Factions desperately need a rework

[JonathanViking]

For me the worst feature of ck2, which has been dragged across to CK3 was vassals, who constantly want to revolt for no reason whatsoever - or at least with the slimmest of grievances/pretences.

It's actually been made worse in ck3, now that they are on a timer once they reach a certain threshold that severely limits the ways in which you can respond.

In my current campaign, my emperor is in his 29th year of rule, but the second my armies suffered just a tiny bit of attrition in a desert battle, all of a sudden a hostile faction pops up containing just 3 out of 17 vassal kingdoms inside my empire but with an army to rival my own (but ignoring my allies like the byzantine empire) and with all the participants having a +50 to +90 opinion of me, yet not leaving the faction.

One of them is literally a blind, profligate drunk who I have cause to arrest, but only a 3% chance of success against.

And aside from him one is my nephew and is apparently temperate and compassionate, while the other is calm and forgiving and both of them are in the middle of fighting defensive wars, while plotting their revolt.

While there are obviously countless situations in the game where you would expect a revolt to occur or at least be more probable, I find that the thresholds for factions to start forming are far too low and you end up with situations where a bunch of supposedly content lords often holding titles that you gave them and with no real problems in life decide to risk everything they have just for the hell of it.

I'd much prefer campaigns where the main threat was external enemies, rather than constantly having to put down minor factions filled with vassals who don't particularly dislike me and who don't even make use of the court system to voice their grievances in advance, before deciding to plot a suicidal attack that for some reason nobody in game considers to be treasonous while they are in the phase of openly rallying support for their uprising, but without having the numbers to act.

Feels really gamey and immersion breaking and can ruin campaigns you've sunk several hours into if it happens to trigger at the wrong time and in sufficient numbers e.g. in the middle of a crusade or major war when your troops are already rallied and possibly low on supplies/suffering attrition or losses from battles.

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I Sometime wanna go back to CK3 just to check If i Can get a fun save going But then i see posts like This with these issues still ongoing 6 months later… i

asked a dev on the forum and they Said If vassal have relation of 75+ they whil Never Join a faction but seeing This issue still in the game just makes it pointless

I quess you Can role play a Caesar situation but This hapens all the time

 

[Dostav]

@Dostav It's pretty much purely an issue for large empires, although the royal court dlc plays a large role in encouraging you to have one (easier to get income to make your court more prestigious and hunt for legendary artifacts) rather than just staying as a duchy or small/gradually expanding, entirely culturally/religiously homogenous kingdom/empire.

The campaign from my screen shots is being role played as the templars though, so the aim is world/religious domination. But the empire I hold is smaller than/similarly sized to the historical Roman or british or mongol or Alexandrian empires in this campaign, and it only needs to survive/grow for another hundred or so years until the game's end, so I wouldn't say it's hugely unrealistic.

Regarding the king of Scotland if you saw my later screen shot, where I was hunting down 198 rebels who wouldn't surrender, you'll see I could actually call upon about 650,000 troops, when all my allies/dynasty got involved, so a king with 20k troops and 2 friends was a pretty small fish.

But my main gripe with him was that I had a 3% chance of success to arrest a blind, profligate drunk. He actually made the most sense to me of all the rebels I showed due to his traits though.

I wouldn't say that the royal court encourages you to get empires. The bigger your realm and the more money you earn - the more costly it is to have court amenities. So it's actually more easier to have small kingdom, what also gives much more bonuses in form of exceeding the grandeur level which is very low for small kingdoms. Though those bonuses are too OP so I would try to not get them.

I didn't know that the templers were trying to conquer whole world, but ok. The empires that you have listed have nothing to do with feudalism, so you can't justify such big empires. Alexandrian empire was going to inevitably collapse. Mongol empire was mostly steeps with high decentalization and tribute system, which collapsed just like Alexandrian after it's founder death. British Empire was a kingdom with colonies and trade companies, it's very different from feudalism. And the romans, well, they had civil wars all the time, so isn't it what you wished for? Not to mention that it was split apart closer to ck3 period, and they didn't had feudalism.

What about the king of Scotland, he was a drunkard, so he wasn't thinking rationally. But you know, I don't think that the game was meant to play where rulers can have half of million troops, AI just don't understand that. And I don't think that AI consider possible dynasty calls to war. 20k troops is pretty big army already for medieval period, so I would for sure try to defend with them in Scotland mountains for independence. Other rebels could be called by hooks, or maybe they also wanted independence and it doesn't matter how much they like you.

