CKIII really needs to be more challenging

[Tiax]

A random AI will (assuming a normal distribution) make the worst decision at the same rate as the optimal decision. A better than average AI will make a better decision than average on average. If we include randomness in the AI behavior, it will still occasionally make an optimal decision, so you are not correct in saying the AI would be static (you don't need to implement it statically). You are making the comparison between fully random and fully static, neither is how one builds proper AI. Ideally we have different fixed AI (basically have different AI strategies which can be selected randomly) with some randomness, but if I had to choose between the two, fully static would be far better than fully random. So yes, randomness isn't necessarily a bad thing, but randomness should always be a very small component to any AI.

What's the optimal strategy for rock-paper-scissors?

 

[fodazd]

My personal opinion: I agree that the single biggest improvement to get a more challenging game would be to make the AI play in a remotely competent manner. This includes their choice of marriages, their choice of when and why to declare war and their control over their armies while they are actually fighting a war. However: I think the *most important* weakness of the AI when compared to a player is that a player is able to effectively play around factions and partition, and the AI can't. And given the state of AI in most paradox games, I have *no* hope that this is going to improve.

When it comes to factions, I think the best way would be to have a difficulty game rule about how likely vassals are to join factions against the player, but this should *not* have an effect on factions against the AI. Or maybe have two separate game rules about how likely vassals are to join factions against the player or against the AI. The point is that I want to have *some* challenge from factions as a player without having all the AI controlled realms implode immediately.

When it comes to partition, I think the best way to go would just be to make it much less punishing for everyone, for example by making sure that inheriting a duchy always comes with inheriting at least 3 counties within that duchy. This would have no effect on the player, but it would make AI realms much more stable on succession than they are currently.

 

[pengoyo]

A random AI will (assuming a normal distribution) make the worst decision at the same rate as the optimal decision. A better than average AI will make a better decision than average on average. If we include randomness in the AI behavior, it will still occasionally make an optimal decision, so you are not correct in saying the AI would be static (you don't need to implement it statically). You are making the comparison between fully random and fully static, neither is how one builds proper AI. Ideally we have different fixed AI (basically have different AI strategies which can be selected randomly) with some randomness, but if I had to choose between the two, fully static would be far better than fully random. So yes, randomness isn't necessarily a bad thing, but randomness should always be a very small component to any AI.

There are plenty of games where there in no optimal static strategy, because if you use a static strategy your opponent can counter that strategy with the proper response. As @Tiax mentions, rock-paper-scissors is a great example of this as the optimal strategy is to randomly pick between rock-paper-scissors with one third probability for each (note strategies that incorporate randomness don't use a normal distribution, they use a distribution tailored to the game at hand). The problem you are having is assuming there is an optimal static strategy regardless of what your opponent does, which if that was true you would be right, but lots of games are built with rock-paper-scissors elements in them such that the optimal thing to do depends on what your opponent does. It is these styles of games where randomness is generally a part of the optimal strategy. And Ck3 has many rock-paper-scissor style elements (the MaA being a pretty on the nose example).

Also I never said that the options are only randomness or only static, I specifically mention randomness as "having a place" or being "incorporated" in to a strategy, which I feel all suggest it being a mixture of the two as would probably be the result for any strategy from such a complex game. I even give suggestion of when would be good to hardcode in static strategies and why a logical CK3 strategy would have some randomness, so I don't know where this accusation of me being black-or-white on this topic is coming from, when I'm giving suggestion for how both can play a role. I also never cover how much randomness is a good or bad thing in an AI (just that it is a balancing act). In fact I mainly talk about randomness in it's relation to building an optimal strategy, which as I pointed out doesn't apply to CK3.

To your point there is an issue with predictability of hardcoded AI, but even static AI is not frequently a bad thing, because it can create a logical AI that players understand if behavior is based on personalities. Good examples of this are already in Paradox and Creative Assembly games. The diplomacy/interaction system is a great example of a hardcoded system that takes personalities into account. Different personalities affect the evaluation. AI behavior (acceptance/decline) is based on a fixed set of parameters that get evaluated. Overall this leads to good AI behavior **if** those decisions are implemented logically.

I point out that there is a balancing act when using randomness and if used too much it can lead to the exact problem you are giving back to me, so I don't think you understood what I was saying, which could be my bad as maybe I should have been more clear.

But I do want to point out there is a difference between understandable what is understandable to the player and what is logical. As the a logical thing for an AI to do in a game where the player could counter their strategy is to be unpredictable (optimally if using a random strategy that is mixed in such a way that the player can't exploit it), but that doesn't always make for good AI behaviour as we have both pointed out that it can make the AI feel as it is not acting understandably.

Of course, every game you can learn to beat the AI by looking at their tendencies. Of course, if you hardcode a bad AI, then it will be worse than random options (eg see the discussion by the devs about Victoria 2 Capitalist AI build priority).

Not with many two player games, many of which are solved and so the computer can be taught the optimal strategy (which might be static or random depending on the game) and this optimal strategy can't be exploited as it beats all other strategies. In fact such games the AI is usually programmed to not play optimally such that the player stands a fighting chance and can actually have fun.

Creative Assembly AI developers have actually talked about the difference between hardcoded AI strategies and more modern AI algorithms, and from their lessons, hardcoded strategies, when done correctly, lead to better AI results than using trees or neural nets. (Eg Rome, Shogun, and Midieval 2 they implemented AI strategies by coding in Art of War/known military strategies, Empire, Rome 2, and later they used Neural Nets to train, turns out the AI performs far better using simpler more logical based strategies). This is primarily due to 1) resource restriction available in a video game to process neural nets vs simplicity of evaluating a FSM, and 2) complexity of translating a video game into a neutral net/learning algorithm state space vs FSM simplicity of representing the game state.

