DD8: Trade-offs

[McCoy1]

I always thought that it would be a neat idea if your vassals approved keeping other vassals in check. Say you have the kings of Italy, France, and Frisia as vassals; if France inherited (or conquered) the kingdom of Frisia, Italy would greatly appreciate you breaking apart their suddenly-stronger rival. Of course, the king of France wouldn't be too happy about it, but as your empire grew larger it would allow you to appease vassals through non-monetary means and give you a way of keeping revolts in check. So maybe the vassal "limit" should be an actual hard maximum with the ideal located at the middle - although you COULD have the maximum number of vassals, there would be a lot of unnecessary political intrigue and it would be more difficult to manage your expansionist vassals.

 

[Cathal341]

All I'm looking for in CK2 at the moment is more Accessible CBs for certain groups(Tribal Ireland in the earlier start dates for example) rather than waiting on claim fabrication or dynastic happenings.

 

[Hadhod]

Possessing multiple virtues should give you boons from the Pope, e.g. some other Christian declares war on you the Pope could step in and ask him to stand down. The ruler could then be given the decision to accept which ends the war, or not accept it, which would give the Pope the chance to excommunicate him. This should work the other way around of course, if you declare on someone else and you are literally the Antichrist regarding your traits, the Pope should ask you to stand down.

Education could be reevaluated, I particularly love the education system in the AGOT mod, where you choose a certain education for your child and once it comes of age, his/her learning skill determines how good their education is. Would give learning a lot more influence in the game. Also education costs money, if you spent a lot on it, you get a bonus in learning which goes hand in hand with the point above.

Might come up with more thoughts later.

 

[King Anund]

I'd actually argue against the latter; different culture vassals should be little more difficult than same culture; this isn't the age of nationalism. Different religion vassals should obviously hate you, but it should be perfectly reasonable to hold a multicultural empire. Maybe this will avoid the inevitable disappearance of the Dutch and other minor nationalities.

That nationalism didn't exist doesn't mean that people and lords of other cultures liked being subjects of a foreigner. You have italians and scots as an example. If you start in 1066 is stupid that italians don't seek independence and will most likely accept the the Emperor's rule.

Also I think that religious conversion of provinces should need a much longer time. Also making impossible for a porvince to accept the culture of a ruler without having an adjacent province of that culture or being in a sea province (but this should not apply to melting pot or culture split events: english, norse, russian, vsigothic, etc)

 

[Jia Xu]

I'd like to see more things like the true Christian knight modifier you can get from having a combination of positive traits.

Make it so having certain combinations of traits give you penalties or bonuses. For example being both slothful and a hedonist could give you -5 stewardship to reflect that you're a very negligent ruler. Little things like that to make you actually pay attention to who exactly your character has become.

 

[Aquae Sulis]

I'd like to see some 'internal/external focus' bonus-malus. Basically the more time you spend fighting in foreign lands, the less effective your administration becomes but, perhaps, the more effective your prestige gains become?

Richard the Lionheart springs to mind. In modern terms, he acheived some legendary feats outside England and spent a great deal of his time outside England. The internal political machinations of England were greatly different compared to some of the more stay-at-home Kings.

 

[Cymsdale]

I don't see any fundamental difference between a bonus or penalty in a game. I know people get frothy when they get a penalty for anything in a game ever, but a bonus is a penalty in a different form. It's an opportunity cost you give up for not staying within the lines.

I want the game to make large empires harder to maintain. Do this by bonuses or penalties, I really don't care, they are the same thing.

 

[Shampoocat]

I would love to see a option to get people to make choices their character would most likely pick.
A lot of events that pop up have obvious choices that a player will always pick as they give you good traits etc. However there are also a lot of choices the player will never pick as they are just plain bad. I would love to see some reward for picking bad ones if your character would act that way or a penalty for picking ones that are good but your character would never do.

 

[Xinkc]

How about when I defeat an adventurer I get 500 - 1000 prestige. Random people with claims just popping up somewhere, ignoring all of the rules, pulling 12k+ troops out of their ass, only to be defeated and hey you get nothing. Yea thats a fun and balanced mechanic.

It would be nice to actually get some prestige from beating adventurers. Maybe allow us to get half their gold as well since it generally just vanishes, making them even less enjoyable.

At the moment there is very little incentive not to blob. It would be good if there was some sort of peace dividend such as an economic boost, which gradually increased the longer you were at peace. Also perhaps some sort of boost for having good relations with your neighbours.

On a similar note, I think learning needs a boost as there doesn't seem to be as much incentive to go down this path as some of the others.

Increasing neighbor opinion boost for being at peace might be nice. However, I'd like any economic boost to be tied to levies being raised. If I control a massive Empire and wage war along the frontiers with local troops there would logically be a lesser impact on the heartlands of the Empire where people aren't being conscripted.


Anyways, for my own ideas, it would be nice if there was a soft limit on realm size that increased with multiple titles of your primary title level (except Empire tier), de jure realm size (so Empire tier can have some ability to effect it), and top tier level Crown Authority (with the most effective increase at lower levels since absolute authority over a Romanesque Empire would be difficult given communication and travel logistics). Being over the size limit would decrease the opinion of vassals both out of your de jure realm and farther from your capital, while also increasing the incidence of joining independence factions. Opinion should obviously limit the faction joining unless the character is ambitious or greedy so that winning a distant crusade as an Empire and setting up a vassal king wouldn't rip the new lands out of your realm before you can try and stabilize/convert them.

Also, their should be a soft cap concerning income with regards to sending gifts. The higher the income, the more each person in your realm will require to get that sweet opinion boost.

