DD8: Trade-offs

[The Great Bear]

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.

How about adventurers only attack when you're are playing in a way that abuses the mechanics?
Gives us a way of avoiding them all together.
Something like... a son starting a rebellion (with a few thousand men) because he didn't inherit any land from his powerful father?

Added: Another reward could be the merging of two King titles, like Aquitaine quickly becoming apart of France.

 

[Tapio]

I agree with the people posting that a stable peaceful empire should be more open to cultural melting pots than just be more dominated. If I unite all of Scandinavia, put Finnish rulers of Finnish faiths in charge consistently, even after revolts against me, I would like to see a benefit from it where the fins just slowly become an accept part of Norse society. The keyword being peaceful and stable, of course.

Accepted religion and accepted culture would be a good addition. Maybe through decision or event.

 

[wam-mnebu]

perhaps we are asking the wrong question about large empires. Some of the other posters like Khanwulf pointed this out talking about the distance mechanics. The goal shouldn't be assigning abstracted benefits/penalties to ruler for breaking abstracted limits, it should make it so that it is mentally impossible to handle a large empire. We should be trying to abstract and replicate mechanics so that players are chafing under the technological constraints of the day. If players were forced to get more involved in the personal fights and squabbles of their vassals. then having a large empire would be difficult because it would be like herding cats, and the cats all have swords and alliances with france.

Charlemagne's empire didn't just happen, it took a significant amount of ingenuity to build a network to work as well as it did. An empire should be the reward of ingenious realm management.

 

[takedown47]

Maybe something like the following bonuses:

If you are a duke with 5 count vassals you get +20% vassal levies and +50% personal levies?

If you are married to the daughter of a king you get +2.0 monthly prestige

If you are married to a genius you get +1 martial, +1stewardship, +1intrigue, +1learning

If you are catholic and the Pope has more than 75 postitive opinion you gain +2.0 piety monthly.

If you are catholic and the Pope has 100 postitive opinion you gain +2.0 piety monthly plus +25% church vassal tax income.

If you Muslim in a defensive holy war you get +20% levy morale.

If you are Catholic in a defensive holy war you get +20% levy morale.

If you an attacker in a holy war you get +30% levy reinforcement rate.

If all your vassals are the same culture as you with postive opinion, get +20 opinion for "unified realm"

If your marshal has a military education you get +2 martial

If your steward has a business education you get +2 stewardship

If your court chaplain has a learning education, you get +2 learning

If your spy master has a intrigue education, you get +2 intrigue

If your chancellor has a diplomatic education, you get +2 diplomacy

If a son of yours is in a holy order (for example the templars) the piety cost to hire that holy order is 50% cheaper

 

[raven63]

Provinces that are too distant should have the decision to break away without a war. This should give the liege a strong claim, and, should he succeed in re-taking the province, the owner is imprisoned and the title can be revoked for free.

perhaps we are asking the wrong question about large empires. Some of the other posters like Khanwulf pointed this out talking about the distance mechanics. The goal shouldn't be assigning abstracted benefits/penalties to ruler for breaking abstracted limits, it should make it so that it is mentally impossible to handle a large empire. We should be trying to abstract and replicate mechanics so that players are chafing under the technological constraints of the day. If players were forced to get more involved in the personal fights and squabbles of their vassals. then having a large empire would be difficult because it would be like herding cats, and the cats all have swords and alliances with france.

Charlemagne's empire didn't just happen, it took a significant amount of ingenuity to build a network to work as well as it did. An empire should be the reward of ingenious realm management.

 

[keynes2.0]

I feel like the purpose of this thread is to discuss benefits for playing conservatively not penalties for expansion.

Provinces that are too distant should have the decision to break away without a war. This should give the liege a strong claim, and, should he succeed in re-taking the province, the owner is imprisoned and the title can be revoked for free.

The problem is that the consequences of revoking aren't well modeled. Yes that particular count would be a traitor but just arresting that count doesn't solve the grievance. In game if you revoke the title and install a crony your problems are solved because the crony loves you for the title. Even if there is a province revolt against the crony, a large empire will just crush it with levies or even with just retinues.