Sounds interesting and I'd love to read about it, but this has nothing to do with randomness versus static. Both random and static strategies can be hardcoded, just means that the AI isn't changing or updating it's strategy in response to how the player responds (a hardcoded AI might be following a decision tree as you mention, which can include both random or static decisions, but unlike what is possible with modern AI it won't be changing the actual structure of the decision tree based on what the player is doing). Plus a AI that is capable of learning new strategies can learn both static or random strategies. So again this tells us nothing about random versus static strategies.

2) Your assumption that the game state is very complex and thus would be hard to create an AI is not true. In all AI algorithms, you have to properly define what the relevant variables are. Even state of the art algorithms do so. For example, face identification and tracking algorithms frequently look for the existence of eyes and a nose via the darker appearance of the eyes (due to depth) and brighter appearance of the nose (due to depth). It's a very very seemingly stupid and brain dead principle. But surprisingly it works very well (also explains why the algorithms perform poorly on people of color but that's a separate topic). We aren't looking to create an AI that can perform the optimal decision in 100% of the cases, we're looking to make an AI that performs a good decision in 90% of the cases, versus the complete randomness right now.

To give you a sense of how complex CK3 is from a making good strategic decisions point of view. Normal 3 player poker is currently considered too complex to solve, currently the version of poker game theorist are solving involves 3 or 4 types of cards and even those generally come with some type of restriction (like only one hand). Compare this to the two player version which is easily solved for a full deck and full game. The reason adding a player makes it so hard to solve a game is that you can get king making situation and/or ganging up which warp the meta. This gets compounded the more and more players you add to a game. CK3 if trying to program the AI to act logically you have essentially thousands of players, each with thousands upon thousands of possible decisions to choose from at any given moment. This is so far from the field of what is calculable for what is a good strategy that it would be impossible to even quantify if they are making a good decision in 90% of cases.

To given you a sense of the scope, imagine playing the game where every landed character in CK3, count or higher is played by a player. And for this game you need to convince them that your decision tree will lead them to the "good" decision in 90% of cases. I doubt many will sign up as they can probably see things they can logically exploit and if they do your strategy will definitely lead to a worse outcome as players are specifically playing strategies that counter it. So even if your 90% good decisions was somehow true theoretically, it wouldn't be in actuality.

But I agree with your sentiment that Paradox doesn't need to build an optimal AI, hence why I suggested that.

In CK3, at least the way I view things, there **are** optimal decisions you can make that are braindead. When building buildings for example, you really don't need to care about what your neighbors are building 70% of the time. There are limited slots in each province. Some buildings are just far far better than others **in the long term**. Sure the buildings might not be great **in the short term**, but if the buildings are built in the long term, then whichever AI character takes over said holding would have a better chance of opposing you the player, so it doesn't really matter from the perspective of creating a challenge for the player. You can usually fill up 2/3 slots with just the far better buildings. Then the last slot it does depend, but you can either code it based on "what would a real person do" (personality) or you can code it based on a "playing to win strategy" (challenge). Or even if you had the AI pick randomly in the last spot, that would be **far far better** than pure random.

So I think this is where some of the confusion come from. So I agree as a player playing a regular game of CK3 you don't really need to care what your neighbours are up to decide what building you need to build. But that because we as players are playing against a hardcoded AI who we have some understanding of how they will act. So we as the actual human players of CK3 are playing a single player game against an environment which is populated by AI players. To go back to a rock-paper-scissors, if you decide to go hard on one or two types of MaA, the AI in CK3 is not programmed to respond to that. And you as the player can learn that and exploit that. So you have more freedom in how to craft your optimal strategy.

But when programming the AI to play more optimally, this is more like the version where every landed character is a human player and you are having to come up with the optimal strategy or even okay strategy that works for every player in the game and isn't thwarted by the very strategy you are crafting. So it's no longer a player playing in an environment, it's now hundreds of players playing off each other.

If you were in a game with thousands of human players, never the less what you build, when would it be optimal or a good idea to build? Because remember if you build with not enough money your human player vassals and/or neighbours could sense weakness and attack while the number of mercenaries you can buy is low and gang up on you (but who knows maybe they'll leave you alone as they fight amongst themselves). But if you wait til you have too much money, then your vassals and neighbours might build before you potentially getting a leg up on you. This is all before we consider what building you build, because if you build ones that favour certain MaA then your vassal and neighbours could counter by getting MaA that negate your MaA (or again maybe they are interested in countering a different player's MaA). So what and when would be considered good to build depend on your belief about the strategies of the people playing your vassal and your neighbours. But unless you've played against them before (and they don't learn from past circumstances) then there is no way to know whether you belief is correct until it is too late. This is the crux of why the AI can't be programmed with a good or optimal strategy in such an involved game like CK3. What is considered good depends on what everyone else is doing. And again hence why we the player can actually figure out good strategies for CK3 as we can get a sense for what the AI generally does.

Also should mention again that CK3 has false or trap choices in it. Ones where there is only one right answer or there are definite wrong answers. But these a considered bad game design especially for a strategy game as they are problems you need to solve once and then never think about again (or more likely just look up the answer on the wiki or on the forums). And so while the AI should be hardcoded to respond to these correctly, they are better dealt with by removing them or fixing them to actually require strategic thought (which then might best be dealt with by the AI using some combination of randomness and static strategies).

3) Some points I brought up about AI isn't even related to the AI making decisions, but the fact that the AI does not even have the ability to interact with many of CK3's systems.

Let's take a look at a suggestion much earlier in the thread about slowing down lifestyle perk gain rate making the game harder. Well, 99% of the AI in the game simply do not have access to the lifestyle system at all. It is simply disabled. So yes, of course, if you slow down lifestyle gain rate, then of course the game would be harder, because now you've just delayed an advantage the player has over the AI. However that's just addressing a symptom and not the cause. The cause is, most AI simply can't use the system. So if we fix that then this solution will also result in a more difficult game.

