How should I worry about playing with 100% Threat?

[GabrielLoki]

I'm playing as the Byzantines and I'm almost constantly at war, usually a war I started. The only war I didn't start was when the pope declared war on me... which was adorably hilarious given that he only controls a tiny bishopric in Brittany.

But anyway, with the recent conquests of Rome and a significant portion of the de jure kingdom of sicily, my threat has jumped to 100%. I'm 72 so soon my half brother will be taking over, and truces will expire. I plan to play my half brother as a war emperor, claiming the rest of italy as well as North Africa. Should I worry about that threat?

 

[RedMage345]

You should be fine, even with 100% threat wars should be easy to win if you are the aggressor.

 

[grigorii]

Threat 100% causes all your neighbors to fight against you. Usually they cann't organize into powerful army or even distract you right, so you still can win any war, but you just won't get much warscore for battles. And so without major battle every war lasts at least 3 years.

 

[DorlasAnther]

Granting independence gives you -50% threat, IIRC. So you could find 2 counts you don´t need and release them, reducing your threat to 0.

 

[Teonod]

Granting independence gives you -50% threat, IIRC. So you could find 2 counts you don´t need and release them, reducing your threat to 0.

Nah, it scales with your realm size. A single count when you have 400 holdings in the realm decreases it with about 3%.

 

[Mstorgaard]

You should go to war in swift Blitz krieg style. Blast the shit out of the people you want to win against and hope that your neighbours don't come to the aid. Usually the people in the alliances that are far away will not come to assist in anyway.

 

[Aries666]

Threat and pacts are pretty pointless as it stands because pacts are solely defensive it really doesn't matter what your threat is. You can still declare war on small targets and as long as you have enough men to rapidly assault everything the target owns you will jump straight to 100% WS and win, essentially if you can raise a 20k light inf retinue you can do whatever you like. If you don't fancy that you can always declare war on anyone who is in rebellion as they are not covered by defensive pacts.

 

[linkicewolf]

What I do is make those around me that I have no interest in(for now) tributes, not only do I don't have to deal with them as they can't join pacts against you, they also pay me money and can't say no to joining my wars. It also gives me the satisfaction that they are now forced to fight for me against their former defensive allies.

 

[Secret Master]

To put it in perspective:

I cleared the de jure empire of Russia while under 100% threat. It took 27 separate wars in a single reign (a bunch of tiny pagan realms), but never once did the defensive pact threaten me significantly. And I was at war with the Abbasids, Byzantines, and Francia each and every time.

The only way defensive pacts will stop you is if your ambitions outstrip your strength.

 

[StarSword]

If you're small enough that the defensive pacts are actually a danger, you can bust them up or counter them with some judicious marriage alliances. Right now France and Bavaria are allied against my Empire of Alba because I've acquired 51% threat seizing duchies in Spain from the Umayyads. Unfortunately for them, I'm allied to Lombardy, Middle Francia, and Germany, and I have around 15k troops in my own right (so does Lombardy: my cousin Rián the Pious is a kingdom title away from forming Italia). (I also have little interest in French territory at the moment, beyond conquering Anjou to try and upgrade a vassal republic into a serene republic.)

 

[Aries666]

If you're small enough that the defensive pacts are actually a danger, you can bust them up or counter them with some judicious marriage alliances. Right now France and Bavaria are allied against my Empire of Alba because I've acquired 51% threat seizing duchies in Spain from the Umayyads. Unfortunately for them, I'm allied to Lombardy, Middle Francia, and Germany, and I have around 15k troops in my own right (so does Lombardy: my cousin Rián the Pious is a kingdom title away from forming Italia). (I also have little interest in French territory at the moment, beyond conquering Anjou to try and upgrade a vassal republic into a serene republic.)

Defensive pacts are never a danger though because they are defensive. Who you are Allied with is sort of irrelevant because if a member of the pact declares on you they can't pull all the other members in against you they are acting as any normal nation.

Essentially all they do is slow the rate at which you gain territory, they can't make you lose territory. Honestly I would rather they tweaked threat gain and make them like EU4 coalitions.

 

[StarSword]

Defensive pacts are never a danger though because they are defensive. Who you are Allied with is sort of irrelevant because if a member of the pact declares on you they can't pull all the other members in against you they are acting as any normal nation.

Essentially all they do is slow the rate at which you gain territory, they can't make you lose territory. Honestly I would rather they tweaked threat gain and make them like EU4 coalitions.

