Conclave: The Near Future

[Alfy]

They might as well just compare numbers at the start of the war and say 'oops, I lost, he has 30K troops and I can only get 15K'. That's not fun. That's not even playing a game. And that's what current CK2 feels like.

Actually, that does not bother me at all if I am the one with 15K. If he has twice the troops I have, than he SHOULD win battlefield. So I won't meet him there, at least not right away. I will make friends. I will wait until he has less friends. I will manipulate, I will assassinate. And only then will I go to battle. And if the ai did that to you, you'd actually be playing a very good game.

This is not anecdotal: it is I believe the biggest weakness in all of CKII. You have many tools at your disposal, the battlefield is just but one of them, and it is a great pleasure to learn how to wield them properly. But they are never used against you with purpose. So yes. I can choose my difficulty in some ways, and the ai certainly does not have to be perfect, but it will only ever try to challenge me on the battlefield, and war is not that interesting in CKII.

That's what the coalition mechanic is: let's not have the ai challenge me in other ways once I become dominant on the battlefield, let's not make the very mechanics of my own realm slow me down, instead let's give the ai an edge that once again is about war and war only. An I deeply disagree with that approach.

 

[TheKingofWinter]

Actually, that does not bother me at all if I am the one with 15K. If he has twice the troops I have, than he SHOULD win battlefield. So I won't meet him there, at least not right away. I will make friends. I will wait until he has less friends. I will manipulate, I will assassinate. And only then will I go to battle. And if the ai did that to you, you'd actually be playing a very good game.

This is not anecdotal: it is I believe the biggest weakness in all of CKII. You have many tools at your disposal, the battlefield is just but one of them, and it is a great pleasure to learn how to wield them properly. But they are never used against you with purpose. So yes. I can choose my difficulty in some ways, and the ai certainly does not have to be perfect, but it will only ever try to challenge me on the battlefield, and war is not that interesting in CKII.

That's what the coalition mechanic is: let's not have the ai challenge me in other ways once I become dominant on the battlefield, let's not make the very mechanics of my own realm slow me down, instead let's give the ai an edge that once again is about war and war only. An I deeply disagree with that approach.

i heavily disagree. in battle there is something called "local force majority", this is where you are outnumbered globally, but have a higher number gathered together in one place. for example, lets say that youre the byzantine emperor, and all your personal counties are gathered directly around constantinople. then a faction rises with 27k troops all in all. you can only gather 16-18k men. but theyre spread out over the entire empire, some on the west side, some on the east. but you can gather your army together much quicker than your enemy, and as such you can crush your enemy before he can bring his entire force to bear. that is called strategy, its being intelligent, its something that you should be able to do, this is about using the rules of the game to your advantage. but because of SR, you cant. if any of the army detachments actually gathers more than 2-3k men, you cant wipe them out in decisive battles, thus making the eventual unified enemy force unavoidable. other than that point i agree wholeheartedly with you though.

 

[Alfy]

Oh I completely agree with you that sometimes, depending on circumstances, you should be able to beat a larger force with strategy. And I've not been fond of SR ever since my EUIV days, and I've been sorry to see rear its ugly head in CKII.

 

[Dracko81]

try going two generations without a peasant revolt, noble revolt or a liberation army.

WTF are you doing to have a liberation revolt as William? I have serious doubts you have any real experience in the game, the event requires that the kingdom does not exist.

 

[TheKingofWinter]

WTF are you doing to have a liberation revolt as William? I have serious doubts you have any real experience in the game, the event requires that the kingdom does not exist.

whoops, srry youre right, i completely forgot that william doesnt have his own country already(ive never played as him). that hypotesis was based on my runs starting as harald hardråde, where my strategy is to destroy the english title, then incorporate it into de jure norway. and in those im always suffereing from liberation revolts for england.

 

[StJimmyRocks92]

Something I've been thinking about, would it make sense/be possible to let SE be something that has a chance of happening instead of something guaranteed to happen? Like a base chance with modifiers from traits and martial? Retinues could have a higher base chance, military organization could raise it as well, and maybe buildings could help too. This way early on in the game battles end up being decisive, but as time goes on they become harder to win with and by the time you're approaching EUIV's time you probably would be seeing shattered retreats almost every time.

 

[bburch11]

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all busy playing Conclave, and I wish to give a huge thanks to everyone who has bought this latest expansion! Thanks to you all, we are still able to keep supporting and developing Crusader Kings II; which will actually turn 4 years old on Valentine’s Day!

