Forum Consensus and Opinions on Coalitions?

[StarSword]

If anything it gives the player an unfair advantage because they can ignore the Pact and attack anyway where the AI would try to avoid attacking Pact members.

Yeah, about that: the AI is just as dumb about coalitions as they previously were about alliances. I saw the Abbasid Caliph trigger a Christian defensive pact twice with two successive holy wars down Abyssinia way, and the only thing that allowed him to get away with white peace the first time was he managed to kill the Byzantine Emperor in battle and they dropped out of the war.

 

[Hector of Troy]

Well, as I sad before, I don't believe the current Defensive Pact mechanic is redeemable, it either needs to be removed and changes made to internal politics to discourage expansion or it needs to be completely redesigned.

I fully agree.

Let's be realistic, coalitions won't even work in EU4, which is a game that in theory this mechanic should flourish. It won't contain blobbing or powerful countries at all, and will usually only be seen formed against weak and expanding countries during early/mid game.

If the feature is a failure in EU4, one has to be very optimistic the developers will ever get it right in CK2. Correctly balancing coalition and threat here would demand taking too many variables into account, which are currently overlooked - such as culture, opinion and religion. Not to mention coalitions will never contain blobbing, especially if they're nerfed to work within plausibility in the future.

 

[kmh42]

I don't believe the current Defensive Pact mechanic is redeemable

I slowly getting covinsed to this.

 

[StarSword]

Here's my thoughts on solutions:

• Restrict defensive pacts down to regional, perhaps places within 150 distance of the target realm. To use my example above, the Muslim (non-Sunni), Indian, and Christian countries immediately surrounding the Abbablob hit the Caliph, including a couple of nomad khagans, but nobody from Western or Northern Europe or Asia did. That result I find more plausible than France, Middle Francia, the Sunni Arabian Emperor, the Shi'a Caliph, and a jillion different little mini-chiefs all teaming up on Britannia to defend Germanic Norsemen from Catholic Britain like what I had to deal with yesterday.
• Give event troops to coalition members when war is declared. ETA: These are coded to disband automatically when the war is over.
• Give more threat for successive expansion wars than for one once in a while. E.g. if you pick a fight within say two years of your last one, threat gain doubles.
• Raise the threat threshold for interfaith cooperation.
• Ramp up the rate of threat decay.
• Give an option to use the diplomatic menu or maybe your chancellor to get rulers to leave defensive pacts and let the AI have access to it.
• Random events to destabilize realms after wars, like making uprisings more likely or making factions more powerful (since a lot of the troops are off in foreign lands instead of holding the homelands).

 

[kmh42]

Random events to destabilize realms after wars, like making uprisings more likely or making factions more powerful (since a lot of the troops are off in foreign lands instead of holding the homelands).

I updated the CCIL
Criticism and Fix-suggestions are highly welcome

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Here's my thoughts on solutions:

• Restrict defensive pacts down to regional, perhaps places within 150 distance of the target realm. To use my example above, the Muslim, Indian, and Christian countries immediately surrounding the Abbablob hit the Caliph, including a couple of nomad khagans, but nobody from Western or Northern Europe or Asia did. That result I find more plausible than France, Middle Francia, the Sunni Arabian Emperor, the Shi'a Caliph, and a jillion different little mini-chiefs all teaming up on Britannia to defend Germanic Norsemen from Catholic Britain like what I had to deal with yesterday.
• Give event troops to coalition members when war is declared.
• Give more threat for successive expansion wars than for one once in a while. E.g. if you pick a fight within say two years of your last one, threat gain doubles.
• Raise the threat threshold for interfaith cooperation.
• Ramp up the rate of threat decay.
• Give an option to use the diplomatic menu or maybe your chancellor to get rulers to leave defensive pacts and let the AI have access to it.
• Random events to destabilize realms after wars, like making uprisings more likely or making factions more powerful (since a lot of the troops are off in foreign lands instead of holding the homelands).

I'd like to respond to these one-by-one.

