Immersion Killers

[Verisian]

What would really be great would be revamping the current vassalage system when it comes to empires having foreign vassals. Basically the game should include protectorates.

It should be extremely difficult to possess a foreign power such as the Kingdom of Egypt when you're France. Much easier to allow Egypt a measure of independence and have form a protectorate loyal to France. Or if an alternative is presented, at the very least, enable us to play with foreign politics a little bit more than the current system of 'If you're not a direct vassal, you're independent', so we can at least reflect historical relationships between foreign powers.

 

[Aethelred]

I think that the separation between titles/territories and noble houses/dynasties is fine. We all need to think in terms of dynasties and noble houses, rather than in terms of cultures, regions and nations, let alone states. From what I know, high ranking noble houses had no links to any kind of region. But of course they had some kind of clientel/personell (thus also local to some extent) base. Just think of the hapsburgs, who originally came from modern day switzerland (Aargau), acquiring Austria and Styria, inheriting Burgundy. Charles I./V. - rather a flaming - then inherited Spain (legend has it that the "flamenco" had it's origin here, a dance for the fleming). His son, being brought up in Spain and bearing the by then still very-un-austrian name of Ferdinando, brought his spanish entourage back to Austria, and it took quite some time until his clientel was "austrianized". For a more medieval example, just google the house plantagenet.

However it seems to be a reasonable point that large dominions should be harder to control and/or establish. For western/central Europe, we're speaking of personal rule without any state-like bureaucratic apparatus. Kings did not have bureaucrats who extended "their" rule, rather they had to delegate rule to someone else - high nobles, or, safer, to low nobles/knights (ministeriales). Basically, a king only ruled when and where he was present in person. It is not for nothing that territorial lords did not have residences in the high middle ages, but instead constantly travelled through their dominions (only bishops had some kind of stabilitas loci). Unfortunately, the game lacks any kind of location-bound-interaction. Having a kind of avatar on the map would have fit the characteristics of medieval rule: "Hurray, the emperor is campaigning in Lombardy, now let's all become independent! He won't take note of it before two months! ". Or imagine how kings drown in rivers on their journey to the holy land, or how they are imprisoned by some strange Babenberg Leopold on their way home . Making vassals harder to control could be an interesting option to simulate the effects of personal rule. On the micro-scale, I'd love to see some holdings to have the chance to become independent as well.

I also agree that the HRE seems to be a bit too strong sometimes. Instead of high crown authority, emperors could possibly issue some kind of Landfrieden/treuga dei.

Colours/Art

Another point I would have loved to see (apart from a 2d map - 3d maps only have disadvantages compared to beautifuly designed 2d maps like ageods') is an even more colourful presentation of the middle ages. Agreed, paradox has done a nice job, because the game already is colourful to a certain extent. But the stone-masonry menues still evoke problematic pictures of the "dark" middle ages. Now, if we don't look at the countryside, which was always and for most periods "dark" or dull, the middle ages were extremely colourful. The problem is that the 19th and 20th centuries colonized the past with their ideas of romantic-classic beauty. Just as Rome was a multi-coloured hodge-potch rather than a city of white marble, the same is true for the middle ages. Here's a link to a picture that shows what the portal of the Amiens cathedral has looked like (a reconstruction via laser-light):

http://www.dartblog.com/data/2011/01/009373.php
Detail: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Amiens_cathedral_Son_et_lumière_003.JPG

I think that pictures like these can really change the way that we're imagining the middle ages. Vibrant life instead of grey stones!

 

[Emre Yigit]

I limited the HRE CA and succession laws in my BGA mod by adding a legalism requirement (or to be exact: a higher requirement than other titles).
Seems to work quite well, as the HRE usually goes through phases of stability where it can expand a bit and times of instability where a lot of vassals fight against the emperor.

Could you share that change with us?

