How did Conclave ruin the game?

[WankoStankins]

I haven't played the game in over 8 months (or any game for 8 months. I consider CK2 to be at least the 3rd best game ever made (Mount and Blade Warband and Dwarf Fortress are 1 and 2), and even then I had complaints about some nonsensical things and some things that I thought should have been in the game. Even so, I thought it was a very good game, since I have a medieval history fetish.

Now I have more free time again so I thought I would play a bit with the new xp, but a quick glance at the forums says that most people seem to hate Conclave, and that Paradox has apparently removed a lot of features (even for mods? WTF GAME OF THRONES MOD MAN) like being able to reject Call to Arms for instance?

Is there a quick rundown of the things that were intentionally done (thus excluding bugs that the devs presumably intend to fix) in the new expansion and patches that are making the game worse?

 

[Asiak]

It didn't.

Its been patched a few times with Coalitions changing to Defensive Pacts and Infamy to threat. But I still felt the major section of the original patch notes still answer the question.

• Marriages creates non-aggression pacts that can be renegotiated if the arranger of the marriage dies
• Alliances are explicitly formed and require an existing non-aggression pact
• Levies reinforce in friendly territory
• Units retreat several provinces in a "shattered" state
• Tweaks to many opinion modifiers to make it more difficult to keep good relations with your vassals
• During non-elective succession primary successor inherits 50% of temporary opinion modifiers from subjects of previous holder
• Death sounds differ depending on age, gender and violency of reason for death
• new ambient sound for the tech view
• History is no longer executed if the player loads a savegame.
• Added a "continue button" to be able to load the latest savegame without going through the lobby.
• Fixed problem in combat casulties calculation that could result in overflow of the numbers giving you casulties of -2 millions
• Added Infamy system.
• Coalitions can be formed against high infamy realms
• When faction is destroyed while looking at the faction view it shouldn't crash anymore.

http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Patch_2.5

I refute the notion that Paradox took away a lot of features. Really its just the ability to reject call to arms. Just one not many.

And besides that you really should play it before formulating an opinion. Never judge any game or any DLC by its forum reaction.

 

[WankoStankins]

A lot of these sound really good, but the non-ability to reject call to arms? Does that include players? Like for instance, in a huge multiplayer game of thrones game, can allies seriously not betray eachother just because they made promises? Or is this just for the AI? Why not leave it as an option for mods? (I expect they will add it back in at least for modders, if they have not lost all sanity).

It would completely mess with the Game of Thrones system (probably the most popular CK2 mod so they should care, people buy the game just for that) if people can't betray.

Let me clarify then, alliances are no longer formed just by marriage (that doesn't sound too bad)? So now marriages=non aggression pact, and alliances (formed explicitly and optionally after a marriage/non-aggression pact) you need to 100% join no matter what?

 

[PanzerKrigs]

Yes, it appears that once you have asked a character to form an alliance, and gotten a positive response, you will be called in to their wars automatically, and vice versa.

 

[Asiak]

No when you have a betrothal you automatically get a Non-aggression pact with that person / their family. If you have a NAP with your liege you cannot faction against him and of course no declaring war.

When that betrothal matures into a marriage the NAP is still in place but you have the option to upgrade it to a full alliance. Which yes will automatically pull you into each other wars with no option. Yes it is the same for the AI and the players. Or you can simply keep the marriage and not engage in an alliance.

If you are in an alliance and war is declared and the AI within some time frame does not see you helping he will yell you and the alliance will be terminated. I've been thinking ya know technically I still have the choice not to show up. A choice is still there.

 

[VladPrus]

No when you have a betrothal you automatically get a Non-aggression pact with that person / their family. If you have a NAP with your liege you cannot faction against him and of course no declaring war.

When that betrothal matures into a marriage the NAP is still in place but you have the option to upgrade it to a full alliance. Which yes will automatically pull you into each other wars with no option. Yes it is the same for the AI and the players. Or you can simply keep the marriage and not engage in an alliance.

If you are in an alliance and war is declared and the AI within some time frame does not see you helping he will yell you and the alliance will be terminated. I've been thinking ya know technically I still have the choice not to show up. A choice is still there.

