Paradox don't believe in the Reconquista

[Maizel]

Asturias is still around in my game, and I have seen many where it actually grew to a decent size.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

The second question is easy, the first question is hard.

It's so far from reality for a couple of key reasons: warfare is too cheap and campaigning is too easy. It's easy to sit an army of twenty thousand men on one county for twelve months to siege it down if you have to, while in history you would tend to end the campaign by the time winter came (giving the defender time to recover, and forcing the attacker to call the troops out again). Because it's so cheap to wage war, even a marginally valuable county is worth it to seize, while historically plucky defenders could keep their sovereignty by fighting fiercely to defend it; since it just wasn't worth it to bring large forces to bear against them, they just had to be a sufficiently hard target to make conquering them not worth the effort.

I think the campaigning season could be implemented if some design effort was brought to bear on it. As for making war expensive, that's harder. Do it wrong and you're simply asking the player to stare at the screen while it's running at maximum speed while he accumulates a war chest to fund the next conquest.

I think a big part of the issue is other than for productive use (war, construction, etc.) gold don't get consumed. When's the last time someone you bribed spent that money for pleasure?

If a game were to really simulate economics in that regard, peacetime expenditures to keep up happiness/morale would need to be implemented, and you need very specific coordination/political campaigns to get your lords to save up the money for their warchest before launching an invasion.

 

[GC13]

I've considered the use of gold to fund your character's lifestyle, but I always get caught up on the question of how it improves gameplay. I mean, what does it do? Nothing. Maybe you spend it to improve your prestige, but that's not very fun for the player. Mostly it would function as a hated gold sink, and irritate the players. It's better to never give it to the players and say that their lifestyle is being funded by other money (so all they're ever seeing is their "fun money", i.e. almost everything except what a real life noble would actually consider to be "fun money").

 

[smellymummy]

like someone else wrote earlier, terrain could be a bit more decisive couldn't?

I remember one game, while not asturias, it was navarra, and I put everything and mercs in alto-arogon county, that mountain one, and they decimated me. Yea Umayad bro? I sure was.

Still no matter your start if there's going to be a reconquista that gets going historically then it's going to need player intervention plain and simple. Besides eventually the pope crusades spain

 

[yezhanquan]

I've considered the use of gold to fund your character's lifestyle, but I always get caught up on the question of how it improves gameplay. I mean, what does it do? Nothing. Maybe you spend it to improve your prestige, but that's not very fun for the player. Mostly it would function as a hated gold sink, and irritate the players. It's better to never give it to the players and say that their lifestyle is being funded by other money (so all they're ever seeing is their "fun money", i.e. almost everything except what a real life noble would actually consider to be "fun money").

Maybe, not lifestyle, but using gold to fund "investments" of some sort, with different rewards according to the investment should be an option.

 

[GC13]

Maybe, not lifestyle, but using gold to fund "investments" of some sort, with different rewards according to the investment should be an option.

One traditionally doesn't take gold away from the player by giving them the option to spend some gold now to get more gold later (much like the castle town we already have).

It reminds me of a discussion I once had about the merits of gambling in RPGs as a gold sink: either the gambling pays out more more money than is spent, on average, or the player never uses it. Either way you're not taking gold out of the player's hands that way.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

One traditionally doesn't take gold away from the player by giving them the option to spend some gold now to get more gold later (much like the castle town we already have).

It reminds me of a discussion I once had about the merits of gambling in RPGs as a gold sink: either the gambling pays out more more money than is spent, on average, or the player never uses it. Either way you're not taking gold out of the player's hands that way.

There's something to what he was saying though. Perhaps not investment in the conventional definition (for more money), but investment in other things, such as stat development for your twentieth 18/5/3/2/4/1 heir who's only good for one thing. Keep going to war you may earn some war traits but no time for developing your attributes.

