Faction Cooldown

[General Karthos]

Just curious... why is there no cooldown time for factions? Half the dukes in my realm are currently in prison because of a failed "increase council power" faction rebellion. The other half have already formed a "increase council power" faction, and are going to send me a demand at any minute. This is less than 18 months after the previous war ended.

Shouldn't there be some kind of cooldown on this? I'll admit I'm not expert on feudal politics, but there weren't civil wars every two years, were there? (There was also a civil war over establishing an electoral monarchy that ended nine months ago, separate faction. I hadn't even had time to disband my levies from the previous war, but that's not a problem. Different faction.)

IMO, there should be at least a five year "no one can form this faction" restriction after any war that was lost over that issue. (Better if it were ten years to stay in line with the cease fires.)

EDIT: On further consideration, I think this should be applied on the issue of any faction demands, whether accepted, refused, or war ensues. 10 years from the determination of the yes/no, no additional factions concerning the same issue (succession law, ruler, council power, whatever) should be allowed to form, with the possible exception of an "Independence" faction. This would also prevent the issue where your laws are changed willy nilly by your regent at the demand of the factions without the usual 10 year cooldown time. Your regent could change, at most, two laws (and even then, only in a regency lasting more than ten years), instead of every single law in your Empire in the space of six months like he can now.

Final note, as per usual, all bets are off when a ruler dies. Factions can then form freely against THAT ruler.

 

[kmh42]

Just curious... why is there no cooldown time for factions? Half the dukes in my realm are currently in prison because of a failed "increase council power" faction rebellion. The other half have already formed a "increase council power" faction, and are going to send me a demand at any minute. This is less than 18 months after the previous war ended.

Shouldn't there be some kind of cooldown on this? I'll admit I'm not expert on feudal politics, but there weren't civil wars every two years, were there? (There was also a civil war over establishing an electoral monarchy that ended nine months ago, separate faction. I hadn't even had time to disband my levies from the previous war, but that's not a problem. Different faction.)

IMO, there should be at least a five year "no one can form this faction" restriction after any war that was lost over that issue. (Better if it were ten years to stay in line with the cease fires.)

There is no cooldown. This is annoying when you handle you vassals wrong. It's actually pretty easy to get them out of factions. NAP, Favors, Spymaster, Gifts, Chancellor,... are here to help you. But I agree there should be a cooldown because is really stupid to put down a easy revolt every 2 years just becasue they do not learn that they need more power.

 

[General Karthos]

There is no cooldown. This is annoying when you handle you vassals wrong. It's actually pretty easy to get them out of factions. NAP, Favors, Spymaster, Gifts, Chancellor,... are here to help you. But I agree there should be a cooldown because is really stupid to put down a easy revolt every 2 years just becasue they do not learn that they need more power.

Gifts aren't nearly as powerful as they used to be. When you're a new King/Emperor, you're going to have to pay a huge amount for a +15-+25 relations boost. Your spymaster has only (even at 20+ skill) a 45% chance (or so) of finding a way to persuade vassals to stay out of factions, and even those aren't successful 100% of the time. Again, your chancellor has a low chance of influencing a vassal, and since those relation bumps were nerfed, +15 is the best you're going to get. Plus, none of these changes last very long, aside from the "don't join factions".

And I'm not appointing non-cultural vassals in conquered territory or anything. All my vassals are of my culture (those who weren't were replaced as soon as they rebelled, which they inevitably did at the earliest opportunity).

I suppose I could purchase favors, but that only works on people who are on my council. And since MOST of the increased council power supporters are NOT on my council, the favor doesn't work.

So I'm not doing anything wrong with my vassals, and they're still rebelling every two years or so to increase council power. It's seriously killing my expansion. (I've got two Kingdoms to conquer, but when I have to declare war immediately after a civil war so I have enough time to win the war before the NEXT civil war, it starts to get on my nerves.)