 

[Archinorf]

On the subject of turning hard limits into soft limits:

-Being able to conduct many plots at the same time, with your personal contribution divided between the plots.
-Being able to designate any heir, with factions fighting strongly for the proper succession law to be applied, during your lifetime and after your death.
-Being able to give any land to anyone. If the law is not respected, the new land owner as well as you would be hated, target of many plots and revolts.
-Being able to appoint anyone to a council position with the same consequences.
-Being able to plots against your children and soon be excommunicated.
-Being able to declare war while your levies are raised. This would decrease your vassals' opinion greatly and lowering your troops' morale.
-Being able to propose law changes without waiting 10 years. This would increase the opinion cap needed for a vassal to vote your law and maybe give you the trait arbitrary.

This one is more of a bonus suggestion:
-Being able to hold many tournaments with the cost raised each time. It must be more grandiose than last time, doesn't it?

 

[Talq]

Marriages: at the moment, you get as much benefit prestige-wise (and frequently alliance-wise) if you marry a daughter to a ruler as to their fourth son who doesn't stand to inherit anything or even a bastard son. Suggest a monthly prestige bonus if a child/sibling is married to a ruler (and not a ruler themselves). You could also give dynastic prestige to consorts (which also means not such an imbalance between daughters and sons (and which dynasty gets the children).

That said, part of the issue is that so many 'trade-offs' are skewed. It takes about the same effort in most situations to claim or subjegate the byzantine empire as it does to take one county. Empires are more stable than kingdoms and larger realms are more stable than smaller realms for a variety of reasons (higher prestige generation, higher tech growth, higher vassal limit meaning more vassals that won't faction, independence factions disallowed over a wider area) even before special bonuses. Cities give more taxes and less levies, while tax rates are proportional so have an incentive to increase taxes and lower levies. The benefits of uniform culture and religion vassals are substantial, the 2% revolt risk easy to ignore.

Also could be worthwhile to reward peaceful play (so its not always 'who can I declare war on next'? at least give options to spend money to generate prestige or tech growth (although prestige/piety are both getting increasing devalued, and the former is too well correlated with realm size).

 

[Ashagar]

Hmm I'd suggest a bonus for long reigning dyanties of small feudal/tribal realms leading to greater loyalty to the ruling family from lower nobles and the peasantry perhaps leading to forces flocking to defend the realm in a defensive war. Also a bonus for remaining at peace and other incentives at remaining at peace would be nice.

 

[wam-mnebu]

I feel like Holy Wars and Crusades should be an exception to this.

Not really, war is still war. The point of the harmony mechanic would have been to represent the kingdoms stability and continuity. A Foreign adventure might be easier on the populous as their lands aren't the ones being sacked, but Lords are still away from their houses to manage the realm, generations are getting killed off, food getting shipped abroad, lands consumed by friendly armies passing through. The idea wasn't that harmony would be completely depleted by a single war (unless we are talking about a decades long one), but several would take you down a tier.

Now maybe rather than just offensive wars it could based on levies raised, levies killed, leaders away on combat realm provinces occupied. Then foreign adventures like crusades wouldn't destabilize as much as a de jure war with a neighbor, but they would still be slowly destabilizing.

I also think crusades should be closer to adventuring mixed with pilgrimages where a king going of to crusade gets you a regent temporarily makes you part of a grand title, and then you join the host (or multiple hosts) on the crusade.

 

[OxfordNik]

Not so much a trade off as player freedom, but I would love to see a nations cultural tolerance expanded on. The technology makes very little difference and sometimes I want my empire to be multicultural and proud of it, as many empires were.

Maybe I'm alone on that, but it definitely hinders some of my playhthrough a for a play style that isn't ahistorical.

You are definitely not alone!

I was actually thinking about this the other day (when I had the option of improving either Majesty or Tolerance - guess which I went with?). Wouldn't it be awesome if the Tolerance tech actually unlocked a different level of, y'know, tolerance, should a player choose to pursue that path?

In an ideal set-up, I'd love to see a Tolerance 'slider' similar to the current ones for e.g. Crown Authority/Centralisation (with higher levels being unlocked with higher levels of tech, so that you wouldn't be able to get there until later in the game). At lower levels, you would get huge negative bonuses for vassals of other faith/culture, and less likelihood of conversion - limiting the expansion of players to areas of similar culture.

