Is the problem with CK3 just balance?

[MatthewP]

After not playing for a while, I decided to try out royal court. I already paid for it after all.

I didn't expect much with the mediocre reviews. But I was pleasantly surprised! Getting artifacts through inspirations was engaging and fun. Working to get my court rating ticking higher and higher was enjoyable. The events, IMO, were actually not bad - they mostly avoided the annoying "lol push the emperor into a water trough" thing that I got too much of in the base game, while a decent number of them dealt with important characters and had real consequences. I liked holding court and felt I had real decisions to make at times between keeping people happy/doing the thing I wanted and getting my court prestige higher.

And then I was done. Starting as a random king in India and not expanding to focus on my court, I hit level 10 court prestige around 25 years into the game. I didn't do anything unintuitive or skillful to accomplish this. At that point I had absolutely ludicrous bonuses (+60% to all lifestyle experience, ~50 opinion with everyone, other similarly wild things), and there was absolutely nothing preventing me from sitting effortlessly at level 10 for the next few hundred years. Of course if I expanded the bonuses would go down since my expected level would be higher, but I wouldn't get any greater engagement with the mechanic because I'd still be sitting at level 10.

So I quit and started a new game as a tribal ruler, since it seemed fairly pointless to do the court thing more than once. In this tribal game I started holding a medium-sized duchy in the middle of the steppe. After 30 years I'm an emperor with half a dozen kingdom titles. My army of horse archers is nowhere near maxed out. I have regiments unfilled, haven't pursued MAA innovations and haven't bothered with any buildings to buff them. They are still utterly invincible. I may wander over to the Byzantine empire, limited only by siege timers and the fact that some random ally a years' journey away in India is fighting an endless war so I can't quickly dismiss and recall my troops between wars. Then I can try out the new culture merging mechanics in Constantinople. That should be fun. But then I'll probably quit the game and not play again for a while.

So, why do I bother posting this, shouldn't I just go away since I'm done playing? Because I'm wondering if I'm alone with what I'm seeing, and I'd love for this to get fixed. A lot of mechanics in CK3 are fun, interesting and engaging. It's just so darn easy to get to the top. It feels like reaching level 10 in court prestige should be the challenge of a lifetime, and impossible to maintain without serious effort. The balance is just off. The basic stuff I did should get me to maybe a little above average, not the very very top. There are also too many "ok, you're done now" mechanics. Get your court to level 10? Ok, you're done, you'll be at level 10 forever and can forget this exists. Hit the reform religion button? Ok, you're done, most of your vassals will instantly convert, there is no ongoing effort or pushback. Build up a strong personal retinue? Ok, you're done, neither you nor your heirs will ever lose a battle again.

I got 5-10 fun hours of play out of this expansion. For some games that would be fine. But I think paradox has set the bar higher than that. And for me, no matter what mechanics get added this isn't going to be a great game until it addresses these balance problems. Mechanics need to be easy to engage with and have some success but difficult to master. They shouldn't just be one relatively quick and easy climb to the top and then that's it for the mechanic that game. The fixes are going to vary across different parts of the game. But I think the problem is pretty common and similar almost everywhere.

 

[Torredebelem]

Yes, most of the game problems are in game balance and the easiness to attain everything. Very rarely your character encounters a life threatening event, nothing unpredictable happens, sucession is always guaranteed and in my near 400 hours of playing I was killed just once by absolute surprise by the vanilla systems (in my mod I coded several events where my character deals with dead threats,I am not counting those): I forgot to hire a physician, was wounded and to my surprise, died.

Vanilla gameplay seems to be always a continuous progression to success without challenge in any front. A pity because the mechanics for a true classic are all implemented. Its really like the developers go to great pains to give unbalanced rewards on top of unbalanced rewards in a never ending cycle. Like throwing candies and more candies to kids, without anything asked in return or making the kids deal with setbacks and frustration sometimes. Fortunately, most of the game is moddable and fixable, otherwise I would have lost interest 370 hous ago, never to come back...

 

[Mastigos]

Yeah I'm going to call bullshit.

First off, you can only reliably obtain a level 10 court with a fixed gold income, which scales. It doesn't just scale per level of quality in each catagory (servants, food, etc), but also with time -- every catagory gets more expensive as your progress through the ages. You can't just sit there and do nothing and still maintain the same results. You have to increase your gold income.

Secondly, you can't expand at all, or your bonuses go down for being "over expected level." So if you're not expanding, what are you doing? If you're after RP, there is plenty. If you're planning on doing any expanding whatsoever, your bonuses go down.