 

[bingbangbong]

@Dostav there is actually an achievement to restore the roman empire, which requires you to build a sizeable empire (larger than or similarly sized to the one in the campaign I've been using as an example), so I wouldn't say what I'm doing is outside of the game developer's expectations of what players should expect to be able to achieve without non stop revolts firing one after another. The decisions menu often includes a lot of goals that require you to expand as well such as controlling the Mediterranean or mending the great schism, which requires you to control every major Catholic & Orthodox Christian holy site including canterbury, Santiago, Cologne, Rome, Byzantium & Antioch.

And the templars were a crusader order, who were extremely wealthy, powerful and influential but ended up being shut down by the pope with many of their members imprisoned/tortured/executed. It's not uncommon in conspiracy theories for people to say they went on to form the illuminati/freemasons, etc who supposedly run the world from the shadows and in games like assassins creed they're portrayed as trying to achieve world domination. A game like ck3 seems like a natural place to play out that fantasy.

Regarding the royal court, you can have a level 10 grandeur court with a small kingdom, but I find it tends to be borderline, meaning it can drop down levels quite easily and it eats into your base income quite a bit when combined with any significant number of men at arms and it can leave you vulnerable to getting kurb stomped by stronger rivals with lots of allies if you're unlucky. You're right though as your kingdom/empire expands so does the upkeep for the court but it's not particularly noticeable in later patches I've found.

But I tend to find with larger empires, since my court grandeur is comfortably and consistently at level 10 I get more legendary people offering to craft or search for items than I do with a small kingdom. Plus I don't really like to just turtle for 300 or so years, as the events get pretty repetitive pretty fast.

And you're right, the AI don't consider additional strength from the player's alliances or dynasty/family when threatening revolts.

This is another consideration I think they really should take into account though, as it drastically reduces the threshold for them to declare an uprising, while also making it unlikely they will ever actually win if they are consistently ignoring the fact you potentially have an extra few hundred thousand troops that you can call up to support you.

But again my issue with the king of Scotland was more that the wealthiest, most powerful man in the world, who also happened to be one of the greatest intellects of his era with 55 learning and a not too shabby 17 intrigue had only a 3% chance to successfully imprison a profligate, blind alcoholic who he had cause to arrest, as a means of preventing the revolt.

 

[bingbangbong]

A game rule to turn off factions would most likely also disable achievements.

I just looked and it actually doesn't disable achievements.

I guess this will be a must for me in future campaigns, although I'd still love to see some reworks to how revolts work, so I can turn them back up in future.

 

[kawamuratc]

Significantly lowering is not the same as removing

Hope you found what you wanted!

 

[Dostav]

@Dostav there is actually an achievement to restore the roman empire, which requires you to build a sizeable empire (larger than or similarly sized to the one in the campaign I've been using as an example), so I wouldn't say what I'm doing is outside of the game developer's expectations of what players should expect to be able to achieve without non stop revolts firing one after another. The decisions menu often includes a lot of goals that require you to expand as well such as controlling the Mediterranean or mending the great schism, which requires you to control every major Catholic & Orthodox Christian holy site including canterbury, Santiago, Cologne, Rome, Byzantium & Antioch.

Regarding the royal court, you can have a level 10 grandeur court with a small kingdom, but I find it tends to be borderline, meaning it can drop down levels quite easily and it eats into your base income quite a bit when combined with any significant number of men at arms and it can leave you vulnerable to getting kurb stomped by stronger rivals with lots of allies if you're unlucky. You're right though as your kingdom/empire expands so does the upkeep for the court but it's not particularly noticeable in later patches I've found.

There is also an achievement where you have to convert all of Africa to your faith. Not every achievement makes sense in the game. If there was Imperial system with viceroyalties as in ck2, then I'd agree with you. But even without The Roman Empire we have Byzantine one that isn't roman by it's structure, and just some kind of weird HRE.

You don't have to hold it at 10 grandeur at all time. And especially there is no reason for using high level of food amenities, that makes literally everyone fat in your court. Hello diabetes, heart disease and gout. Remember that the more royal courts speak your language - the more grandeur you all have. So there is still an incentive to not make big empires.

Plus I don't really like to just turtle for 300 or so years, as the events get pretty repetitive pretty fast.

That's why I don't really play more than 200 years or so at most in my campaigns. But that is how it was though. France was France. Spain was Spain. The HRE was the HRE. External borders weren't changing that much, while inside of those kingdoms was constant chaos.