Rest assured that we are listening to all constructive feedback both here on our own forums and elsewhere, and are already hard at work preparing a fairly major update. In particular, I find that a lot of comments concerning the new Coalition mechanics and the intricacies of “Shattered Retreats” merit our immediate attention. You can expect us to address the following issues very soon:

Coalitions:

• 25% Infamy threshold issues (Coalition formation should be a far more gradual process depending on your Infamy level.)
• Immersion/realism issues concerning distance and differences in religion.
• Coalitions should be purely defensive (no exceptions or extra rules.)
• There should be reasonable caps on Infamy gain and lowest possible Infamy decay rates.

(Btw, Coalitions were primarily added to make the game more challenging for huge, aggressively expanding player realms. That intention should serve as the primary measuring stick for the system.)

Shattered Retreats:

• Raiders should not bother you anymore if defeated once.
• You should get much more War Score from winning battles in general, and even more for winning battles against Adventurers.
• Retreating armies should be in trouble in neutral and hostile provinces (perhaps through attrition.)
• Bugs will be fixed with where armies retreat.

(The main intention with the Shattered Retreat mechanic is to keep countries viable and able to bounce back even after losing a major battle or two. Though you should not be able to easily “blitz” a country, neither should wars drag out for much longer than necessary.)

Other issues will be fixed down the line. For example, we are also looking at fleshing out and improving the new Education system.

So, keep the faith and let’s make the game better together!

I have multpile suggestions to how to improve the game.
1. Non-automatic movement- Make it so the player, and other players must travel via retinue to change capitals, or if they inhierit a larger kingdom must travel via retinue to the new capital. Allow options for players to hold court whilst leading troops that are stagnant in one county.
2. Potentially difficult successions- Your father has died you are the only legitimate child he had, but your a female and have older brothers. The council has propped up the eldest brother and declared rebellion in his name, other powerful dukes have raised their flags in rebellion supporting your youngest brother. All the while, you are miles away from the capital and unable to claim your throne, a small retinue stands between you and the vast armies of your brothers supporters. Things like this would make gameplay even more awesome. Potential features could include a claimant system to be set up, allowing vassals to decide or abstain from choosing one of the clamants and until a ruler is chosen disable features. Potentially allowing kingdoms to be split apart, and dissolve.
3. Better imprisonment mechanics- allowing you to control lands etc. through imprisoning landed characters even your king.
4. Council Pressure on Leige- Female rulers get pressured to marry and if they refuse the council gets upset, or even they make suggestions on who to marry.
5. Heir designation- If you have no obvious heir, allow the character too choose or even set the next line of succession.
6. Next Playable character- Allow the player the choice of who they play next, not choose succession but just who they play

 

[jfoytek]

So Personally I feel that Coalitions/Infamy could be balanced and could create a positive influence on the game. (5 out of 10)

However Shattered retreat has not place in CK2 and if people want it, they should put it into a Free Flavor DLC. (1 out of 10)

Mercenary Band's are just fine... (9 out of 10)

Education system is Dull and boring, it was stripped of all its flavor, events, anything that made it enjoyable all to try and crush the ability to create OP kids. (3 out of 10)
Now its just a chore, monotonous, and boring....

As for the Council its fine but why did you remove Crown Authority??? (7 out of 10)

This is how I feel about the new Mechanics and 2 of my least favorite of the new mechanics are not avoidable there in the base game and this is the major Problem!

 

[Zsrai]

So Personally I feel that Coalitions/Infamy could be balanced and could create a positive influence on the game. (5 out of 10)

It sounds like PDS is working on that in 2.5.2, so hopefully the changes are solid.

However Shattered retreat has not place in CK2 and if people want it, they should put it into a Free Flavor DLC. (1 out of 10)

I don't mind Shattered Retreat so much as I mind the distance being so long. I can't find the dev response (I haven't looked very hard) but I'm pretty sure someone said that they are looking at the retreat distance for 2.5.2. I hope I'm not making that up.

Education system is Dull and boring, it was stripped of all its flavor, events, anything that made it enjoyable all to try and crush the ability to create OP kids. (3 out of 10)
Now its just a chore, monotonous, and boring....

I found it a boring, monotonous chore before, soooooo... not much has changed on that front for me I guess? I usually foisted my kids off on courtiers anyways so that I didn't get terrible event spam. That tended to keep my kids from being super men. I DO like the general lowering of stats that seems to happen with the new education system though.