 

[kmh42]

Before 2.5 and conclave I used to have as many weak vassals (single dukes) as possible and with low centralization to expand my Vassal-Limit to get even more weak vassals. But this doesn't work so good now. My first 6 games after the patch I had the same problem as you, constant factions, rebellions and unthankful vassal. In my last playthrough I changed my play style. I did go fore high centralization and absolute power with fewer strong vassals. In the moment where you marry you third daughter to his second son, the problem is gone. It's much easier now to have just a few strong vassal then many weak ones. In the moment you are Emperor and instituted Imperial Administration you won the game. I was able to have a 14 demesne which provided me with 20k troops and a retinue with 15k. All my vassal are Vice-Kings and the strongest ones have a NAP with me. I key to success: Have as many kinds as possible and marry them. This was never been so true in CK2

 

[StarSword]

The council power faction needs a serious nerf.

• First, only characters who are either ON the council or who are powerful vassals should be allowed to create or lead the faction (though anyone can support it once created). This is both to reduce the faction's frequency and to add a measure of realpolitik realism: Some tin-pot count in the middle of the Russian Empire or HRE has little to no chance of actually benefiting from a strengthened council.
• Second, add to each faction a separate several-year cooldown after resolution of an ultimatum, possibly basing the duration on how the situation resolved: short cooldown for "ruler agrees to ultimatum" (ruler looks weak but faction is satisfied), long cooldown for civil war ending in white peace (ruler looks strong), really long for civil war ending in faction surrender (ruler has utterly crushed the faction and scared other vassals into compliance for a while), and really short for ruler surrender (ruler publicly humiliated).
• Give a levy buff to revolt leaders to help them against powerful lieges.

End result, civil wars are rarer but more dangerous.

 

[Iron Chariots]

So I'm not doing anything wrong with my vassals, and they're still rebelling every two years or so to increase council power. It's seriously killing my expansion. (I've got two Kingdoms to conquer, but when I have to declare war immediately after a civil war so I have enough time to win the war before the NEXT civil war, it starts to get on my nerves.)

I mean... you say you aren't doing anything wrong with your vassals, but the empirical data suggests otherwise. How many of your vassals do you have NAPs with? Between those and your council, you should be able to keep your most powerful vassals from being able to faction at all. Giving the council war dec powers really isn't such a bad thing, you can almost always get them to go your way with a bit of effort.

 

[Kumicho]

The council power faction needs a serious nerf.

• First, only characters who are either ON the council or who are powerful vassals should be allowed to create or lead the faction (though anyone can support it once created). This is both to reduce the faction's frequency and to add a measure of realpolitik realism: Some tin-pot count in the middle of the Russian Empire or HRE has little to no chance of actually benefiting from a strengthened council.
• Second, add to each faction a separate several-year cooldown after resolution of an ultimatum, possibly basing the duration on how the situation resolved: short cooldown for "ruler agrees to ultimatum" (ruler looks weak but faction is satisfied), long cooldown for civil war ending in white peace (ruler looks strong), really long for civil war ending in faction surrender (ruler has utterly crushed the faction and scared other vassals into compliance for a while), and really short for ruler surrender (ruler publicly humiliated).
• Give a levy buff to revolt leaders to help them against powerful lieges.

End result, civil wars are rarer but more dangerous.

I'd settle for the old "call fellow vassals to war" option, since then you had to make sure EVERYONE was happy, not just the guys in each faction.

But I totally agree that something should be tweaked here. Part of it is that the opinion bonus you get for crushing a rebellion is half of what it used to be, so people still hate you. The other problem is that the Increase Council Power faction has a drastically higher threshold for people to leave it, meaning you end up with people staying in it drastically longer than they do for other factions.

 

[General Karthos]

I mean... you say you aren't doing anything wrong with your vassals, but the empirical data suggests otherwise. How many of your vassals do you have NAPs with? Between those and your council, you should be able to keep your most powerful vassals from being able to faction at all. Giving the council war dec powers really isn't such a bad thing, you can almost always get them to go your way with a bit of effort.

