I'd Call The Game Farcical but I'm Not Sure that Quite Captures the Essence of the Problem

[OnceSetCannotBeChanged]

Also, it doesn't matter if YOU are the same faith and culture as the county, what matters is the faith and culture of the direct ruler of that county. If those differ, then the popular opinion will get penalties. So if you are appointing vassals of a different faith or culture than the county is then expect populist revolts until the county can be converted to match the ruler.

Yes, I understand. I have lost counties even when I, the direct ruler of the county, have been the same faith and culture of the populist uprising.

 

[OnceSetCannotBeChanged]

The number in the Faction panel is pretty much meaningless, as it doesn't show anything but the modifiers that would apply to the popular opinion IF that person was the liege of the county. This can be easily observed on any county that has a local modifier such as 'Upset over Conversion'. The modifier will not show up in the Faction display for the faction when it should. In the images below, notice that the local popular opinion has several modifiers, Upset Over Conversion, the Holy Site Ellora, etc, while the faction panel shows only the modifiers for the top liege's cultural acceptance and faith penalty.

Is the number meaningless though? Does it get used to determine populist uprisings or not? I have no idea. That's the core of the confusion and where the idea that there might be two different popular opinions comes from.

 

[x4077]

Yes, I understand. I have lost counties even when I, the direct ruler of the county, have been the same faith and culture of the populist uprising.

Just because you are the same faith and culture as the populist uprising doesn't mean they don't have some gripe with you. Offensive war opinion can easily tank popular opinion on its own, as can other modifiers when added up.

Edit: corrected misspelling

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I didn't play CK2 so I generally stay away from that conversation but often I see people quoting the good it had in comparison to CK3 while rarely acknowledging what CK3 does better, and I just find it hard to believe that CK3 has achieved little or nothing in that regard.

people forget/ignore that 3 doesn't have 7 years worth of DLC's

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Your liege gets petitioned and can capitulate without a war being declared.

@Tomray94 this is what people are complaining about

 

[JonathanViking]

As far as I remember, no. In CK2 I do not recall finding that my chaste brother cheated on his wife with my pious sister. Or others typical nonsense that happens so often in CK3. On the contrary I remember that both RPG & strategy mechanics could often works in tandem. Typically it was good to have a vassal with the content traits. It fell like each game sub-genre were complimenting each other and managed to offer bigger stories overall. I do remember my characters changing progressively as they grow older, in part due to what they experiment through my strategic decisions, in part though eh natural flow of RPG mechanics (events, way of life, etc).

Imho the devs made a big mistake when they reduced the number of base traits to only three and introducing many skill trees instead. Especially as they did not make sure the three traits have real and far reaching effect to AI behaviors. It cut the relationship between RPG and strategy for the AI and simultaneously it removed the largest and the most interesting link between RPG and strategy for the player. Aka the ability to tell detailed story as your characters naturally develops through the strategy experience you face in his life as well as the more anecdotal life events.

I am not sure why the devs made many skills trees. Since a few years a lot of devs do it while claiming this turn their game into RPG. While it most of the time its the opposite. Skill trees may be the most famous RPG concept but it is also the crudest one. And it usually takes others mechanics to work in tandem with them (story, tabletop narrator, etc).

CK2 was not perfect but it was better imo. And of course it had the quality of novelty. Unfortunately CK3 feels like a step backward rather than the two steps forward everybody hoped for.

this so mutch

 

[johnty5]

As far as I remember, no. In CK2 I do not recall finding that my chaste brother cheated on his wife with my pious sister. Or others typical nonsense that happens so often in CK3. On the contrary I remember that both RPG & strategy mechanics could often works in tandem. Typically it was good to have a vassal with the content traits. It fell like each game sub-genre were complimenting each other and managed to offer bigger stories overall. I do remember my characters changing progressively as they grow older, in part due to what they experiment through my strategic decisions, in part though eh natural flow of RPG mechanics (events, way of life, etc).

Imho the devs made a big mistake when they reduced the number of base traits to only three and introducing many skill trees instead. Especially as they did not make sure the three traits have real and far reaching effect to AI behaviors. It cut the relationship between RPG and strategy for the AI and simultaneously it removed the largest and the most interesting link between RPG and strategy for the player. Aka the ability to tell detailed story as your characters naturally develops through the strategy experience you face in his life as well as the more anecdotal life events.

I am not sure why the devs made many skills trees. Since a few years a lot of devs do it while claiming this turn their game into RPG. While it most of the time its the opposite. Skill trees may be the most famous RPG concept but it is also the crudest one. And it usually takes others mechanics to work in tandem with them (story, tabletop narrator, etc).

CK2 was not perfect but it was better imo. And of course it had the quality of novelty. Unfortunately CK3 feels like a step backward rather than the two steps forward everybody hoped for.

Interesting. In my experience CK2 was no more or less incoherent than CK3 - in as much as they were/are both pretty coherent.

Disagree with quite a lot of what you said tbh. But I guess that’s mostly about personal preference/playstyle. If Ck3’s not for you, it’s not for you, I suppose. For me, it’s a net improvement on CK2.

 

[AlipheeseXV]

What I find odd about the often discussed example that the player as a vassal can't do much about populist factions as those target the top liege:
Aren't vassals supposed to deal with the local peasants?
Aren't vassals supposed to keep the local peasants in check and subdue them if they revolt so the top liege doesn't have to deal with them personally?