Similarly, if we consider late game vs early game, why is the game difficult in the early game but not late game? Well in the early game, you, as a small player, have less resources available then nearby AI. Sure, the AI will be making incompetent decisions, or making no decisions, but if you forced it into a war, you will have to play optimally.

However in late game, this challenge vanishes. Why? Because **there is no agent with the credible resources to counter you, and no agent working to accumulate said resources**. Unless you are playing multiplayer, there is simply no other great house in the game that has marriage alliances that can challenge you, because **the AI frequently does not marry**, and there is no AI actively working to expand their lineage due to the game generating lowborns not of any major house. The AI does not economically develop properly, so their holdings fall behind. The AI does not prioritize good military bonuses (like a player would) that offer a bonus, so their military falls behind. There are so many other factors that I haven't even listed, but they all combine together to create this imbalance.

The playing field is simply tilted too much in the favor of the player by end game because the player has so many tools the AI is either forbidden or incorrectly using. I'm fairly confident that if there was at least a competent (not optimal) AI, the game will be much harder without any need for balance changes. Or if there is still a need, it will be much more clear what those needs actually are. For example, if the AI was coded to win, then the AI would be abusing various exploits, and there would be balance pressure to fix those exploits. (Also fun AI generally isn't optimal but suboptimal as this is a game, so there's no real conflict between just coding a believable, logical, competent AI vs design goals).

I don't know why you are bringing this up. I haven't said the AI shouldn't interact with more systems, I haven't said the game can't be made more difficult, I haven't said the AI can't be improved (to the contrary I have said it can be improved). I've just said that trying to create an optimal AI is not something that Paradox can or should try to do (and you seem to indicated you don't even want optimal AI). So again I think you misunderstand what I was saying).

Though I do want to add that just because the AI has access to more abilities doesn't necessarily mean it will make them more of a challenge for the player in the late game. Remember the AI can use those new abilities to tear each other down rather than build stronger realms. Now many of the ones you have mentioned, if I had to wager would probably lead to more of a challenge for the player (especially if implemented well) but it's not a guarantee. The AI are also playing against each other.

Now with all that said I still think the AI should be given access to more parts of the game (assuming it doesn't tank performance), if for nothing else than to make them more interesting and dynamic.



One thing final thing I would like to say, is that while the AI in CK3 can't be made to play optimally (or near optimally, as there is not optimal to be near), the AI definitely can be made better. Specifically better in terms of creating a more entertaining environment for us, the human player, to play in. And that can involve making the AI more challenging, having more personality, and being more understandable. But it does still have a place in there for some randomness, but again it's a matter of striking the right balance with all of these (which definitely has some degree of personal preference, but that's a whole other can of worms).

 

[Lightbanee]

Making all this from just a count, i'm deciding if I want to continue and conquer the Byzantine requirements to make Slavia or not. I've already done it with a Ruthenia campaign before. I haven't had much real challenge while building this, and as usual its your own vassals that give you the most grief because most of the time they want to murder you just because you just died.

 

[Limith]

What's the optimal strategy for rock-paper-scissors?

Again, I'm not talking about an optimal strategy, we're talking about having a reasonably competent AI that is better than random.

A good game AI often should not follow an optimal strategy because the game would not be fun from a design perspective.

Creating an competent AI that is better than random is not an impossibly hard task that you guys think it is. Comparing the task to problems such as poker or rock paper scissors is not really a correct comparison.

I think perhaps you guys are not understanding what a static strategy actually entails. It doesn't mean "always pick rock". Nor does it mean "always pick paper". It means having a strategy that is well defined which the AI follows, and you can have variables in it which react to the player, and you can also have randomness in it. And you can have multiple static strategies for the AI to choose from based on personality or goal. Pengoyo seems to be insisting that randomness should be a component of good AI and I agree it should be (but I think randomness should be a far smaller component). Currently, randomness is the only component of the AI. Which makes it incompetent.

In the MaA example for example, the AI currently doesn't build MaA with any coherent strategy. It will randomly pick buildings to build ignoring their current unit composition.

Sure, the player can always counter what the AI is building in MaA. But at least if the AI has chosen a strategy, and is actively working with that strategy in mind in a competent fashion, it would provide more challenge than the current AI behavior of randomness.
Never let the perfect get in the way of good.

So for example, the AI can go down a Knight Effectiveness strategy. Or another AI can go down archers (eg if english). Another can go down elephants, another can go down pikes + archers. Maybe mongols go down cavalry. You can take into account what MaA the AI owns as well as factors such as the total effectiveness bonus and have the AI follow a strategy, any strategy.

If we compare the above to random, it will be far better than random, I guarantee it. It's not going to be optimal. The AI is not going to be able to counteract or react in time, but at the very least, even if say the AI has the troop counter penalty, it will at the minimum have some stacking bonuses to its chosen form of army. It will at least perform better, than the current 0 planning randomly choose a building type even if there is no MaA of that type.

If you want strategies for rock paper scissors, it exists, and it's not complicated either, Markov Chain is fundamentally a FSM based strategy and you can build on top of that. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-win-over-70-matches-in-rock-paper-scissors-3e17e67e0dab

 

[pengoyo]

Again, I'm not talking about an optimal strategy, we're talking about having a reasonably competent AI that is better than random.

A good game AI often should not follow an optimal strategy because the game would not be fun from a design perspective.

Creating an competent AI that is better than random is not an impossibly hard task that you guys think it is. Comparing the task to problems such as poker or rock paper scissors is not really a correct comparison.

[...] Pengoyo seems to be insisting that randomness should be a component of good AI and I agree it should be (but I think randomness should be a far smaller component).

One, you responded to me, definitely talking about randomness in relation to optimal strategies. And again this is stuff I have already said. And I never said the randomness in CK3 was properly utilized, in fact I suggested the opposite. Also I get the feeling you think of random as meaning without planning or arbitraty. Which is probably true in a lot of the CK3, but is defintely not true of utilizing randomness in general. In order for a strategy utilizing randomness to actually be good involves a lot of planing and calculations.

