Conclave: The Near Future

[heliostellar]

Yea, better to get the opinions of a very small player base instead of allowing the entire player base a chance to play and give feedback on a feature 2 days old....not.

A 2-day old feature that was panned almost immediately when it was announced citing fears of exactly what we are seeing. Such a controversial change had no place seeing the light of day without some kind of opt-in or maybe even an open beta process.

 

[Zolotaya]

They shouldn't necessarily be religion specific, but inter religious coalitions should be extremely rare and very localised... as happened in history. Whereas now Karl can't press his claim on Saxony without the Pope getting involved...

I have no issues with distance restrictions. What I do not want to see non-historical religious restrictions placed because the majority of the complainers do not believe they ever happened.

As far as the specific Charlemagne scenario - those should be examined in detail and tweaked, since Q/A was aware of extreme infamy issues and problems when playing as the Karling. This has been acknowledged as needed to be fixed, recorded as such and placed on their internal listings for fixing.

Although, if Charlemagne got involved in Lombardy without Papal invitation, don't you think the Pope would have looked for defenders? He did historically; that is how the Karling got invited into Italy in the first place...

 

[Birken]

Did patch 2.5.1/Conclave improve multiplayer stability, or am I just getting lucky? In our current 6-10 player MP campaign I've noticed less desyncs than pre-Conclave, though there's been somewhat more CTDs.

I sincerely hope that development also continues on the multiplayer front of this great game.

Cheers in advance.

I'm sorry that you're having more CTDs, if your games have produced any dumps (in the document & settings crusader kings folder), please report in the bug-forum and attach those.
We've fixed a number of OOS during development of Conclave, most of which were old.
Earlier this week we also fixed a problem that have caused OOS when doing MP between different platforms (Win, OSX, Linux) and today we ran 1½h MP with mixed platforms during our MP test without OOS.

Earlier today I was trying to give land to one of my clans and being blocked by my Council. When I checked it was because the clan leader I was trying to give land to had called in a bunch of favors to stop me from giving him the land. I was stuck with the 'Clans Demand Land' popup without any way to give it to them because the guy I was trying to give it to was opposing me. Ridiculous.

That sounds ridiculous indeed, if you have a savegame, please post in the bug-forum. The called favors should make them all agree to giving him the land.

 

[Conan Troutman]

They shouldn't necessarily be religion specific, but inter religious coalitions should be extremely rare and very localised... as happened in history. Whereas now Karl can't press his claim on Saxony without the Pope getting involved...

Maybe tie them to the de jure territory and what claims the realm in question could potentially get were they to expand further. If I'm aggressively expanding as say, Sweden in Scandinavia, the other de jure kings and dukes of the empire of Scandinavia should rightfully feel threatened that I might form the Empire and get the de jure claim to vassalize them. Or holy war different pagans. Which is of course exactly what I'm doing.

On the other side, if I'm a catholic with no religious CB and no religious de jure claims whatsoever, my neighbors should be more relaxed. Say I just formed a kingdom within the de jure HRE and am now bordering a smaller country in de jure Francia. Even if I managed to form the HRE, I still wouldn't get a claim on that one, so they shouldn't feel threatened and thus not be able to join the alliance.

Something like that would secure that the coalition stays regional and is actually about a very real threat, not just some infamy score.

Edit: Maybe very high infamy could negate those restrictions - if you're expanding all over the map, coalitions could be global.

 

[Hanksa]

What about the seduction? Are you going to fix that?

It gets out of hand at larger empires with your wife almost guaranteed to cheat on you immediately after marriage, no matter what. Only thing that helps are homosexual and chaste-traits, otherwise they are guaranteed to cheat on you. Same goes for unmarried courtiers, they have herpes and start popping out illegimate children continuously soon as they turn 16. Also if playing as a empress you are surrounded by vassal seduction attempts non-stop.

 

[ogarrr]

Edit: Maybe very high infamy could negate those restrictions - if you're expanding all over the map, coalitions could be global.

There should be different coalitions worldwide but someone in Finland shouldn't join in a coalition with someone in Egypt. The game isn't set in 1938.

 

[TheKingofWinter]

(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.)

..... what? WHY??? why the hell should countries be able to bounce back from a decisive defeat? this isnt the time period of EU4 here, battles in the medival period was decisive, countries rarely managed to recover after half their armeis was exterminated on the field of battle. and wars not dragging out for longer than necessary? are you joking? if you have two braincells to rubb together, you will chase the enemy army down and continue to do so until its gone, cause if you dont, itll get its numbers back up. ive seen several people claiming that you shouldnt chase down armies anymore, and instead focus on sieges after winning the first battle. which seems to be the surest way to let the enemy eventually get more troops than you. am i alone in thinking thats an insane strategy? am i really alone here, in believing that chasing down armies is the smarter and more intelligent course of action? its like paradox wants me to play in a certain way, except that way is insanely dumb, and i refuse to follow along with it.

