Forum Consensus and Opinions on Coalitions?

[Naughtius Maximus]

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

Disagree. Tyranny opinion hit is a very suitable hit as it has roughly the same cooldown as threat and opinion plays a cruicial role in factions. Want vassals to stay loyal to you? Grant them that holding, everyone else gets a minor hit, your vassal doesn't and in fact likes you more.

 

[Silversweeeper]

Why would every vassal care about every title grant? I can see them get upset if they have a claim, if there is a dynastic claimant (that they don't dislike), if it is a de jure liege title or de jure vassal title, if it is granted to a heretic/heathen, etc., but if there is no such reason for them to get the title they shouldn't particularly care that they didn't get the title (though Ambitious/Greedy characters might get slightly upset if the title is near their demesne/subrealm).

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Because this is the simplest way to cause internal instability.

Every person getting land that's not you means less relative power for you. This matters as you may have a rival among vassals.

This encourages AI and players to give even more land to already powerful vassals. So when they DO hate you for some other reason they'll do so with bite.

Also + 70 opinion modifier is huge for whoever you grant Rome to (7 holdings) while everyone else just gets a measley -14. Who cares what the others think when your +70 vassal remains loyal to you

 

[Silversweeeper]

Grants to rivals (and possibly people you have claims on) could count as a reason to get upset, but assuming the vassal is neutral towards the vassal being granted the title and has no claims/de jure pretensions/etc. it doesn't make much sense that they get upset by the grant (though, as I mentioned above, Ambitious or Greedy vassals could want titles that are nearby as well as those that are de jure/claimed). Otherwise title grants would be a lose-lose situation as you probably would end up in a position where you end up with more people being upset than happy no matter what you do (as opposed to making one person happy, a few upset, and most not caring), which would be rather unrealistic if there is no discernable reason for the vassal to have wanted the title for himself (other than wanting power).

As an example, the emperor of Hispania should normally not upset the vassals in de jure Hispania if he decides to grant the county of Ascalon to the duke of Jerusalem, but the duke of Sinai might get upset due to the Ambitious trait, the duke of Sicily might get upset due to being a rival of Jerusalem, and the duke of Ascalon will obviously hate it due to it being part of his de jure. Higher tier titles should obviously be more noticeable, so e.g. granting the kingdom of France (particularly as a non-viceroyalty title) to the king of England would probably upset the kings of Lotharingia and Aquitaine (to say nothing of the various vassals in France that were passed over), but the king of Hungary shouldn't care unless he is a claimant, the king of England is his rival, someone from his dynasty has a claim, or he considers the king of England to be a heathen or a heretic.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Tyranny is a very specific modifier - if a vassal sees you as Tyrannical that has major impacts on everything from factions they join to who they vote for in elections. Also irrc Tyranny has a 30 years cooldown now, or something like that, as opposed to 10 years. That means that pretty much every vassal will see you as Tyrannical, which means every vassal will want to overthrow you.

Consider this, a vassal has to have +60 opinion not to join a faction and +80 opinion to leave a faction - your system makes it unlikely you'll ever have a vassal not in a faction. Just because something is simple doesn't make it a good idea - in fact in a game like CKII is often means it's a bad idea.

The problem is not internal instability, the problem is that factions tend not to fire until they have huge percentages, and even then they're relatively easily beaten. Realms are less stable now than they've been for several years, but that stability isn't translated into either a disincentive to conquest or interesting politics.

Actually, you system would encourage conquest because every time a "Super Vassal" dies, or his title grant opinion bonus wears off you'll need to conquer more land to keep him sweet, because your inherited opinion modifier will be horrendous from all the Tyranny you've wracked up.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

That's the point in tyranny, the 30 year is comparable to threat. You can rationalize it as vassals getting less power relative to the realm. More than enough reason to slap a measley -2 per holding if it means balancing out blobbing.

My system just means you have several powerful vassals whom you are closely related to. Or many vassals but you don't expand much per quarter century for fear of realm instability.