You misunderstand. My point, rambling though it was, is that an allied nation cannot be a member of a defensive pact. So, you create an alliance network and you reduce the number of available members and help counter the ones that will attack you if you attack a member.

 

[Aries666]

You misunderstand. My point, rambling though it was, is that an allied nation cannot be a member of a defensive pact. So, you create an alliance network and you reduce the number of available members and help counter the ones that will attack you if you attack a member.

I see, fair enough.

 

[MaP_Prime]

I don't mind threat and defensive pacts, but I do have one issue though. Gaining threat by asking someone to become your vassal when you're their de jure overlord is kinda dumb. In my Scandinavia game I just usurped the kingdom of Norway, gaining threat from that is fine in my eyes since I took the title from someone else. However, after Norway broke up into it's various duchies and counties I went from 20% threat to 75% as I requested most of the now independent characters to become my vassals and they accepted. This seems silly to me. I can understand neighbors getting a little nervous at a realm growing larger regardless of how it happens, but peacefully asking people to become part of your realm and they agree doesn't seem like it should generate high levels of threat.

 

[Ghost Matter]

If you don't like fighting blitzkrieg wars or just don't want to fight the entire map, use this occasions to build your demesne. The economy is much better in the recent patches so you should be able to get a pretty scary demesne if you spend your gold on it.

 

[PG908]

It's really annoying using holy wars to clean up muslim fragments and borders (this particular one was mopping up the scattered realms of spain after a crusade), only to realize everyone from the Papacy to Scotland to Georgia is in a coalition against you after three wars. This happens fairly consistently. For example, if I eat a few Lithuanian pagans in an impromptu Baltic crusade (especially since crusades don't work well against fragmented kingdoms), catholic Europe decides to jump in on their side after a few wars.

I would much prefer seeing difficulty taking and holding it over having all the other nations come to its defense. This would arguably require a revolt overhaul so that one region can be more volatile than others. The saxon revolt events or liberation revolts are better, but they're relatively easy to defeat with a battle or three. They're not really a well-entrenched insurrection. I would like to see something closer to the undermining of the conqueror's authority, particularly for pagans and trials. The tribal attrition seems to attempt this, but fails.

 

[Ghost Matter]

[...]

That's actually the most compelling argument I've seen for improvements of Defensive Pacts, mostly because of the historical basis and also because those kind of comments are mostly (in my opinion) "Pope joins war with Caliph against me wtf grr", which yours i not.

I do think that what you're talking about could be fixed somewhat with improvement on how threat numbers are calculated. I would increase the threshold for Pacts to ~10-15% minimum then make it so that different targets for land acquisition gives different Threat numbers. For example:

• A holy war against small rulers (2-3 counties max) with a low authority religion could give much lowered Threat if the Moral Authority of your religion is high.
  
• Vassalizing de jure rulers of your religion and culture would add much less threat. Vassalizing holy orders would add more than that.
  
• Small wars against same culture/culture group would have add slightly less threat.
• Wars for Weak Claims would add more Threat than war for Strong Claims.
• Invasions would add much more Threat.
• Also show an approximate Threat % before declaring the war or offering vassalization so players know what they're getting into.

I nearly suggested different Threat numbers for each religious group but I fear that would just be adding more complexity.

 

[Red Earth]

I don't mind threat and defensive pacts, but I do have one issue though. Gaining threat by asking someone to become your vassal when you're their de jure overlord is kinda dumb. In my Scandinavia game I just usurped the kingdom of Norway, gaining threat from that is fine in my eyes since I took the title from someone else. However, after Norway broke up into it's various duchies and counties I went from 20% threat to 75% as I requested most of the now independent characters to become my vassals and they accepted. This seems silly to me. I can understand neighbors getting a little nervous at a realm growing larger regardless of how it happens, but peacefully asking people to become part of your realm and they agree doesn't seem like it should generate high levels of threat.

Your rivals don't care how you get powerful, only that you did. If you attack after you gain all this land then you've proven you were a threat to them and the increase in threat rating was justified. If you don't then your threat rating doesn't matter. Given the purpose of defensive pacts if they behaved otherwise it would be an illogical.

 

[Citizen1oo1]

Give me strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

 

[PG908]

It does get a little absurd when everyone from the Aztec doomstacks from Iceland, to the Mongol doomstacks in the steppes of Mongolia united with the remnant of the Caliphate and every other little ruler that isn't in India, because you tried to annex one heretic christian county in Tunisia. I still beat all of them, but it is a bit silly.

Yep.