 

[Marasai]

Thank you paradox for the feedback. I look forward to picking up conclave after a things have been tweaked. Then maybe some day I will finally get that SPQR achievement.

 

[vertinox]

Thanks for the prompt reply Doomdark.

I will be buying Conclave this weekend.

 

[Sabotage13]

The core of the problem with coalitions is that they're just a gamey way to stop large empires. The realm-size multiplier is just weird. I can be a warmongering Norseman who conquers Ireland, Wales and sets his sights on England and nobody cares, but if I'm a king who inherits his brother's kingdom then everyone wants to kill me.

Worse, they're a gamey way to stop player expansion. They won't even stop large empires once they've snowballed, because large empires just crush coalitions.

The price of unfettered expansion should be instability at home, but apparently that doesn't mesh with the new philosophy of "players are countries, not characters or dynasties".

 

[mjohnson85]

A 2-day old feature that was panned almost immediately when it was announced citing fears of exactly what we are seeing. Such a controversial change had no place seeing the light of day without some kind of opt-in or maybe even an open beta process.

Again, you can opt out - there are already mods on steam which do the work for you. It makes absolutely no sense from a development POV to remove something 2 days after it is introduced when you are actively looking for feedback.

The only person who would even advocate that has no idea regarding game development.

 

[jakt]

If I make a "strategic redeployment" while raiding involving a retreat, will I be unable to raid that person for X time, or is it just that the AI will be instructed to run away home and don't come back round here, if it's a shattered retreat? If it's the former, what if I'm raiding with 2 armies and one retreats? If it's the latter how long would this cooldown on the AI not being able to be raiding my lands last, any idea?

 

[ogarrr]

why the hell should countries be able to bounce back from a decisive defeat?

You should probably read up on a litte known figure called Alfred the Great. That's literally exactly what he did.

 

[JohnKR]

Shatter Retreat is really good and historical....as coalitions are too...some tweaks of course are welcome but really...was the whole destruction of armies with one battle and pursue realistic?? They got sattelites back then? And knew where the enemy army retreated? Actually even today that's not the case! And guess...we got sattelites!

 

[Jorlem]

@Doomdark
Any thoughts yet on making Late Administration take longer to get in the 1066 starts? It is honestly kind of silly, how easy it is to get primogeniture succession in that start.

 

[Afinati]

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

I almost shed a tear. I'm naming my next dependent, whether it's a human baby or a pet turtle, Doomdark.

But seriously, thanks. Prestige +1000

 

[TheKingofWinter]

Shatter Retreat is really good and historical....as coalitions are too...some tweaks of course are welcome but really...was the whole destruction of armies with one battle and pursue realistic?? They got sattelites back then? And knew where the enemy army retreated? Actually even today that's not the case! And guess...we got sattelites!

true, most armies didnt have their entire force killed. what actually happened was that after losing, most of the army would simply say, screw this im going home, and then attempt to get home. they didnt hold ranks as they fled, because they werent soldiers, they were levies. they broke, and usually that meant that after a retreat, wheter it be ordered or not, would be followed up by mass dessertion. wich unsuprisingly destroyed the army as well as killing it did. shatterd retreat belongs in EU4 where the armies are composed of proffesional soliders, not CK2 where armies are made up of untrained levies.

 

[alexkayownsabus]

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!

Thanks to the developers for always hearing people out and always striving for high quality products! I bought the expansion and haven't had time to play much yet but I've been watching the reddit posts and the hate being put out there is a bit ridiculous.

 

[Afinati]

Warfare is a facet all its own in this game. It's kind of the main event, too; really, it's the aspect which most of the game is geared around. It's the part of the game that holds the most anticipation for its players. It's the action of the game. Naturally, it's not surprising that imperfect changes to this aspect of gameplay have caused one of the larger uproars I've seen in this forum over the last year. Nobody wants to see the "action" of an otherwise cerebral game turned into a slogging quagmire. It upsets the balance of the game on a macro level.

I honestly care about 10 times as much about coalitions as I do shattered retreats. Sure, it's immersion breaking to have armies trek for so long ... and without getting intercepted ... but it's just a thing of units on a map. The characters, the real stars of the game, aren't affected. And there isn't nearly as much whack-a-mole as there was at launch. On coalitions, education, perfecting decadence, giving you more council options, deepening intrigue ... I put sieging, army battles, and martial traits a dead last. I must be an odd duck.

 

[TheKingofWinter]

You should probably read up on a litte known figure called Alfred the Great. That's literally exactly what he did.

i did. im assuming you didnt mean his first loss against the danish(where he made peace with them after losing) but rather his second. where in CK2 terms, he lost a county but survived to to rally his army.

nether has any relevance here, as alfred lost the first war, but the second opened with him losing an important stronghold, without having called an army into being. thats not a decisive loss. thats a tactical one. but taking a capital does not instantly win a medival war, and even less so if there is still an unbloodied army ready to be gathered or in the field.