 

[kmh42]

The problem is not internal instability, the problem is that factions tend not to fire until they have huge percentages, and even then they're relatively easily beaten. Realms are less stable now than they've been for several years, but that stability isn't translated into either a disincentive to conquest or interesting politics.

Interesting, I think the problem of faction is in fact they fire to early. In my games the fire often from 100-150% but this is way to early. They can easily be beaten. Mostly because I can still field more man (sometime I wonder what this 100% means) and I can buy mercs and have allies. They need to fire much later, e.g. 200% to have a little chance.

 

[StarSword]

Interesting, I think the problem of faction is in fact they fire to early. In my games the fire often from 100-150% but this is way to early. They can easily be beaten. Mostly because I can still field more man (sometime I wonder what this 100% means) and I can buy mercs and have allies. They need to fire much later, e.g. 200% to have a little chance.

Really, the problem is that they're treated as realms instead of alliances now, with the faction leader as "king" and everybody else his vassals. They get an opinion buff from being the faction leader for as long as the war lasts so their vassal levies are higher, but they still rarely come close to matching their opponent. If the faction members got the full benefit of their combined armies they'd be a lot more destructive.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

If the player is ahistorically blobbing, it's perfectly fine for the AI to ahistorically ally.

Likewise, if you're Byzantium and you conquer parts of Anatolia back from the Turks, then it makes perfect sense for the small Christian states in the Balkans to form a pact.

 

[User29]

If the player is ahistorically blobbing, it's perfectly fine for the AI to ahistorically ally.

Likewise, if you're Byzantium and you conquer parts of Anatolia back from the Turks, then it makes perfect sense for the small Christian states in the Balkans to form a pact.

This isn't what happens though, I take Portucale and everything in eastern Euope everything in Central Europe and everything in Western Europe coalitions me. I own Sweden so I guess they see me as a threat? but they are all christian pretty much and I just holy warred a muslim

mind you this is when I just finished the andalusian crusade which for some reason lowered my threat by 12%

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Interesting, I think the problem of faction is in fact they fire to early. In my games the fire often from 100-150% but this is way to early. They can easily be beaten. Mostly because I can still field more man (sometime I wonder what this 100% means) and I can buy mercs and have allies. They need to fire much later, e.g. 200% to have a little chance.

The Faction power is the totaly number of troops of all faction members vs your total number of troops. So at 200% Faction power the Faction members have you at a 2:1 disadvantage. Except that the following now applies:

Really, the problem is that they're treated as realms instead of alliances now, with the faction leader as "king" and everybody else his vassals. They get an opinion buff from being the faction leader for as long as the war lasts so their vassal levies are higher, but they still rarely come close to matching their opponent. If the faction members got the full benefit of their combined armies they'd be a lot more destructive.

I would estimate most factions get 40% of the advertised Faction Power, in addition to levy laws and the fact that "100%" of a vassal's levies isn't 100% of their actual troops the Faction Leader also doesn't get access to the retinues of Faction members, nor does he get as much income as the liege because he has a smaller demesne.

On top of all that revolts actually favour the old system of Allied revolters over a big faction because the allies would often go to siege multiple targets which the liege then had to rush around and un-siege. This tended to wear down your levies so that by the time you faced a large revolter army you were in worse shape than they were.

It was "Death by a Thousand Cuts" but with the Faction System you usually get one climactic battle and the liege
(player) has the bigger retinue and more core demesne troops, so he's liable to win.

Revolts also used to "snowball" where you could be chasing a revolter around the map only for a "loyal" vassal to get fed up and agree to join the revolt, suddenly you're down another 700 men and the enemy are up 1500 men.

If the player is ahistorically blobbing, it's perfectly fine for the AI to ahistorically ally.

Likewise, if you're Byzantium and you conquer parts of Anatolia back from the Turks, then it makes perfect sense for the small Christian states in the Balkans to form a pact.