• This still doesn't answer the basic problem of Christians in Southern Europe going to war to protect Muslims in the Levant. It simply doesn't make sense. It's plausible to believe that a Christian realm adjacent to a Muslim realm might offer support if they were afraid they might be next but there's no way to rationalise the current setup.
• This isn't a bad idea, but the question is which Pact members, and what happens to them after the war as the AI never seems to disband event troops, and the player won't either unless they're enforcing their own house rules. suppose you gave a lot of event troop to the CB target, making them the biggest military power in the Defensive Pact, this is probably the best way to do things and it might even help the AI decide to converge on the one powerful army, rather than run around like a bunch of headless chickens. What happens after the war if the Pact wins? Your former "victim" will now be the "Big Bad Wolf" and he'll attack his former allies because Defensive Pacts aren't connected to character AI or diplomacy in any way.
• This is a good idea, rapid expansion should generate more threat, but beware encouraging the player to Turtle. Remember, if the player does conquests slowly and methodically he's safer than if he tries to expand rapidly and miss-calculates.
• As I have already noted, in most instances where interfaith co-operation occurs is simply doesn't make sense. In a general sense it's inconceivable that a Christian Alliance would protect a Muslim realm from Christian "liberation". This especially true int he Levant where the Christians were united in seeing the Crusades etc. as liberation wars, and not conquests. Of course, the Muslims saw Jihad in just the same way.
• Following your suggestion above, it makes sense that Threat should decay faster the longer you are at peace as your reputation for bellicosity is forgotten.
• A good idea, but the Devs have already said that the point of Defensive Pacts is that the player can't use diplomacy to break them apart. When I asked why Pacts couldn't be like Factions where persuading the Leader to give up (or killing them) could cause the faction to collapse I was bluntly told that it wasn't supposed to be that easy, you are meant to wait it out. This goes back to me point that the system needs to be junked and re-designed.
• This is a good idea in principle but the game already has features for this. Peasant revolts are more likely when your levies are depleted (as during war) and factions naturally grow stronger over the course of an offensive war because vassals don't like having their levies constantly raised. One of the problems with Factions is that, because the threshold for not joining is so high, most Faction members tend to like you, and therefore the Faction tends not to fire unless you provoke it.

You've made some really quite well reasoned points but, aside from the bit at the end which doesn't actually relate to defensive Pacts, I don't see the Devs implementing much of it and you still have the absurdities of interfaith alliances because of high threat.

 

[Aries666]

I think they are a good addition but poorly implemented. The main reason for this is them being solely defensive and that once you have a large enough retinue you can just turbo assault small targets to win the war before anyone can respond. As a result coalitions currently only protect large realms, the opposite of their intended role.

 

[StarSword]

I'd like to respond to these one-by-one.

• This still doesn't answer the basic problem of Christians in Southern Europe going to war to protect Muslims in the Levant. It simply doesn't make sense. It's plausible to believe that a Christian realm adjacent to a Muslim realm might offer support if they were afraid they might be next but there's no way to rationalise the current setup.
• This isn't a bad idea, but the question is which Pact members, and what happens to them after the war as the AI never seems to disband event troops, and the player won't either unless they're enforcing their own house rules. suppose you gave a lot of event troop to the CB target, making them the biggest military power in the Defensive Pact, this is probably the best way to do things and it might even help the AI decide to converge on the one powerful army, rather than run around like a bunch of headless chickens. What happens after the war if the Pact wins? Your former "victim" will now be the "Big Bad Wolf" and he'll attack his former allies because Defensive Pacts aren't connected to character AI or diplomacy in any way.
• This is a good idea, rapid expansion should generate more threat, but beware encouraging the player to Turtle. Remember, if the player does conquests slowly and methodically he's safer than if he tries to expand rapidly and miss-calculates.
• As I have already noted, in most instances where interfaith co-operation occurs is simply doesn't make sense. In a general sense it's inconceivable that a Christian Alliance would protect a Muslim realm from Christian "liberation". This especially true int he Levant where the Christians were united in seeing the Crusades etc. as liberation wars, and not conquests. Of course, the Muslims saw Jihad in just the same way.
• Following your suggestion above, it makes sense that Threat should decay faster the longer you are at peace as your reputation for bellicosity is forgotten.
• A good idea, but the Devs have already said that the point of Defensive Pacts is that the player can't use diplomacy to break them apart. When I asked why Pacts couldn't be like Factions where persuading the Leader to give up (or killing them) could cause the faction to collapse I was bluntly told that it wasn't supposed to be that easy, you are meant to wait it out. This goes back to me point that the system needs to be junked and re-designed.
• This is a good idea in principle but the game already has features for this. Peasant revolts are more likely when your levies are depleted (as during war) and factions naturally grow stronger over the course of an offensive war because vassals don't like having their levies constantly raised. One of the problems with Factions is that, because the threshold for not joining is so high, most Faction members tend to like you, and therefore the Faction tends not to fire unless you provoke it.

