Event troops function based on pre-2.0 levy values

[Subcomandante]

I wonder what Dracko would say to this post, haven't seen any of those loyalists yet.

First time for me too, I started as France in 1066, then made myself deliberately weak by lowering vassal levy law to minimum. To see how it goes. Autonomous vassals all the way. The dukes really want my throne, declare on me. Then, "out of thin air", 2700 loyalists appear, which doubles my army. I win the war.

 

[Personman09]

Not what I meant by loyalists, but thats great too I suppose. XD

 

[Mann42]

I've figured out how to perfectly determine exactly how many event troops will spawn based on match_mult.

match_mult = 1.0 will spawn a number of event troops equal to the grand total of levies as listed in the Realm Levies page of your leger (Page 3). However, those values are not the actual levies you as the player can raise.

The values listed in the leger for vassal holdings are:
Leger Value = Total Levy of Holding * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

It does not factor in the latest Liege Levy (-25%/-50%/-65%/-75%) penalties for vassals outside of capital territory, nor does it take into account that all liege levies are already reduced by 50% by default.

You see, the actual amount of liege levies you actually get (as shown in on the Military page) is equal to
Liege Levy = Total Levy of Holding * 0.5 * Liege Levy Penalty * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

So, not only are event troops not taking the Liege Levy Penalties from 2.0 in account, they are also ignoring the fact you're already getting 50% less levies by default from all vassals, regardless of opinion or law.

Lastly, the calculation in the leger (and thus for event troops) does take your Capital County/Duchy bonuses into account, however, so you can't offset the higher number of event troops by maintaing a strong capial demesne. Event troops will scale up to match the bonuses to your personal holdings perfectly, while ignoring the penalties your liege levies get.

This results in some fun side effects. For example, if everyone in your country hates you so much that they would never dream of giving you levies but your crown law is low, it actually reduces the number of event troops so significantly you could probably handle them with just your direct levies. Essentially, since the game factors opinion and laws into the event troop calculation, but ignores liege levy penalties, you are essentially making it harder to fend off event spawns by maintaining good opinion with your vassals or raising crown law - effectively punishing proper feudal play even more.

It also explains why North Korea mode has become such a 'sensation', since it's the most effective way to combat event troops. Event spawns are actually scaled perfectly to the direct levies you'll have in North Korea mode, while playing properly by handing out titles will punish you more and more the next time an event troop stack spawns.

I've updated the original post with these values. They are perfectly reproducible 100% of the time.

 

[BadDecisionDino]

This results in some fun side effects. For example, if everyone in your country hates you so much that they would never dream of giving you levies but your crown law is low, it actually reduces the number of event troops so significantly you could probably handle them with just your direct levies. Essentially, since the game factors opinion and laws into the event troop calculation, but ignores liege levy penalties, you are essentially making it harder to fend off event spawns by maintaining good opinion with your vassals or raising crown law - effectively punishing proper feudal play even more.

*slowclap*

I love this thread so much.

 

[Dracko81]

I wonder what Dracko would say to this post, haven't seen any of those loyalists yet.

You are an idiot. Is what I'd say, because as usual you'd rather try to call someone out rather than actually contribute to the thread.

I have said all along that Event troops can spawn larger than expected values, but I don't see a problem with it. They simplified the game mechanics to allow blobbing and faction rebellions were introduced to combat that at the same time. If they actually work now and break up blobs, that is a good thing.

I also said on many occasions, provide proof which the OP was doing, you want to go whine do it someplace else rather than filling the thread with your garbage.

It also explains why North Korea mode has become such a 'sensation', since it's the most effective way to combat event troops. Event spawns are actually scaled perfectly to the direct levies you'll have in North Korea mode, while playing properly by handing out titles will punish you more and more the next time an event troop stack spawns.

But to keep my post on topic, I do really have to say.

You are not being punished, people are abusing/exploiting mechanics and getting an easy play through. This does not mean you are being punished because there is a small chance of a large stack ruining your day.

I run full feudalism in my empire and it doesn't crumble, I have vassal kings and I am able to hold it together and beat back anything the game throws my way without any real issues.

Is it more difficult to play with full feudalism, over NK? In some respects sure. Is it easier to play count only over full feudalism? I doubt it. The overall difficulty of the game has dropped, even with this release, the fact that there is a small chance of something ruining you day is good. Regardless of how it is implemented.