If I had been a-historically blobbing and it had been Christians in the Middle East or the Pontic Steppe forming a Defensive Pact you might have had a point. However, I re-took Sicily, one county in Italy, Krete, Asia Minor, Tripoli and about four more provinces, all in Holy Wars. Historically speaking that's the Byzantine Empire "having a good five years" and well within the bounds of the sort of thing Emperors did historically.

It's not a-historical blobbing.

In any case, the major Pact members after that were Catholic Italy and Orthodox Bulgaria, neither of which was really threatened by my Conquests, but now suddenly willing to fight be to prevent the re-capture of Antioch or Jerusalem.

That is, bluntly, just nuts. No Christian Prince in the 9th Century would have considered telling the Byzantine Emperor "Hey, lay off those poor Muslims occupying the Holy Land". No, it would be more along the lines of "Ave Imperator, can I marry your daughter?"

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Personally, I've felt that it was a bit out of place how quickly you generate threat and that different religious groups would band together so early on in the game, while late in the game it feels more appropriate. I've got a few suggestions for this.

1. There could be that there is actually a tech requirement for various pact functionality. For example, tolerance 4 or 6 might be required in order for a country to band together with other religious group defensive pacts. This way you can't get global defensive pacts really early on in the game and can simulate some of the mass conquests that were historically done in the time period.
2. The amount of threat generated is based on the number of holdings taken or the amount of base income those holdings generate. If done based on the number of holdings, I'd like to also see a mass reduction in the number of holdings in the world during the earlier start dates, except in places that were historically heavily developed already. As the game progresses, the number of holdings and holding income steadily rises, meaning low threat for conquest early, high threat for conquest later, and always lots of threat for taking highly developed or populous areas like Constantinople or Venice while little for nearly empty areas like Iceland.
3. A way to make it more difficult to hold together kingdoms or empires as their holding count rises. This is beyond the number of vassals or personally held provinces. As your country's population goes up, it should just be in general more difficult to keep together. This would set the stage for a transition from the early game to the late game, where in the early game you have lots of wide conquered empires that often change hands but have low populations, and in the late game you have many more smaller kingdoms that are all much more relatively stable or heavily decentralized with powerful local rulers.

 

[StarSword]

I did it again. Catholic Irish Imperial holy war to drive Germanic Norse Russians out of Lesser Poland when I already controlled one of the counties. As usual my Lithuanian territories (don't ask) get screwed with by everybody and his mother, but France putters around wasting time on my vassal republics' trade posts while a million little Finnish and Norse chiefs send a million little armies that all get roflpwned by two Irish-led holy orders and a couple thousand troops from Norway and Germany. I seriously wasted more time steamrolling stacks than it took to actually conquer the territory I needed for warscore. Oh, and to top it off, the opposition was so weak that none of the battles even counted as major by game standards, so I had to wait for the King of Gardariki to offer terms on his own.

Defensive pacts aren't an obstacle to big blobs, they're just an annoyance.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

In any case, the major Pact members after that were Catholic Italy and Orthodox Bulgaria, neither of which was really threatened by my Conquests

You think Italy and Bulgaria wouldn't be worried about an expansionist Empire?

 

[kmh42]

Really, the problem is that they're treated as realms instead of alliances now, with the faction leader as "king" and everybody else his vassals. They get an opinion buff from being the faction leader for as long as the war lasts so their vassal levies are higher, but they still rarely come close to matching their opponent. If the faction members got the full benefit of their combined armies they'd be a lot more destructive.

I will add this to the CCIL

 

[BeyondExpectation]

On the subject on dislike for granting claims, I've had a similar idea for a while. After wars which grant lots of land to the liege like Holy ones, the most powerful vassals, as they likely had the greatest troop contribution besides the liege, should dislike him if he does not grant any land to them, meaning that the player must have both unhappy powerful vassals and happy new vassals or neither.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Personally, I've felt that it was a bit out of place how quickly you generate threat and that different religious groups would band together so early on in the game, while late in the game it feels more appropriate. I've got a few suggestions for this.