But again my issue with the king of Scotland was more that the wealthiest, most powerful man in the world, who also happened to be one of the greatest intellects of his era with 55 learning and a not too shabby 17 intrigue had only a 3% chance to successfully imprison a profligate, blind alcoholic who he had cause to arrest, as a means of preventing the revolt.

Learning skill was always very inflational, and what doesn't help in schemes as far as I know. And 17 intrigue is already very good. Do not forget that your vassals have spymasters too, so it's not just 17, it could be easily doubled.

 

[ZacmanTheDamned]

The primary title can be changed at any time, so if a vassal stops being de jure just because I chose to make another title primary that's just piss poor game design.

Not really. Your "Primary Title" is the one that matters - if your primary title is France, you're styling yourself as "Emperor of France," waving a French banner everywhere you go, and using french symbols in your wax stamps, etc. A good historical parralel for this would be something like Austria-Hungary - nominally, the Emperor was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. But in practice, he was an Austrian, caring primarily about Austrian interests, and carrying Austrian heraldry, tradition, and mannerisms. He might technically *also* be the ruler of Hungary, but all those Hungarian lords see an Austrian prancing around, paying lip service at best to the east of the kingdom. If you were REALLY a Hungarian, after all, you'd be proudly wearing using Hungarian styles as your primary title, not leaving it off to the side!

These kind of proto-nationalist tensions ripped apart a lot of medieval Empires. While the system probably could do with being more complex - nobility historically had a lot of options other than "immediate civil war" or "murder" to express displeasure with their liege, which should both aggravate the situation and serve as a "canary in the coalmine" for the players - powerful subordinates should be agitating against a liege who clearly prioritises someone else's interests over their own. Why on earth would the King of Scotland kneel before an Emperor who won't even sign his letters Emperor of Britannia?

 

[bingbangbong]

@ZacmanTheDamned My primary title was actually the empire of Wales (the game changes it to dynasty name) so the Scottish king shouldn't have had too much of a problem with it!

If I changed to empire of britannia I'd still be signing off letters as ruler of the templar empire and using the templar dynasty crest though.

But I think your second paragraph really nails what I'm getting at. Less that these things occur and more that there is minimal signposting or leadup to them.

And while I don't disagree with your analysis, I do think the characteristics of the ruler(s) and political situation should also have more of an impact.

While an ambitious king might want to break free of foreign rule, his subjects and nobility might not feel the same way.

In the Scotland example, there was very high (90%+) cultural acceptance between our people and we spoke the same language, my capital in London was only a short distance from Scotland and on the same island, while my primary empire title was for one of the three kingdoms making up that island. My ruler was well established (30+ years on the throne), in good health and with Scottish ancestry, while Scotland had been a subject since before his birth. On top of that, my ruler's traits were significantly better than that of the Scottish king and there was low taxation and crown authority at the time, while I had access to 30x the amount of troops he could personally muster.

In short, not really ideal conditions for a revolt to form, even if the Scottish king wanted one.

It could just be a question of the game needing more depth, but when de jure shift happens over a quite lengthy periods of time and the game starts at a time when kingdoms like Scotland aren't even formed, it doesn't feel right (to me) to have such strong nationalist sentiment overriding all other considerations about how a realm is being ruled when it comes to deciding whether or not to revolt/join hostile factions.

 

[Bisonmask]

It seems like your problem is that you're trying to make sweeping changes to societies hundreds of kilometers apart in an era where messages move fastest by rowboat

If you did the groundwork of keeping up alliances with powerful kings in your realm or strategically mixed kings and dukes in as vassals or used a dejure title with a larger footprint or expanded more slowly or finished the political and religious changes you want done separately or ensured friendships with the power brokers in your empire or even lowered the faction difficulty you'd have fewer problems

I'm not trying to be an elitist when I say this but I genuinely don't understand where the fun would come from if you could make these kinds of sweeping changes without any pushback from the game

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

I'd much prefer campaigns where the main threat was external enemies, rather than constantly having to put down minor factions filled with vassals who don't particularly dislike me and who don't even make use of the court system to voice their grievances in advance, before deciding to plot a suicidal attack that for some reason nobody in game considers to be treasonous while they are in the phase of openly rallying support for their uprising, but without having the numbers to act.

Spot on, totally agree!

Sounds like you two just want to play a different game. If you don't want to deal with feudalism then play a game that doesn't have it.