CKIII isn't particularly difficult except when you challenge yourself. Sitting in a tiny corner of the map and reaping the rewards of being a mite of a country with an impressive courtroom is only going to help you so long as you stay the same.

If you take issue with that, I can't help you. You're choosing to stay small (literally and figuratively) and then complaining about it.

People wanted a way to play tall. They were given a way to play tall. Then they complain.

People said "only numbers matter in wars." They were given a way to counter pure numbers. Then they complain.

You can't please everyone. I guess that what mods and alternate game rules are for. Maybe you'd enjoy the game more if you didn't jump into a campaign as a premade king or emperor? Start as a baron, work your way up.

 

[Kurt Pat]

Game Is easy, because players wanted it easy. Paradox simply offered what their customers wanted.

I said once, the main difference when I started a CIV IV game some years ago, and when I start a CK3 today is ; I was not sure to be the winner in my Civilization game.

 

[klopkr]

Balance is a huge problem because it's simply so unbalanced right now but it's not the only issue. There are real mechanical issues, especially with warfare, troops, and AI action weighting.

I think the most absurd example of unbalance in this game is gold. In some scenarios you can get an endless amount through really built up domains (which the AI can rarely do) but for the most part you can almost always get more of it from stealing, demanding payment, random events, and ransoming.

Why does my cat spawn events to choose to lose 50 gold when my county doesn't make 50 gold in a a decade? Why does it cost more than an entire castle to throw a single feast? Why do my men at arms prices fluctuate wildly depending on succession?

On top of this, even if the player can handle these problems the AI can't. This is one of the biggest reason the game is too easy. AI will rarely have a full domain, muchless a fully built one. The AI can't handle the broken faction system and will trend towards falling apart. How can the game be hard when the enemy is always completely balkanized.

Fixing these will go a long way but there are fundamental problems other than these that are troubling the game just as much. Did you know the game never tells you that the ideal and cheapest way to win a war is to siege the enemies capital and hope that you capture them? The AI knows it. This is the simplest level of bad game design. Or the fact that the AI can easily move 5 stacks to avoid attrition but a player will struggle with the immense clicking with every split stack.

 

[Mythraelis]

Game Is easy, because players wanted it easy. Paradox simply offered what their customers wanted.

I said once, the main difference when I started a CIV IV game some years ago, and when I start a CK3 today is ; I was not sure to be the winner in my Civilization game.

But only on Deity difficulty.

The first sentence on the tutorial mission is, you can't win CK 3, you can only play it and enjoy it.

When i read, that an answer here includes the word mod, then ok, maybe it is to easy.
I consider myself as a good strategy game player and sometimes, a CK3 game can be hard. You die of cancer, your heir is only 15 and has a murder schceme after some month against him, factions and so on, it can be enjouyable.
But i would say, for this gameplay you "need" to play a little bit slow and enjoy the game. Of course it is too easy, when you "exploit" things and are an emperor after some months with tactics, that would never be happend in the real world.

 

[Rubidium]

I'd put the AI as actually the biggest issue facing CK3; bigger than the emptiness, sameness, etc.

The war AI is utterly dreadful, and seems to get worse with every patch. It's too cowardly to actually challenge a remotely similar sized army, which means wars between near peers frequently result in both sides' armies sitting in their capitals and not moving, just burning gold. It lacks even a basic concept of what gives war score, so it will besiege non-target nations (such as allies of the war leader), which give no war score. And allied armies are utterly incapable of doing anything productive.

It doesn't even provide an interesting problem to solve, as the "run away" mechanism means that wars are spent clicking constantly to try and chase down a fleeing enemy (or ignoring it and having it besiege your own lands. Which makes warfare tedious (not hard, just tedious).

Meanwhile, domestically, the AI is incapable of managing either its realm (which inevitably explodes in factions and rebellions, eliminating any peer opponents) or fighting said rebellions (as per the above problems). As characters, it can't handle stress at all (pretty much any landed AI and plenty of unlanded will rapidly descend into a stress-filled cycle), and regularly commits adultery, fornication, or even incest, because it has no weighting telling it not to.

It's all very well to talk about "roleplay," but the game itself doesn't provide the tools to make said roleplay interesting (you have no reason to care about basically any of the characters, and challenge is so rare that your decisions are mostly meaningless). This isn't a problem from Royal Court (which I actually kind of like, for what it is), it's fundamental to the design of the game itself, which is much harder to deal with.

 

[Dayvit78]

I seem to recall having many more frustrating deaths in CK2. Here, most of my rulers live to be 70+ even without the dynasty perks (my RC full playthrough 867-1453 was 16 rulers youngest death was 64). So that's one challenge that's missing.

