CK expansion/gameplay ideas
Greetings,
The other thread got me thinking, about things we could change that would take actual programming by the developers to do. Three things immediately stood out for me, in relevance to warfare:
1) The way AI used gold and armies. They could never go below negative, so they could just keep their troops indefinitely in the field and transport them anywhere. You shouldn't have been able to take a sea route unless you had the gold. By allowing the AI to go on like 900 gold naval trips for free, we got silly cases of Emirates in Norway or Ireland.
2) The way war movement was conducted. You should not have been able to move across any other realm, except your own home realm, without getting permission to do so. Otherwise, you'd have to declare war. This would have worked the same for Crusading. So instead of having 20 Christian armies make a beeline for Jerusalem, every time they passed into the territory of a neutral muslim (or vice versa) it should've been an automatic war. That way, the Crusader States of Outremer might actually have formed. Perhaps armies lead by characters with the 'Crusader' trait, could be immune to this when dealing with Orthodox or Catholic traits. This could have simply been done via the 'ask for military access' diplomatic ability, that could've been ported over, and the chances of acceptance could be how the personality traits stacked up, combined with diplomacy, like everything else. It should however , only last a single year.
However, I think in order to do the two ideas above, the developers would have to recognize that giving Armies the ability to strike anywhere at anytime (marching over any neutrals, free boat trips), they will need to withdraw from the somewhat arrogant assertion that all wars be equal, and that it is a game design issue to let the Muslims set up emirates in Ireland or Norway. This is untenable, and I hope after 2 years, considernig how widely villified and hated this aspect of CK is, would be corrected. It would put everyone on an equal footing anyways. The Christians would have to go via Anatolia much more, and so would the Muslims, just like they did historically. A 20,000 Muslim army shouldn't be able to walk across Byzantium, Hungary, half of Germany, and set up shop in Cologne, whereupon it'll never be touched.
3) Perhaps one of the most unfortunate missing function was the simple ability to defeat a rebelling vassal in an war and simple confirm them in their titles. Perhaps for a slight decrease in badboy. Or at the least, to no more gain. You should be able to confirm anyone whom you have a title over, so that you are not forced to annex or let them go free. 90% of 'civil wars' in this era, was simpy the overlord asserting his authority. Many times, a vassal would be brought into the fold and still rebel later. Guiscard dealt with this several times, as did most other rulers.
Errata:
I should also note that I have probably, the most heavily self-modded CK game of ALL time. I've tweaked many events, techs, spreads...I've even gone through and given each culture and province on the map a specific tech and power level based on what was historic, and I gave all the kingdoms their historical laws, instead of just Traditional Custom and Ecclesical Balance. (For instance, France is Feudal Contract/Monastic, HRE is Elective/Royal Supremacy and England is Royal Perogative/Ecclesical Balance.
Many Bishops were set to Church Supremacy too. I also heavily modified the Byzantium-Seljuk start (by giving claims to the Seljuks, and making Alp at war with most of the Anatolian vassals, and lowering piety to 0 from 25 for all involved, I made it so the vast majority of the time, the Seljuks would not stop until they had conquered their historical areas), and all castles start with a minimum of medium since they represent such huge areas.
So my priorities are mostly on stuff that isn't moddable.
EDIT: Oh, and it shouldn't be possible to create a vassal while at war. Too often the AI will conquer something, only to give it to somebody else, who is suddenly immune from the war. Frankly, I think all vassals should be at war with all vassals, whenever a war starts.
