How and Why Faction Wars Are Broken: A Demonstration
I happen to really like the faction system in the abstract. This one change in the game made holding large empires together challenging. This is something the game really needed. Before the faction system, I always got bored once I formed a massive empire because the game turned into a game of properly timing war declarations and title revocations so as to mercilessly stomp each neighbor again and again. I always quit before I finished a game.
But that doesn't mean the system doesn't need major changes. Very serious changes. I wanted to use my latest game as the Russian Empire to provide a quick example of what's wrong with factions and how to fix it. Factions made this game fun enough to continue much later than I normally would. But ultimately it just turned too absurd to deal with. What killed the game for me was the following independence war.
THE SETTING
This is my Russian Empire of the early 1300's.
I really haven't expanded my border much since I wiped the Mongols in the mid 1200s. Instead I devoted the last half century not to expanding my borders by eliminating every single landholder in my Empire who was not my dynasty and culture. Just because I'm obsessive like that. Leaving the nation the same size for a long time just happened to provided a great comparison as to how faction wars were working.
THE WAR
My king has been on the throne for about a decade. We fought a big independence war on coming to the throne, and since have bought off most plotters. But eventually a group decided to revolt. They almost all love me. Most of them are +40 relations or better. Yet independence they want.
Lesson One: When we talking about factions, we're really only talking about one faction -- Independence. Normal factions don't revolt unless they can reach about 90% of your power. Independence doesn't work that they. They almost always revolt around 30%. But they can and do revolt at any level. They can revolt at only 10%. (This group was in the low 20s, which I figured was low enough to keep them quiet but was wrong.) Not that it matters. They get free troops. A revolt at 5% of your power is as dangerous to you as one at 50% because the free troops they get will dwarf their personal troops regardless.
This is the map of the revolters.
This is hardly a threat in itself. But this also happens.
The free troop event hits. This revolt got three stacks of about 60K each for 180k. These troops get no attrition. They are also much more elite than regular levies. They include a lot of heavy infantry instead of light infantry and archers.
Now, that's a war.
Lesson Two: The free troop event is keyed to the maximum size of your retinue. My retinue had a cap of about 200k at this point, which I spent on 75k heavy infantry cultural levies and 25k cavalry, split into 5 groups of 20k total each. But having not expanded my border for a while, I watched the free troop event over time. As my retinue expanded in size due to tech increases, the free revolted troops also increased to always just about equal my cap. The size of my realm or my realm levies didn't matter at all.
Lesson Three: It doesn't matter how many people are in the independence faction. If anyone revolts, you will likely fight free non-attrition troops equal to your retinue. And if even one vassal is unhappy, you can get an independence revolt. One revolter or 20 really isn't much different to you -- the threat is the free troops. So you really shouldn't stress too much about stopping people from joining the faction because they will no matter what you do -- you can't keep everybody in the nation over 80 all the time -- and any revolt of any size is always about the same to you on the battlefield.
FIGHTING THE WAR
As soon as the war broke out, I immediately called up my realm levies. I grouped them into small stacks of about 5-10k. And I sent my retinue out to meet the doomstacks. The levies immediately sent out to play whack a mole with all the tiny little armies all over the map.
Why? Because this is how warscore works during independence revolts:
(This is a different war, but it makes the same point)
The revolters get between 5-10 percent PER HOLDING that they take. You get about half a percent per holding that you take. You need about 30 percent to white peace. If they get 100 percent, they win. Do the math.
To get 30 percent warscore by taking holdings means taking 90. 90 holdings, or about 30 counties. They need around a dozen holdings. Or about 5 counties. If you let them take 5 counties anywhere, you lose. And you definitely won't get a white peace if you let them take even ONE holding anywhere.
Lesson Four: Independence wars are like fighting three genetically engineered super-bears in a field of killer bunnies. You have to kill the bears, and fast. But if you ignore any of those bunnies, you lose. You have to kill every single one of them, because if any gets behind your lines and steals a county you're in a world of hurt. So you have to have to play whack a mole with this swarm of little armies while your main force goes against the doomstacks. There's no point in taking his holdings. They're not worth anything. There's only a point in stopping him from taking any of yours.
