Crusader Kings II - Free content patch v2.5

[Maizel]

Not a fan of the infamy+coalition mechanic, looks like its going to unfairly/ahistorically punish expansion+war, I was hoping that the new council mechanics in conclave would cause them to drop this infamy idea, sadly they didnt. If things end up going south and the feature is awful, i hope Paradox do indeed adjust/remove it. If the coalition/infamy mechanic does suck and end up breaking gameplay and immersion, we can make enough noise until its addressed. At the end of the day, without user support, a game is nothing. Until then, I'll experiment and test when this patch drops and post my findings along with a pros and cons list. We should give this a chance, but we shouldn't stop providing constructive criticism to Paradox, we dont want an inferior rehash of EU4 in CK2. This our game as much as it's Paradox's game.

Most of the userbase has been saying the game is too easy ever since its release. The only thing that got changed to really make the game a bit harder in the past 4 years was to add a vassal limit, so uberduchies became a thing of the past, but that's pretty much it, really.

I'll have to see how the infamy and coalition thing turns out, but I like the sound of it. Anything that makes the game harder and get me off the 'autopilot expanding' I've been on since release is a good thing in my book.

This is shaping up to be the best DLC to date, and probably the one I will recommend first when people ask me which to get.

 

[Groogy]

Ah. I suppose I'll just have to edit it myself on my conversions then, oh well. Thank you for the clarification, in any case. Surely there is some merit to the idea that a very developed province in CK2 could appear changed in EU4 though? Or perhaps it's because the AI doesn't develop at a pace similar to players? I'm assuming you've done edits like that yourself on your CK2 --> EU4 AAR.

Yeah I did, I upped provinces for countries that I saw as "leading" in progress in some way or just found interesting. For instance the Duchy of Gascoigne got a big boost since they are like the main producer of innovation within warfare.

But reason why it doesn't convert is because the landscape in CK2 is pretty flat in comparison to EU4 which means the conversion would be flat. So I simply decided to keep the Eu4 values so the map stays interesting.

 

[CVDE]

Is this update coming out before or during release?

 

[Groogy]

Sane time like usual.

 

[Thure]

Final or second to final seems likely. Early last year they said there would be three more expansions, since then horselords and now conclave has been released, so there might be one more, but a lot could have changed in a year.

No... they said 'We have plans for three major expansions in 2015'. This is not the same as 'We make the last three expansions for CK2'...

 

[yourworstnightm]

I'm still on the edge over the infamy system, mainly because I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. Who gets infamy? Can any landed character get infamy? Can any landed character join a coalition? Can coalitions be formed against any landed character (i.e. is there intra Realm coalitions)?

Because all the talk about Realms getting infamy is what really scares me. I can already see the obvious exploit in that case.

 

[princeseth]

For me it was already difficult to maintain good relationships with vassals especially in big realms i had always too many factions to deal with ... Why do you make it more difficult ? ... It will be hell this time i think ...

 

[SnowHawkKiller]

I really feel like losing to a coalition should have a more detrimental effect. Simply losing prestige and gold isn't punishing enough. Territory should be taken from the target of the coalition if they lose. Maybe it could scale, like if a King is defeated the members with the highest war score each gain 1 county with a limit of say 3-5 counties being taken from the King. And maybe if its an Emperor whole duchies could be given to the members of the coalition with the highest war score with a limit of say 2-3 duchies and the highest war score each get 1 duchy. This is just a really rough idea, but I just feel like losing to a coalition currently seems like it doesn't mean anything and I'd like to see an actual punishment which makes you think twice about whether you really can defeat the 4 kings and 2 dukes in the coalition against you.

 

[zonkie]

I was thinking of starting up a new game of Morrowind recently...

Do it!

 

[Birken]

Oooooh, how does the time of the inherited opinion modifiers work? If the father has a +10 for 10 years and a +10 for five years, what does the son inherit?

The son will inherit +10 (50% of the fathers value) for a dynamic time based on the son's age (longer if you're younger). The +10 decays linearly for it's duration.

Optimization didn't make it to the list?

We're always optimizing the game, otherwise it wouldn't run at all at this point. Most of the optimizations done for conclave is offset by the performance need for the added features. I don't think that is worthy of entries in changelogs.

What does "History is no longer executed if the player loads a save game" mean?

Aaaaaaand saw that was (probably) answered already after posting it. Still, would be nice to have some Dev clarification.

We've reduced the need to run the history only to throw it away when you're loading a save game. This was done to improve the time from starting the game until actually being able to play from a save game. On a similar note, the history is no longer run while clicking back and forth in the era picker, but instead run when you either move into the game or go to custom game start.

 

[tkamin]

I've done some stuff but do you have any specifics that you need fixed?

I have a list of very specific things to be fixed in thread linked my signature. And even have fixes for them. Actually how many of the issues from the thread was fixed?

 

[Slayen]

So, will this change to when history loads finally fix the issue of flags like Lombardy's flipping to the Italian flag upon loading saves? Or is that issue tied to something completely different?

 

[Jorlem]

Yeah I did, I upped provinces for countries that I saw as "leading" in progress in some way or just found interesting. For instance the Duchy of Gascoigne got a big boost since they are like the main producer of innovation within warfare.

But reason why it doesn't convert is because the landscape in CK2 is pretty flat in comparison to EU4 which means the conversion would be flat. So I simply decided to keep the Eu4 values so the map stays interesting.

Would it be possible to do a combination of the two? That is, have the EU4 landscape as a sort of base, but then modify the provinces depending on how varied the CK2 provinces were from the average?

 

[dagund]

hi all,
where is explained infamy system?

 

[Groogy]

I have a list of very specific things to be fixed in thread linked my signature. And even have fixes for them. Actually how many of the issues from the thread was fixed?

Don't have a number but a few

 

[raikaria]

Death Sounds is cool. Hearing ARRRGH! when you died a natural death in your sleep seemed odd. Or if you were female.

 

[Galaahd]

Any hope for a fix to the horse archer graphical unit bug?

 

[TheDungen]

There's been no evidence to suggest this will be the last DLC. Anyone saying differently is just speculating.

Paradox will likely continue making DLC as long as it makes them money. Given the fact the number of CK2 players is actually higher now then it was at launch, we have every reason to believe they will keep making DLC.

Another thing. People have been saying "this will be the last DLC" for the past five DLCs in a row. And they've been wrong every time. In fact, the CK2 team has gotten even bigger despite the fact that Paradox has two other strategy games in the works.

There is a limit to how mny DLCs the game can handle, and we've hit it. Despite them improving the performance to make up for what they add it still gets worse with every new DLC. Not to mention that one of the things they do to fix performance is to up the mortality rate of characters and even that is getting annoying at this point. Also there are as mentioned recently features they'd like to improve upon but can't since they were DLC features, for an example retinues. And with many more new games comming out they will want us to spend out money on them for now.
All this makes me arrive at the conclusion that CK2 is nearing the end of it's development cycle, that said I don't think they'll stop working on crusder kings, I think they'll just start working on ck3, in fact I think that they in a way already have, in that they while making DLCs for Ck2 have identified a load of things they'd like to do with ck3.
I'm not saying it's the last DLC I'm however saying that they can't keep developing it ad infinitum and I'd be suprised if there were a great number of additional DLCs.

 

[Galaahd]

Oh and was any balancement done regarding the Seduction focus?

 

[TheDungen]

Any hope for a fix to the horse archer graphical unit bug?

Is that still in there? I fixed that myself ages ago. Or wait you mean the byzantine retinue thing right?