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Geobog

Sergeant
13 Badges
Mar 4, 2007
70
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  • Europa Universalis IV
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I like to mess around in CK3. So Royal Court came out and I came up with the goal of combining the Welsh and Mel cultures into a Melsh culture and stomping around unifying Africa with Longbowman and Guinean Uplanders. I made my way down to Africa with the Morgannwg/Gwent dynasty, and got me some Guinean kingdom territories with the Mel culture, plus a couple of others along the way.

Understandably, various local leaders were not a fan of my idea. I won a few, lost a few, but slowly established enough adjacent territories for a duchy in the Mel area. Just had to feudalize them and move my capital down when the wars resolved (was going to abandon my Welsh holdings once Melsh culture was established).

Then I find myself the target of three Norse conquest wars for my African territories, each sending down an army about twice the size of mine.

…can anyone explain why? I thought I knew how Norse invasions worked with the whole 9k rando invasion every five years, but now the Jarldom of Pomerania controls Nalu in the kingdom of Guinea area .
 
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Nope. It was a conquest war. Jarldom of Pomerania was still in Pomerania, and they didn’t go for a duchy or anything like that. Three Norse Rulers specifically targeted my African holdings closely one after another.

There’s got to be some AI logic that caused such a peculiar series of events; I just have not encountered that kind of random conquest of a far-off territory before. Two of them declared on the same county even, finding it perfectly reasonable to send 2.5k men each a thousand or more miles south to snatch a poor West African county from a peculiarly acting welsh duchy.
 
maybe they wanted to hybridise with Melsh or something. would they take that into account? i've no idea.
 
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Do you still own Welsh counties ? If you do, it could be the reason why they attack you and why then they choose, among your lands, the best of them.
 
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Nope. It was a conquest war. Jarldom of Pomerania was still in Pomerania, and they didn’t go for a duchy or anything like that. Three Norse Rulers specifically targeted my African holdings closely one after another.

There’s got to be some AI logic that caused such a peculiar series of events; I just have not encountered that kind of random conquest of a far-off territory before. Two of them declared on the same county even, finding it perfectly reasonable to send 2.5k men each a thousand or more miles south to snatch a poor West African county from a peculiarly acting welsh duchy.
Ai detects weak ruler
Selects random cb
Norse get all coastal cbs so maybe they just did that instead
 
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Do you still own Welsh counties ? If you do, it could be the reason why they attack you and why then they choose, among your lands, the best of them.
Yes I still owned Welsh lands at the time. The African counties were certainly not the richest, though, not when I hadn’t had a chance to feudalize and develop. But I think the next poster described the logic enough that the cartoonish conquest is explained.
 
Ai detects weak ruler
Selects random cb
Norse get all coastal cbs so maybe they just did that instead
That explains it mostly I think. I didn’t know that Norse get all CBs for all coasts (funny that they are still forced on land for hundreds of miles in this case) but that explains why they could target those counties. Why they preferred to target those counties remains a mystery, but at least most of the logic is explained. And I certainly was weak, stretching things as I was to finish my setup. I figured if anything I would be handing over the Welsh counties over time (which was part of the plan anyway), but I did not figure that they would target the African ones.
 
Your Welsh counties bring your ruler within diplomatic range of the rulers declaring war on you. This means they can “interact” with your ruler, including declare war on him with any C.B. they have against him. Tribal rulers have an invasion C.B. that allows a ruler to declare war for any county or duchy (not just Norse rulers and not just coastal counties) in diplomatic range. So the Norse ruler can declare war on you because your Welsh territories bring you within diplomatic range, and the ruler has a conquest C.B. against any county within diplomatic range including those your ruler has in Africa.

As to why the counties in Africa… got me. Worse fortifications, maybe? Welsh castles always seem to me to have high fort levels in the early game. But honestly I don’t know what factors into the AI decision making. Beyond levy numbers, it’s a bit of a black box.

[Edit — Used holding when county was the correct term.]
 
