Conclave DD #6 The 2.5.2 Patch

[richvh]

Doomdark was and is the designer. The development lead has been passed around between DLCs lately.

 

[erhpdm]

As you can see, I won most of the battles and the battles I lost didn't dent war-score enough to actually hamper my conquest - it just took a long time.

So - what about this was hard?

Nothing
What about this was fun?

Nothing, really, it was a lot of work - as in me clicking the mouse to move armies around, but there was no challenge and no real sense of satisfaction at breaking the game mechanic by forming a couple of alliances and bribing a few Councillors to vote with me.

This is the irony of it all - I have a similar experience : massive coalition against you: 40% of which stays where they are as they are busy fighting other wars that have priority ; 40% that besiege the nearest province of yours which has zero consequence on outcome (once you have taken the last of your enemies holdings you win, despite the fact that several of your towns were taken on a different continent) and 20% comes marching over from Australia to actually help the place you are besieging but it's all too little too late.
So... In overall gaming enjoyability it's lots more admin and mouse clicking. But challenge ? And fun ? Innovation?
I can only hope that after several weeks the fix will be worth it...

 

[James Wolfe]

So has there been any discussion on whether Infamy will be removed from Great Holy Wars? It makes no sense to me that the Knights Templar can gain all of Andalusia from a Crusade and get absolutely no Infamy while the Fylkir retakes Saxony and gets 60%+.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Doomdark was and is the designer. The development lead has been passed around between DLCs lately.

Yes, I went back through the credits and established this. The direction the game went after SoA makes even less sense in light of that. The only thing that stands out about CKII's initial release is the 20 or so "additional" historical advises.

It doesn't change the fact that the changes in Conclave conflict with both the original design and historical plausibility.

 

[Slayen]

I don't know if you skipped right over my words to look at the pretty picture, but I preemptively already agreed with you:
So I agree with you that this is too easy to do. The game is flawed in how it makes this easy. OK? Can we move on to my actual point now? With respect to that, there's only two teentsy-eentsy tiny little things wrong with your argument:

1. My point was all about Christians agreeing to defend Muslims in the holy land. Are you saying that makes sense in this game, or in any historic sense, if said Christian kingdom is large enough? Or are you completely oblivious to my point? Here it is also cut and pasted: "my basic point that my fellow crusaders should not be pledging to protect the Muslims we just finished fighting together against to secure Jerusalem." Yes I know this is supposedly going to get fixed in the next patch, but (at the risk of beating my point to death to make sure you get it, because it doesn't look like you read all my words), my original post that I was jumped on and called a liar over was a reply to someone who said there is nothing wrong with coalitions as they are in 2.5.1.
2. The immense irony of that map and your reaction to it, is that literally all of the "hideous border gore" was achieved by getting foreign heirs into my court and giving them titles == ones they would inherit in lower crown authority regions (again -- did you even read my post?!?) . These intial footholds have in some cases grown because the foreign dukes, once they inherited, have the resources of two dukedoms at their disposal and so have the power to autonomously expand their foreign territory. The irony is that you're saying "we need to do something about this hideous border gore," but (AFAIK?) the tactic I used does not generate s single ounce of "infamy" & so this thing you seem to be suggesting needs to be in place to stop it, ironically does not do anything to prevent it!

Well at least there is some forward progress I suppose - I'm merely having people miss my point now, at least that is better than someone saying whatever I say shoudl be ignored because I must be lying

I think we have a minor misunderstanding.

My reaction in horror was not because of the size of your expansions. But due to the rampant disregard to clean borders.

Random English enclaves in Russia? Hungary?! GEORGIA?!

Do you have no SHAME?! Do you have even the smallest spark of pity for those poor cartographers?

[in short, both the previous post and this one where more an attempt at humor than anything else.]

 

[MadManMark]

... [in short, both the previous post and this one where more an attempt at humor than anything else.]

OK, peace & skol I guess maybe I was still a bit hot under the collar about the dude who said I made everything up.

The bright side of this for me is that it's brought me to look at mods for the first time ... CK2+ looks like something I may try out, when I start a new game. I like that they have taken the cautious route of not supporting new paradox patches and features until they are stable, I don't want to continue being the guinea pig. In addition to checking out CK2+, I still need to figure out what "HIP" stands for!

 

[yezhanquan]

HIP= Historical Immersion Project.

 

[SnowHawkKiller]

Unfortunately, the developers were afraid players would not take well the slightest possibility of losing a war against factions, thus being forced to cede land or even lose their emperor status. So they came up with the constraining new features introduced in the latest patch. Infamy and Coalitions may slow you down, but they won't add instability and implode larger empires.

I, for one, get frustrated because of the opposite reasons. To be assured that I will always defeat all of the rebellions within my empire and never lose anything is what gets me frustrated.

I completely agree, I really wish that the internal difficulty was turned up rather than the external. Sometimes I sabotage my own play throughs just to make them more fun. Like I once let a gigantic independence revolt fire and didn't raise my levies to give them a head start then surrendered to an adventurer who was after my empire and now a king, I joined a revolt that fired for elective succession. I still remember how much fun it was, attempting to destroy the realm I had worked to build.

