Give Your Opinion on The State of Warfare in CK3

[chr0me]

A warfare rework needs to be one of the next major free patch/overhaul due to it being a critical mechanic for the whole game. If you were to rate all the major Paradox GSGs from the past decade based solely on their warfare gameplay/system CK3 is dead last.

While this is only an opinion I will give some reasons why I think this having played, CK2, EU4, HOI4, Imperator, and even Stellaris (whose war system would be the worst if CK3 didn't exist).

1. Lack of Historical Plausibility From Bad Abstraction of Levies and Knights

Levies currently act as massed blobs of poorly trained peasants that stay terrible from start to end of the game, whose only use is being a meat shield for your MAA and Knights. There is not a cultural difference in either naming or composition of your levies since they've been homogenized into one blob, a major immersion downgrade from CK2 that had levies differentiated in type and amount based on culture.

Knights in their current function are basically terminators abstracted into one person who leads an infinitely replenishing group of elite MAAs of unknown size or type due to the way Paradox decided to model them in game. In accordance, the so called Knights aren't even modelled properly due to them having no gold upkeep, no elevation to lower nobility or being a separate class, or land grant which would go a long way in offering some Historical Plausibility of the Medieval Era. Doing the bare minimum research using Wikipedia shows this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight.

2. No Manpower or Limitations from Population or Development

CK3 does not use a manpower system and currently allows infinite monthly replenishment, there is no model of population and development has no impact on amount or quality of armies. This leads to an oversimplified system and causes both the AI and Player to not take costly wars seriously since the consequences for ill-advised/rampant warmongering is essentially non-existent.

3. Outdated Peace System

For some odd reason CK3 still uses the outdated peace system from CK2 that was okay for 2012 but horribly outdated for a game that released in late 2020 that does not properly model Feudal/Medieval Warfare. It's too rigid of a system, its overly lax for failed attackers with little to no consequences to losing wars and offers little recourse to successful defenders to punish attackers. Despite already having a superior peace system in EU4 to draw from CK3 kept the worse aspect from CK2, out of all systems to retain from CK2 this is probably the worst one.

4. Bad Rally point System/UX Design

The rally point system does not offer much player choice in how many troops to raise for a war and its UX design is also a downgrade to the simpler and more functional one from CK2.

Conclusion:

Let me know if agree or disagree and if you have your own ideas for why the system is either good or bad in your opinion based on your own experience playing CK3 and the other GSGs.

 

[fodazd]

I mostly agree with these criticisms. My personal opinion:

1.:
Yes, levies are bad. And this is kind of a problem, because levies are what you get from your vassals, and this makes your vassals military contribution basically irrelevant. I don't think this is a good system for a game that is supposed to model the feudal power structure.
...Knights are maybe a little bit too strong, yes. But I do like that they are relevant, even though it's not realistic for so few people to carry a battle.

2.:
I agree that wars should be costly. A large number of your troops dying should have consequences.

3.:
I agree that the CK peace deal system is the worst peace deal system of all paradox games. (EDIT: ...Or at least the worst of all the ones that were mentioned in the OP)

4.:
I strongly disagree that the system for raising armies is a downgrade compared to CK2. Raising armies in CK3 is much better.

 

[Sorbo]

Bad Abstraction

I dislike inherited forever special soldiers or event troops. You can't replenish them and they keep exact same numbers so it feels like a bunch of immortals follow your rulers through the ages.

For inherited event soldiers there should be a time cap after which they die out (aging) and disband. Something like 50 years. They should also disband if they have only 5% of the original numbers left because at that point they do not contribute much and just clog up the army UI.

 

[Austregisel]

I mostly agree with these criticisms. My personal opinion:

1.:
Yes, levies are bad. And this is kind of a problem, because levies are what you get from your vassals, and this makes your vassals military contribution basically irrelevant. I don't think this is a good system for a game that is supposed to model the feudal power structure.
...Knights are maybe a little bit too strong, yes. But I do like that they are relevant, even though it's not realistic for so few people to carry a battle.

2.:
I agree that wars should be costly. A large number of your troops dying should have consequences.