And you can attack your ally (but you can't attack someone with NAP)

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

I find automatic call to arms a bit jarring, but otherwise Conclave has been a big improvement as a whole.

 

[WankoStankins]

It doesn't sound as bad as some posters made it seem, but not being able to betray, not just desert and not fight for, but fight for the opposing side seems like it has to work differently here. What if you have marriage ties and alliances to two opposing claimants to the throne who fight a civil war? Can you somehow choose which one to support, or will the first one to call you force you to join, or will the defender always get its allies to help over the attacker? Do people constantly look at their allies, waiting for the first sign of trouble to see if they should break the alliance before being forced into an impossible war (I guess interesting characters has another use them...).

I'm mostly thinking from a Game of Thrones perspective. In those 20 person games, people make promises all the time that they don't keep, and switch sides if they know one is going to lose and they have no pressing reason to try to stop it from happening. Unless a rule is made of "no alliances!" as a workaround, I imagine whenever a new King comes up he will demand all his vassals "ally" with him and now the entire way realm-wide wars occur is ruined, and I see no way to fix it for the AI unless there is some way to make them never form alliances or to disable them altogether so it doesn't interfere with the mod's very developed civil war mechanic.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's not that big of a deal. I don't see the harm in allowing a lil' lua option or something toggling the ability to reject CoA though.

So nothing else is a major deprovement then?

 

[Audoucet]

It doesn't sound as bad as some posters made it seem, but not being able to betray, not just desert and not fight for, but fight for the opposing side seems like it has to work differently here. What if you have marriage ties and alliances to two opposing claimants to the throne who fight a civil war? Can you somehow choose which one to support, or will the first one to call you force you to join, or will the defender always get its allies to help over the attacker? Do people constantly look at their allies, waiting for the first sign of trouble to see if they should break the alliance before being forced into an impossible war (I guess interesting characters has another use them...).

I'm mostly thinking from a Game of Thrones perspective. In those 20 person games, people make promises all the time that they don't keep, and switch sides if they know one is going to lose and they have no pressing reason to try to stop it from happening. Unless a rule is made of "no alliances!" as a workaround, I imagine whenever a new King comes up he will demand all his vassals "ally" with him and now the entire way realm-wide wars occur is ruined, and I see no way to fix it for the AI unless there is some way to make them never form alliances or to disable them altogether so it doesn't interfere with the mod's very developed civil war mechanic.

So nothing else is a major deprovement then?

Conclave is totally awesome, go buy and play it, you'll see. Fighting against the Pope, Charlemagne, the Jormsvikings and Byzance when you try to conquer Jerusalem as an Italian king is great.

 

[yourworstnightm]

Basically the non-sensical coalition system, and the automatic call to arm. The coalition system is weird, feels out of place and really does nothing to stop big blobs. It sometimes slow them down, but as a player being slowed down just means nothing to do, since the game unfortunately offers you too little to be doing in peace time. The automatic call to arm is even worse. I don't want the stupid AI to joinwars I don't need them in. They more or less get in the way, get ruined and become worthless allies. It's now actually better to have no allies, and that's wrong.

 

[Burned Coffee]

Conclave is totally awesome, go buy and play it, you'll see. Fighting against the Pope, Charlemagne, the Jormsvikings and Byzance when you try to conquer Jerusalem as an Italian king is great.

Oh come on, you know perfectly well that's fixed now.

 

[Asiak]

And you can attack your ally (but you can't attack someone with NAP)

I have seen odd occurrences where you as a vassal with a foreign ally can go to war with that ally because your liege does.

And even NAPs aren't entirely bulletproof. I was able to join in a crusade against a Muslim that I had a NAP with. It broke the NAP I was able to get it back later.

And off topic but can I just say god I agree with your signature. It may need to also be my signature soon.

I find automatic call to arms a bit jarring, but otherwise Conclave has been a big improvement as a whole.

This pretty much sums up my opinion of conclave.

 

[Audoucet]

Oh come on, you know perfectly well that's fixed now.