As the tech develops, you can choose to become more tolerant, so that you no longer get any/as many penalties for being in the same culture group, then other cultures (but the same religion), then for heretics, then maybe even other faiths (five "steps" in total - I'm sure people could come up with effective monikers for these). You'd also get more likelihood of conversion through education etc (no longer having to find that Gregarious same-culture tutor to educate a foreign-culture heir would be great!). And perhaps bonuses to tech point acquisition, to represent the progress of multi-cultural discourse (like how having Jewish councillors occasionally gives you a tech point boost now?).

I'd pair this with the suggestion that it ought to be more likely that a lord adopts the culture of his subjects than the other way round - so even if you put e.g. Greeks in charge of provinces in Italy, they're more likely to become Italian than for the Italian citizens to become Greek - the ruler "Going Native", if you will. And I'd add a (substantial) province rebelliousness modifier, for having local rulers of another culture/religion than that of the province, which would disappear along with the steps up the Tolerance "slider".

So, at the lower levels of tolerance, you'd have more likelihood of rebellions (perhaps even with your vassals of the same culture/faith as the revolters being called in?) - but perhaps the trade-off for adding those in would be that if you won against a 'cultural rebellion' for county X, that county's culture would flip to yours (to represent the fact that all the trouble-makers from that area went off to fight and lost, and you're now replacing them with loyal "proper culure" subjects).

All this would make for more meanignful cultural interaction, and put a stronger "soft limit" on blobbing - all for the good, in my book!

 

[Parha]

My vote? Definetly more personality traits, there are so many more flavor events and options that could be added if you added them in. It would also help someone identify more with their character and do some better RP. If you don't feel like adding anything, PLEASE make the seven deadly sins have some plus sides on each trait. The only ones that help I believe are greedy and proud, perhaps lustful, but then you're left hoping you don't get any of the four traits. Perhaps add a greater same_trait opinion for them?

 

[Darkath]

As you're getting bigger and bigger the difficulty should ramp up. The "easy difficulty" should be a catholic duke or king of a small kingdom. Claiming to be an illegitimate Emperor (foreigner to the HRE/ERE or self-declared empire) should make most of the known world angry at you. And kings should most of the time seek independance from an empire especially if different/culture religion.

Centrifugal and Centripetal forces should push your empire to break in massive clusterfest if you make wrong moves or simply have bad rulers.

But it should be done in a "losing is Fun" way were you can bounce back and not a "BAM game over, try again" way.

 

[zackovs]

Bonuses for limiting yourself?
The game is easy, it needs to add some unrest elements both personally (court intrigue, and vassal modifiers) and on a county level.
Here's my problems, the games great so there's not many;

I don't like culture drift, it makes the game easy. A multicultural empire is an interesting, fun thing and it's historical. It's a little silly when 50% of the map is a Greek Orthodox. It should be COSTLY, and difficult to convert and force a cultural on a people, it should cause wars.

Being a good, king needs trade offs. It's too easy to be this perfect king and nothing goes wrong or tries to take advantage of you because you're loved by all. The more soft (and less tyrannical) of a king you are, the more plots against political power hungry people there are. People need to be afraid of you. Feudalism was not a kind thing.

It seems my family never plots against me, especially my brothers. They need to be dangerous and not so easily manipulated into liking me. Brothers should occasionally flee to other courts, becoming a fugitive after stealing or attempted murder, and try to cause a war against you with an enemy kingdom.
Marrying a lowborn needs political consequences. The AI should avoid to a last resort as well. (May negative events firing off, and problems your children of that lowborn)
For large empires/kings introduce increasingly troublesome events that randomly occur (or in a chain) based on the demesne ( so it unlocks ...)
75 demesne, the sweet spot, occasional peasant unrest.
100, 125. Increasing political problems unless handled by good characters.
150, empire level. National revolts, imperial decadence (may be unavoidable), large bureaucracy bleeding you of money (high stewardship can prevent this), aggressive generals trying to overthrow you (high martial can prevent this), peasant uprisings, religious revolts (high learning can prevent this). Damaged provinces bleed tax money from you
Look to history for problems that large realms had.