 

[johnty5]

What I find odd about the often discussed example that the player as a vassal can't do much about populist factions as those target the top liege:
Aren't vassals supposed to deal with the local peasants?
Aren't vassals supposed to keep the local peasants in check and subdue them if they revolt so the top liege doesn't have to deal with them personally?

It’d be interesting if revolts always started at the single county-level - declaring war on the count of that county.

If they beat the count, they could then expand and declare war on the Duke, then kingdom, then empire.

As a ruler further up the food chain, you’d have to keep an eye on small peasant revolts happening to your counts - as they would have the potential to escalate/spread and eventually start causing you real problems.

There’d be choices to be made about whether to help out a problematic vassal with their revolts - choosing between letting it rumble on and weakening them vs risking it expanding and biting you in the arse later.

If a peasant revolt beat one of your vassals, maybe they’d issue demands (guarantee liege of their culture, guarantee no attempts at culture conversion or some such) that you could accept in order to stop the revolt from spreading at the expense of other vassal opinion/dread/whatever.

 

[Bannerman21]

What I find odd about the often discussed example that the player as a vassal can't do much about populist factions as those target the top liege:
Aren't vassals supposed to deal with the local peasants?
Aren't vassals supposed to keep the local peasants in check and subdue them if they revolt so the top liege doesn't have to deal with them personally?

Yes, but that isn't in the game, so it's a moot point.

 

[AlipheeseXV]

Yes, but that isn't in the game, so it's a moot point.

But it could be better simulated by populist factions targeting the direct liege and not the top liege.

 

[jtorr]

It's not just populist factions that work this way. Northern invasions will trigger an event where the top liege can give away vassal land to the Northmen and vassalise them without any input from the vassal that previously owned the land.

My main takeaway from InsidiousMage's post is that 1) the devs continue to be silent on the majority of concerns fans have about the game, and 2) if you want to be in full control, you have to be top liege in your realm and CK3 will steer you towards this so vassal gameplay should only be short-term.

Lieges love to try to revoke your land if/when they have a claim, and you don't even have to try to win elections if the top title has elective succession, the AI can (and from anecdotal experience, often does) appoint you Emperor even if you are still a teenager.

It would be different if there were in-game explanations for this kind of thing but the fact is that the current events are lazy one-offs and not sequential, I can't recall a single event chain in CK3. If there is never any follow up, how can it be anything but confusing/ immersion-breaking and ultimately a very poor medium for creating a cohesive story? In this aspect, CK2 was designed much much better as it had tons of follow-up events.

And I know the Stockholm syndrome-esque fans will be like "well just give it time, we just need DLC"; a reminder this game came out in Sep 2020, and there were mods like the Joan of Arc event chain almost immediately after it came out so why haven't the devs even tried to do something similar instead of making fart events?

I do love the game like everyone else bothering to post on this forum, getting close to 2000 hours now but honestly more than half of that is mods and multiplayer. The truth is that the more you play the game, the more apparent all of its flaws are, especially if you also do modding and/ or played a lot of CK2.

 

[Magil]

I think there's a fair amount of rose-tinted goggles going on for some when looking back in CK2--I've tried to look back on it but there's just so much nonsense there that I'm not interested, and I really appreciate how modular everything in CK3 is so I can tweak to my heart's content. In fact I read the OP's post a few times (well, skimmed after the first read) and had a hard time deciphering exactly what the problem even was, aside from low communication on some crucial issues (which I agree with). In particular the one that's come up a few times later in the thread where vassal players can lose portions of their land with little-to-no input is a rather glaring issue that I personally would like to see addressed, as I pretty much refuse to play as a vassal for a long time because of it. But outside of vassal gameplay I generally like the direction the game is going and have been enjoying it a lot since launch.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

But it could be better simulated by populist factions targeting the direct liege and not the top liege.

how many posts would there then be, saying, 'my vassal capitulated to a populist faction and i could do nothing about it. literally unplayable'

 

[prismaticmarcus]

ok, how about this? remove the capitulation option altogether for populist factions.

they want independence? they have to fight for it.

could people live with this? any drawbacks?

 

[Zhetone]

ok, how about this? remove the capitulation option altogether for populist factions.

they want independence? they have to fight for it.

could people live with this? any drawbacks?

and if people for some reason wanted to surrender the land they could just surrender the war immediately. I don't get why the option to just capitulate even exists

 

[AlipheeseXV]

how many posts would there then be, saying, 'my vassal capitulated to a populist faction and i could do nothing about it. literally unplayable'

I don't think so:
As I nowhere said that such populist factions would become independent if they succeed against one of your vassals, if the player is the top liege, he or she could then take measures against the new populist vassal (usually some peasant leader).
Also as at least player-lieges can join their vassals against revolts, a player has to be really distracted (usually in another war) to not being able to help the vassal as a player with at least some decent MAA's should always be able to crush peasants.

 

[grommile]

ok, how about this? remove the capitulation option altogether for populist factions.

Works for me.

 

[Magil]

ok, how about this? remove the capitulation option altogether for populist factions.

At the very least, the AI should not do it. If we want to get super gamey about it, maybe as a stopgap until a more extensive look is taken at the system, they can be prevented from doing it if they're in the same realm as a human player.

 

[Karlington]

ok, how about this? remove the capitulation option altogether for populist factions.

they want independence? they have to fight for it.

could people live with this? any drawbacks?

It sounds like a reasonable solution to me.