WHY I LOST
This is how the war went.
The AI started with a 10k army in Kwarazim, which it immediately marched up the edge of the map assaulting holdings. The doomstacks also immediately started assaulting holdings.
By the time I formed up my levies into groups, I noticed the army on the map edge and had a group race towards it. As other groups raced towards every other little gnat army that might grab something -- a group tried way up in Norway. And my retinue was racing towards the doomstacks. He quickly took 5 counties. I lost, while I was waiting for the timer to allow me to assault back one of the Kwarazim steals.
The travel distances in Russia are just too slow.
Here is the thing: I didn't really get beat. I lost the war without fighting. My retinue was still racing towards his free troops when I lost. I also didn't lose strategically. I have over 1100 holdings. I lost 5 free backwater counties, all of which I could easily take back. At the same time, I had been knocking around all his other armies and destroying him. Given time, there is no doubt I would have won.
Yet according to the clock, I lost. And in fact, there was no way I could have won.
WHAT IS MESSED UP
Here's what's messed up about this situation:
1. I shouldn't have had a revolt in the first place. All my vassals love me. The revolters were almost all with positive relations. And few of them had any reason to get free.
2. In big empires, independence wars like this are constant and inevitable. They can fire at any level of support. When you have dozens of vassals, you can't keep them all happy. Somebody is going to be ambitious. Somebody you can't bribe enough. So at this stage of the game, they come every few years no matter how nice you are to your vassals or what you do. You just figured it into the game plan.
3. The warscore system for independence wars is way out of whack. Why is the AI getting up to 10 percent PER HOLDING when the player gets less than 1 percent? In big empires, it makes them drag on forever. A white peace if the best you can do with this kind of scoring, and only when you've really had close to a complete victory.
A win for taking 5 counties when you have hundreds is insane, especially when the math doesn't work the other way.
4. The free troop event needs work. 180k men para-dropped by aliens ever five years, again and again? For a big empire, this is facing a Mongol invasion again and again, every five years, without stop. There's nothing you can really do to stop these revolts. Making a massive invasion like this a regular occurance just gets tedious. Yes, I can beat them. But do I really want to, again?
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
I'm glad factions are in the game. I even like the free troops in concept. When the event doesn't fire, they're really too easy to beat. But a few serious things need to get tweaked.
1. Vassals with positive relations who are de jure to your nation shouldn't be joining independence wars. Ever. People who hate you? Fine. People no de jure to your realm? Sometimes.
I have seen a one county bishop outside of Moscow with plus 50 relations join an independence war. A bishop? Who likes the Tsar? And who is seated two counties from the royal demense? What reason can he possibly have, and what can he possibly hope to gain. If that can happen, and it can, the system is broken.
2. The warscore system needs to get adjusted. Badly. Maybe it makes sense for kingdom-sized wars. For empires it's just a ticking clock that has no relation to the state of the war. The AI can assault a few counties with it's free attrition-less doomstacks and it wins before you can even move troops into the area to fight. Bad design.
3. The free troop event is far too generous. 180k elite troops dropped out the sky for a standard independence war? I appreciate the desire to make these a fair fight. But that's ridiculous. No matter the size of your army, nobody should have to fight Mongol invasions every five years. It's just boring and tedious. You're no longer able to play your game because it becomes a constant mega-war.
What makes it really bad is that these guys are elite troops and face no attrition. If they were levies, and split up into normal sized stacks, it might be more reasonable.
FINAL NOTE
I don't want factions out of the game. And I actually think every faction other than independence works fine. I get what you guys were trying to accomplish. It even works well for kingdom-sized realms. But it doesn't scale at all. The execution really needs work on big empires, which is what most of your dedicated players at this stage are running -- I mean, you're letting us form the Roman Empire now.