3.:
I agree that the CK peace deal system is the worst peace deal system of all paradox games. (EDIT: ...Or at least the worst of all the ones that were mentioned in the OP)

4.:
I strongly disagree that the system for raising armies is a downgrade compared to CK2. Raising armies in CK3 is much better.

My problem with raised levies is that the player can exploit, for example, you can raise your army relatively quickly on your enemy's border, but the AI can't do that, it always raises her soldiers in her capital, which is often far from the border, and that gives the player a big advantage.

 

[fodazd]

My problem with raised levies is that the player can exploit, for example, you can raise your army relatively quickly on your enemy's border, but the AI can't do that, it always raises her soldiers in her capital, which is often far from the border, and that gives the player a big advantage.

I agree that this is a problem. The best fix for it would be to make the AI raise troops close to the border, and not to return to the CK2 system.

 

[pengoyo]

A warfare rework needs to be one of the next major free patch/overhaul due to it being a critical mechanic for the whole game.

While I agree that I would like to see the war system see a major update/overhauled. I personally think it is functional enough and would much rather see major updates to the economy, governments, and possibly even religion before war. That said I have nothing against getting the ball rolling now on how to improve the war system.

If you were to rate all the major Paradox GSGs from the past decade based solely on their warfare gameplay/system CK3 is dead last.

Actually I'd put it slightly above CK2 (or equal), mainly because CK2 was so unuser friendly and most of the cool ideas it had, like tactics where hidden away and ultimately didn't really matter. CK3 is really just the same system as CK2 in terms of the end results, with all the parts in CK2 that didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things removed.

Though to be fair, of all the paradox games you mentioned I think the CK series should be the worst at war, as it should be the least focused on war among those titles. Note that I'm NOT saying the CK series shouldn't have war as one of it's focuses or that the current CK3 war system shouldn't be improved. Just I think all those titles should have war as a more central part of the game than the CK series and thus should have better war systems to reflect that.

Levies currently act as massed blobs of poorly trained peasants that stay terrible from start to end of the game, whose only use is being a meat shield for your MAA and Knights. There is not a cultural difference in either naming or composition of your levies since they've been homogenized into one blob, a major immersion downgrade from CK2 that had levies differentiated in type and amount based on culture.

Let's not look at CK2 with rose tinted glasses. While the troops from your vassals were of multiple types, culture did not play any important role. There was 1 building out of like 10 that was determined by your culture. So the end result was your army was just a hodgepodge of whatever building your vassals happened to make, thus each culture played the same in term of vassal contributions. The place where culture shined in CK2 for armies was your retinue which is still carried forward in CK3 in the form of MaA.

CK2 also had the problem that your tactics where determined by your army composition, which if using vassal levies meant that you weren't in control of it. This gets even worse as mixing certain troop types could lead to worse tactic rolls (this also means that building certain buildings in CK2 that gave you more troops would actually make you weaker by ruining your tactics rolls). So the optimal thing to do was to use only retinues to give you control over your troops (and because they were always standing which was op). The same result as in CK3.

Honestly if vassal troop types come back to CK3 I'd like to see it closer to the I:R way of doing it rather than CK2. Alternatively, government type could be used to determine what kind of levies a vassal gives to their liege, but that would make more sense when more government type are added (like for instance Nomadic vassals could give a horse archer levy).

Knights in their current function are basically terminators abstracted into one person who leads an infinitely replenishing group of elite MAAs of unknown size or type due to the way Paradox decided to model them in game. In accordance, the so called Knights aren't even modelled properly due to them having no gold upkeep, no elevation to lower nobility or being a separate class, or land grant which would go a long way in offering some Historical Plausibility of the Medieval Era. Doing the bare minimum research using Wikipedia shows this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight.

While I like Paradox's idea of making characters matter more in war (outside of just leading armies). I do agree that having knights also play a role outside of war would be good . That would help make them matter more and thus me care more when they die or get wounded. In terms of their abstraction in war, I think it's fine (it's a game, I don't need CPU time wasted on representing everybody in each individual knight's cohort of warriors), just needs to be toned down.

CK3 does not use a manpower system and currently allows infinite monthly replenishment, there is no model of population and development has no impact on amount or quality of armies. This leads to an oversimplified system and causes both the AI and Player to not take costly wars seriously since the consequences for ill-advised/rampant warmongering is essentially non-existent.

