New Hostile Scheme Ideas

[kegnaofficial]

So I love the new intrigue system, but my one criticism is that at the moment there are only a few schemes and all of the hostile ones are rather drastic. Here are some suggestions for some new hostile schemes:

-Frame: Make someone else take the fall for one of your earlier schemes. Makes them a criminal, and makes it much harder for your secret to be found out. Failure exposes you for the original crime. Bonus to success if thet were actually a co-conspirator.

-Sabotage relationship: Make two people lose the “lover” or “friend” trait with eachother.

-Frame for witchcraft: Make someone guilty of witchcraft.

-Sow discontent: Make a ruler lose control and gain unrest in all personal holdings.

Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[AlexJG]

Fabricate Affair: Pull an Iago and frame two innocent people as illicit lovers. A very good way to sow discord between people.

Clear Name: If someone has accused you of some misdeed you can try to clear your name. Bonus if you are actually innocent.

Destroy evidence: If someone has a blackmail hook on you you can use this to destroy whatever evidence they have of your misdeeds, alleged or otherwise. Turns strong blackmail hooks into weak ones and eliminates weak blackmail hooks.

Embezzle funds: Targets Liege. Cooks the books to make sure you send less tax than you should. Huge boost if you're a Councillor, especially the Steward, and also gives you the option to redirect government funds into your purse.

Palace Coup: Targets Liege. Imprisons liege and grants you their titles. Claim or Council position required. Huge bonus if both. Hard to pull off and dire consequences for all involved if failure. Gives Tyranny if successful. Target and other court characters have a chance of being killed or escaping into exile during the coup.

Undermine Legitimacy: Call a character's parentage into question. Can cause either Disputed Heritage or Bastard/Wild Oats trait (depending on Bastardry Laws). Bonus if mother is a known adulteress or if there is a male adulterer in court that can be blamed.

Sponsor Corruption: Causes events that lowers control and causes corruption modifiers in target's personal holdings.

Steal: Illicitly transfers some money from the target to you. If they include artifacts at a later date this could also cover those.

Spread Rumors: Fabricate rumors about a character. Even if nothing can be proven their reputation can suffer.

 

[AlexJG]

I also feel that there should be some sort of unique schemes that each Councillor gets against their liege. A little corruption that makes gunning for those positions valuable to an unscrupulous player.

Marshals should be able to redirect military equipment and supplies to their personal forces, or to others in exchange for hooks.

Stewards should be able to embezzle funds for their purse or redirect resources to their holdings, or to their friends in exchange for hooks.

Chancellors can rewrite feudal contracts to give themselves better deals. In exchange for hooks, money and opinion boosts they can also re-write other vassal's feudal contracts favorable. If they re-write someone else's contract to be unfavorable their liege takes the Tyranny hit.

Spymasters should get a boost to all scheme's within their liege's realm. In addition they can also choose not to expose schemes in exchange for hooks and gold.

Priests/Chaplains can undermine their liege's popularity and opinion with their vassals through their contacts in the clergy.

 

[AlexJG]

Another dynamic I've been thinking of is how corruption and tyranny can interact with each other.

Successful corruption schemes, as well as employing Councillors that are known to be corrupt, should cause your liege to suffer Tyranny. However, if a corrupt Councillor is discovered and punished it can lower Tyranny. A liege could also target their Councillors and Powerful Vassals with a Diplomacy scheme to shift the blame for their Tyranny onto them, resulting in them losing Tyranny whilst making their scapegoats very unpopular. There could also be Factions dedicated to removing corrupt Councillors.

In addition, having Councillors that are well-known for being incorruptible and just can be good for the ruler's image.

It add a whole new element to deciding who should go on your Council and all sorts of opportunities for dirty politicking.

 

[fodazd]

I would personally like some variant of the "antagonize" scheme from CK2. This just insults the target and generally makes their life miserable, maybe costing them prestige and/or increasing their stress.

 

[AlexJG]

I would personally like some variant of the "antagonize" scheme from CK2. This just insults the target and generally makes their life miserable, maybe costing them prestige and/or increasing their stress.

Maybe bullying and antagonising others could be a way to relieve stress as well?