 

[MasterofMagic]

Immersion killers are situations that for me, just appear unrealistic or downright strange. While obviously CK2 isn't a perfect historical simulator and doesn't try to be, I think there are a few issues which could be improved upon, for gameplay reasons as well as historicity.

One of these is the accumulation of territories which seems to happen over the course of the game so that by the late game a few powers seem to control counties all over the map. In my current game as Lombardy by the late 1300s Western Europe had pretty much been divided up between Ireland, the HRE, England, and Castille. HRE owned their core territories of Germany, Bohemia and the low countries as well as all of England; Ireland owned Scotland and a large amount of France such as Aquitaine and Toulouse; Castille owned the Iberian Peninsula as well as all of Ireland and England owned a couple of counties in England but their main power base was in Southern Italy. Another strange situation is Georgia owning a huge amount of land in northern Russia and Scandinavia, which is separated from its home territories by the Golden Horde.

It made the entire map disjointed and confusing, with the majority of rulers having their holdings split up all over the map and the weird thing was the relocation of entire nations to new places, e.g. the fact that "Ireland" no longer controlled any of its original island but was now a major power in France. I know that historically rulers did have their possessions split up, such as Spain's possession of the Netherlands in the (1500s?), but that was generally the exception not the rule, and possessions which were removed from their kings by a large amount of land and with foreign powers cutting through the middle of them generally split off and became independent sooner or later, which I haven't seen happening in CK2.

Maybe a solution to this problem could be to increase the relations penalty from distance for vassals, or increase the 'foreigner' relations penalty. I don't know what the answer is, but it's quite a strange situation in game as it stands at the moment.

You have to gain the mentality that this game is NOT A HISTORY LESSON, but, a WHATIF type strategy game of what MIGHT happen if certain VARIABLES are thrown into the mix. When you have VARIABLES then you have many possibilities of DIFFERENT outcomes from what actually happened in HISTORY. Crusader Kings 2 is nothing more than a RISKLIKE game in MEDIEVAL times with medieval generic units and equipment and random though along a plausible timeline technology gains.

I not for one minute attempt to place CK2 as some HISTORICAL SIMULATION that would be ludicrous in the first place. What it is is a fun little romp into a Medieval Scenic type of game and with DYNASTY building the MAIN goal of the game and conquering a 2nd best if at all. The units are too generic for it to be historical, the way you get units without any population reduction isn't historical. The way battles are fought out (ala risklike for the most part) isn't historical.

So, anyone who came buying this game THINKING it was going to be some kind of HISTORICAL SIMULATION is just ludicrous. lol

 

[Finzi]

You have to gain the mentality that this game is NOT A HISTORY LESSON, but, a WHATIF type strategy game of what MIGHT happen if certain VARIABLES are thrown into the mix. When you have VARIABLES then you have many possibilities of DIFFERENT outcomes from what actually happened in HISTORY. Crusader Kings 2 is nothing more than a RISKLIKE game in MEDIEVAL times with medieval generic units and equipment and random though along a plausible timeline technology gains.

I not for one minute attempt to place CK2 as some HISTORICAL SIMULATION that would be ludicrous in the first place. What it is is a fun little romp into a Medieval Scenic type of game and with DYNASTY building the MAIN goal of the game and conquering a 2nd best if at all. The units are too generic for it to be historical, the way you get units without any population reduction isn't historical. The way battles are fought out (ala risklike for the most part) isn't historical.

So, anyone who came buying this game THINKING it was going to be some kind of HISTORICAL SIMULATION is just ludicrous. lol

I don't expect it to be a historical simulation and of course it's better as a 'whatif' game. However the 'whatif' has to be plausible, a plausible alternative historical scenario would be the Muslims taking over control of Iberia, or France collapsing into warring states, or the Byzantines rebuilding their Empire and defeating the Ottomans. However seeing things like Georgia inexplicably ruling half of Scandinavia with no apparent problems regarding the native population or the fact that their capital is separated by hundreds of kilometres of Mongol owned territory does NOT seem like a plausible 'whatif' scenario to me.