As for the Council its fine but why did you remove Crown Authority??? (7 out of 10)

I don't mind CA being removed since the effects were moved into other laws anyways... mostly. Some of them are missing which is disappointing.

I haven't even really bothered with Merc bands yet, been too busy tooling around while waiting for 2.5.2 to hit. Mostly I'm just waiting for 2.5.2 before I decide to flip a table over or not.

 

[Dracko81]

I don't mind Shattered Retreat so much as I mind the distance being so long. I can't find the dev response (I haven't looked very hard) but I'm pretty sure someone said that they are looking at the retreat distance for 2.5.2. I hope I'm not making that up.

Currently Wasteland and Sea provinces count within the range, which makes for some fun retreats. But they are looking into that as you said.

I don't mind CA being removed since the effects were moved into other laws anyways... mostly. Some of them are missing which is disappointing.

What was removed exactly? I'm assuming you are refering to vassal wars. There is actually a good reason for this. In the old version with CA, you could create a law to lower CA, which meant you could then declare war as a vassal again. If there was a law that stopped vassals from warring in the current system, a vassal would have no way to change the law. Ever, full stop, end of story your under my heel and must do as I say. To counter that you have the option now to end their wars, which I think is a far better solution, since people were using MCA to exploit other things like holding baronies as vassals no de jure to them and such. Now a vassal can declare war on them and unite their internal realm.

 

[Zsrai]

What was removed exactly? I'm assuming you are refering to vassal wars. There is actually a good reason for this. In the old version with CA, you could create a law to lower CA, which meant you could then declare war as a vassal again. If there was a law that stopped vassals from warring in the current system, a vassal would have no way to change the law. Ever, full stop, end of story your under my heel and must do as I say. To counter that you have the option now to end their wars, which I think is a far better solution, since people were using MCA to exploit other things like holding baronies as vassals no de jure to them and such. Now a vassal can declare war on them and unite their internal realm.

Preventing external vassal wars is the big one. Internal wars I don't mind because of what you said. That and you can use Internal Peace to prevent it if need be. I did kind of like how much more split up the succession laws were too, but it wasn't that hard to just bee-line for High/Absolute in a couple of generations either.

 

[Dracko81]

Preventing external vassal wars is the big one. Internal wars I don't mind because of what you said. That and you can use Internal Peace to prevent it if need be. I did kind of like how much more split up the succession laws were too, but it wasn't that hard to just bee-line for High/Absolute in a couple of generations either.

I never felt that preventing external wars was really something that should have been there anyway. But it would have the same problem as before, once passed, no one can change it. There is a faction to lower previously, now laws can't typically be affected by anyone but the ruler.

 

[jpinard]

As someone who has played countless hours on CK2 and other paradox games , I understand you wanted to make expansion more difficult. But crazy coalitions really overdid it. Infamy for a one de iure county conquest silly. Attrition resulting in endless chasing of defeated armies ...
Educating kids in your court who are not family becomes a chore of micromanagement. Please fix this or create a button like one of my counsellors doing this for me so I'm not burdened with this kind of management.
More internal civil war is a more realistic way to slow down expansion but please tweak it : dukes that are happy should not be so eager to join a rebellion...
And nomads should be more aggressive as they were: Magyars , Seljuks , Mongols . Still can't understand why Mongols just sit there for decades without doing anything...
Thanks for making the game better by fixing these things...

Excellent post. Hope PI follows posts like this and not the crazy people whow 14,000 in the game no other life.

 

[Turinsday]

Thank you for the information. Pardon me if this is now old news as I'm also new to the forums and paradox account.

I m a little late to starting up this DLC and have given some thought to my new encounters with the features particularly the coalitions.

I can see the features benefits, but was also thrown out by the whole map uniting as one. Glad to hear that will no longer be the case.
I'm sure that similar comments have been made since the DLC was put out but I would advocate for:

- The ability of the AI to form multiple coalitions.

-I would limit each realm to being in one coalition at a time, perhaps two, I can see potential for essentially a religious coalition and an non-religious one, particularly for states like Aragon, sandwiched between great powers of large size but with smaller similar neighbours.

-Implementing this would perhaps be difficult. Perhaps to form a religious coalition one needs the favour of their religious head/ most pious unreformed leader.

-Coalitions form in the response to the infamy of nations states as now, but the approach is much more regional. Neighbouring states should coalesce first, then more distant states should be drawn in by religious ties. In effect if you start to rapidly attack, for example the Slavic states, then they should joining together rapidly as a coalition with the odd neighbouring christian/catholic/norse pagan state as well. I appreciate that similar things can be achieved with marriage, but for small houses and small young feudal states and republics a money/favour orientated system would perhaps give flexibility?