Small correction, but development does act as a small multiplier on the levies you receive from a county (though this could be even larger in my opinion). Also control does mean you can have some devastation after a war if a lot of your land is sieged, but I'd also like to see for the possibility of development being decreased. Also I agree troops replenish too fast. Don't think a full manpower mechanic is needed (it would get complicated really fast with the problem of a liege is technically fighting the war with someone else's troops problem), just large reduction in the current troop replenishment rate should work to make war more costly.

For some odd reason CK3 still uses the outdated peace system from CK2 that was okay for 2012 but horribly outdated for a game that released in late 2020 that does not properly model Feudal/Medieval Warfare. It's too rigid of a system, its overly lax for failed attackers with little to no consequences to losing wars and offers little recourse to successful defenders to punish attackers. Despite already having a superior peace system in EU4 to draw from CK3 kept the worse aspect from CK2, out of all systems to retain from CK2 this is probably the worst one.

While I'd love to see more options for peace in CK3 (marriage proposals being one), I don't want to see it move to an EU4 peace system (edit: assuming you mean more ability to grab land using warscore without proper claims). I can see why a lot of people want a EU4 system: it works well in EU4 and it feels weird to completely conquer a realm but only take 1 county. But I don't think the EU4 system makes much sense in the middle ages and the problem of conquering an entire realm for 1 county should be handled through making the war score system favour shorter wars with more decisive battles/sieges (and honestly 1 county wars between large realms should be handled through some kind of border dispute mechanic rather than all out war).

And honestly I'd like to see CK3 take a page out of Stellaris's book when it come to the peace system. Stellaris allows the defender to decide the kind of war they want to have against the attacker. And I think such a system would be a natural fit for CK3, so if you declare a holy war, the defender can decide if they want to go for the current just pay war reparations or if they want to declare a holy war in return. What they choose could be used to determine the war score needed fro the defender to win the war and the prestige cost of bringing in allies. This would make declaring offensive wars more risky as you don't know what the defender will do in response and it could lead to the attacker loosing land to the defender. Note for the sake of coding simplicity, it might be required that the type of war the defender can declare is limited in some way (maybe only the same type of war as the attacker, and/or the defender is limited to equal or smaller sized war goals than the attacker).

The rally point system does not offer much player choice in how many troops to raise for a war and its UX design is also a downgrade to the simpler and more functional one from CK2.

I'd hardly call CK2's system levy raising system simple, as it was mainly annoying where it differs from CK3 (one exception being retinues always being raised, that aspect made things pretty simple, but was way too op). Plus the CK2 system was very abusable if you set up your vassals correctly (more abusable than the current CK3 system). People complain about CK3's teleporting troops, but CK2 had them too, just a level down and way more powerful. And you could use that to your advantage to crush the AI, especially in civil wars.

That said I think CK3 could give more control over the number of troops raised (even a simple raise half the levies would be nice). Currently it takes a lot of playing around with placing multiple rallying points down to get the local levies to be in a range you want (and the UI doesn't tell people about this trick). And more control over what MaA raise would be nice.

I have also liked some suggestion about integrating the MaA with the rally point system more, so you troops can assigned to specific rally points. But a lot of the details of such a system would still need to be worked out.

edit: clarity

 

[Lordy's]

While I'd love to see more options for peace in CK3 (marriage proposals being one), I don't want to see it move to an EU4 peace system. I can see why a lot of people want a EU4 system: it works well in EU4 and it feels weird to completely conquer a realm but only take 1 county. But I don't think the EU4 system makes much sense in the middle ages and the problem of conquering an entire realm for 1 county should be handled through making the war score system favour shorter wars with more decisive battles/sieges (and honestly 1 county wars between large realms should be handled through some kind of border dispute mechanic rather than all out war).