 

[Thure]

It doesn't change the fact that the changes in Conclave conflict with both the original design and historical plausibility.

So... mostly if people speak about 'historical plausibility' they came with wrong facts about the middle ages like 'Coalition like alliances never happened' or 'Muslims and Christians would never join an alliance' etc etc. So I will ask... what's wrong about historical plausibility for you?

 

[Fabiano79]

They sure are taking time to release 2.5.2. Im still waiting to play a proper campaing with The Conclave, a DLC I paid for weeks ago. If 2.5.2 comes with new major bugs, even after all this time of development, can I be mad at PDX without facing the anger of my fellow players?

 

[Thure]

They sure are taking time to release 2.5.2. Im still waiting to play a proper campaing with The Conclave, a DLC I paid for weeks ago. If 2.5.2 comes with new major bugs, even after all this time of development, can I be mad at PDX without facing the anger of my fellow players?

Not even 2.5.0 had major bugs. If all this changes didn't cause major bugs I'm sure the normal patch has good changes to cause no major bugs

 

[Robert II]

So... mostly if people speak about 'historical plausibility' they came with wrong facts about the middle ages like 'Coalition like alliances never happened' or 'Muslims and Christians would never join an alliance' etc etc. So I will ask... what's wrong about historical plausibility for you?

Got any examples of coalitions anywhere near the scale of the ones in ck2?

Fixed spelling.

 

[Dracko81]

Got any examples of coalitions anywhere near the scale of the ones in ck2?

Fixed spelling.

Got any examples of large empires ruling over large areas like players typically have?

 

[Robert II]

Got any examples of large empires ruling over large areas like players typically have?

HRE,Byzantines,Caliphate,Seljuks and whatever you want to call old Charlie's Empire. I don't like the ease of holding empires together either btw. I'd much rather there was some kind of struggle involved but not WW1 when I want to take a county.

 

[Thure]

Got any examples of coalitions anywhere near the scale of the ones in ck2?

Fixed spelling.

You know this one will be fixed? Did you read the opening post?

 

[Dracko81]

HRE,Byzantines,Caliphate,Seljuks and whatever you want to call old Charlie's Empire. I don't like the ease of holding empires together either btw. I'd much rather there was some kind of struggle involved but not WW1 when I want to take a county.

And who did they go and conquer while at this size?

 

[Thure]

HRE,Byzantines,Caliphate,Seljuks and whatever you want to call old Charlie's Empire. I don't like the ease of holding empires together either btw. I'd much rather there was some kind of struggle involved but not WW1 when I want to take a county.

The Egyptians and Crusaders did tried to make an alliance against the Seljuqs. And there was the Franko-Mongolian alliance plan against the caliphate... And again. The world spanning alliances will not be there with the next patch.

 

[Robert II]

You know this one will be fixed? Did you read the opening post?

Aye. Though I didn't care about most of the things that weren't seduction possibly getting fixed. That made me nearly happy and I hate being happy. I tried it once and it just wasn't for me.

The Egyptians and Crusaders did tried to make an alliance against the Seljuqs. And there was the Franko-Mongolian alliance plan against the caliphate... And again. The world spanning alliances will not be there with the next patch.

Neither of those are world spanning ridiculous coalitions. Not sure on the crusaders and Egyptians but I know the Franco Mongolian alliance was a good idea for both sides that never really happened. Anyway if in game the Sultan of Egypt and King of Jerusalem made an alliance against the Sunni Caliph or Seljuks. Or Sicily,Croatia and Rum against a strong Byzantine Empire or rather emperor that could maybe be a decent change to help smaller realms but that's simply not what's happening currently and it's not really what it was designed for. It's designed to stop you when you are big and it doesn't even do that now so when they nerf them coalitions will be even more ineffective. So basically as me and plenty of other people have already said they shoud not have half-assed a mechanic in from EU4 and should have went with internal mechanics to trouble empires.

Fixed autocorrect Franco not francia. Silly phone.

 

[Reckall]

Asturias is surviving to declare holy wars in your games? In my recent reattempt at the Duke of Toulouse during the Charlemagne start they practically died in 7 years since the Umayyads ate the Duchy of Galicia then it's vassal emirs declared holy wars (like 5 of them) afterwards. It's sad since they're now one county.

In my current game as Tolouse, same start, Asturias is kicking the Umayyads away from the Iberian Peninsula with righteous fury (!) Honestly I'm amazed by this turn of events, but it means that Asturias has the possibility to do something right.

 

[Zooboss]

Got any examples of large empires ruling over large areas like players typically have?

I know they're not from the era but I think these are the ones that come close to player ruled blobs:
Achaemenid Empire (lasted~ 200 years until Alexander the Great took over most of it)
Macedonia (under Alexander the Great, but it fell apart after his death)
Roman Empire (lasted ~1500 years and infighting, corruption, religious unrest, tribal/nomadic invasions and a ridiculous border length all contributed to its downfall)
Rashidun/Umayyad/Abbasid Caliphate (this is much closer to the in game time period)

Personally I head canon coalitions as birder raids and skirmishes going on while the blob fights in other areas. Just like I pretend shattered retreat disbands armies and then raises them wherever they stop. These two things help me make sense of the two mechanics.