 

[MasterofMagic]

Seems perfectly plausible to me. What wouldn't seem plausible would be tanks and areoplanes running around the map. Machine guns, howitzers and V-rockets all around. Now THAT wouldn't be PLAUSIBLE. But, any country/nation that takes over another is plausible enough in the "whatif" sense for me. I don't restrict plausibility to what happened or could have happened in that historical time frame by nationality or customs. As I said before it's a RISKLIKE game in MEDIEVAL times. Play a game of Risk and you'll see that the player of say South America can also own Austrailia's 4 provinces. The Germany player CANADA!. The African player...JAPAN! Everything is plausible in Risk pretty much.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

What? The game is nothing like Risk!

You are ignoring the difficulty of KEEPING that land once you acquire it. Just imagine how long it took for envoys to cross land in that time (e.g., from Georgia to Scandinavia). Now, consider trying to manage that. The realm would quickly collapse.

 

[tnick0225]

Haha thats an awesome run. Was he sitting at Med ca for much of that time?

Im not entirely sure if it will workout that way though in the new patch. A lot of people were complaining about how "historical' it is to have the new Empires. The dev's said you probably won't see them formed often so im assuming France will have a hard time making one. But ti would be kinda cool to see Empirical France take on the HRE.

I think he was in the beginning though he suffered from tons of independent Italian states breaking away and then he got to medium and I broke away which lowered it again, and wasn't able to raise it for a while after that, so he went between Low and Medium till the 1300s when he finally got it to high. And I was angry because my wife was the Queen of Bohemia and I needed him to be back to Medium so I joined me a plot to lower that stuff again

So sometimes HRE really doesn't get all the way to high, really just depends on whats going on in game. Probably helps that they're on their third ruling dynasty...went Salians > Gerulfings > Stadens...basically every century sees a new dynasty. (took me a while to respond to you sorry)

To some of the comments above me though, saying Georgia can't have land in Scandinavia isn't exactly implausible especially in those times. I mean perhaps the King is Scandinavian and therefore the Relations hit equals out with same culture. Who knows I don't know your game, haven't seen it in any of mine as Georgia is part of Mega Hungary-Rus. But in these times the way nobility worked I could see something like that happening. I think when we argue how history in game should work we may tie our hands from having a fun entertaining game, as making decisions off of strict historical guidelines or saying no you can't inherit this land its too far away from you and such would just make it kind of dull and pointless. If the game worked like that I'd throw it out and go buy a history book.

I think where some of us get tied down is when we try to paint the map, and in some cases I sometimes think thats why people complain about the dominance of the HRE because its too hard of an obstacle, even though I will admit the Emperor shouldn't have that much power, as it was more or less a confederation of Princes, not a classic monarchy in the style of England and other realms (at least thats how I've always understood how the HRE worked).

I even get tied down trying to paint the map, but I've found started evolving into picking a dynasty that is my rival and feuding with them more than painting the map. Right now feuding with the Staden's its been a long ongoing fifty year feud thus far. Makes things more intriguing focusing on a rival house though INMO, but then again I've already painted the map anyway so eh nothing else to do

 

[tnick0225]

What? The game is nothing like Risk!

True, but in a way he is right generic units fighting in a risk style format. So in a way yes in a bigger sense your right it isn't like Risk!

You are ignoring the difficulty of KEEPING that land once you acquire it. Just imagine how long it took for envoys to cross land in that time (e.g., from Georgia to Scandinavia). Now, consider trying to manage that. The realm would quickly collapse.

It would take forever especially through Hostile territory, but thats why you have vassals, Dukes rule their lands the way they see fit and answer for what they do to their King therefore constant contact and communication not necessarily needed. Now those far away Dukes may not enjoy being ruled by someone so far away but that's an issue between Duke and Sovereign, one thing is for sure though I'm quite positive it'd be fairly easy for them to break free and win independence with how far away they are.