All I said is that randomness can be part of an optimal strategy (not necessarily the entirety or even to what quantity, as that is game specific). And I have said from the beginning that a good AI isn't optimal. I also said it can be used to make the computer less predicable which can be good for making them feel more alive, and less robotic, but I even point out why too much of that can be a problem..

So I don't know why you think you want less randomness in CK3 than me as I have never quantified or qualified the amount of randomness I want in CK3, beyond saying some. And since you don't want zero, we are in the same very broad ballpark. Though maybe based on some of my comments below you can start to gauge where we might differ on the amount of randomness.

I think perhaps you guys are not understanding what a static strategy actually entails. It doesn't mean "always pick rock". Nor does it mean "always pick paper". It means having a strategy that is well defined which the AI follows, and you can have variables in it which react to the player, and you can also have randomness in it. And you can have multiple static strategies for the AI to choose from based on personality or goal.

So when you mentioned static strategy I assumed you were talking about a pure strategy, which can involve decision trees, but not randomness (side note, but in game theory the other type of strategy is a mixed strategy is one the involves randomness, either entirely or in part). Also I mention a decision tree as being an example of something that can be static so I don't know why you think I think static would be "always pick rock". Now hardcoded is more what I'd consider your definition of static in this context as that's what it means to hardcode a strategy into a computer. Also if that is your definition of static, you are then you are misusing it as you multiple times use "static" as an opposite to randomness or to mean non-random. Hence why I took it to mean a strategy without randomness.

Also note that a strategy is just a well defined set of rules for making a decision. These can involve decision trees that take into account the state and can be deterministic or involve randomness. Note though that randomness is something that you can well define (and need to for a strategy), like the rock-paper-scissors example, the randomness of the optimal strategy is well defined as a distribution with 1/3 probability for each hand shape.

Also note that whether you choose personality or goals as a top level thing or lower level thing is mathematically equivalent when it come to building strategies (you especially have a lot of freedom if dealing with pure strategies). It's just about implementing it correctly either way you do it.

In the MaA example for example, the AI currently doesn't build MaA with any coherent strategy. It will randomly pick buildings to build ignoring their current unit composition.

Sure, the player can always counter what the AI is building in MaA. But at least if the AI has chosen a strategy, and is actively working with that strategy in mind in a competent fashion, it would provide more challenge than the current AI behavior of randomness.
Never let the perfect get in the way of good.

So for example, the AI can go down a Knight Effectiveness strategy. Or another AI can go down archers (eg if english). Another can go down elephants, another can go down pikes + archers. Maybe mongols go down cavalry. You can take into account what MaA the AI owns as well as factors such as the total effectiveness bonus and have the AI follow a strategy, any strategy.

If we compare the above to random, it will be far better than random, I guarantee it. It's not going to be optimal. The AI is not going to be able to counteract or react in time, but at the very least, even if say the AI has the troop counter penalty, it will at the minimum have some stacking bonuses to its chosen form of army. It will at least perform better, than the current 0 planning randomly choose a building type even if there is no MaA of that type.

So this is something I overall agree with. It would be better if the AI took MaA into account when building buildings. So the problem is that some decisions you make effect what you should do for other decisions, which the AI doesn't properly take that into account.

But I don't agree with how you think the AI should pick their MaA, at least from a making the game more challenging stand point (could work well for maximum flavour). If all English AI have a deterministic army composition, you can just look up somewhere the best army for counting it and build that and easily crush the English. It'd be better for the English to pick their MaA randomly (though using a distribution that favours archers to still keep the overall flavour). This means that when fighting an English army, they will each be somewhat unique requiring you to have to actually look at the composition and think about how to counter it. But at the same time still have the flavour that MaA that are good against archers is probably a good bet if fighting the English. It also makes sense from a logic stand point as the MaA are just a more complicated rock-paper-scissors game, so any challenging strategy will incorporate some degree of randomness due to this rock-paper-scissors influence.

I find you last paragraph interesting, as it seem you think that beating Paradox's strategy is something I deem not possible or unlikely, because it has randomness in it. That is not at all what I have been saying. Randomness like anything else used to build a good strategy has to be used correctly and I have never said that Paradox use it correctly (in fact the opposite). So beating Paradox's bad random strategy with a non-random, doesn't tell us anything about the value of randomness in strategies.

edit: note I say "Paradox's bad random strategy" because I don't think Paradox was try to use randomness in the strategic sense. More in the it produces variety sense.

Currently, randomness is the only component of the AI. Which makes it incompetent.

Randomness is not the only component of the AI, while there is a lot, the AI does utilize triggers that will either hard block, or allow certain decision under an multitude of circumstance (those are decidedly non-random parts of the the AI). Plus the AI make heavy use of weight to manipulate the random distribution used, which is using non-random elements to influence the random parts of the strategy (with personality traits heavily used this way in events). And this is just what I can see in the script, who knows about the AI in the non-accessible parts of the code. So while there is a lot of randomness in what the AI does, it isn't complete randomness as you are saying. And again this is not me saying that the AI is good in it's current state, or the amount of randomness couldn't be lessened, this is just me pointing out the situation at hand.

Since there has been a lot of talks about building I decided to look up the code for that. And here is the build AI for military camps:

    ai_value = {
        base = 10
        ai_general_building_modifier = yes
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            building_barracks_requirement_terrain = yes
            NOT = {
                has_building_or_higher = barracks_01
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            building_camel_farms_requirement_terrain = yes
            NOT = {
                has_building_or_higher = camel_farms_01
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            building_regimental_grounds_requirement_terrain = yes
            NOT = {
                has_building_or_higher = regimental_grounds_01
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            building_farm_estates_requirement_terrain = yes
            NOT = {
                has_building_or_higher = farm_estates_01
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            building_orchards_requirement_terrain = yes
            NOT = {
                has_building_or_higher = orchards_01
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            add = -9
            has_building_or_higher = city_01
        }
    }

While the base of 10 is random, there are many situations that set that base to 0, effectively meaning such buildings must be built before it. So as you can see the AI does have certain building it prioritizes over others in a decidedly non-random way.

