How to make HIP harder?

[DonSavage]

Hello,

I am quite new to HIP mod, been playing it less than week. I've played CK2 more than 400 hours in overall.

I started playing as the county of Suomi. Now I am the king of Suomi. I have two strong kingdom neighbours that haven't attacked me once. When my character dies, there isn't much of "succession crisis" since I own 90% of demesne in my kingdom. So my vassals are very weak compared to me.

Any ideas how to make the game harder? I am mainly looking for adjusting settings instead of "playing as a small county next to infidel empire".. I wish the game would kick my butt harder (sometimes I die quite randomly... which I like ) but I feel there is no internal or external threats to me. There is usually only one faction up but it covers only about 10% of my army size. Should I reduce demesne and vassal limits in the settings - or what would old-time HIP players recommend me for making the game more challenging?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Increase the difficlty setting.
Better values than in vanilla when playing "very hard".

Spoiler: Difficulty settings in HIP

Difficulty Modifiers
##########################################################################

very_easy_player = {
fertility = 0.4
land_morale = 0.25
land_organisation = 0.2
max_manpower_mult = 0.25
manpower_growth = 0.25
retinue_maintenence_cost = -0.25
horde_maintenence_cost = -0.25
global_tax_modifier = 0.15
}

easy_player = {
fertility = 0.2
land_morale = 0.15
land_organisation = 0.1
max_manpower_mult = 0.15
manpower_growth = 0.15
retinue_maintenence_cost = -0.15
horde_maintenence_cost = -0.15
global_tax_modifier = 0.05
}

normal_player = {
}

hard_player = {
land_morale = -0.25
land_organisation = -0.25
max_manpower_mult = -0.35
manpower_growth = -0.5
retinue_maintenence_cost = 0.5
horde_maintenence_cost = 0.5
}

very_hard_player = {
land_morale = -0.25
land_organisation = -0.25
max_manpower_mult = -0.35
manpower_growth = -0.5
retinue_maintenence_cost = 0.5
horde_maintenence_cost = 0.5
}

very_easy_ai = {
land_morale = 0.05
land_organisation = 0.05
}

easy_ai = {
land_morale = 0.15
land_organisation = 0.15
}

normal_ai = {
land_morale = 0.25
land_organisation = 0.25
global_tax_modifier = 0.1
}

hard_ai = {
land_morale = 0.35
land_organisation = 0.35
max_manpower_mult = 0.15
manpower_growth = 0.15
retinue_maintenence_cost = -0.2
horde_maintenence_cost = -0.2
global_tax_modifier = 0.2
}

very_hard_ai = {
land_morale = 0.45
land_organisation = 0.25
max_manpower_mult = 0.3
manpower_growth = 0.3
retinue_maintenence_cost = -0.3
horde_maintenence_cost = -0.3
global_tax_modifier = 0.3

Not sure on how changing game rules would actualy make it harder to you and not the AI.

IF noone else responds, then check out the HIP discord channel.