But lets also look at when factions were introduced and the first attempt to balance them. There were hundreds of threads, of how a faction was triggering at 5% and winning, how large factions were unbeatable, which they were not. PDS as a result fixed the early triggering of factions, which is great, but this wasn't done over night. It was done by people providing feedback and talking about it, and providing solutions to people to get through it. I still recall there were people from PDS actively talking in these threads because oh my, they were mostly civil and people were not calling them out over it. People need to seriously take a chill pill and behave like adults and maybe the devs will reply with their views on the issue.

 

[Phibs]

[...] This results in some fun side effects. For example, if everyone in your country hates you so much that they would never dream of giving you levies but your crown law is low, it actually reduces the number of event troops so significantly you could probably handle them with just your direct levies. Essentially, since the game factors opinion and laws into the event troop calculation, but ignores liege levy penalties, you are essentially making it harder to fend off event spawns by maintaining good opinion with your vassals or raising crown law - effectively punishing proper feudal play even more. [...]

Thank you Mann42 for all your work on this issue.

How can anybody seriously argue that this is not broken or at least in serious need of rebalancing?
I just don't get it.

 

[BadDecisionDino]

Even if they like the newly added difficulty, it seems surreal that there are still people who believe it was done on purpose in the full light of paradox's infinite wisdom. If people can't at least agree that this was an accidental oversight - one which may have nudged the game in a direction they enjoy more but an accident nonetheless - I just don't see the point of having a conversation. We just might as well not speak the same language.

 

[BadDecisionDino]

I still recall there were people from PDS actively talking in these threads because oh my, they were mostly civil and people were not calling them out over it. People need to seriously take a chill pill and behave like adults and maybe the devs will reply with their views on the issue.

Oh, thank goodness! The civility police has arrived. I was afraid this thread might get out control but now that you're here, I'm sure we can return to being cultured gentlemen.

You are an idiot....you want to go whine do it someplace else rather than filling the thread with your garbage.

Erhem. *adjusts necktie*

Tea, anyone?

 

[Bortron]

You are an idiot. Is what I'd say, because as usual you'd rather try to call someone out rather than actually contribute to the thread.

Oh Dracko, still calling people names I see. It's good thing we have your valuable contributions.

 

[anomalacaris]

I've figured out how to perfectly determine exactly how many event troops will spawn based on match_mult.

The values listed in the leger for vassal holdings are:
Leger Value = Total Levy of Holding * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

It does not factor in the latest Liege Levy (-25%/-50%/-65%/-75%) penalties for vassals outside of capital territory, nor does it take into account that all liege levies are already reduced by 50% by default.

For example, if everyone in your country hates you so much that they would never dream of giving you levies but your crown law is low, it actually reduces the number of event troops so significantly you could probably handle them with just your direct levies.

Even if the additional factor is accounted for, I still find it silly that the threat scales with YOUR current levy numbers. For instance, if I have a very high martial ruler, great, the rebels automatically grow stronger as well! Whereas if I have a high stewardship but low martial ruler, I can rather easily handle them with extra mercs.

The current system just tries to present a 'fixed' amount of threat (and not even that, as Mann42 shows) which is probably fine gameplay wise, but I really find this kind of silly. I think event troops number should never take into account current state of affairs in your kingdom. So if a threat came when your ruler is weak and your vassals mostly autonomous, the threat have a higher chance to succeed. Whereas if they try to came when your country is strong, they are easily brushed away. To do this, they can simply just take raw numbers from holdings.

 

[TheTuninator]

This results in some fun side effects. For example, if everyone in your country hates you so much that they would never dream of giving you levies but your crown law is low, it actually reduces the number of event troops so significantly you could probably handle them with just your direct levies. Essentially, since the game factors opinion and laws into the event troop calculation, but ignores liege levy penalties, you are essentially making it harder to fend off event spawns by maintaining good opinion with your vassals or raising crown law - effectively punishing proper feudal play even more.

It also explains why North Korea mode has become such a 'sensation', since it's the most effective way to combat event troops. Event spawns are actually scaled perfectly to the direct levies you'll have in North Korea mode, while playing properly by handing out titles will punish you more and more the next time an event troop stack spawns.

Man, this is just terrible. Hopefully Paradox fixes this soon. I defy anyone to defend event troops as "working as designed" or logical now.