I happen to really like the faction system in the abstract. This one change in the game made holding large empires together challenging. This is something the game really needed. Before the faction system, I always got bored once I formed a massive empire because the game turned into a game of properly timing war declarations and title revocations so as to mercilessly stomp each neighbor again and again. I always quit before I finished a game.
But that doesn't mean the system doesn't need major changes. Very serious changes. I wanted to use my latest game as the Russian Empire to provide a quick example of what's wrong with factions and how to fix it. Factions made this game fun enough to continue much later than I normally would. But ultimately it just turned too absurd to deal with. What killed the game for me was the following independence war.
THE SETTING
This is my Russian Empire of the early 1300's.
I really haven't expanded my border much since I wiped the Mongols in the mid 1200s. Instead I devoted the last half century not to expanding my borders by eliminating every single landholder in my Empire who was not my dynasty and culture. Just because I'm obsessive like that. Leaving the nation the same size for a long time just happened to provided a great comparison as to how faction wars were working.
THE WAR
My king has been on the throne for about a decade. We fought a big independence war on coming to the throne, and since have bought off most plotters. But eventually a group decided to revolt. They almost all love me. Most of them are +40 relations or better. Yet independence they want.
Lesson One: When we talking about factions, we're really only talking about one faction -- Independence. Normal factions don't revolt unless they can reach about 90% of your power. Independence doesn't work that they. They almost always revolt around 30%. But they can and do revolt at any level. They can revolt at only 10%. (This group was in the low 20s, which I figured was low enough to keep them quiet but was wrong.) Not that it matters. They get free troops. A revolt at 5% of your power is as dangerous to you as one at 50% because the free troops they get will dwarf their personal troops regardless.
This is the map of the revolters.
This is hardly a threat in itself. But this also happens.
The free troop event hits. This revolt got three stacks of about 60K each for 180k. These troops get no attrition. They are also much more elite than regular levies. They include a lot of heavy infantry instead of light infantry and archers.
Now, that's a war.
Lesson Two: The free troop event is keyed to the maximum size of your retinue. My retinue had a cap of about 200k at this point, which I spent on 75k heavy infantry cultural levies and 25k cavalry, split into 5 groups of 20k total each. But having not expanded my border for a while, I watched the free troop event over time. As my retinue expanded in size due to tech increases, the free revolted troops also increased to always just about equal my cap. The size of my realm or my realm levies didn't matter at all.
Lesson Three: It doesn't matter how many people are in the independence faction. If anyone revolts, you will likely fight free non-attrition troops equal to your retinue. And if even one vassal is unhappy, you can get an independence revolt. One revolter or 20 really isn't much different to you -- the threat is the free troops. So you really shouldn't stress too much about stopping people from joining the faction because they will no matter what you do -- you can't keep everybody in the nation over 80 all the time -- and any revolt of any size is always about the same to you on the battlefield.
FIGHTING THE WAR
As soon as the war broke out, I immediately called up my realm levies. I grouped them into small stacks of about 5-10k. And I sent my retinue out to meet the doomstacks. The levies immediately sent out to play whack a mole with all the tiny little armies all over the map.
Why? Because this is how warscore works during independence revolts:
(This is a different war, but it makes the same point)
The revolters get between 5-10 percent PER HOLDING that they take. You get about half a percent per holding that you take. You need about 30 percent to white peace. If they get 100 percent, they win. Do the math.
To get 30 percent warscore by taking holdings means taking 90. 90 holdings, or about 30 counties. They need around a dozen holdings. Or about 5 counties. If you let them take 5 counties anywhere, you lose. And you definitely won't get a white peace if you let them take even ONE holding anywhere.
Lesson Four: Independence wars are like fighting three genetically engineered super-bears in a field of killer bunnies. You have to kill the bears, and fast. But if you ignore any of those bunnies, you lose. You have to kill every single one of them, because if any gets behind your lines and steals a county you're in a world of hurt. So you have to have to play whack a mole with this swarm of little armies while your main force goes against the doomstacks. There's no point in taking his holdings. They're not worth anything. There's only a point in stopping him from taking any of yours.