You've made some really quite well reasoned points but, aside from the bit at the end which doesn't actually relate to defensive Pacts, I don't see the Devs implementing much of it and you still have the absurdities of interfaith alliances because of high threat.

As far as the event troops, I forgot to say it but the idea was that they would be like tribal warriors raised by council missions or purchased with prestige from the Intrigue menu, in that they would disband automatically once the war was over.

And no, Christians should not be defending Muslims or pagans from other Christians; I'm thinking more along the lines of Christians and Muslims working together against a third faith entirely, e.g. Tengri Mongols. IIRC that one actually happened historically.

And yes, I know uprisings are already more likely during war, but I'd like that to be magnified and increase the longer the war continues, and extend to a few months or so (directly proportional to the war target's distance from the capital) after the war is over to represent the time it takes the soldiers to return home.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

Please hit "agree" if you like coalitions for game balance and/or think it's historically accurate and/or plausible that defensive coalitions are in the game. I'd love if you commented on why

Please hit "disagree" if you think coalitions are a misplaced anachronism that doesn't make sense for the time frame and breaks your immersion? I'd love if you commented on why

What do I respond if I think the game need some sort of coalitions for balance and challenge, if I like the idea, but think as implemented right now, they are both unrealistic and quite frustrating sometimes. Frustrating not because they forbid you to conquer what you want, but because if you blob, they make wars against them not much harder but much more tedious lengthy and boring. So they fail to achieve their goal of adding challenge and at the same time, fail at providing interesting gameplay.
But again, the idea itself is not a bad one. This is possible to work around them if your goal is not to blob too quickly. But they still need to be improved.

Problem with your question: The two possible responses are not incompatible ^_^

 

[SigurdStormhand]

So, given that I said we should junk and rebuild the Defensive Pact system I suppose I should offer an alternative, here's what I have.

Firstly - we get rid of the formal persistent pacts completely, that mechanic doesn't work for its intended purpose, it's biggest disincentive to further expansion is that it breaks your immersion ro have to face Christians defending against Muslims.

Here's what we have instead:

• Threat remain, it works more or less as it does now with one importance difference, realms start off with a "Base Threat" rating based on size. This new Base Threat will be something every realm will have, ranging between say 0-20%, and a realm will not be able to reduce Threat below that level unless it becomes weaker, either by losing land or suffering a major defeat that wipes out its levies.
• Threat will increase with conquest and expansion.
• Threat will decrease over time or as the realm shrinks.
• The rate at which threat increases or decreases will vary depending on how rapidly you expand or how long you are at peace. If you help your allies expand threat will reduce more slowly (but you won't acrue threat) and you'll be able to accelerate threat decay by helping defend allies.

So, that's how threat will work, but what will it be used for? Well - my thought it that threat will be a tangible measure of how threatening other realms find you. Instead of triggering Defensive Pacts your Threat Level will instead change how other realms react to your conquests.

If a realm has a high Threat level then when it initiates a new Conquest against another smaller realm nearby rulers will get an alert and will have an option to join the defender in the war regardless of culture and religion. Whether an individual ruler decides to offer support to the defender will depend on how they feel about the belligerents on both sides. If they like the attacker and dislike the defender, and are of the same religion as the attacker then they almost certainly won't join the Defender unless the attacker actually has 100% Threat. On the other hand, if they like the Defender and hate the attacker, but are of a different religion to the defender, they may decide to join.

If the Defender is joined by another realm in the defence which they are not already Allied to they will have the option to propose Alliance and the other realm will be more inclined to accept than normally. If multiple realms join the Defence then the primary Defender will get an Intrigue option to propose a "Mutual Alliance" which will place all defenders into Alliance with each other. This could be a normal Alliance or it might be a special "Co-Alliance" which other realms can apply to join after it is founded. When a ruler dies his heir would get the normal "renegotiate NAP" option with other Alliance members.

A final note - following on logically from this I think it should be possible to propose an Alliance to someone you have previously fought alongside in war due to a mutual Alliance to a third party. The idea being that even without the Dynastic connection you have formed a bond through working together in the current war.