 

[Shadrol]

Even if the additional factor is accounted for, I still find it silly that the threat scales with YOUR current levy numbers. For instance, if I have a very high martial ruler, great, the rebels automatically grow stronger as well! Whereas if I have a high stewardship but low martial ruler, I can rather easily handle them with extra mercs.

The current system just tries to present a 'fixed' amount of threat (and not even that, as Mann42 shows) which is probably fine gameplay wise, but I really find this kind of silly. I think event troops number should never take into account current state of affairs in your kingdom. So if a threat came when your ruler is weak and your vassals mostly autonomous, the threat have a higher chance to succeed. Whereas if they try to came when your country is strong, they are easily brushed away. To do this, they can simply just take raw numbers from holdings.

I agree that it is wierd that the calculation takes all modifiers (except current levy change) into account, but then again if i was an adventurer and i knew that the duke of X hates the king i would think that X would not provide his levy. You'd could argue wich modifers should be included, but the levy change should be in it.

On a side note. I'm with Dracko in that i don't see a problem with the amount of troops. Its true that they should be correctly calculated, but a slight more random how big they are should be included. As of now i'm always either seeing 3k or 3x3k stacks for rebels. That just seems too similiar to be realistic.
Also even when a faction had huge stacks spawning for them, i did not have any problems with them, because they'd always split up and form single flank armys because eachone was to big and supplies were to low in the provinces. So it only really seems to be a problem in a realm of 1 to 2 kingdoms.

 

[Mann42]

Even if the additional factor is accounted for, I still find it silly that the threat scales with YOUR current levy numbers. For instance, if I have a very high martial ruler, great, the rebels automatically grow stronger as well! Whereas if I have a high stewardship but low martial ruler, I can rather easily handle them with extra mercs.

The current system just tries to present a 'fixed' amount of threat (and not even that, as Mann42 shows) which is probably fine gameplay wise, but I really find this kind of silly. I think event troops number should never take into account current state of affairs in your kingdom. So if a threat came when your ruler is weak and your vassals mostly autonomous, the threat have a higher chance to succeed. Whereas if they try to came when your country is strong, they are easily brushed away. To do this, they can simply just take raw numbers from holdings.

Interestingly, this is what revolt spawn troops do with scaled_by_biggest_garrison, to an extent, by taking the Total Levy + Garrison Value of your largest holding in a province, multiplying it by 3, and then occasionally scaling it up by 33%.

While I'm not going to defend the concept of troops magically spawning from thin air, I do think there's valid reasons to scale a threat to the player's capability, but I do agree that if the match_mult doesn't take liege levy penalties into account, it shouldn't take opinion, law, and demesne bonuses into account either. The main problem I see is that, by factoring bonuses in while not factoring negatives, they're effectively encouraging you to play either sub-optimally or so optimally you're exploiting and missing the point of the game.

From a practical perspective, it makes it an absolute nightmare to balance without introducing those undesired side effects, and from a selfish perspective, it makes it an absolute nightmare to attempt to mod the values to something that makes sense.

I'm all for adding challenge, but if Paradox wants to increase challenge in revolts/event troop spawns, they should do so in a way that encourages people to play the game 'properly' as a feudal simulator. Right now, the calculations active work to negate all your advantages and penalize you twice for properly managing your vassals, once by reducing your levies, and then again by boosting event spawns without consideration of your levies.

I'd like them to fix their calculations such that it encourages people to play in the way the developers intended (fuedally), and I'd love if discussions of difficulty centered on how to properly scale and present these larger number of event troops instead of a stalwart defense of a bug or oversight on the side of the developer.

I want Crusader Kings to be an awesome game. I make games for a living, but even though Paradox isn't paying me a cent, I enjoy their game enough to want to see it become better.

I'm not doing this work to make the game easier to 'beat'. I'm working to fix a developer oversight that introduces tons of unintended negative side effects. I'm doing this work in the hopes of making it easier to balance in the future for both developers and modders, easier to discuss as a community when rationally brainstorming the difficulty curve, and easier to play the way the I believe the developers intended. The current systems and event troops calculation are actively working against all 3 of those purposes.

 

[hannibal_barca]

Excellent analysis, and fairly damning regarding Paradox's balancing of 2.0. If your research bears out, they simply failed to adjust very key values. Quite sloppy patching.

Genius analysis. You caught them red-handed. Lets here them spin this.

 

[Phibs]

Genius analysis. You caught them red-handed. Lets here them spin this.

Tongue in cheek?