Also, extravagant weddings for two high ranked noble houses should cost money. If you can't spend the money, you can't secure the wedding (currently its all free). Quick alliance marriages where you don't pour down funds could come as intrigue plots to make the arrangements. That way, you're spending money to buy into a greater house, and all those marriage prospects don't get insta-married off by the AI as soon as they turn 16.

 

[Xinkc]

The last thing we need are early crusades. It's bad enough to get them in a few years into the CM/TOG start because some viking adventurer took over Rome.

Umm, it should be at least a few decades before Crusades start in the TOG start and over a century for Charlemagne as the Crusades absolutely cannot happen before the 10th century.

And the fact that it isn't uncommon for Umuyyads to win a Muslim invasion of Aquitaine anyway.

Yeah, it wasn't until the Umayyads conquered the duchy of Toulouse in my current campaign that the Pope-man declared a Crusade.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

I'm a bit fuzzy on the early Reconquista, but did the Asturian kings ever ally with the Franks? Maybe one of the problems is that the AI is a bad matchmaker and gets bad allies.
Another problem is the event that Charlemagne gets that allies him with a rebelling Emir and gets to vassalize him afterwards. I've never seen this succeed. If it did, this could lead to a weaker Umayyad and this a stronger Asturias.
Or perhaps a greater chance for Christian uprisings to happen in the Sultanate, though this would probably create an incredibly fragile Umayyad.

But either way, the results will not happen historically. One side usually ends up steamrolling the other within a century rather than over a long period if time.

So obscure is Christian Spain in this period IIRC, only one interaction between Asturias and the Franks is recorded. See here for a summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_II_of_Asturias#Relations_with_Charlemagne_and_the_Papacy

This implies the kings of Asturias were ready to acknowledge Charlemagne's role as arbiter of Christian Europe under pressure. However, no submission or alliance is implied.

Asturias was extremely isolated and fragmented and it shows in the delay between the adoption of artistic / architectural styles in the core of Christian Europe and their arrival in Christian Spain.

 

[Mackus]

Give Asturias some event units, just like Karen, or Rurik.

 

[Dragatus]

Maybe, not lifestyle, but using gold to fund "investments" of some sort, with different rewards according to the investment should be an option.

Agreed. This ties into the discussion about blobbing. The main problem with blobbing is not how easy or hard it is, but rather that there is a lack of similarly rewarding peace time activities, so blobbing become the default empire tier gameplay. Events only go so far too. The first time I encounter an event I will carefully read it, but after a few times I start to just click through them, pausing only as much as I need to in order to see what happened. So some sort of peace time activity where I could spend my gold and get rewarded with prestige or piety or stats sounds quite appealing.

 

[Audoucet]

In my new game as duke of Transylvania (769, 2.4.5), I noticed that 10 years after the beginning, the Abassid empire had been entirely conquered by a nomad hindu, and the caliphate was now in Iberia. Every duke and count in the Arabian empire had been converted to hinduism.

953 :

I guess some kind of Reconquista happened. XD

 

[Azarias59]

The AI does not Re-Negotiate Pacts of their own accord. EVER. They only make new ones. Which is a big fucking deal, because we now lose pacts & alliances on succession. Until the AI, and Asturias, start being proactive about alliances and pacts, we will continue to see them lose to the muslim blobs.

If you're going to complain about something, complain about this, PLEASE. Mods can fix many things, but that can't fix the AI.

 

[JoeSteel]

What about the almighty ERE and HRE?

If you play 1000 games, both empires will reach the the sixteenth century as super powerful mega blobs. Why do people only ask for historical fidelity when it comes to Muslim territory?

I think we should have some historical fedelity with both of them. They both had their historical issues at game start, and I think it unfair to basically say "It's impossible to play as the nations near them without some mad luck." The time period this game is set in saw the cripling decay of older empires, the founding of new, but short lived steppe empires, and the founding of stable kingdoms through europe. I merely wish for the gameplay of CKII to reflect this trend. Things aren't all random in history, what comes before has always set the course for what comes after.