WHY I LOST
This is how the war went.
The AI started with a 10k army in Kwarazim, which it immediately marched up the edge of the map assaulting holdings. The doomstacks also immediately started assaulting holdings.
By the time I formed up my levies into groups, I noticed the army on the map edge and had a group race towards it. As other groups raced towards every other little gnat army that might grab something -- a group tried way up in Norway. And my retinue was racing towards the doomstacks. He quickly took 5 counties. I lost, while I was waiting for the timer to allow me to assault back one of the Kwarazim steals.
The travel distances in Russia are just too slow.
Here is the thing: I didn't really get beat. I lost the war without fighting. My retinue was still racing towards his free troops when I lost. I also didn't lose strategically. I have over 1100 holdings. I lost 5 free backwater counties, all of which I could easily take back. At the same time, I had been knocking around all his other armies and destroying him. Given time, there is no doubt I would have won.
Yet according to the clock, I lost. And in fact, there was no way I could have won.
WHAT IS MESSED UP
Here's what's messed up about this situation:
1. I shouldn't have had a revolt in the first place. All my vassals love me. The revolters were almost all with positive relations. And few of them had any reason to get free.
2. In big empires, independence wars like this are constant and inevitable. They can fire at any level of support. When you have dozens of vassals, you can't keep them all happy. Somebody is going to be ambitious. Somebody you can't bribe enough. So at this stage of the game, they come every few years no matter how nice you are to your vassals or what you do. You just figured it into the game plan.
3. The warscore system for independence wars is way out of whack. Why is the AI getting up to 10 percent PER HOLDING when the player gets less than 1 percent? In big empires, it makes them drag on forever. A white peace if the best you can do with this kind of scoring, and only when you've really had close to a complete victory.
A win for taking 5 counties when you have hundreds is insane, especially when the math doesn't work the other way.
4. The free troop event needs work. 180k men para-dropped by aliens ever five years, again and again? For a big empire, this is facing a Mongol invasion again and again, every five years, without stop. There's nothing you can really do to stop these revolts. Making a massive invasion like this a regular occurance just gets tedious. Yes, I can beat them. But do I really want to, again?
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
I'm glad factions are in the game. I even like the free troops in concept. When the event doesn't fire, they're really too easy to beat. But a few serious things need to get tweaked.
1. Vassals with positive relations who are de jure to your nation shouldn't be joining independence wars. Ever. People who hate you? Fine. People no de jure to your realm? Sometimes.
I have seen a one county bishop outside of Moscow with plus 50 relations join an independence war. A bishop? Who likes the Tsar? And who is seated two counties from the royal demense? What reason can he possibly have, and what can he possibly hope to gain. If that can happen, and it can, the system is broken.
2. The warscore system needs to get adjusted. Badly. Maybe it makes sense for kingdom-sized wars. For empires it's just a ticking clock that has no relation to the state of the war. The AI can assault a few counties with it's free attrition-less doomstacks and it wins before you can even move troops into the area to fight. Bad design.
3. The free troop event is far too generous. 180k elite troops dropped out the sky for a standard independence war? I appreciate the desire to make these a fair fight. But that's ridiculous. No matter the size of your army, nobody should have to fight Mongol invasions every five years. It's just boring and tedious. You're no longer able to play your game because it becomes a constant mega-war.
What makes it really bad is that these guys are elite troops and face no attrition. If they were levies, and split up into normal sized stacks, it might be more reasonable.
FINAL NOTE
I don't want factions out of the game. And I actually think every faction other than independence works fine. I get what you guys were trying to accomplish. It even works well for kingdom-sized realms. But it doesn't scale at all. The execution really needs work on big empires, which is what most of your dedicated players at this stage are running -- I mean, you're letting us form the Roman Empire now.
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Only feudal vassals are 3 family run kingdoms on the outskirts.