And honestly I'd like to see CK3 take a page out of Stellaris's book when it come to the peace system. Stellaris allows the defender to decide the kind of war they want to have against the attacker. And I think such a system would be a natural fit for CK3, so if you declare a holy war, the defender can decide if they want to go for the current just pay war reparations or if they want to declare a holy war in return. What they choose could be used to determine the war score needed fro the defender to win the war and the prestige cost of bringing in allies. This would make declaring offensive wars more risky as you don't know what the defender will do in response and it could lead to the attacker loosing land to the defender. Note for the sake of coding simplicity, it might be required that the type of war the defender can declare is limited in some way (maybe only the same type of war as the attacker, or the defender is limited to equal or smaller sized war goals than the attacker).

When people say they want a more EU4-like peace deal system, they usually mean that there should be negotiable options instead of a lost/white peace/won status and NOT that you can take up to your warscore worth of provinces (and also not that claims should loose their value).

But I agree, EU4 is not the peace system CK3 needs - they should take the Vic3 system for inspiration. It's the only system where war is, like it should be, the continuation of politics and where third party interests are taken into account (neighbouring rulers might like/dislike your actions; your allies who also have claims probably want them too).

 

[Kurt Pat]

There is no reason to hope in free update for a more sophisticated war system.
Actual system could even be still too complicated to catch an even larger audience.

If we agree (and it is just my opinion, I dont ask you to agree with me) the basic game we have, target the largest audience possible, and DLCs target more CK hard core gamers; may be a specific DLC dedicated for war would exist in the future.

There is a last important point (and interrogation) which is susceptible to slowdown or annhilate any hope for change in the good direction ; multiplayers.

Any change in the game, especially in war system, immediatly cause a shitstorm among mp community. The second thing, is ; MP community interests are often in conflict with those of the solo community.

 

[pengoyo]

When people say they want a more EU4-like peace deal system, they usually mean that there should be negotiable options instead of a lost/white peace/won status and NOT that you can take up to your warscore worth of provinces (and also not that claims should loose their value).

I've seen both argued for in CK3 under the EU4 label, but you are right that I shouldn't have assumed that was what OP was arguing for.

But I agree, EU4 is not the peace system CK3 needs - they should take the Vic3 system for inspiration. It's the only system where war is, like it should be, the continuation of politics and where third party interests are taken into account (neighbouring rulers might like/dislike your actions; your allies who also have claims probably want them too).

Don't know to much about Vic3, only been partially following the dev diaries. But I do agree that warfare being a continuation of politics (and intrigue) would be a good fit for CK3.

 

[Slow Bathroom]

It's funny going back to the pre-release gameplay video and seeing how the game designer fights a war. He uses one rally point which he doesn't move from his capital, and he never splits his one army stack. You can tell they put no time or effort into how war works, which really sucks because war is like half of the game.

 

[TheMind]

I think this is one of the least worrying problem in the game design.

 

[Rurik Troublamker]

Battle mechanics levies and men-at-arms is meh but it's not the problem.
The problem really is how hopelessly useless AI at keeping his kingdoms/empires together - you don't need armies because 9 out 10 times HRE, Byzantine, Abbasids will break themselves apart so you can take them by pieces.
First thing that needs be done is some glue and crutches for the AI so they can keep it together.

 

[Secuter]

A warfare rework needs to be one of the next major free patch/overhaul due to it being a critical mechanic for the whole game. If you were to rate all the major Paradox GSGs from the past decade based solely on their warfare gameplay/system CK3 is dead last.

While this is only an opinion I will give some reasons why I think this having played, CK2, EU4, HOI4, Imperator, and even Stellaris (whose war system would be the worst if CK3 didn't exist).

1. Lack of Historical Plausibility From Bad Abstraction of Levies and Knights

Levies currently act as massed blobs of poorly trained peasants that stay terrible from start to end of the game, whose only use is being a meat shield for your MAA and Knights. There is not a cultural difference in either naming or composition of your levies since they've been homogenized into one blob, a major immersion downgrade from CK2 that had levies differentiated in type and amount based on culture.

Knights in their current function are basically terminators abstracted into one person who leads an infinitely replenishing group of elite MAAs of unknown size or type due to the way Paradox decided to model them in game. In accordance, the so called Knights aren't even modelled properly due to them having no gold upkeep, no elevation to lower nobility or being a separate class, or land grant which would go a long way in offering some Historical Plausibility of the Medieval Era. Doing the bare minimum research using Wikipedia shows this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight.