1. There could be that there is actually a tech requirement for various pact functionality. For example, tolerance 4 or 6 might be required in order for a country to band together with other religious group defensive pacts. This way you can't get global defensive pacts really early on in the game and can simulate some of the mass conquests that were historically done in the time period.
2. The amount of threat generated is based on the number of holdings taken or the amount of base income those holdings generate. If done based on the number of holdings, I'd like to also see a mass reduction in the number of holdings in the world during the earlier start dates, except in places that were historically heavily developed already. As the game progresses, the number of holdings and holding income steadily rises, meaning low threat for conquest early, high threat for conquest later, and always lots of threat for taking highly developed or populous areas like Constantinople or Venice while little for nearly empty areas like Iceland.
3. A way to make it more difficult to hold together kingdoms or empires as their holding count rises. This is beyond the number of vassals or personally held provinces. As your country's population goes up, it should just be in general more difficult to keep together. This would set the stage for a transition from the early game to the late game, where in the early game you have lots of wide conquered empires that often change hands but have low populations, and in the late game you have many more smaller kingdoms that are all much more relatively stable or heavily decentralized with powerful local rulers.

1. I like this idea, but I refer you to my post above about junking the current Pacts entirely. As things stand you either end up nerfing them into complete pountlessness or you rebuild them from the ground up. Consider how awkward this might be, as well, when the majority of a Pact (especially the larger higher-rank members) have that tech requirement and the smaller ones don't. How would that work in-game? Will the bigger Christian members join a "SuperPact" to defend the Muslims? Will the smaller realms be forming their own Pact? What happens when the smaller realms don't join the war to defend the Muslims and the player uses this to declare on them separately a fight two wars at once even though the Pacts and Threat level are designed to prevent that?

2. This is a good idea viz Threat Generation, but it can't address the core problem with the mechanic, which is the Defensive Pacts themselves, not how Threat is generated.

3. Please see my response to BeyondExpectation below:

On the subject on dislike for granting claims, I've had a similar idea for a while. After wars which grant lots of land to the liege like Holy ones, the most powerful vassals, as they likely had the greatest troop contribution besides the liege, should dislike him if he does not grant any land to them, meaning that the player must have both unhappy powerful vassals and happy new vassals or neither.

I like the idea in principle, and I think it makes sense psychologically, and historically, which are points in its favour. However, I think it should be a short-term thing rather than a long term thing for a couple of reasons. Firstly whilst nobles might be initially resentful of the fact the liege hasn't granted them land most would not usually nurse a burning hatred, they'd probably get over in in a couple of years at most. It could be a good way to "shock" the realm though and make revolts more likely in the immediate aftermath of a conquest war.

You think Italy and Bulgaria wouldn't be worried about an expansionist Empire?

In a word, no. You're thinking about this in too meta a sense, and without considering the period. This is the period when Christianity and Islam are either at War or in a sort of Cold War. Saying Italy might defend Muslim Arabia against the Byzantine Empire is like saying Poland will defend Britain against Communist Russia.

Not going to happen.

 

[StarSword]

You think Italy and Bulgaria wouldn't be worried about an expansionist Empire?

Worried, sure, but since he's conquering Muslims, i.e. their previously equally expansionist enemies, well south of them, not worried enough to go to war to stop him from conquering said mortal enemies as long as he stays away from them.

 

[omega20056]

CK2 is still so focused on blobbing that coalitions and infamy leave you with nothing to do.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

Worried, sure, but since he's conquering Muslims, i.e. their previously equally expansionist enemies, well south of them, not worried enough to go to war to stop him from conquering said mortal enemies as long as he stays away from them.

If Christians are helping Muslims, then he's over 75% threat. Everybody is convinced they will be next if he's not stopped by that point.