 

[Personman09]

Oh, thank goodness! The civility police has arrived. I was afraid this thread might get out control but now that you're here, I'm sure we can return to being cultured gentlemen.



Erhem. *adjusts necktie*

Tea, anyone?

Couldn't have said it better myself. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. XD
At least now that I'm making enemies I know I'm doing something right.

 

[ChildeR]

Hi, it's taken me a few days to find the time to really look at this and test your results, and I find myself unable to reproduce these issues. At least not exactly as you describe.

I've figured out how to perfectly determine exactly how many event troops will spawn based on match_mult.

match_mult = 1.0 will spawn a number of event troops equal to the grand total of levies as listed in the Realm Levies page of your leger (Page 3). However, those values are not the actual levies you as the player can raise.

I started play as the Duke/Petty King of Brittany in 1066. Let game continue for a couple of weeks to make sure levy numbers are up to date. Then used console to fire event 45002, which creates three units of match_mult = 0.1. The armies have 133 men each. The military tab lists 1448 men. Seems to match, assuming there's some rounding going on.

Second experiment, King of France. Event armies have 539 men. Raisable levies are 5530. Seems to match again.

HRE. Event armies 1986 men. Levies 17400. This is the first time it didn't match, but the difference is much smaller than you have.

The values listed in the leger for vassal holdings are:
Leger Value = Total Levy of Holding * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

It does not factor in the latest Liege Levy (-25%/-50%/-65%/-75%) penalties for vassals outside of capital territory, nor does it take into account that all liege levies are already reduced by 50% by default.

You see, the actual amount of liege levies you actually get (as shown in on the Military page) is equal to
Liege Levy = Total Levy of Holding * 0.5 * Liege Levy Penalty * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

I don't see any 50% modifiers missing from my tests. A large part of France's vassal troops come from outside the de jure kingdom, yet the numbers match approximately. The HREmperor gets about 20% more event troops than he should, so a missing modifier somewhere is possible, but again, many vassals are even outside the de jure empire, so according to your math the difference should be much larger.

 

[Mann42]

Thanks for helping me validate my work! It's much appreciated.

Keep in mind that I'm working to figure out how to get exact calculations - a discrepancy of 20% is a big deal, so 'close enough' doesn't count.

I'd also love if you run your numbers against Brittany in 867 and look specifically at sub-vassals in the county of Mortain, which appear to experience the -75% for being outside capital region despite being ignored in the leger.

Anyway, the more eyes the better.

The military tab lists 1448 men.

Ignore the military tab when checking how many troops spawn. You appear to be ignoring the leger, which is where the actual values are determined.

Add the total levies from your Realm Levies page (Page 3) of your leger. At 0.1 match multi, it will reliably spawn 10% of the total of all the numbers listed there (x3, since the event you're using spawns 3 stacks).

The amount you can spawn via the military tab will always be smaller than this unless you specifically have bad relations/low crown law.

I don't see any 50% modifiers missing from my tests. A large part of France's vassal troops come from outside the de jure kingdom, yet the numbers match. The HREmperor gets about 20% more event troops than he should, so a missing 25% modifier somewhere could be possible, but again, many vassals are even outside the de jure empire.

Since you're not looking in the leger, you won't notice where the 20% discrepancy comes from. I'll get into the 0.5 modifier later in this post.

To verify, I popped open Brittany in 1066. Here were my leger values (non-0 holdings):

Holding (Vassal): Lt Inf/Pikemen/Arch/Hvy Inf/Lt Cav/Hrs Arch/Hvy Cav/Total
Barony of Rennes (demesne)		224	48	16	352	152	0	56	848
Barony of Nantes				71	7	5	92	48	0	0	223
Barony of Quimper				57	12	4	89	38	0	14	214
Barony of St Pol de Leon		11	2	1	18	12	0	3	47
City of Hennebont				21	5	17	0	0	0	0	43
City of Guerande				24	14	19	0	0	0	0	57
City of Carhaix					21	5	17	0	0	0	0	43
City of Brest					42	11	33	0	0	0	0	86
City of St. Brieuc				16	4	13	0	0	0	0	33
Total							487	108	125	551	250	0	73	1594
match_mult = 0.1				48	10	12	55	25	0	7	157

I trigger Event 45002 and get 3 stacks of 144 - well shit, where'd I mess up?

The "From Demesne" value is 848 and my "From Vassals" value is 412, for a total of 1260. If the game derived from these values, I would see 3 stacks of ~126, but I don't, because they don't.