 

[Fawr]

-Historically the HRE had nothing remotely close to Medium CA. The hre was , for all comparative purposes , constantly at a state between autonomous vassals and limited ca. The thought of the Empire getting High ca in a few generations and turning to Primogeniture in the 1100's is absurd as far as history goes , yet i see it pretty much every game.

Personally I think that elective countries should have a harder time to increase crown authority. Often the gathering of votes made it hard for the new ruler to increase their authority, and similarly after increasing crown authority the vassals would be more likely to support a next emperor who promised to wind back the reforms. It won't stop all blobs, but it would help in the HRE.

Ideally you would have a system where if you get a dynastic change in an elective kingdom/empire the crown authority goes down. Also under elective rules the nobles hate increasing crown authority even more than normal and for longer than normal.

However you could get a similar end effect by just making it harder to increase crown authority. I've seen mods which do that by adding prestige requirements, adding requirements that noone hates you (like changing succession laws), stopping content rulers from increasing crown authority, etc.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Personally I think that elective countries should have a harder time to increase crown authority. Often the gathering of votes made it hard for the new ruler to increase their authority, and similarly after increasing crown authority the vassals would be more likely to support a next emperor who promised to wind back the reforms. It won't stop all blobs, but it would help in the HRE.

Excellent idea. I guess I will add that to BGA! =)

 

[fcmsaab]

Immersion killers are situations that for me, just appear unrealistic or downright strange. While obviously CK2 isn't a perfect historical simulator and doesn't try to be, I think there are a few issues which could be improved upon, for gameplay reasons as well as historicity.

One of these is the accumulation of territories which seems to happen over the course of the game so that by the late game a few powers seem to control counties all over the map. In my current game as Lombardy by the late 1300s Western Europe had pretty much been divided up between Ireland, the HRE, England, and Castille. HRE owned their core territories of Germany, Bohemia and the low countries as well as all of England; Ireland owned Scotland and a large amount of France such as Aquitaine and Toulouse; Castille owned the Iberian Peninsula as well as all of Ireland and England owned a couple of counties in England but their main power base was in Southern Italy. Another strange situation is Georgia owning a huge amount of land in northern Russia and Scandinavia, which is separated from its home territories by the Golden Horde.

It made the entire map disjointed and confusing, with the majority of rulers having their holdings split up all over the map and the weird thing was the relocation of entire nations to new places, e.g. the fact that "Ireland" no longer controlled any of its original island but was now a major power in France. I know that historically rulers did have their possessions split up, such as Spain's possession of the Netherlands in the (1500s?), but that was generally the exception not the rule, and possessions which were removed from their kings by a large amount of land and with foreign powers cutting through the middle of them generally split off and became independent sooner or later, which I haven't seen happening in CK2.

Maybe a solution to this problem could be to increase the relations penalty from distance for vassals, or increase the 'foreigner' relations penalty. I don't know what the answer is, but it's quite a strange situation in game as it stands at the moment.

I think the foreigner penatly could use some love. Right now it is @ -10. I think a -35 or even -40 would it do it. At least since your hating the fact their spreading way too much.

Go to your Crusader Kings 2 installed game file> Common> Modifers> Control F = Look for forienger and change the penatly. I would even put it at -40 just to see how will it affect the AI.

My prediction that there will be serious rebellions against forieng rulers unless they flourish their followers with golds and such. Have fun!


For those who arent enjoying crown laws. You can edit the values of negative opinion regarding crown laws. Instead of having vassals hating low crown laws by -10, have them hate it by -20. Medium = -30? High = -40?

Just imagine how hard will it be for the AI to keep his empire togther with these values! More rebellions!

 

[SpartanSoldier]

immersion killer? How about assassiantions?

 

[Morwys]

I always found AI too aggressive, especially large empires.
Also, I wish vassal Kings would succeed more often in getting independent, with the Emperor losing claim on the kingdom, for example when the rebelling kingdom title has a foreign original culture.

I agree completely.