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Your Welsh counties bring your ruler within diplomatic range of the rulers declaring war on you. This means they can “interact” with your ruler, including declare war on him with any C.B. they have against him. Tribal rulers have an invasion C.B. that allows a ruler to declare war for any county or duchy (not just Norse rulers and not just coastal counties) in diplomatic range. So the Norse ruler can declare war on you because your Welsh territories bring you within diplomatic range, and the ruler has a conquest C.B. against any holding within diplomatic range including those your ruler has in Africa.

As to why the counties in Africa… got me. Worse fortifications, maybe? Welsh castles always seem to me to have high fort levels in the early game. But honestly I don’t know what factors into the AI decision making. Beyond levy numbers, it’s a bit of a black box.
Not just castles but also tribal counties
 
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Your Welsh counties bring your ruler within diplomatic range of the rulers declaring war on you. This means they can “interact” with your ruler, including declare war on him with any C.B. they have against him. Tribal rulers have an invasion C.B. that allows a ruler to declare war for any county or duchy (not just Norse rulers and not just coastal counties) in diplomatic range. So the Norse ruler can declare war on you because your Welsh territories bring you within diplomatic range, and the ruler has a conquest C.B. against any county within diplomatic range including those your ruler has in Africa.

As to why the counties in Africa… got me. Worse fortifications, maybe? Welsh castles always seem to me to have high fort levels in the early game. But honestly I don’t know what factors into the AI decision making. Beyond levy numbers, it’s a bit of a black box.

[Edit — Used holding when county was the correct term.]
Continued work on my silly project reveals that Vikings continue to be offended when welsh rulers control African territories. Specifically, they seem to go for tribal holds. On this try I had the Zammour duchy (sp?) and again the Jarldom of Pomerania declared war out of nowhere and conquered it. Ceuta and Melilla, though, have not been harassed by Vikings at all (instead they offend North African Islamic rulers). I think that is the remainder of the puzzle. My theory now is that Vikings try to take tribal holds from British Isle rulers (or maybe anyone in range) because that usually means Scandinavian conquests. My coastal tribal holds just happened to be nowhere near Scandinavia, but their tribal-ness attracts Vikings like kids to an ice cream truck.
 
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Yes I still owned Welsh lands at the time. The African counties were certainly not the richest, though, not when I hadn’t had a chance to feudalize and develop. But I think the next poster described the logic enough that the cartoonish conquest is explained.
It doesn't matter how far your land is. If one part of your realm is in range they can use CBs on any part of your realm.

Someone posted something similar about being invaded by the mongol empire for land in west africa, but he had one county in mongolia so he was a legitimate attack target, it's just the AI picked a CB for more land that happened to be far away.
 
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I don't think the AI consider the distance to the war target at all - it's just limited by diplomatic range and the CBs available. Most of the times, this is entirely serviceable - afterall, the AI is constantly at war somewhere, and how often do you see it fight for land that's so far away that you remember it being weird? Most AI realms aren't big or spread up enough for this to be an issue (some crusade-related inheritance hijinks notwithstanding), as the combination of these two limiting factors makes by far most wars declared by the AI more or less reasonable (in terms of distance to war target). Most land-targeting wars require either a claim, de-jure liege title, or the war target to neighbor the attacker's realm - two of these require proximity, and a ruler fighting for a title they have an inherited claim on against a party in diplomatic reach usually isn't too strange. With unusually shaped realms, though, odd things can happen.

However, looking at it now, I believe the tribal conquest CB is bugged - it seems most tribal rulers can target any title of the appropriate rank within the realm of any ruler in diplomatic range - however, Norse characters can only target neighboring and coastal titles in realms of rulers in diplomatic range. This seems unintentional. On a quick look, it's not linked to the Longships innovation or the Coastal Warriors tradition (the Estonians have both and can target landlocked titles with Conquest CB) - I would guess this is something that broke with the Royal Court culture rework - I recall tribal conquest CB to be limited to neighboring titles prior to Royal Court for most tribals. This bug is pretty easy to check, just load up 867 out of Ironman and switch around to a few Norse and not-Norse tribal rulers and check what counties and duchies they can target with Conquest CB (Kingdom Invasion and Varangian Adventure CBs can be used on landlocked titles just fine by everyone with access to them).