It may be that people don't live all that long using the Old Age mod (living past 60 or so is rare, since at 50 [or shortly thereafter] you get a modifier that reduces your health by 2.00), so my NAPs don't last as long as I'd like.

I've got it more or less under control for now, although since I added Jerusalem in a Crusade....

It would be really nice to be able to recruit retinue boats.

 

[Iron Chariots]

It may be that people don't live all that long using the Old Age mod (living past 60 or so is rare, since at 50 [or shortly thereafter] you get a modifier that reduces your health by 2.00), so my NAPs don't last as long as I'd like.

I've got it more or less under control for now, although since I added Jerusalem in a Crusade....

It would be really nice to be able to recruit retinue boats.

Yeah, that would make it harder. At that point you might want to consider spending some time with seduction focus. Crank out a few bastards who serve little other purpose than betrothing for NAPs/Alliances. If you happen to get one that's really good, legitimize them, but that's just a bonus.

 

[General Karthos]

My current King is 70 years old (somehow). He's ruled for over 50 years. He personally led his armies in the crusade for Jerusalem (he's a lunatic). Even so, most of his time is spent wrangling his vassals out of factions.

I'm not complaining about that. Vassals building factions is fine. But when the Increase Council Power faction forms AGAIN WHILE I'M STILL FIGHTING THE WAR FROM THE PREVIOUS FACTION....

I'm just saying that SOMETIMES, shouldn't we have a break, a little point where we can sit back and say "Okay, so there's not an impending rebellion. I can get back to some realm building. Secure my borders, maybe even do a little long-range warfare."

 

[kmh42]

My current King is 70 years old (somehow). He's ruled for over 50 years. He personally led his armies in the crusade for Jerusalem (he's a lunatic). Even so, most of his time is spent wrangling his vassals out of factions.

I'm not complaining about that. Vassals building factions is fine. But when the Increase Council Power faction forms AGAIN WHILE I'M STILL FIGHTING THE WAR FROM THE PREVIOUS FACTION....

I'm just saying that SOMETIMES, shouldn't we have a break, a little point where we can sit back and say "Okay, so there's not an impending rebellion. I can get back to some realm building. Secure my borders, maybe even do a little long-range warfare."

Yes and No.
Yes it is very annoying and immersion breaking that right after a pathetic rebellion all non imprisoned vassals start the same pathetic rebellion all over again.
No because the game finally forces you to do internal management. It rewards you to marry in you realm (I never did that pre-conclave becasue I did get something in return), pleases you vassal with more than Gifts (pre-conclave many vassal very happy with money), send you Spymaster to discourage them from factionalism (I always had my Spymaster collecting Technology before) and give them seats on you council (I never did this before conclave).

For me this it is more fun playing now. I needed some time to adopt this strategies but you have the tools to get rit of those constant factions, use them!

 

[Silversweeeper]

On the one hand, vassals should not suicidally join factions that just were crushed, but, on the other hand, if you are weakened in a different war or either accept their ultimatum or lose the faction war then it makes sense for your vassals to try again (if they lost) or to try to weaken you more and more (if they got what they wanted). A weak ruler losing lots and lots of power because he couldn't keep his vassals in line sounds very realistic.

 

[General Karthos]

On the one hand, vassals should not suicidally join factions that just were crushed, but, on the other hand, if you are weakened in a different war or either accept their ultimatum or lose the faction war then it makes sense for your vassals to try again (if they lost) or to try to weaken you more and more (if they got what they wanted). A weak ruler losing lots and lots of power because he couldn't keep his vassals in line sounds very realistic.

This is true, and I don't mind cascading factions triggering. I mean, if you lose half your army in a war over Council power, that "electoral succession" faction is going to fire based on your revised strength.

What I mind is when the same faction that just got half my vassals locked in prison is fired by the other half of my vassals just a few years later. Especially when I have a vast treasury and can hire a Mercenary army to crush my rebelling vassals.

Though that actually happened historically, come to mention it....