Wait, Count Morvan of Leon (Barony of St Pol de Leon) is leading a dangerous faction against me, so let's try removing Barony of St Pol de Leon and City of Brest (his vassal) from the equation.

Barony of Rennes (demesne):		224	48	16	352	152	0	56	848
Barony of Nantes:						71	7	5	92	48	0	0	223
Barony of Quimper						57	12	4	89	38	0	14	214
City of Hennebont:						21	5	17	0	0	0	0	43
City of Guerande:						24	14	19	0	0	0	0	57
City of Carhaix:						21	5	17	0	0	0	0	43
City of St. Brieuc:						16	4	13	0	0	0	0	33
Total									434	95	91	533	238	0	70	1461
match_mult = 0.1						43	9	9	53	23	0	7	144

Huzzah! Apparently, match_mult does remove the levies of anyone leading a dangerous faction, which makes some sense but seems to fall into the same trap of rewarding you with easier event spawns when your vassals hate you.

Or, as I said in my post:
match_mult = 1.0 will spawn a number of event troops equal to the grand total of levies as listed in the Realm Levies page of your leger (Page 3).

I did miss the fact that it excludes dangerous faction forces, which is huge, so thank you for helping me find that oversight


Okay, so back to the discrepancies between military screen and leger. Let's look at my good buddy Count Hoel of Nantes and his vassals. I've got an opinion of 44 with him, and we're rocking normal crown law (-20%), which means I should be getting 35.2% of his maximum possible levies based on opinion and laws. Cool! That's what it says.

Count Hoel's capital holding, the Barony of Nantes, has a Total Garrison value of 643, broken down as:
Light Infantry: 203 * 35.2% = 71
Pikemen: 21 * 35.2% = 7
Archers: 14 * 35.2% = 5
Heavy Infantry: 261 * 35.2% = 92
Light Cavalry: 137 * 35.2% = 48
For a total of 643, or 223 after taking opinion and laws into account. Well, that's exactly what the leger says, so yay! Math!

Or, as I said in my post:
Leger Value = Total Levy of Holding * ((Opinion Modifier * (1-Levy Law Penalty)) OR Crown Law Minimums, whichever is higher)

I think that further confirms where the actual data comes from when deriving event troops, which is calculated different from what you see on the military page and is completely different from what you can actually raise as a liege levy.

I have to go to work, but I'll do a break down of how the military screen breaks down when I get home tonight. Some of my numbers are producing odd results, so thank you again for forcing me to further validate my findings on different nations/timeframes. I'll break down one of the counts giving me levies and calculate why those numbers appear as they do, and hopefully prove the default 0.5 penalty with maths.

(Which, btw, is and has been in the defines since 1.11 as)

	LIEGE_LEVY_SIZE_MULTIPLIER = 0.5,				-- The Size of the liege levy will be the total troops in the vassal subrealm * this

I'll be around posting throughout the day, but won't be able to go back into maths analysis mode until tonight.

 

[ChildeR]

Ignore the military tab when checking how many troops spawn. You appear to be ignoring the leger, which is where the actual values are determined.

Before I even read the rest of your post, let me just say that I don't see the point in looking at the ledger here. Sure, the ledger may be the place you can use to calculate event troop size, but it doesn't really matter for the argument of whether there's something wrong with event troops. What matters in practice is whether a rebel army that's supposed to get half your troops is really getting half your troops. And from what I tried, such a rebel army would be getting 45-57% of your troops.

I.e. there's clearly something that match_mult doesn't take into account, but it doesn't mean event troops are significantly more powerful that seems to be intended by the match_mult ratios defined in the scripts.

Now to read rest.

 

[Mann42]

Before I even read the rest of your post, let me just say that I don't see the point in looking at the ledger here. Sure, the ledger may be the place you can use to calculate event troop size, but it doesn't really matter for the argument of whether there's something wrong with event troops. What matters in practice is whether a rebel army that's supposed to get half your troops is really getting half your troops. And from what I tried, such a rebel army would be getting 45-57% of your troops.

It matters a tremendous deal to pay attention to the leger when it provides data accurate values for event spawn troops, while the military page does not, and both calculate their numbers differently.

Which is the crux of my analysis.

Choosing to ignore that is the same as choosing to ignore factual, mathematical analysis. As I said, 'close enough' is not good enough, and the military page only gets you 'close enough' while the leger gets you exact numbers.