 

[Hector of Troy]

Despite the good ideas that have been proposed in this thread, the more I read about threat and coalition, the more I believe blobbing should be contained from within - by increasing realm instability and giving factions a chance to win rebellions every now and then.

Mind I am not proposing some devastating RNG multipliers that would lead to a game only suitable for hardcore masochists. Far from that. Just a reasonable amount of internal instability and more demanding and threatening vassals would suffice.

If however the developers could somehow turn threat and coalition into a plausible feature - which I personally doubt -, I see no reason why it wouldn't work fine in conjunction with a more pungent faction system.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I agree - I think it's also important to say that Paradox Devs do actually listen, which is why we need to keep presenting reasoned arguments about why this feature isn't working.

I think tomorrow I'll do my Basil of Macedon test again without Conclave, see if there's a difference.

 

[Hector of Troy]

I agree - I think it's also important to say that Paradox Devs do actually listen, which is why we need to keep presenting reasoned arguments about why this feature isn't working.

They certainly do. The developers also help a lot by constantly providing modding tools. It's no accident there are a few excellent overhaul mods out there, which can always serve as an alternative to the vanilla experience.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Trying to avoid getting into CKII modding right now because....



For the uninitiated that's a mesh from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion I'm correcting for the Unofficial Oblivion Patch; ten years after release and we are still finding bugs, yesterday I found a whole wall missing collision.

I share that partly to plug the patch (if you plan to replay the game you want it) but mostly to illustrate how lucky we are as players to have a game as well supported and so long supported.

 

[Fishman786]

To eleborate on what I proposed earlier:
1. Defensive pacts should be centred on defending a balance of power. People with no interest in the system you're disrupting should not take part in coalitions against you. That means countries that don't border you, aren't in a de-jure Empire where you control anything and aren't empires themselves should never join a defensive pact against you.

2. Threat should be centred on the personal threat your empire represents to other nobles. The amount of threat a war generates should be based on the number of counties and higher titles that get confiscated. Subjugating nobles and leaving them in peace to rule in your name should not generate any threat, whilst on the hand revoking titles from those you've just conquered should generate threat, even at peace.

3. Threat should be entirely secular. Religious wars (holy wars and crusades) already allow de-facto coalitions to rise against you, so they should not trigger a second intervention by a pact. Religious wars should also not increase threat, as the current Great Holy War system already helps to contain religious dangers.

4. Threat should be interactive. It should not simply be some number that only decreases with time, there should be ways to make yourself less threatening. For example, it should be possible to reduce threat and remove a coalition member against you by pledging not to invade them, in effect signing a one-way non-aggression pact. And it should be possible to deliberately increase threat by executing (or torturing or whatever) members of foreign houses.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

If you guys that insistent on removing defensive pacts in exchange for realm instability, easiest way to do that would be to give all characters in your realm -2 tyranny opinion for every single holding you hand off to someone that's not him/her( if valid.) This penalty is converted to opinion of predecessor at 100% efficiency should you die.

Also allow character initiated nullifaction of non aggression pacts once opinion drops low enough. Say, -20.

 

[bertxav]

Let's be realistic, coalitions won't even work in EU4, which is a game that in theory this mechanic should flourish. It won't contain blobbing or powerful countries at all, and will usually only be seen formed against weak and expanding countries during early/mid game.

And that's really a problem. EU4 is the period where coallition were an answer to would be conqueror, poor old Napoleon. I preorder the bloody thing and in all the time since then I've never seen balance coalition. Not only they never form against an AI in some patches they would just never formed and in other a single province put all of Europe against you. So when they announce it for CK2 I knew the coallitions would never be balance, Paradox didn't desapoint. I wonder what the devs were thinking: ''It's not balence in EU4 but it will work perfectly in CK2.'' I hate the mechanic so much I've stop playing vanilla and any mod using the coallition until the next patch.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

If you guys that insistent on removing defensive pacts in exchange for realm instability, easiest way to do that would be to give all characters in your realm -2 tyranny opinion for every single holding you hand off to someone that's not him/her( if valid.) This penalty is converted to opinion of predecessor at 100% efficiency should you die.

Also allow character initiated nullifaction of non aggression pacts once opinion drops low enough. Say, -20.

I'm sorry but that's a bad idea, tyranny is the last thing you want to add to a character.