EDIT: @ up: maybe not this, but make them look for allies before they start an independence war as a puny 1-county vassal of a 30+ county realm.

I agree with both suggestions; a duke who fights a war for independence should have a real chance of winning the war and keeping the title. I don't think that empires should have de jure claims - like kingdoms do - because they can have claims in kingdoms and, for all intents and purposes, in medieval times the emperor and the king where equals.

An improvement in the AI for evaluating its chances of winning a war would be great. Playing as duke of York, I've seen 4 plots to lower CA at the same time; none of them united against their liege.

I don't particularly agree with less aggressive ai. I think the AI is actually probably too passive as it is (specially against empires, Kings and below literally never declare war on empires). IF the AI are passive , it feels like its just the Player running around taking what he wants.

The AI is not passive. It's smart to the point of cowardice. They never DoW in empires? Sure, they know they will be steam rolled. HRE and ERE are too stable. Period. Either they should have some serious penalties to stability or they should be less agressive. As with kings, the problem is not agressiveness, is the mechanics for claims and usurping titles. It's too easy. It should be harder, for the AI and for the player.

Two things i think could REALLY improve the game here.

If the balance of power is tilted too far in one rulers favour , he should start to take relations penalties with Neighboring Rulers. It should eventually culminate in an Alliance of sorts between "threatened" Rulers. E.g HRE starts conquering France , Starts taking out Poland and Hungary. Instead of them all doing nothing about it. What if they started banding together? What if Denmark , Sweden and the Independent's in Italy were also part of it? Suddenly , the HRE has a real fight on its hands if it wants to bully them around. As well as this , they might even be able to re claim their occupied de jure lands.

Agree in part. He should have relation penalties with neighbours if he's holding on to titles with claims that are not genuine. Except that in CK2, every claim is genuine. This is something that should be fixed within the claim mechanic, not in the relationship between rulers. And, to an extend, that already happens when the pope excomunicates a ruler. The problem is that the AI - both the pope and the others - don't use this mechanic properly. Also, I think that there should be relation penalties applied to emperors and kings with more than two king titles - but between rulers and their vassals. And they should be heavy.

I don't think Europe was as concerned about Power struggles and the balance of it in 1066 (though pretty sure they would have been if HRE conquered 1/2 of France , Hungary , Poland and Denmark) , but rulers did still seek alliances for reasons other than marriage , and definitely for defense.

They weren't. If a king had the pope's approval, that was it. His claim would be valid and end of story. Usually what happened was internal collapse; a kingdom with too many vassals would never survive its founder because of the instability that comes with it. I don't think that external meddling would be the solution. Instability and civil wars, on the other hand, would be much better historically.

Medium CA is the true Scourge of all Blobs. I can't express my disappointment with Medium Ca enough. I actually recently played a few games through with Medium Ca basically modded out (vassals can now fight each other till Absolute Ca). I noticed some cool things. Firstly , Germany was huge , rebelled against the HRE , and won. He stayed independent. Secondly , Burgundy did the same and took a chunk almost as big as France with him. Eventually , Bavaria was formed and it looked very threatening and likely to rebel soon (i started a new game before i could witness it). So basically when a big party rebel's , they have a MUCH higher chance of succeeding long term then a bunch of minor or petty counts and dukes. The Emperor will just come back in 10-20 maybe even 30 years time and press his claims on weak people. Germany and Burgundy could stand up to him , so they survived.

Agreed, but I think that the whole CA mechanic is badly done, and should be seriously improved. As I've pointed out elsewhere, there's some stupid consequences of the way CA works in CK2 and they should either be removed or changed in some way. You say you're diappointed with medium CA, I'm with CA entirely.

Historically the HRE had nothing remotely close to Medium CA. The hre was , for all comparative purposes , constantly at a state between autonomous vassals and limited ca. The thought of the Empire getting High ca in a few generations and turning to Primogeniture in the 1100's is absurd as far as history goes , yet i see it pretty much every game.

