2 Heirs from the Empire split. The wars are easy. It's not having claims to the land and only being able to acquire a Duchy at a time, then needing to wait for the Truce to end (and sometimes forgetting) that is slowing the whole process down to a crawl. If the whole game was like this.... I think the current AI would be more than capible of keeping my expansion, in-check.

 

[Georilla]

I agree. I played CK2 on and of through the years, but I could feel myself struggling with the depth of some mechanics more often. With CK3 I never struggled at any point with the mechanics. But I do feel this game does roleplay better and generally improved on the idea of roleplay, if you compare where CK2 was at the same stage. I am sure they also held back on certain mechanics for future DLC, although I am not a big fan of that practice.

The issue for me right now is that the roleplay aspect alone isn't enough for me to not become bored, because of eventually feeling like the main boss of the world.
I currently "fixed" the problem by not fixating on the "groom perfect heir and consolidate territory" gameplay loop. Instead, I pretty much only play with the Inheritance mod. That mod forces me to take every offspring into consideration and that I can not "gerrymander" my way into feeding the perfect primary heir to consolidate my power after death. Instead, there is a higher chance of me becoming someone that has to function in an underdog position once again. That also gives me more interesting roleplay opportunities within the dynasty. It will likely lead to more conflicts from within. It's still possible to become top dog again and continue to paint the map if I desire, but it will be a recuring obstacle if I am not guaranteed to be the primary heir after death. Hell, the recently crowned perfect primary heir might even screw up my empire before I fight my way to becoming top dog again.

I also prefer to not "meta" the game anyway, meaning I stay true to the traits of the character. The game is basically forcing you in that direction anyway with the stress mechanic, but I make it a case to focus on it as much as possible.

 

[MyLordFellington]

Agreed. Here's to the next update adding some difficulty.

 

[SauronGorthaur]

Well, yes you can. But many have different requirements for fun. CK is a game that tries to make a balancing act between strategy and roleplay.
As of now, there is no real strategy in the game. Especially with all the new feature that makes your character so strong in a short amount of time.
This game is not challenging when I only need 30 years to become unbeatable by the game. There is no real challenge in this game and challenge is fun. So for me it is not fun.

There's also no real roleplay (because, for starters, the driving force behind RP are the events, yet random selector of characters to play a role in the next event doesn't really take into account if the given event would make any sense for them), so it sort of balances itself out that way.

 

[Kubissus_PL]

It's only a problem if you intentionally treat this game as a map painter.

 

[Emperor 1997]

It's only a problem if you intentionally treat this game as a map painter.

But the Game is a "Map Painter" Game, because the Game's Main Objective is, to place your Dynasty on many Thrones you can(independent or your Vassals).

The main Goal in CK3 is, to secure, that every Child of your Dynasty, which can be granted a Title, has a Title.


So, it is a "Map Painter" Game, because it is more an Grand Strategy Game than an RPG Game, even the Devs have tried to make it an RPG Game, but it will never be a RPG Game, as long the Players can keep playing their Campaigns, even their Character has died, because in all RPG Games, when your Character dies, it is Game Over and you need to reload a Save Game.


The Player has the Objective, to guide their Dynasty through the Middle Ages, even the Release Trailer says this.

 

[Kimlin1004]

It's only a problem if you intentionally treat this game as a map painter.

Or if you want to have actual consequences to decisions or if you want an actual challenge to anything your doing or if you don’t want to make the worst choice every time.

These types of takes are so ridiculous. The game is too easy in every single aspect, not just war and not just painting the map. As I’ve said already, having to purposely make all of the wrong decisions isnt a mechanic or game design it’s a flaw.