 

[DaVincix]

Why are the kigdom of Asturias so powerless against the muslims? i started 20 games with a count inside that kingdom and they always get rolled over. This is not historical paradox should fix this somehow, at least a 50/50 change of that happening.

I'm with you.
Actually, it seems, Iberia is the hardest part of CK2 to fix in this regard. I tried some CB codes plus region-property changes to manipulate AI decisions regarding Iberian regions, but they don't play out, as Pdox would have some almighty mess-up codes somewhere hidden.

As for diverse absurd outcomes, which destroy any immersion (in my case at least), i stopped to play any bookmark or start-date before iirc. 1118 AD, but here especially meant as for the KoJ's status (Kingdom of Jerusalem, Baldwin II).

... and recently, i stopped playing the game in the whole, because i'm tired to try modding to increase historical plausability, just only to see, that mod codes fail to fire accordingly.
I'm a modder-expert in regard of balancing, tons of experience, did this for years with other games, especially Total War series, successful ... but giving up for now with Pdox products.

Although at first glance of the CK2 files, it seemed easy to modify certain aspects of AI decisions. But as far as i found in the open files so far, the modding options are too limited (perhaps unless one would invent aka create a whole new map set up with related files from scratch) - this compared to other games, ie. Total War games, which but needed years of balancing work (or at least experience to know what's to do) to make a gameplay slightly more historically plausible in its outcomes.

I hoped for something better aka easier/quicker approach with Pdox games from the start, just as for their somehow unique approach/dedication to history, but well ... no.
Those many ahistorical outcomes are immersion killers to me, but well, i know that most players give rather a damn on this item.
However, this experience will lead me back to games where actual history has no impact on my immersion, just like Skyrim and M&B Warband.

 

[Atlantians]

In my new game as duke of Transylvania (769, 2.4.5), I noticed that 10 years after the beginning, the Abassid empire had been entirely conquered by a nomad hindu, and the caliphate was now in Iberia. Every duke and count in the Arabian empire had been converted to hinduism.

953 :

I guess some kind of Reconquista happened. XD

Now that is alternate history...

 

[JoeSteel]

So I was looking into the fall of the Umayyads on a historical scale (I know i'm talking history again, but hear me out.) They fell due to a series of events called the Fitan of al-Andalus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitna_of_al-Andalus), essentially power politics came into play, and a bunch of court rivalries led to several civil wars, and the ultimate fracturing of Cordoba into the various states at the 1066 start.

My solution to solve all of this is to model a system similar to EU4. Make historical events, some soft scale ones for flavor, and some more hard scale ones. The hard scale ones should take place early on in each start date to represent the events that transpired before start that led to events that happened after start. To simulate the Fitna of al-Andalus you could create an event (trigger when a child is on the throne) that gives a council member the ability to declare the king a "puppet" much like the Vizier Almanzor did historically. This would lead to a massive opinion penalty and destabalize the realm until the ruler is of age. It wouldn't spell death for the umads, but it might balance them a bit more. Combine that with a truce on Austurias at start, and I think this problem could at least be curbed. This could also be worded as an extra challenge for people playing as the umads. After all I feel that the challenge of playing a small county, and the challenge of playing a large empire should be relatively similar in difficulty, just with a different focus of attention.

Honestly when conclave came out I was hoping they would make good on the claim of making late game more challanging, but so far it has done the opposite. More interesting maybe, but it has so far served to make the already existing massive realms more stable.

 

[WeissRaben]

So I was looking into the fall of the Umayyads on a historical scale (I know i'm talking history again, but hear me out.) They fell due to a series of events called the Fitan of al-Andalus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitna_of_al-Andalus), essentially power politics came into play, and a bunch of court rivalries led to several civil wars, and the ultimate fracturing of Cordoba into the various states at the 1066 start.