Absolutely true. I don't think that there should be a 'hard' limit for CA in empires, but, as I've stated, with some penalties to vassals, a emperor ruler would never have the necessary approval to raise CA.

 

[NewbieOne]

Well, in reality crowns did merge, although not to the degree that happened in your game. But I think the latter is unique... Well, what happens does seem to be plausible. The AI aren't really human assassination/(matrilineal) marriage mongers, generally the successions are relatively okay.

I like the games vivid and wild and I believe real history was so anyway.

But what's an immersion killer for me is the fantasy de iure empires, where PI took an exception from the meticulous historical reconstruction and just threw in a bunch of fantasy for balance/candy. Huge disappointment.

 

[Ruwaard]

Very true. I think I have seen France fight the HRE like once, ever, and it was for control of a single country, which France lost. The HRE does always seems to reform even after massive internal rebellions. It would be really cool if the HRE broke up into the kingdoms it contains, like Frisia, Bohemia, Germany, Burgundy, and Italy. That would make for a very interesting Europe.

The reforming of the HRE, but also kingdoms is IMHO a good feature in the game. Historically interregnums in even reasonably well established realms (though the HRE at times was quite loosely united) ended in the reformation of the realm. In fact the attitude (mostly) was not that there wasn't a realm, but just the throne was empty.

OTOH territories outside the de jure borders (although for the HRE Burgundy and Italy should have some special rules; IMHO if these are a part of an empire, then tehse should have been a part of the HRE anyway) should probably not return, when a realm is reformed.

 

[Doomdark]

Well, in reality crowns did merge, although not to the degree that happened in your game. But I think the latter is unique... Well, what happens does seem to be plausible. The AI aren't really human assassination/(matrilineal) marriage mongers, generally the successions are relatively okay.

I like the games vivid and wild and I believe real history was so anyway.

But what's an immersion killer for me is the fantasy de iure empires, where PI took an exception from the meticulous historical reconstruction and just threw in a bunch of fantasy for balance/candy. Huge disappointment.

I would not call it either balance or candy, but gameplay. The choice between historical accuracy and good gameplay is usually an agonizing one. I respect both approaches, having a great deal of experience looking at game design from either angle. I understand the historical arguments. However, though history might be King, gameplay... is Emperor.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Well, its a ying-yang situation. Gameplay is for the brain (possibilities/fantasy), while immersion (here: "historical feel") is about retrieving your expectations and more colourful than you could think of, isnt it ?
Isnt it like a good film, getting surprised with some aspects while you can identify with most other aspects of a story ? It just came to my mind, sorry for my complicated explanations.


Well anyway, thats why i think that most empires should be optional instead of being in the game at first without a choice and the need to mod them out.
Would it be that complicated to make it optional in the opening screen or is it just not your policy/idea on games ?

Its also the timeframe that makes it harder to believe than in lets say the EU or Vic series, ..........but hey, you're the boss.


edit: oh wait, wrong thread....but kinda same topic and immersion in general.
Btw, thats why i like to "see" buildings and not only having them in a list, but i digress.

 

[vaca_loca]

I would not call it either balance or candy, but gameplay. The choice between historical accuracy and good gameplay is usually an agonizing one. I respect both approaches, having a great deal of experience looking at game design from either angle. I understand the historical arguments. However, though history might be King, gameplay... is Emperor.

I'm with you on this one. Many players just play to get as much power as they can, nothing more satisfying for those than being Emperor.

 

[Tufto]

But what's an immersion killer for me is the fantasy de iure empires, where PI took an exception from the meticulous historical reconstruction and just threw in a bunch of fantasy for balance/candy. Huge disappointment.

Not really. The "real" empires were the inventions of people in the first place. It is very possible that someone would want to invent the "Empire of Britannia" to further their own prestige. The fantasy empires are all possible, in theory, even if some of them are extremely unlikely. If history is wild, then wild things have to actually happen.