If you limit yourself, you can prevent a lot of issues. It's like drinking. You keep drinking and drinking, and things become blurrier and more chaotic and silly. If you limit your personal strength you can prevent a lot of silly events from destroying your kingdom or empire.

 

[Dr_Vile]

This has popped up already in the thread, and I already replied - Italy immediately before and during the Renaissance (which is, at its richest and most advanced) was a war-torn land. Florence, Venice, Genoa, the Pope, and Milan (especially Milan) threw themselves at each others again and again; Milan came very very near to conquering the whole of Northern Italy under Gian Galeazzo Visconti, before he suddenly died of plague, at which point Milan was torn into pieces. Peace was not why Italy rose. Peace was the exact opposite of what Italy experienced during its zenith.

Renaissance Italy is perhaps not the best comparison, since the City-States tended to focus on small, well-equipped militias and hired mercenaries rather than the mass peasant conscription typical of the early-to-high-middle ages.

With this in mind (and bringing it back On Topic), I'd like to see some sort of malus towards gold/supply in a province if you raise the levies there, to correspond with the decrease in manpower available, since in effect what you're doing is taking peasants out of the fields and pressing them into service in your armies. This way, war becomes a delicate balancing act between mobilizing an army and maintaining your lands - perhaps with a famine event thrown in if the war drags on long enough?

My one reservation with this would be the AI - specifically whether or not it could be programmed to be smart enough to recognize the dangers of mobilizing their entire levies all at once.

 

[Atlantians]

Christian tribal leaders should gain a piety bonus for having only 1 wife and no concubines, even though as tribal leaders they may be culturally inclined towards concubinage.

 

[Atlantians]

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.

Tributaries, bro.

 

[Dirt McStain]

If you could add optional limits that would give you bonuses, what type of limits would you like to see?

First, I'd like to see some sort of CK2+ style faction system... but you know, built into the game.

I'd love to see different rulership styles work differently for different situations and you should be rewarded for handling each situation appropriately. If your court and vassals are religious zealots then you should be rewarded for doing pious things - religion focus, holy wars, holy feasts, pious decisions. It can be a way of making friends and getting goodies like being entrusted with a holy relic or discounts on temple buildings or improvements. If you rule a large, multi-ethnic empire, you should be rewarded in stability (and other things) by handing out land to people of the province's culture. So, you should be rewarded for correctly identifying the current state of the realm and ruling accordingly. There should be times when being a tyrant is the best course of action, just as much as being a kind, just, humble leader that showers everyone with gold and land.

Additionally, I'd love to see way more nuance in the random education/ward events. For example, when you get a random event, 9/10 times one option is good and the other 2 are bad. I'd like to see more "gray" options, where there isn't a clear cut best choice, and if there is, then the RNG gods can still kick you in the balls.

 

[Cathal341]

Tributaries, bro.

Yes I could, but that doesn't make it any quicker for me to form Eire in the Charlemagne start date so I can begin whatever run I want to do as my home country. Yes I could choose a later start date but if I want to turn the world Jewish as Ireland I need as much time as possible.

 

[Knightfall52]

So tech, you are likely only going to focus on one in each category, you get tons of points from a bunch of things, like the parked in Constantinople spymaster event or battles or high stats, So instead of just sitting on points and 1/1/1/1/5 because only one part matters, you should receive a bonus in spending in the least developed tech and when all your techs are equal you then get the bonus in any category...

Every realm should benefit greatly by having a merchant republic in it by getting some realm wide advantages, one should be an extra loan source and trade posts that are from the same realm in areas not under the control of the republic should also benefit a lot, thus the AI should be incentivized to set one up if they have the size for it hopefully through an event that wont result in tyrrany. However having more than one should complicate things... (work on the republics PDX, they are awesome, they deserve it!)

Not joining factions should create some two-way relationship between the ruler line and your ruler line in form of a trust opinion modifier bonus and hopefully an incentive to intermarry the two dynasties, exchange wards and rewarding the support via land-titles etc. An inherited opinion modifier/trait thingy that would greatly affect the AI logic around how to deal with the liege-vassal relationship if trust can be build over time (and generations) and making the stingy bite of betrayals hurt that much more and leading to some exceptional revenge stories.