Bullying random courtiers gives you very little stress relief but going after vassals, especially powerful vassals, Councillors, peers and your liege offer better returns. Basically the more important they are the better it feels but that also means that you risk making an enemy of someone powerful.

 

[Geodynamis]

Rescue: Plot to have someone imprisoned in another court freed through intrigue rather than ransom, with a chance of freeing other prisoners in the process.

Sow Dissent: Attempt to sow discord in another court, harming relations between liege and subjects, between vassals, or increase faction discontentment.

Sabotage: Attempts to interfere with another character's holdings by either reducing control, reducing popular opinion, applying a county malus, or temporarily disabling buildings.

Heist: Attempts to steal gold from target. If artifacts are ever introduced in future DLC, can steal those too.

 

[Ten_Tacles]

I love these ideas.

How about splitting the hostile schemes into minor and major schemes?
Allowing you to run a small one, like theft, and a big one, like kidnapping, at the same time.

 

[unmerged(476547)]

Yes to this. I barely use hostile schemes, especially as a top-realm ruler, as they're either too heavy-handed or have enough penalties to put me off them. One thing I think would be very useful is the ability to stir up factions in a foreign realm. Say you're an independent duke in the Balkans and want to weaken the Byzantine Empire, send your agents to rile up potential faction members to give the emperor trouble.

 

[TravlingCanuck]

I almost never use my Hostile scheme "slot", so I'm wholeheartedly in agreement that the game could benefit from a wider variety of schemes. Not sure they need to be divided into "major" and "minor", I think it'd be enough simply to have a few that were modestly powered with modest possible downsides, that could be used by non-Intrigue characters who aren't interested (or capable) of running murders or kidnappings.

 

[Naathi Adventurer]

I agree wholeheartidly with that. It's probably that I'm not good enough at roleplaying but I have a hard time getting enough emotionally impacted by a random other character pettiness that I would kill them; not that I care about their life or anything, but the fact that running such a scheme risks smearing my own reputation forever (murderer) is sufficient to discourage any murder attempt. I wouldn't mind risking being seen as schemer for a few years (temporary malus) tho.

 

[BlueMoon20]

I completely agree that there should be more intrigue options. Currently it’s mostly used for murder, which, if discovered, will probably give you a sin and quite an opinion penalty, so in most cases, it should be reserved only for people you truly want gone. Fabricating hooks and abducting have a much narrower case of use. This means that for most of the time, you are constantly swaying somebody, but only rarely have a malicious scheme active.


They could something like spreading rumors, which would lower the opinion of vassals or court invitation acceptance for target, but if discovered, would cost prestige for the perpetrator. Or an action that would boost acceptance rate of a claimant, making more vassals eager to join in a claimant faction or for them to vote for a specific candidate in elections.
Both of these wouldn’t be a crime, so you wouldn’t be excommunicated for them or anything as serious, but you could still get opinion and prestige modifiers if you fail in your missions, while also becoming at odds with the targets if they discover it was you behind the hostile rumors. It could also cost you prestige or fame, since you’re resorting to underhanded methods. In some cases, it could also cost piety.

I also like the idea in a previous comment that would allow you to try to steal from your liege. It could be done by giving him a smaller share of money than what you are obliged to.

 

[Ten_Tacles]

Some ideas for more schemes:

-Theft:
Take some money of the target, and put it in your own pockets.
More effective against courtiers, your liege if you are on his council.
While a crime, nobody can do anything about it when you steal from someone who has no jurisdiction over you.
Gain tyranny if you targeted vassals and courtiers.

-Slander:
Lowers the targets reputation and prestige.
Lowers yours if you fail, and makes the target hate you.

-Sour Relations:
Lowers the relations between the target, his close family, his liege and his councillors.
Costs prestige and opinion if you fail.

-Sabotage:
Grants negative modifiers to the targets domain.
Will make your liege and the target hate you, if you target a fellow vassal.

-Incite Rebellion
Makes peasants or the targets vassals more likely to rebel.
Increased chance if you share religion and/or culture with domain or vassals.
Makes the target and their vassals mad if you are found out.