Now this can be improved, as you have mentioned it doesn't take MaA into account, which is something it definitely should.

If you want strategies for rock paper scissors, it exists, and it's not complicated either, Markov Chain is fundamentally a FSM based strategy and you can build on top of that. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-win-over-70-matches-in-rock-paper-scissors-3e17e67e0dab

Yeah you can add non-random things to any strategy, it doesn't make it more optimal or better. Note that this algorithm wins 70% of the time specifically because it is competing against non-optimal algorithms and is using that fact to try and exploit them (also probably utilizing the fact a lot of computer's random number generators aren't truly random). But you can knock this algorithm down a few pegs by just by playing against it by using the optimal strategy of rock, paper, or scissors each with 1/3 probability. Then it's 70% win rate would drop to 50%. You could also write a strategy that counters and exploits the non-randomness in the article's algorithm to further lower it's success chance, but such an algorithm would then it's self would be susceptible to the same from other algorithms. Non-optimal strategies require other non-optimal strategies to exploit and to get lucky that other non-optimal strategies aren't exploiting them.

An optimal strategy just means a strategy that no other strategy can exploit, such that if playing against it the best another strategy can only hope for is to tie on average. So again the algorithm in this article achieves higher win rate than 50% precisely because it is playing in a competition against non-optimal strategies, because that's what the people in that competition find fun.

 

[TheArid]

Yeah the game is pretty easy right now

 

[Krajzen]

View attachment 780830

Making all this from just a count, i'm deciding if I want to continue and conquer the Byzantine requirements to make Slavia or not. I've already done it with a Ruthenia campaign before. I haven't had much real challenge while building this, and as usual its your own vassals that give you the most grief because most of the time they want to murder you just because you just died.

Honestly, I am a Polish person myself and the ability to make such a thing out of Poland in 200 years is horrible for my own immersion... Like, this level of power that quickly is completely disconnected from potential of Poland in this time period. Maybe if some things went extremely well 1066 Poland would be capable of dominating like nearby Slavic & Baltic pagans, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Western Ukraine, maaaaaybeee Hungary (IRL it basically sticked to ethnic borders or even less during 966 - 1340 period). Germans should be the ultimate final boss for medieval Poland you can barely defend against, and Mongols should be mid-to-late game apocalypse you prepare against, with some potential horror of Rus unifying. Now THAT would be what Polish players would find truly exciting and motivating, fighting against three great medieval dangers to the Polish state and overcoming them with difficulty, not some easily built gigantic empire. It's as if in HoI4 Poland was capable of casually winning against Germany and/or Soviets, just not very exciting from our underdog point of view at all. Of course except for people who really need such fictional super - Poland steamrolls to feel good about their country, but I don't need that, I just want... real medieval Poland with its real struggles.

Establishing large empires in Europe should be damn hard anyway, with its ethnic and geographic divides and political competition. Look how quickly Charlemagne's empire started dividing itself, and it was the largest Latin medieval state of middle ages, with enormous advantages over its mainland enemies.

It especially hurts Byzantium too. Byzantium imho should have this awesome feeling of being Gondor in LoTR (wasn't Gondor partially inspired by Byz anyway?), where you have this still - glorious - but - lost - much - glory powerhouse, that is nevertheless barely defending against enemies on all sides and its own decadent intrigues and civil wars. How much I would like to play dramatic defensive Byzantine campaign, with Constantinople suffering dramatic sieges, being endagered by Turks/Arabs/Latins/Slavs/civil wars/heresies, surviving and maybe retaking some Roman lands with great difficulty.

Islamic empires in the medieval era had a tendency to steamroll really hard and quickly (idk why, maybe due to some political structures or open lands conquests with cavalry), obligatory failing to decisively destroy Byzantium, having like 100 years of a golden age and next 100 years of a silver age, and then catastrophically collapsing to some religious sect or another great empire emerging out of nowhere. So they should be able to indeed expand quickly, but then good luck surviving in a good shape for a long time. Also, Byzantium should be hell to decisively defeat (idk how to balance it so Byz itself feels challenging ), Latins should be a mortal threat all the way, Indian realms blocked Islamic expansion all the way until like 1190s, and most importantly Mongols should be the main boss of Middle Eastern realms.

Uniting India should be a goddamn hard task as well, with its multiple religions and a metric ton of cultural and language groups, there is a reason why it was never really done "100% and for more than a blink of an eye" across history. Islam and Mongols should be great threats.

Of course I am aware that I write about multiple civilizations being somehow hard to defeat each other in the same time, which feels weird, but I'm meaning that Very Big and Very Stable expansion should be very hard (and therefore very satisfying and dramatic), as well as Decisively Destroying major empires and subduing cultures.

 

[Breton_Lord]

This is not thread to bash the game but a simple suggestion. I just finished a campaign together with a friend (it was his first time playing CKIII) and it was kind of shocking how easy it was to go from a irrelevant count in a underdeveloped land in Lapland to the most powerful man in Eurasia ruling 2 empires in just one generation. It is just way too easy to snowball without any obstacles, there really needs to be some kind of competition. At least make it hard to expand right know there isn't any strategic thinking required to grow big, you just declare war on your weakest neighbours and snowball your way up. The only challenge in the game comes from the unflexible succession laws.

I know CKIII isn't about empire-building but more about role-playing, but it will be so much more fun to role-play if there was actually threat. My king of an underdeveloped Sweden with mediocre stats was more powerful than the Byzantine empire? If i wanted I could conquer all of Europe with just one character without any strategical mindset.