2. No Manpower or Limitations from Population or Development

CK3 does not use a manpower system and currently allows infinite monthly replenishment, there is no model of population and development has no impact on amount or quality of armies. This leads to an oversimplified system and causes both the AI and Player to not take costly wars seriously since the consequences for ill-advised/rampant warmongering is essentially non-existent.

3. Outdated Peace System

For some odd reason CK3 still uses the outdated peace system from CK2 that was okay for 2012 but horribly outdated for a game that released in late 2020 that does not properly model Feudal/Medieval Warfare. It's too rigid of a system, its overly lax for failed attackers with little to no consequences to losing wars and offers little recourse to successful defenders to punish attackers. Despite already having a superior peace system in EU4 to draw from CK3 kept the worse aspect from CK2, out of all systems to retain from CK2 this is probably the worst one.

4. Bad Rally point System/UX Design

The rally point system does not offer much player choice in how many troops to raise for a war and its UX design is also a downgrade to the simpler and more functional one from CK2.

Conclusion:

Let me know if agree or disagree and if you have your own ideas for why the system is either good or bad in your opinion based on your own experience playing CK3 and the other GSGs.

1. I agree. Levies came in all shapes and sizes. Some being nothing more than almost unarmed peasants, while other levies came as a very solid force which primarily was defensive in nature. At the moment, levies don't matter and they're either used as meat shields when needed, or not used at all.

2. Indeed, there are very little reason to not always be at war. I mean, what's there to lose? You can't even lose lands in an offensive war. That your levies soak the fields in blood doesn't matter at all.


3. There are a better peace system out there than EUIV. The main draw back of EUIV is that only one party - the winner - can raise demands. While the system is alright for a land-grabbing game, it can't really simulate the advanced treaties particularly well. That said, it would still be way better than what CK3 has to offer atm. Like you, I'm baffled that they decided to pick up an archaic peace treaty system and use it in a 2020 game.

Instead, we should draw inspiration from Total War Three Kingdoms. Now, Total War games aren't exactly known for their diplomacy. But, Three Kingdoms is different on that point. In that game you can both demand and give at the same time. Here's an example that would suit CK3:

(I will) Demand	(I will) Give
The county of Foix	300 gold
The county of Languedoc	Renounce my claim on the duchy of Gascogne
Marriage between Gascon (your son) and Amelia (Opponents daughter)
That (Opponent) renounce claim to the Duchy of Toulouse
Hugo, the opponents son, will stay at my court for X years (hostage)

In this way, peace treaties would become much more dynamic. No more is it a completely one-sided deal where only one party can possibly gain anything from it. Instead, treaties can be hammered out that would at least attempt to simulate some of the real treaties.

4. I'm not sure that I dislike the rally system. But I dislike the fact that I cannot split my MaA. What if I don't want all my artillery pieces, but just half of them?


I will also add, when it comes to warfare, that I'm a bit confused about the decision to make baronies an integral part of counties. I mean, when that is the case, then why even bother making them a separate entity on the map?

Lastly then, Sieges has to become a lot better. But I don't think any changes will be made before they've finished with their DLC.

 

[Sopbucket]

Levies currently act as massed blobs of poorly trained peasants that stay terrible from start to end of the game, whose only use is being a meat shield for your MAA and Knights.

I think it's even worse that that, because MAAs don't even need the meat shield most of the time. In my experience, levies are functionally indistinguishable from Mercenaries in warfare, most of the time you won't use them but they can always be raised to bolster your army for that needed edge, provided you're willing to pay a little upkeep. They're actually rather expensive for what they can do (because they are so terrible) and unlike in CK2, your vassals don't pay the upkeep on the portion they give you when raised. This goes entirely against that dev diary that said we'd want to fight with levies to keep our MAAs from dying, in practice its actually more expensive to do that.

They do help prevent civil wars from breaking out in the first place, so they are not entirely pointless. But I don't think the design intent was to use them that way. One possible solution I've thought about is, perhaps MAAs could be changed to replenish much more slowly, say 5 or 10 men per month per regiment, regardless of size. Small enough so that losing your elite soldiers during war actually matters; this way you would want to protect them with levies from the start. Perhaps different types of MAAs could replenish at different rates, giving you a strategic reason to use light infantry over heavy, for instance.