My solution to solve all of this is to model a system similar to EU4. Make historical events, some soft scale ones for flavor, and some more hard scale ones. The hard scale ones should take place early on in each start date to represent the events that transpired before start that led to events that happened after start. To simulate the Fitna of al-Andalus you could create an event (trigger when a child is on the throne) that gives a council member the ability to declare the king a "puppet" much like the Vizier Almanzor did historically. This would lead to a massive opinion penalty and destabalize the realm until the ruler is of age. It wouldn't spell death for the umads, but it might balance them a bit more. Combine that with a truce on Austurias at start, and I think this problem could at least be curbed. This could also be worded as an extra challenge for people playing as the umads. After all I feel that the challenge of playing a small county, and the challenge of playing a large empire should be relatively similar in difficulty, just with a different focus of attention.

Honestly when conclave came out I was hoping they would make good on the claim of making late game more challanging, but so far it has done the opposite. More interesting maybe, but it has so far served to make the already existing massive realms more stable.

No, please, no. "Historical" events are horrible in EU4 already, and the ones already in CK2 could probably bear to become generic, as well. Nations should be able to crumble, and this should in no way or reason bound to being Andalusia, or Andalusia in a specific moment. Why should it? Because muh history? And who cares? Surely not the one conquering the Baltic as an Estonian tribe chief.

 

[Dragatus]

I don't think Asturias should be made to survive with special events just because that happened historically. However, I would like it if the game better modeled the realities which lead to Asturitas' survival.

I've been thinking some more about what makes large realms so powerful and I realized it's in large part because they can be run as efficiently as a small ones. In reality if a revolt happened on the far side of an empire it might take months before the emperor finds out about it and again months before orders from the capital could be delivered back to the front (which is why historically putting down rebellions was the job of the local governor). Raising an army likewise took longer and was a much bigger logistical hurdle than it is in the game. And the empire had to protect it's borders too, because you never knew when you were going to get attacked and it would again take months for word to reach your army and then it would take even more time before they could bring the army to where it's needed.

Now, I'm not sure if I actually want all of that modeled in the game, because a lot of it would be just plain annoying. But it's something to think about.

 

[Pippin123]

The second question is easy, the first question is hard.

It's so far from reality for a couple of key reasons: warfare is too cheap and campaigning is too easy. It's easy to sit an army of twenty thousand men on one county for twelve months to siege it down if you have to, while in history you would tend to end the campaign by the time winter came (giving the defender time to recover, and forcing the attacker to call the troops out again). Because it's so cheap to wage war, even a marginally valuable county is worth it to seize, while historically plucky defenders could keep their sovereignty by fighting fiercely to defend it; since it just wasn't worth it to bring large forces to bear against them, they just had to be a sufficiently hard target to make conquering them not worth the effort.

I think the campaigning season could be implemented if some design effort was brought to bear on it. As for making war expensive, that's harder. Do it wrong and you're simply asking the player to stare at the screen while it's running at maximum speed while he accumulates a war chest to fund the next conquest.

While it's not without it's faults, and tied to a different period, Nobunaga's Ambition does a decent job in modeling both the necessary "rythm" of warfare and the importance of terrain.

It does this by :

• Having a "supply" currency (rice) that's produced by your lands (once per year)
• Your armies can carry 90 days worth of rice with them, and can only resupply in friendly forts
• Armies have to follow roads, who have a different speed rating. This makes some locations "strategic" are they are natural chokepoints.

In practice, attempting to siege a fort in the mountains, means that your armies will arrive after a long trek, having already used a significant part of their supply. They now need to siege and take the fort quickly or start dieing of starvation. (You can start living of the land, but it destroys the value of the province you are trying to conquer)

Launching a huge military campaign will deplete your rice stocks and at some point, force you to halt things and wait for the next harvest

The game suffers from the usual blobbing issues where once you are big enough, these constraints are less relevant.

Obviously, CK2 won't switch from provinces to road movement, and but I think something like the rice supply system would create this campaigning seadon.