I'm not asking for anti-blopping mechanics but for ways to make the game more difficult for experienced players. I really think the devs should add a hard mode.

I 100% agree , the games' highest difficulty is "Normal" wich says something , and I think it was made this easy on purpose to grab as many new players as possible and grow the fan base for CK which is fine from a business stand point , but what I don't get is why didn't they include more difficulty levels for older more veteran players ? or why didn't they make challenging features togglable on-off in the rules tab for people to increase the difficulty one challenge at a time if they wanted to ? and yes the whole game feels pointless once you're an emperror , which should be a huge accomplishment.

CK2 had a strange way of doing so , that it just killed your ruler out of no where , whether from a disease or a plot that got you killed or whatever , and all of a sudden you were leaft with a 5 year old under the regency of a power grabing cu**t ! which was awesome but can be improved upon in CK3 , not through buffing or cheating the AI , but through developing it and introducing new mechanics that can make becoming an emperror a god like task and feels like a real achievement , or making the game a bit harder in general which will make a campaign longer and more enjoyable.

 

[Omogoy]

Honestly, I am a Polish person myself and the ability to make such a thing out of Poland in 200 years is horrible for my own immersion... Like, this level of power that quickly is completely disconnected from potential of Poland in this time period. Maybe if some things went extremely well 1066 Poland would be capable of dominating like nearby Slavic & Baltic pagans, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Western Ukraine, maaaaaybeee Hungary (IRL it basically sticked to ethnic borders or even less during 966 - 1340 period). Germans should be the ultimate final boss for medieval Poland you can barely defend against, and Mongols should be mid-to-late game apocalypse you prepare against, with some potential horror of Rus unifying. Now THAT would be what Polish players would find truly exciting and motivating, fighting against three great medieval dangers to the Polish state and overcoming them with difficulty, not some easily built gigantic empire. It's as if in HoI4 Poland was capable of casually winning against Germany and/or Soviets, just not very exciting from our underdog point of view at all. Of course except for people who really need such fictional super - Poland steamrolls to feel good about their country, but I don't need that, I just want... real medieval Poland with its real struggles.
Establishing large empires in Europe should be damn hard anyway, with its ethnic and geographic divides and political competition. Look how quickly Charlemagne's empire started dividing itself, and it was the largest Latin medieval state of middle ages, with enormous advantages over its mainland enemies.
It especially hurts Byzantium too. Byzantium imho should have this awesome feeling of being Gondor in LoTR (wasn't Gondor partially inspired by Byz anyway?), where you have this still - glorious - but - lost - much - glory powerhouse, that is nevertheless barely defending against enemies on all sides and its own decadent intrigues and civil wars. How much I would like to play dramatic defensive Byzantine campaign, with Constantinople suffering dramatic sieges, being endagered by Turks/Arabs/Latins/Slavs/civil wars/heresies, surviving and maybe retaking some Roman lands with great difficulty.
Islamic empires in the medieval era had a tendency to steamroll really hard and quickly (idk why, maybe due to some political structures or open lands conquests with cavalry), obligatory failing to decisively destroy Byzantium, having like 100 years of a golden age and next 100 years of a silver age, and then catastrophically collapsing to some religious sect or another great empire emerging out of nowhere. So they should be able to indeed expand quickly, but then good luck surviving in a good shape for a long time. Also, Byzantium should be hell to decisively defeat (idk how to balance it so Byz itself feels challenging ), Latins should be a mortal threat all the way, Indian realms blocked Islamic expansion all the way until like 1190s, and most importantly Mongols should be the main boss of Middle Eastern realms.
Uniting India should be a goddamn hard task as well, with its multiple religions and a metric ton of cultural and language groups, there is a reason why it was never really done "100% and for more than a blink of an eye" across history. Islam and Mongols should be great threats.
Of course I am aware that I write about multiple civilizations being somehow hard to defeat each other in the same time, which feels weird, but I'm meaning that Very Big and Very Stable expansion should be very hard (and therefore very satisfying and dramatic), as well as Decisively Destroying major empires and subduing cultures.

This is possible if the system of real communication is realized in the game, that is, the communication that existed in those centuries. For example, when the Great Turkic Khaganate was created from Manchuria to the Crimea. Postal messengers were sent out for six months, so it took a year for feedback. In a game, decisions are made in a split second. To respond quickly to circumstances, the authorities were forced to create a center of power in the steppes between the Volga and Don, the Khazar governor. Also in the Oghuz steppes, the governor of Yabgu, the third center of power.
Poland had the ability to unite the Slavs under the rule of Boleslav I the Brave, but local Kiev nationalism, regionalism ruined his cause.

Secondly, it is necessary to make sure that really talented rulers are rarely born. It is necessary that many hedonist rulers be born. They are known from modern history, for example, Boris Yeltsin from Russia. From the history of Rome, the emperors Nero and Caligula. It is necessary to make sure that any business that is not connected with pleasure causes the strongest rejection and stress among hedonists, so that the functions of economic and military control are turned off. For this negative character to cause massive uprisings of usurpers and separatists.
Thirdly, 90% of the rulers should be concerned with internal problems: drought, hunger, plague, locusts, robbers.
Fourth, it is necessary to have more acquired and congenital diseases. It is necessary to make sure that the residents experience a lack of vitamins and iodine, so that because of this they become mentally impoverished. Women need more anemia due to menstruation, so that they walk forever sleepy and lethargic, exhausted by physical labor.
Fifth, for corruption and inflation to appear.
That is, the laws of entropy or chaos. Everything is prone to chaos, maintaining the elementary vitality required a lot of stress in those days. Let's try to look at the world of the hungry through the eyes of the hungry. Perhaps it seemed to the descendants of the conquerors of the Great Nations Migration that they had escaped from this difficult circle, but they died out.