This kind of addresses the issue about manpower you brought up too, I totally agree that right now it all replenishes too quickly, though its hard to tell overall with levies since I don't use them.

I think I'm okay with the peace system. You can, after all, just declare war on an attacker after defeating them in a defensive war; though as already stated they tend to bounce back pretty quickly.

I agree about the rally point system, though my main contention is that we shouldn't be able to rally right on the border.

I think this is one of the least worrying problem in the game design.

I think the problem with warfare currently comes down to the ways players can exploit its systems vs the AI. You're always at a huge advantage because of it, and I feel like it's making the game a lot easier than it should be. It's not the only thing that needs to be balanced, but it's pretty important because of how central it is to the game.

 

[Tiax]

Battle mechanics levies and men-at-arms is meh but it's not the problem.
The problem really is how hopelessly useless AI at keeping his kingdoms/empires together - you don't need armies because 9 out 10 times HRE, Byzantine, Abbasids will break themselves apart so you can take them by pieces.
First thing that needs be done is some glue and crutches for the AI so they can keep it together.

Agree with this - it doesn't matter how good or bad warfare is if you have no one worth fighting.

 

[Miroku20X6]

I would love to see
1. Levies improve via tech as the game goes on
2. Vassals give a % of MAA in addition to levies.
3. Levy and MAA replenishment is reduced

 

[vyshan]

There are some good points here, some of my own thoughts on warfare, in no particular Order

Seasons and Warfare
The Medieval world was an agricultural world, even in the most urbanized of empires the vast majority of the people worked in the fields. This is also where you get campaigning seasons. Which while they do vary from region to region based on local climate factors, the fact that for most armies powered by levies, those levies need to go home and farm and that keeping them raised throughout the winter months and into the spring can be devastating to producing food, which is necessary for the wealth to be produced.

Having this somehow represented would be good.

Lack of Devastation
What do I mean by devastation is the destruction of buildings, such as the House of Wisdom by the Mongols, Nalanda by the various islamic raiders, English churches by the Normans, etc. or the destruction to actual people, see the Harrying of the North or the Mongol's response to Khwarizma, or just the land it self through looting of farms and towns unless you are specifically raiding.

Now part of this lack is due to the fact that there really isn't a disease system in CK3 yet, but warfare is nasty and disease can do damage and waging war should have certainly have an impact. But the other aspects aren't really there and they should be.

Peace Treaties
As mentioned by others better peace treaty things. In particular I want to be able to trade hostages between parties for x amount of time or marriage deals part of it.

Raiding and Marches
Raiding wasn't just something don by the Norse or tribals, but by pretty much everyone. As such it should not be limited to them but available to pretty much everyone. To counter raids, this is what Marches should be for. They should be the vassals who are there to defend the areas where raiding happens constantly. Such as for example the Scottish/English Border.

No minor or regional wars
Right now you can't really have a minor war between border regions without drawing in the top liege. Having minor conflicts that chip away at big empires should certainly be possible without drawing in the emperor him or herself.

 

[Kurt Pat]

In my first game, I started my wars in march, thinking, I dont know why, counties supplying was lower in winter. That makes me also noticed that plundered counties had no supplying descrease.

Anyway when I see I have a better supply at Mourmansk than at Cork, it is perhaps not useful to dream.

 

[Torredebelem]

MP community interests are often in conflict with those of the solo community.

Unfortunately true, even if they are proportionally a small minority of players averaging between 5% and 15% in EU4 that ever played the game in MP. For CK3 there is no data but I suppose one can infer a similar % range is most probable.

 

[Dlin369]

Personally I don’t mind warfare being abstracted in a game like CK3 - where the focus is on domestic management. However

1. I don’t like that large empires can concentrate forces as easily as they do which allows them to blob. I think they should be able to have large armies, but proportionately have to keep more men at home to keep order and defend the borders

2.) I don’t like how in a RPG-Esque game combat doesn’t really have much roleplay in it. Knights are hired and replaced without much concern besides their prowess stat, there’s no battlefield events, etc