 

[Ferrero]

This was already suggested a few times in the forum: make inheritance actually manageable by the player. For example, gavelkind is usually the crappiest law, with only a small bonus in the demesne limit. Well, let us determine before our last breath how the realm will be divided, assigning portions of our realms to our sons, so that they will have more logical realms, and let us overrule the expected partition by assigning more to a son if we want to face the maluses. Let us appease the younger sons by giving them more titles/money than what they should receive and make them have a weaker claim or no claim at all.

 

[Mr_Hobo]

Some of these aren't positive reinforcement, but here we go:

• A reward for landing your sons. Currently, landing them risks building tyranny and losing control of their marriages. Allow us to still set up marriages, and let them gain rulership experience from having titles.
• Have vassels expect rewards from new conquests; currently, nearly every conquest results in new vassels being create while old ones stagnate. Force a choice between building up strong vassels or losing opinion. This should regulate rate of expansion.
• Participation of the ruler in game mechanics boost stats. Joining allies' wars give diplomacy bonuses, leading troops give martial bonuses, etc. This encourages actually using these mechanics.
• Reward having more children by making bad rulers or disputed successions a serious problem. The ruler dying without a son or nephew in primigeniture succession should usually cause a war. Similarly, foreigners ascending to the throne should cause a war

 

[DeathBurst]

This was already suggested a few times in the forum: make inheritance actually manageable by the player. For example, gavelkind is usually the crappiest law, with only a small bonus in the demesne limit. Well, let us determine before our last breath how the realm will be divided, assigning portions of our realms to our sons, so that they will have more logical realms, and let us overrule the expected partition by assigning more to a son if we want to face the maluses. Let us appease the younger sons by giving them more titles/money than what they should receive and make them have a weaker claim or no claim at all.

Yeah, more flexibility in the inheritance system at the price of malus opinions (or whatever) if you don't respect the traditional laws used up to now is a great idea. There are a few thread about that in the Suggestion sub-forum.

 

[wolfing]

When in doubt, make it historically accurate and use common sense. If a king has too many properties, then his attention has to be shared among them, so each property produces less (money, manpower, etc). If the game engine can't emulate the problems of history, whatever you do use common sense, don't make it annoying.

 

[Asiak]

Education could be reevaluated, I particularly love the education system in the AGOT mod, where you choose a certain education for your child and once it comes of age, his/her learning skill determines how good their education is. Would give learning a lot more influence in the game. Also education costs money, if you spent a lot on it, you get a bonus in learning which goes hand in hand with the point above.

Might come up with more thoughts later.

I especially agree with this. Its just really I don't see the fun or the balance in having a random chance to become some random other education. Why would a boy educated by a soldier his entire life become a dutiful clerk. Part of the problem I think is the fact that some of them are educations like a soldier, or some of them are traits pretending to be educations like indulgent wastrel, really that shouldn't be a trait?

 

[v1989]

1)How about feature "The Last Will"?
You would decide which lands and titles would go to heirs. You can act according to heredity rules, but country is divided. Or omit some guys to create stable country, but with incoming civil war.
2)Possibility to decide which heir you can continue game.
3)Heirs are more nagging to ask for land.

 

[Xinkc]

I don't see any fundamental difference between a bonus or penalty in a game. I know people get frothy when they get a penalty for anything in a game ever, but a bonus is a penalty in a different form. It's an opportunity cost you give up for not staying within the lines.

I want the game to make large empires harder to maintain. Do this by bonuses or penalties, I really don't care, they are the same thing.

You're right, there isn't a difference between the two on a fundamental level of their effect. However, losing a bonus compared to gaining a penalty is generally more preferable from a psychological standpoint.

 

[CVDE]

Im confused I thought they said we where getting two Dlc before the end of the year??

also im disappointed in this non-update, I expected to get an update on bugfixs or at lease things that ruin the game for players( OP Nomads, Seduction, Optimization )

 

[Mr_Hobo]

Create a trade off similar to raiding adventures by which you can conquer new lands, and establish a new administration there at the cost of losing previous titles. This would make the Norman conquest of Sicily possible without needed to keep Sweden as well. Abandoning Sweden could give a revolt risk reduction and the option to form a new culture or something.

 

[Matthias_Wlkp]

At the moment, I try to get as much personal demense as possible, as it directly affects my personal levies. Giving away a county always results in a major drop in levies, which affects factions, likehood of being attacked and sooooo much other staf, it's not funny. At the moment, I see no reason to have smaller personal demense that max allowed.

I would like to see some kind of bonus (opinion? taxes? vassal levies?) for having smaller demense, than allowed maximinum. Or maybe tie this bonus only to internal allies or sons? (if vassal == ally, give levy bonus of max_demense - actual demense * 10%?)

That would be an interesting trade-off - give away your demense to your sons now to get more troops, but when you die, you will be more likely to face a succession crisis or civil war, as your brothers are now contenders and some allies might align with your opponents if they like them better.

 

[DM818]

I would like bonuses for a few things:

1) A bonus to piety for not having any lovers would be nice as well as giving you and your wife some relatively small increase in fertility so as to deter optimal play being seducing all the women so that you can get better genetic traits.

2) The AI is terrible at education and currently the only bonuses you get for having your child educated by someone other than you is a +20 opinion modifier, I think that if the AI was better at educating the children of people that they liked it would solve a few problems, 1 being that you always want to educate your own child and the other being that when you have done your rulers education for a few generations your rulers are gods among men which also makes a number of pieces in the game much easier for the player. The previous suggestion for education was also good though I would assume much harder to implement.

3) Not really a bonus that I want but something that has bothered me is that generally dukes want all the counties and baronies in a duchy and counts will want to control the duchy they are in despite the fact that historically there were more often than not very strange ways that holdings were spread out as opposed to the nice neat ones that the game pushes towards.