It isn't. It's WAD. They just made it so that the Pope will wait a little more before allying with muslims and pagans because a Catholic king conquered too much of the Abassid.

 

[WankoStankins]

Anything that reduces reasons to go to war imo is a good thing, because otherwise I feel pressure to go to war all the time and have my chancellor fabricating 24/7 (it's an addiction). If the alliance and coalitions are the main things wrong, at least there's some hope in fixing it eventually.

 

[ninoallen]

if you wanna play the AGOT mod, just revert back to version 2.4.5, ever since conclave came out i been playing AGOT again, its honestly such a better game, i cant believe paradox hasnt taken some of its features and implemented them. i love being able to pick and choose what do with people once i siege down a castle.

 

[Secret Master]

I don't know why people complain about the coalitions. They aren't even a big threat to a semi-skilled player. After all, the AI doesn't get magically smarter when it joins a coalition, so coalition members will coordinate about as well as Barbarossa and Richard the Lionheart did during the Third Crusade.

I find the new mechanics for the council to be very interesting. There are new viable strategies to pursue that involve doing more than just measuring out your tyranny in discreet chunks. With the right set up, you can more effectively use fear and political deal making to keep the realm in line as I do in this thread here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-fear-of-this-conclave.908475/#post-20661147

I don't like the auto-call to arms, but I understand why it is set up that way. Luckily, it is easy to just say no to alliances. I rarely ally with anyone. (Which I guess is the point of the system.)

I like the new set up with obligation laws and levies and taxes. There is a reason to either focus on taxes or levies. The minimum levy for high end obligations is unaffected by opinion penalties, so maximum levy obligations will still net you decent levies even if your vassals have -420 towards you thanks to murder, incest, and tyranny. On the other hand, maximizing taxes can be a great way to generate income now for even feudal realms without worrying about vassals being angry over high crown authority.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

I actually like the new Obligation laws since they remind me of EU3 sliders, except it's not done in an asinine way that will completely screw you over if you click the wrong button once. Can't say the same for pillage and settling however.

 

[Soylent Dave]

Coalitions were originally a bit over the top (although not really to the degree that the forum reaction would have you believe), with multi-religious pacts over a slightly too large a range - something which was exacerbated by continent bestriding blobs, who border with everyone anyway...

But that's actually been addressed already.

This is what defensive pacts look like in the beta. The different colours are different religions, in separate pacts against the (AI) abbablob (who was ~28% at threat for gobbling up a duchy). If the threat mounts, then more nations get brought into each pact (and, I believe, from gradually further away). If it mounts enough then the separate religious pacts will combine.

Threat drops off pretty quickly, you're don't spend decades twiddling your thumbs.

And if you've got Conclave, and you empower your council, you've got more stuff to do within your realm anyway (another thing adjusted in the patch is frequency of childhood events, and you're effectively 'educating' all your children unless you choose otherwise, so you get a decent chunk of those.

But the other thing to note is that Defensive Pacts don't stop you expanding. They just make it riskier. If you're big enough, or if you're quick enough, or if you time it right, the Defensive Pact won't stop you. If you want your expansion to be risk free (or low risk), then they slow you down.

Along similar lines, Shattered Retreat is really not a game breaking issue - unless you decide you must crush the enemy army no matter what, and chase it all over the map. But that's not how you win a war, so why would you do that?

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

I still fail to see how Shattered Retreat or coalitions were ever "game breaking" issues. Like, did they stop people from playing the game? RoI wtf revolt % gains was a game breaking issue. A working feature is not. Armies occasionally retreating to a far away province is a bug., not "game breaking." The fact that people can't seem to handle the fact that they can't win an entire war in one battle now is the issue. The same could be said for coalitions. All they needed were tweaks. By themselves, they're completely valid additions to the game.

 

[Zsrai]

I don't like the auto-call to arms, but I understand why it is set up that way. Luckily, it is easy to just say no to alliances. I rarely ally with anyone. (Which I guess is the point of the system.)

Thank god someone else figured this out. I barely married for Alliances in the old system; they were mostly for claims or to get a dynasty member a foreign title.