 

[zaboli]

Honestly, I am a Polish person myself and the ability to make such a thing out of Poland in 200 years is horrible for my own immersion... Like, this level of power that quickly is completely disconnected from potential of Poland in this time period. Maybe if some things went extremely well 1066 Poland would be capable of dominating like nearby Slavic & Baltic pagans, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Western Ukraine, maaaaaybeee Hungary (IRL it basically sticked to ethnic borders or even less during 966 - 1340 period). Germans should be the ultimate final boss for medieval Poland you can barely defend against, and Mongols should be mid-to-late game apocalypse you prepare against, with some potential horror of Rus unifying. Now THAT would be what Polish players would find truly exciting and motivating, fighting against three great medieval dangers to the Polish state and overcoming them with difficulty, not some easily built gigantic empire. It's as if in HoI4 Poland was capable of casually winning against Germany and/or Soviets, just not very exciting from our underdog point of view at all. Of course except for people who really need such fictional super - Poland steamrolls to feel good about their country, but I don't need that, I just want... real medieval Poland with its real struggles.

Establishing large empires in Europe should be damn hard anyway, with its ethnic and geographic divides and political competition. Look how quickly Charlemagne's empire started dividing itself, and it was the largest Latin medieval state of middle ages, with enormous advantages over its mainland enemies.

It especially hurts Byzantium too. Byzantium imho should have this awesome feeling of being Gondor in LoTR (wasn't Gondor partially inspired by Byz anyway?), where you have this still - glorious - but - lost - much - glory powerhouse, that is nevertheless barely defending against enemies on all sides and its own decadent intrigues and civil wars. How much I would like to play dramatic defensive Byzantine campaign, with Constantinople suffering dramatic sieges, being endagered by Turks/Arabs/Latins/Slavs/civil wars/heresies, surviving and maybe retaking some Roman lands with great difficulty.

Islamic empires in the medieval era had a tendency to steamroll really hard and quickly (idk why, maybe due to some political structures or open lands conquests with cavalry), obligatory failing to decisively destroy Byzantium, having like 100 years of a golden age and next 100 years of a silver age, and then catastrophically collapsing to some religious sect or another great empire emerging out of nowhere. So they should be able to indeed expand quickly, but then good luck surviving in a good shape for a long time. Also, Byzantium should be hell to decisively defeat (idk how to balance it so Byz itself feels challenging ), Latins should be a mortal threat all the way, Indian realms blocked Islamic expansion all the way until like 1190s, and most importantly Mongols should be the main boss of Middle Eastern realms.

Uniting India should be a goddamn hard task as well, with its multiple religions and a metric ton of cultural and language groups, there is a reason why it was never really done "100% and for more than a blink of an eye" across history. Islam and Mongols should be great threats.

Of course I am aware that I write about multiple civilizations being somehow hard to defeat each other in the same time, which feels weird, but I'm meaning that Very Big and Very Stable expansion should be very hard (and therefore very satisfying and dramatic), as well as Decisively Destroying major empires and subduing cultures.

100% this! If I play as a country I want to have at least some abstract representation of their geopolitical situation. Everyone plays exactly the same in Ck3. I can experience everything Ck3 has to offer in just 1 campaign because it's really easy to convert religion & geopolitics never change because no one will be able to challenge you once you reach king tier. The only region that somewhat has this is England in Viking start date but all the other regions feel just the same.

Ironic considering IR got bashed for the same reason even though it offered far more more variation in playstyles.

 

[Anna_Gein]

I suspect the restricted number of building slot by baronny is undermining the AI big time.

At least in the CK2 building system, the AI could eventually maximize its baronnies. Eventually.
In CK3 the AI makes early mistakes (as in CK2) but contrary to the previous game, it is then stuck in its flawed building development.

Whenever I expand or just inherint new baronnies from the AI, the buildings present make me realize why the AI is indeed less powerfull than me despite roughly equal size in demesne / realm size.

 

[Lightbanee]

My personal opinion: I agree that the single biggest improvement to get a more challenging game would be to make the AI play in a remotely competent manner. This includes their choice of marriages, their choice of when and why to declare war and their control over their armies while they are actually fighting a war. However: I think the *most important* weakness of the AI when compared to a player is that a player is able to effectively play around factions and partition, and the AI can't. And given the state of AI in most paradox games, I have *no* hope that this is going to improve.

When it comes to factions, I think the best way would be to have a difficulty game rule about how likely vassals are to join factions against the player, but this should *not* have an effect on factions against the AI. Or maybe have two separate game rules about how likely vassals are to join factions against the player or against the AI. The point is that I want to have *some* challenge from factions as a player without having all the AI controlled realms implode immediately.

When it comes to partition, I think the best way to go would just be to make it much less punishing for everyone, for example by making sure that inheriting a duchy always comes with inheriting at least 3 counties within that duchy. This would have no effect on the player, but it would make AI realms much more stable on succession than they are currently.

The Umayyids blobbed conquered most of France and Spain, then exploded because AI can't handle factions. Fix the brain dead AI and its inability to handle independence/claim factions and the game will get a lot harder because then the AI won't be constantly wrecking itself.

Honestly I do love this game, but it feels like we're playing a shell of a game that's going to take a dozen DLCs to actually get into a place where you can do more then just simply blob out. The lack of density in the mechanics and the AI's inability to grip even the basic mechanics we have sets this game back a ton.