Secondly, way too many babies. Another challenge is if you don't have heirs. Well that challenge is out, too, since you're guaranteed a ton of heirs. Consolidating is not as challenging as trying to sire a young heir and then dying while he's still a child.

But I think I'm going to agree with Rudibum that the AI is the biggest problem here. If they don't develop their lands, if they can't manage their realm and their vassals, then there's no literally no challenge. Just wait a bit, and you're exponentially more powerful than them.

Last thought - when I see the dev diaries of EUIV, they talk alot about balance (well, and bugs but...). I wish CK3 devs would also make balance changes more frequently. Then we can be assured that over time, the game would become more challenging. As the OP suggests, adding more "content" is itself just going to add a few hours of engaging playtime. But adding more "challenge" will provide more of what they actually want which is emergent storytelling (Robert McKee: stories require conflict).

 

[DaBombXXX]

Yes, one of the key issues of the game is balance at the moment. The game is very predictable at the moment, stats and modifiers are extremely easy to stack and it takes almost no difficulty at all to blob out and become strong enough that no one can ever threaten you again. This added with the fact that there's very few gameplay differences on the various parts of the map makes the game unappealing long term, since I feel like i've done it all and it's not challenging or thought provoking to do it once more.

 

[Kurt Pat]

a CK3 game can be hard.

No it cant. It can be frustrating, tedious or long, but as long you cant loose, game can not be hard.

I can even said, that frustrating and tedious, is not what I wait from a game. I prefere it challenging and exciting.

 

[Mythraelis]

No it cant. It can be frustrating, tedious or long, but as long you cant loose, game can not be hard.

I can even said, that frustrating and tedious, is not what I wait from a game. I prefere it challenging and exciting.

Maybe it is the wrong game for you. As i wrote and i quote (a little bit) the CK 3 tutorial first sentence.

You CAN'T win in CK3 bcs there is no winning goal. The goal is the game itself. So please stop writing about winning and loosing in this game. That are totaly subjectal views and they are not objectiv as in other games like CIV, where you can win by achieving a winning condition.

And we can discuss what hard means. What you call frustrating is maybe that, what i would call hard (sometimes).

Maybe too much players in this game are searching for this not intended goal by conquering the world or reach develpment level 100 by 12 years or whatsoever and then, they are blabbering about "too easy" and so on. I really think, most of these people are forgetting, that a story alone can be a enjoyable game.

And maybe the challenge in this game for a player could be, to relax a little bit and not to attack every other member of another faith via holy war.

 

[Azar]

Yes, most of the game problems are in game balance and the easiness to attain everything. Very rarely your character encounters a life threatening event, nothing unpredictable happens, sucession is always guaranteed and in my near 400 hours of playing I was killed just once by absolute surprise by the vanilla systems (in my mod I coded several events where my character deals with dead threats,I am not counting those): I forgot to hire a physician, was wounded and to my surprise, died.

Obviously a king shouldn't encounter random life-threatening events in their own courtroom often, or being a king would be pointless. There might be something related to an assassination attempt but I haven't experienced any.

Personally I really like Royal court and what it added.

 

[LucasG21]

Obviously a king shouldn't encounter random life-threatening events in their own courtroom often, or being a king would be pointless. There might be something related to an assassination attempt but I haven't experienced any.

Personally I really like Royal court and what it added.

There is a rare event in RC where after you hold court one of the three petitioners attempts to assassinate you, and you must either duel them or rely on the holders of the bodyguard court position to save you.

 

[Torredebelem]

Obviously a king shouldn't encounter random life-threatening events in their own courtroom often

No, but there must be lots of abstractions in the game. The king is not always in the court, sitting on his throne.

While travelling by his demesne in a province with low Control he might very well be ambushed by bandits, just for instance. Or a high tyranny King should risk the neck the same way. Or a King with a certain number of evil traits... or a king with high Dread might see his actions turned against him by facing a dangerous backlash through events that threaten his life... or a King that is lunatic decides, through his mental instability, to attempt to end his life... or a ruler that bypasses the nervous breakdown threshold might suffer the risk of a cardiac arrest, the higher the level of stress, the higher the risk... or rivals might stage an assassination attempt through event (since the murder plots against the player are rarer than water in a desert). In 400 hours of playing the game I was never the target of a murder scheme, for instance...and I have had plenty of rivals!

I am not implying these events should happen often at all, but happening NEVER is a problem.

 

[Azar]

No, but there must be lots of abstractions in the game. The king is not always in the court, sitting on his throne.

