Increasing Difficulty

[Umrem300]

On normal mode; it's actually quite easy to go from Count to Emperor within 3 generations. After a few 100 hours of gameplay I found a way to pattern myself to the top without much resistance.
I will suggest ideas that you can do to make it more challenging for those who enjoy harder difficulties with the game AT IT'S CURRENT STATE OF DEVELOPMENT. I know that things will change over time such as mechanics and overhaul of systems.

- gold and prestige income reduction
- reduction of vassal contribution
- more gold income for non-players
- more piety/prestige expense to declare wars
-more expensive to call in allies in offensive wars
- extend cooldown period for decisions such as "call hunt" and "feast"
- higher unfaithfull/wrong culture penalties and "offensive war" or "at peace" penalty for vassals/counties
- harsher opinion penalty for vassals regarding personality traits and actions
- more stress gain and harsher stress penalties
- more men-at-arms penalties if wrong terrain/counter but better bonus if right terrain/counter
- increased men-at-arms maintenance cost
- reduced levy reinforcement % rate
- reduced battle advantages
- increased attrition penalty
- increased embarking cost
- reduction of total amount of basic levies

Next comment are things I'd like to see added to raise the bar even higher.

 

[Umrem300]

- add salary for all your adult courtiers. (example; 0.01 for those doing nothing. 0.01 x respectfull skill lvl x ruler rank lvl for counsilors)
- add salary for champions/knights
- reduced total capacity of vassals but can be increased through dynasty tree
- non-aggression pact after marriage and possible "negotiate alliance" post-marriage
- add cooldown time between commander switch
- add "add policy" next to "add laws" under Title screen such as ; expansion, development, peace etc.
- add maximum increase to "sway" scheme. (or make it substantially harder to do it again)

 

[blackfalcon1324]

My biggest thing is how fast you can expand now. I think what they need to do is
1. Make the penalty for losing a war much worse
and
2. Make murder schemes more risky.

I understand the point of the game is to play as a dynasty, however, that makes some things too powerful because you ultimately do not care about the consequences your actions have on your particular character.

 

[Leoreth]

Was looking for a suggestion like this. 100% agree. I picked normal in my first game to get familiar with the game and found it way too easy, and then was baffled that it's the hardest option and among all those detailed options there was no way to make your life any harder.

I would like significant limitations for fabricating hooks as well, such as higher gold or time cost, or even prereqs for being available at all (e.g. you need a hook or have someone with a claim on that title in your court). Likewise, enforcing courtier claims should be much harder to do.

The existing options should have stricter variants, e.g. further restricted diplo range, and why is there a way to reduce claim costs but not to increase them?

My personal preference would also be to be able to customise the numbers around gaining and losing stress.

Folding all those penalties you mention under a "hard" and "very hard" game difficulty would be one thing, but even better would be a grouping such as "economic difficulty", "opinion difficulty", "warfare difficulty", and so on. That way people can tune which part of the game exactly they want to be challenging.