 

[Lightbanee]

Honestly, I am a Polish person myself and the ability to make such a thing out of Poland in 200 years is horrible for my own immersion... Like, this level of power that quickly is completely disconnected from potential of Poland in this time period. Maybe if some things went extremely well 1066 Poland would be capable of dominating like nearby Slavic & Baltic pagans, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Western Ukraine, maaaaaybeee Hungary (IRL it basically sticked to ethnic borders or even less during 966 - 1340 period). Germans should be the ultimate final boss for medieval Poland you can barely defend against, and Mongols should be mid-to-late game apocalypse you prepare against, with some potential horror of Rus unifying. Now THAT would be what Polish players would find truly exciting and motivating, fighting against three great medieval dangers to the Polish state and overcoming them with difficulty, not some easily built gigantic empire. It's as if in HoI4 Poland was capable of casually winning against Germany and/or Soviets, just not very exciting from our underdog point of view at all. Of course except for people who really need such fictional super - Poland steamrolls to feel good about their country, but I don't need that, I just want... real medieval Poland with its real struggles.

Establishing large empires in Europe should be damn hard anyway, with its ethnic and geographic divides and political competition. Look how quickly Charlemagne's empire started dividing itself, and it was the largest Latin medieval state of middle ages, with enormous advantages over its mainland enemies.

It especially hurts Byzantium too. Byzantium imho should have this awesome feeling of being Gondor in LoTR (wasn't Gondor partially inspired by Byz anyway?), where you have this still - glorious - but - lost - much - glory powerhouse, that is nevertheless barely defending against enemies on all sides and its own decadent intrigues and civil wars. How much I would like to play dramatic defensive Byzantine campaign, with Constantinople suffering dramatic sieges, being endagered by Turks/Arabs/Latins/Slavs/civil wars/heresies, surviving and maybe retaking some Roman lands with great difficulty.

Islamic empires in the medieval era had a tendency to steamroll really hard and quickly (idk why, maybe due to some political structures or open lands conquests with cavalry), obligatory failing to decisively destroy Byzantium, having like 100 years of a golden age and next 100 years of a silver age, and then catastrophically collapsing to some religious sect or another great empire emerging out of nowhere. So they should be able to indeed expand quickly, but then good luck surviving in a good shape for a long time. Also, Byzantium should be hell to decisively defeat (idk how to balance it so Byz itself feels challenging ), Latins should be a mortal threat all the way, Indian realms blocked Islamic expansion all the way until like 1190s, and most importantly Mongols should be the main boss of Middle Eastern realms.

Uniting India should be a goddamn hard task as well, with its multiple religions and a metric ton of cultural and language groups, there is a reason why it was never really done "100% and for more than a blink of an eye" across history. Islam and Mongols should be great threats.

Of course I am aware that I write about multiple civilizations being somehow hard to defeat each other in the same time, which feels weird, but I'm meaning that Very Big and Very Stable expansion should be very hard (and therefore very satisfying and dramatic), as well as Decisively Destroying major empires and subduing cultures.

The Mongols are literally never a threat to me, i've never once had to fight a Mongol Horde because they get to Volga-Ural then die because the AI isn't capable of managing the cultural/religion revolts it creates with all its conquests then it gets horrifically split between 8 different wars. A serious rethink needs to be done on how the Mongol Horde event works because its a flop. There's also the 'death of natural causes' bug, don't know what causes it but sometimes the Khan will just die of 'natural causes' at age 29-35 then the Horde collapses because the next Khan is 2.

And another thing with Rus unification, that never will happen until the AI stops being brain dead on Independence/Claim factions as soon as they get big enough they just explode because of said Faction dumbness.

I have united India it was hard, it was actually the hardest game I had I barely had enough time in 400 years to fully unify India for the meta Empire that you can form, the Roman Empire is far easier to form then the Indian Empire is.

 

[zaboli]

The Mongols are literally never a threat to me, i've never once had to fight a Mongol Horde because they get to Volga-Ural then die because the AI isn't capable of managing the cultural/religion revolts it creates with all its conquests then it gets horrifically split between 8 different wars. A serious rethink needs to be done on how the Mongol Horde event works because its a flop. There's also the 'death of natural causes' bug, don't know what causes it but sometimes the Khan will just die of 'natural causes' at age 29-35 then the Horde collapses because the next Khan is 2.

And another thing with Rus unification, that never will happen until the AI stops being brain dead on Independence/Claim factions as soon as they get big enough they just explode because of said Faction dumbness.

I have united India it was hard, it was actually the hardest game I had I barely had enough time in 400 years to fully unify India for the meta Empire that you can form, the Roman Empire is far easier to form then the Indian Empire is.

Interesting. Going to try an Indian campaign after reading this

 

[Lightbanee]

Interesting. Going to try an Indian campaign after reading this

yeah its mainly because there's a jigsaw explosion of different cultures and different religions that slap you in the face so it's definitely a go slow approach. I had to reassemble the empire at least three times because of how volatile the cultural/religious differences are. But then it may have had something to do with the fact I was playing as a Shivite cult where the religion was female dominant. But it was a fun and challenging campaign

 

[Krajzen]

yeah its mainly because there's a jigsaw explosion of different cultures and different religions that slap you in the face so it's definitely a go slow approach. I had to reassemble the empire at least three times because of how volatile the cultural/religious differences are. But then it may have had something to do with the fact I was playing as a Shivite cult where the religion was female dominant. But it was a fun and challenging campaign

Europe also has a ton of different cultures, and three religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslims), so I wonder what exactly makes Indian conquest significantly harder

 

[Hichel]

Europe also has a ton of different cultures, and three religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslims), so I wonder what exactly makes Indian conquest significantly harder

It's all mixed up in India

 

[Lightbanee]

Europe also has a ton of different cultures, and three religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslims), so I wonder what exactly makes Indian conquest significantly harder

because Europe is blocks of culture, India is a jigsaw so you're going to have multiple cultures then when you die. Oh boy, one time 90% of my empire was in the kill the Empress faction

 

[grommile]

the games' highest difficulty is "Normal" wich says something

It says to me that the CK3 team realized what no Paradox team before them has really seemed to realize: Paradox's traditional approach to defining difficulty settings (where H and VH give all AIs numerical bonuses) warps the game, rather than just making it harder for the meatbag.