At least they made it so that the king/queen is not visible in the court when leading an army.

 

[johnty5]

Agree that the game feels too easy.

Ideally, I'd like the AI, mechanics and events to be the way to rack up the challenge but, in the meantime, a quick win for the devs would be to add a "Hard" difficulty setting that mirrors the buffs of the "Easy" and "Very Easy" difficulty settings.

i.e. take what's currently there...

Difficulty	Hostile Scheme Resistance	Fertility	Short Reign Duration	Tyranny Gain	Stress Gain	Knight Survival	Disease Chance	Health Boost	Faction Formation	Vassal Opinion	Liege Opinion
Very Easy	+30	+20%	-50%	-75%	-50%	+75%	-75%	Moderate	Significantly Slower	+25	+50
Easy	+15	+10%	-25%	-25%	-25%	+66%	-15%	Small	Slightly Slower	0	0
Normal	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	None	Regular	0	0

and add something like...

Difficulty	Hostile Scheme Resistance	Fertility	Short Reign Duration	Tyranny Gain	Stress Gain	Knight Survival	Disease Chance	Health Nerf	Faction Formation	Vassal Opinion	Liege Opinion
Very Hard	-30	-20%	+50%	+75%	+50%	-75%	+75%	Moderate	Significantly Faster	-25	-50
Hard	-15	-10%	+25%	+25%	+25%	-66%	+15%	Small	Slightly Faster	0	0

They're just the Easy/Very Easy numbers flipped around - and tweaking the numbers with a bit more thought would be better, but just as an example. It might be that certain other mechanics would be better to nerf/buff to make the game harder (Education success chance? Marriage acceptance baseline? that sort of thing).

 

[Azar]

There is a rare event in RC where after you hold court one of the three petitioners attempts to assassinate you, and you must either duel them or rely on the holders of the bodyguard court position to save you.

You know, it would be funny if someone walked to the court and challenged the king to a duel because their honor is tarnished or somesuch. Like, Errol Flynn-era style. My old viking ruler would've enjoyed bending the upstart into a pretzel, and others could have a use for the designated champion role.

 

[LucasG21]

You know, it would be funny if someone walked to the court and challenged the king to a duel because their honor is tarnished or somesuch. Like, Errol Flynn-era style. My old viking ruler would've enjoyed bending the upstart into a pretzel, and others could have a use for the designated champion role.

That's actually sort of what happens in a different event. The person who challenges you is a shell-shocked veteran who challenges you to a life-or-death duel to restore their honor, not yours. There are also options to just have your bodyguards kill him or your court physician offer mental health counselling, which are probably safer (I reloaded my last autosave after this event after my character was killed after losing the duel). I lost with a 32 prowess ruler to the 13 prowess veteran, which I suppose just goes to show how unpredictable duels are.

 

[Dread Og]

I seem to recall having many more frustrating deaths in CK2. Here, most of my rulers live to be 70+ even without the dynasty perks (my RC full playthrough 867-1453 was 16 rulers youngest death was 64). So that's one challenge that's missing.

Secondly, way too many babies. Another challenge is if you don't have heirs. Well that challenge is out, too, since you're guaranteed a ton of heirs. Consolidating is not as challenging as trying to sire a young heir and then dying while he's still a child.

It didn't always happen but the more random deaths in CK2 actually made for interesting challenges and games. Your 20-year-old ruler dies tragically from the flu, or your 30-year-old ruler dies from stress, etc. and you'd find yourself playing as somebody you weren't expecting with more pushback from your vassals. In CK3 the fact that 'health' is displayed and I just know that I have until age 65'ish on every ruler, it just makes the game easier and less interesting.

Also yeah, you have too many kids in CK3 (and I think fertility goes up with each rank in CK3 so Kings and Emperors always have a ton of kids). In CK2 you'd sometimes be forced to play as a less popular daughter because you didn't have a son but that hasn't happened to me in CK3. Honestly, the predictability of CK3 is one of the worst parts of it for me, I need more negative RNG and unpredictability.

 

[Azar]

That's actually sort of what happens in a different event. The person who challenges you is a shell-shocked veteran who challenges you to a life-or-death duel to restore their honor, not yours. There are also options to just have your bodyguards kill him or your court physician offer mental health counselling, which are probably safer (I reloaded my last autosave after this event after my character was killed after losing the duel). I lost with a 32 prowess ruler to the 13 prowess veteran, which I suppose just goes to show how unpredictable duels are.

Its not entirely random though. The choices in the dialog will have a big impact on how probable your victory is.