The fact is the AI is perfectly willing to form huge Factions (well over 150%) if you give it the chance, but it's unwilling to press them - possibly because despite joining a coalition to overhtrow you many vassals actually like you. Assuming you do provoke a Faction into declaring war you're then likely to beat it because the advertised 150% power works out more like 50% power after you factor in levy laws which reduce the ultimate effectiveness of the Faction as all the members are vassals of the Faction Leader.

Not to bang on about it but the solution to this is to allow the old system for Factions where they fought as an Alliance instead of as a separate realm. Then 150% power actually meant 150%, i.e. your vassals had you at a 2:3 disadvantage.

 

[kmh42]

Sounds interesting but I have some questions and remarks:

Threat remain, it works more or less as it does now with one importance difference, realms start off with a "Base Threat" rating based on size. This new Base Threat will be something every realm will have, ranging between say 0-20%, and a realm will not be able to reduce Threat below that level unless it becomes weaker, either by losing land or suffering a major defeat that wipes out its levies.

I see some potential abuse from the player here. I developed a strategy in my last game were I did go fully on money and not on levy in my obligations laws. This way I had very little troops in comparison to my realm size. But with the money I could easily buy lot of mercs and rush with them the wargoal. Furthermore this leads to the abuse that you can attack multiple enemies at the same time. So aCtA is one importend factor in DP

Threat will increase with conquest and expansion.

Dose it depend on the use of the CB and does peaceful vassalization expand thread?

If a realm has a high Threat level then when it initiates a new Conquest against another smaller realm nearby rulers will get an alert and will have an option to join the defender in the war regardless of culture and religion. Whether an individual ruler decides to offer support to the defender will depend on how they feel about the belligerents on both sides. If they like the attacker and dislike the defender, and are of the same religion as the attacker then they almost certainly won't join the Defender unless the attacker actually has 100% Threat. On the other hand, if they like the Defender and hate the attacker, but are of a different religion to the defender, they may decide to join.

Sounds good but it will take for ages till all AI realms are in this war and join forces.

If the Defender is joined by another realm in the defence which they are not already Allied to they will have the option to propose Alliance and the other realm will be more inclined to accept than normally. If multiple realms join the Defence then the primary Defender will get an Intrigue option to propose a "Mutual Alliance" which will place all defenders into Alliance with each other. This could be a normal Alliance or it might be a special "Co-Alliance" which other realms can apply to join after it is founded. When a ruler dies his heir would get the normal "renegotiate NAP" option with other Alliance members.

In extreme cases to could lead to a hole area are allied with each other preventing every single war in this region.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

I see some potential abuse from the player here. I developed a strategy in my last game were I did go fully on money and not on levy in my obligations laws. This way I had very little troops in comparison to my realm size. But with the money I could easily buy lot of mercs and rush with them the wargoal. Furthermore this leads to the abuse that you can attack multiple enemies at the same time. So aCtA is one importend factor in DP

Well, Threat would be based on a combination of Realm Size and troops, which would help mitigate the exploit you describe. At the same time, your Threat rating will ramp up as soon as you hire those mercs because your total number of troops will go up. If you're expanding and large enough to hire that many mercs and maintain them based on taxes then you'll still have some base threat.

On the other hand, this is CKII - you should have ways of lulling your enemies into a false sense of security. To an extent this is an issue for the AI.

Dose it depend on the use of the CB and does peaceful vassalization expand thread?

You should probably factor in use of a CB but peaceful vassalisation will, at the least, increase Base Thrteat

Sounds good but it will take for ages till all AI realms are in this war and join forces.

It would take less time than it does for the current hodge-podge to come together. It never takes more than about 10 days for one ruler to respond to another and the AI does it instantly. In my suggested system, and it's just a suggestion, the realms that band together will be roughly adjacent which means the time for their armies to converge will be roughly the same as a single realm of comparable size.

In extreme cases to could lead to a hole area are allied with each other preventing every single war in this region.

Yes, it could, but likely only for a generation. If smaller realms are more inclined to work together and less inclined to try to eat each other they will develop technologically rather than trying to expand territory. Networks of small alliances and regions where peace reign for twenty years or so are not a bad thing, this isn't Warhammer. The extreme case you suggest would likely require everybody to be the same culture and religion, and if that were the case they would support each other in attack and defence. It's entirely possible, in your extreme case, that one member of the Alliance could use it to expand enough to gain the De Jure Kingdom and vassalise the others. We desperately need a mechanic to allow Kingdoms to be created by mutual consent.