-Nations at war with another of a differing reaction can not join the same coalition. I currently have Sunni Hispannia defending a Crusade vs Catholic Western Europe but they and everyone else on the map are in a coalition against the Byzantines. Likewise the khanates and Abbasids in the East are in the same situation.

Just some thoughts. I appreciate both the commitment of Paradox to a) still working on this game and b) having their staff personally respond to such a degree in places like the forum.

Cheers

TD.

 

[Maraxus]

On Infamy and Coalitions:

The rule to gather infamy and to reduce it over time is simple and bad. The rule of 25% = Worldwide coalition is even worse.

First draft for scaling infamy limits:
25%: Coalitions start to form, if there are rulers, that especially fear you (Small ones, that you have just stolen land from or that are similar in culture and religion to ones you have just annexed). Rulers of similar religious group and region might join those coalitions, depending on how much they fear or hate you.
50%: Rulers may be in 2 different coalitions against you. If two coalitions share most of their members, they merge.
75%: Coalitions may start to merge, even if they hate each other, as long as they (as a whole) still fear you
90%: Napoleon threshold: All your neighbors and all their neighbors of similar religion or culture group and everybody else that fears you, joins one big coalition against you (basically as 25% now. )

Fear: Since I'm using the word fear a lot: That would be a function of infamy, relative strength, proximity and cassus beli. It determines how strongly the AI reacts to your infamy level.
If you are aggressive (high infamy), huge, nearby and have an invasion cassus beli against someone, that one will seek safety in numbers.
On the other hand even if you have been similarly aggressive in the recent past but you still are a relatively small, distant, Jain realm, people will see no reason to join a coalition against you.

With size playing this way into the balance, it should no longer be needed to factor size in when calculating infamy gain from conquest. However, county Infrastructure (Conquest of Finmark should not hit you with the same infamy as conquest of Paris or Rome. Number of baronies (build and, to a lesser extend, empty) should count.) and cassus beli could count. 5% for an average province in average situations sounds fine.

And finally reduction:
I do not think this should be a flat number based on size, simply for the rule of fun: It is not fun to wait 30 years after each holy war. I think 4% per year for everybody should be good measure but I'd like it to be more progressive with keeping peace: It could start at 0.25% per month but if you keep peace for more then 2 years, the speed of reduction could significantly increase. This would have the effect that even after a big "Claim on Kingdom" or "Invasion" war, you could at some point in the foreseeable future return to war. Basically 10 years of peace should always bring you from 100% to below 25%.
I did not factor size in here either but some distinction between simple "big kingdom" and "all-consuming Moloch of an empire" would be nice, so There could be some hamper for the really big ones. Also it seams logical, that while some guarded half-trust (low infamy) can be achieved with keeping peace for a while, true and honest trust (no infamy) takes a while longer. Combining those two points I would add a diminished infamy reduction when the infamy approaches zero (even surpassing the growing factor for keeping the peace) Huge realm would have a higher threshold, when this starts. The effect of this would be, that huge empires could still kind of expand at the same speed as smaller realms but they would have to do so at a higher level of infamy, meaning that instead of attacking small neighbors alone, they would have to attack bigger neighbors (who do not join a coalition at 25% because they are not that fearful) or small coalitions of small states.

 

[jpinard]

Is there a beta for this yet?

 

[Zsrai]

Is there a beta for this yet?

If it's not a sticky, then not yet.

 

[erhpdm]

On February 4th Doomdark stated the issues would be resolved "very soon". I guess it depends on how one interprets that. 2 weeks ? 3 weeks? A month ?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

On February 4th Doomdark stated the issues would be resolved "very soon". I guess it depends on how one interprets that. 2 weeks ? 3 weeks? A month ?

When it's ready.



Seriously, i can only suspect that they stumbled over some bugs that were caused by fixing bugs and now want to be sure that fixing the new bugs doesn't cause new bugs in turn.
Also some new features could cause/might have caused issues for popular mods *ahem* and these will be taken care of i suppose.

Or somesuch...let the speculation fest begin...

 

[elvain]

In the light of the latest @Doomdark 's interview it seems like the general concept for the last CK2 DLCs is clear or already decided what they will be about, in general. Is it the right assumption, or is it misunderstanding of your words?