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Dev Diary 11: Stopping The Snowball

Hey! So today we will talk about some mechanics we’ve added to make other rulers react to what happens in the world. We want to slow down the snowball and prolong the time it takes to conquer the world, so it shouldn’t be as easy to do. Snowballs are pretty evil, just like medieval rulers.

Just as with the shattered retreat mechanic we took inspiration from Europa Universalis 4 in our decision to add Coalitions. Our coalitions however are based on an Infamy value instead of Aggressive Expansion. You might recognize the name Infamy from our old games, but even though it shares the name it will work quite differently.

Infamy is limited to be within the range of 0 to 100% and will slowly decay over time based on how strong your max military potential is. When you hit 25% infamy, coalitions will be unlocked and AIs will start joining them based on how threatened they feel.Your infamy will serve as a hint on how aggressive and dangerous other rulers think your realm is. You gain infamy primarily by conquering land through war or by inheriting a fair maidens huge tracts of land.

The amount of Infamy you gain is based on the action you do, how much land you take and how large your realm already is. So for instance the Kaiser of the HRE declaring a war for Flanders and taking it is going to make the neighbours more worried than if Pomerania manages to take Mecklenburg.
capture(56).png


Coalitions themselves are mostly defensive in Crusader Kings, if any member gets attacked by the target of the coalition they will automatically be called into the war. If a member starts a war against the target they only get a normal call to arms which they can choose to decline.

For an AI to join a coalition they will consider the relative strength between the target and themselves, how threatened they think they are and how much infamy the target has accrued. You can view the current coalition someone has against them by the diplomacy field on the character screen.

capture(54).png


But it might not be the easiest way to view it so we also added a mapmode to more easily visualize Coalitions. A nation which turns up white is the nation you have currently selected, blue will be targetable for coalitions, yellow means they have a coalition against them and Red means they are members of the coalition against the currently selected one.

capture(55).jpg
 
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I also hope that we can start to expand casus belli now. Declaring conquest for one county and occupying all of Bavaria should give us a chance to keep much that with some infamy gained.
For Catholics that should be a serious risk, like excommunication though. For most others with some sort of central law, people should look considerably down on it.
 
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For Catholics that should be a serious risk, like excommunication though. For most others with some sort of central law, people should look considerably down on it.
I hope the Pope takes infamy into account when excommunicating people. Would finally be a good reason to not p off the Pope!
 
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I would assume that there's some weighing based on religion. As in Christians don't much care if you attack pagans or heathens etc.

It is affected by that a little but mostly it's about realpolitik. "You can kill me? Then I'm gonna try to defend me "
 
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Please don't do this. The idea should stay in EU4 where it belongs, in a context where more centralised nation states and the idea of the balance of power makes sense.

Blobs in CK2 should be punished by things that make sense for the time period - increased corruption, difficulty of administration for large realms, that kind of thing. Make there be some actual difficulties inherent to being a blob, rather than punishing people for expansion.
 
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Not sure how I feel about this, I wanted an anti-blobbing mechanic, but I was hoping for something more original, especially because I feel like this doesn't fit the time period as much as it fits EU4 or Vicky 2

I was hoping for something less reactive and more focused on enforcing and reenforcing the status quo
 
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Can't wait for Charlemagne to conquer half of Europe and have 10% infamy to show for it
In my test he get 300% for conquering Iberia. So 10% is a bit low for half of Europe.
 
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Am I the only concerned as to what happens after a coalition war is successful in ck2? Just a bit curious to hear what lands we will have to give up or what penalties will concur afterwards.
 
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An interesting thing to note: The HRE appears to be able to "buy hedgehogs" from the Seljuks, but the Jimenas in dev diary 7 could not do it from one another. Something only possible versus religious enemies? Against distant targets?

Independent crusades perhaps? The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th crusades were not declared by the pope, but rather by monarchs. Several other crusades were also that way(i.e: alexandrian crusade). It is the only thing I can think of.

Fits with a late medieval dlc I suppose. I like that.
 
Why are no hedgehog related questions being answered? I need to know about hedgehog purchases!
 
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Please don't do this. The idea should stay in EU4 where it belongs, in a context where more centralised nation states and the idea of the balance of power makes sense.

Blobs in CK2 should be punished by things that make sense for the time period - increased corruption, difficulty of administration for large realms, that kind of thing. Make there be some actual difficulties inherent to being a blob, rather than punishing people for expansion.

Coalition did happen in this era too, just between rulers on various scales. So an expansionist count may very well end up with other counts and maybe a local duke joining against him, but he may stay unnoticed by a king or emperor, unless his demesne borders the Royal/Imperial Demesne.
Coalition also happened in case of a war of succession too.

Medieval rulers were politicians too, however in the CK II era things were a lot more decentralized when compared to the EU IV era.
 
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The concept of 'this guy has more pointy sticks than me, so I will get everyone who hates him to poke him with their pointy stick's was invented about roughly the same time as the pointy stick.

No coalitions are not something humans invented because we created nation states.
 
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In my test he get 300% for conquering Iberia. So 10% is a bit low for half of Europe.
So the value of infamy is capped at 100%, but conquering Iberia gets you 300%? Does this mean that the infamy above 100% is just not added or tracked, or that the infamy is tracked, but has no additional effects after 100%?
 
2012 - "Badboy won't appear in CK2"

2015 - "Badboy mechanics!"
 
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People wanted a Check to the Karlings, Greyskin, Blurple and The Muslim blobs running around Stomping everything, Now they have it.

Speed 5 is the once again the best friend of an ambitious conqueror, same as Eu3/4 and Vicky 2.
 
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It occurs to me that this dev diary is misnamed. "Stopping" the snowball would mean creating some sort of equilibrium. The forces tearing an empire apart would be in balance with the forces building it up. What infamy does is pause the snowball for a while.
 
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