If someone is interested in doing further testing, I didn't spend the time to check if this effect on Norse (though I suppose the bug is on everyone but Norse and the Norse are working as intended) persists on cultures divergent or hybridized from Norse.
EDIT: Tested on Swedish tribals, they too are limited to coastal and neighboring titles - I suspect the deciding factor is North Germanic Heritage.
EDIT2: I have submitted a bug report on the issue.
EDIT3: It seems Norse or Norse-descendant characters without Asatru faith can also target any titles, not restricted to neighboring or coastal ones.
EDIT4: If a character has Longships innovation (possibly Coastal Warriors - couldn't test a culture with one and not the other without either playing on for a longer time or messing with debug mode) and Ásatrú faith (could test further if it's linked to one of the tenets - if a different faith with the same tenets would do it, or if it's some other factor in the faith), they can, using tribal conquest CB, target counties and duchies that either neighbor their own realm or are coastal - but a character that does NOT fulfill these conditions can target ANY county or duchy in the realm of any ruler that is a valid target for war declaration. Tested with Ásatru Estonian custom ruler - limited to coastal and neighboring counties and duchies, just like Ásatrú Norse rulers.
EDIT5: Tested with Tengri Estonian ruler, limited to neighboring and coastal titles. Seems the deciding factor is Longships innovation (or Coastal Warriors, but that one I'm doubtful of) and Warmonger tenet - if both conditions are met, you can target neighboring and coastal titles with tribal Conquest CB, if either or both conditions is not met, you can target any titles with tribal Conquest CBs.
 
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However, looking at it now, I believe the tribal conquest CB is bugged - it seems most tribal rulers can target any title of the appropriate rank within the realm of any ruler in diplomatic range - however, Norse characters can only target neighboring and coastal titles in realms of rulers in diplomatic range.

You might want to take a second look. A couple of screenshots from current campaigns of mine plus one from an 867 start show something different.

Reformed Tengri (no change) Mongol tribal emperor -- no Longship innovation or Coastal Warrior tradition, has a conquest C.B. on any county within diplomatic range, neighbor, coastal, or otherwise, here declaring war on Egypt, claiming county along Nile:

2022_05_15_1.png

Reformed Asatru Norse feudal emperor -- same, here declaring war on landlocked Duchy of Fes:

2022_05_15_2.png

Unreformed Asartru Norse tribal duke -- same, here declaring war on landlocked Bohemia:

2022_05_15_3.png

All of these vanilla CK3, 867 start, ironman with most recent update.
 
You might want to take a second look. A couple of screenshots from current campaigns of mine plus one from an 867 start show something different.

Reformed Tengri (no change) Mongol tribal emperor -- no Longship innovation or Coastal Warrior tradition, has a conquest C.B. on any county within diplomatic range, neighbor, coastal, or otherwise, here declaring war on Egypt, claiming county along Nile:

View attachment 839351

Reformed Asatru Norse feudal emperor -- same, here declaring war on landlocked Duchy of Fes:

View attachment 839352

Unreformed Asartru Norse tribal duke -- same, here declaring war on landlocked Bohemia:

View attachment 839353

All of these vanilla CK3, 867 start, ironman with most recent update.
I can assure you I do not piss in the wind.
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I can assure you I do not piss in the wind.

I'm not sure that means what you think it means, but regardless, always a good rule to live by.

Looks like the difference turns on whether the Norse ruler's territory includes coastal counties.

2022_05_15_4.png
2022_05_15_5.png
2022_05_15_9.png
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2022_05_15_12.png

May the wind always be at your back when you piss.
 
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