I'm gonna take some time to clarify some misconceptions regarding coalitions. There's a LOT of assumptions and outright lies circulating both here on the Paradox Forums and on Reddit. Here we go:
1. Coalition Members judge you on an individual basis, depending on a combination of many different factors. Infamy is not a constant value affecting everyone equally. I.e.:
- Proximity/distance to you (In general, nations that neighbor you or are within 2 sea zones will want to join).
- Amount of Infamy (You'll have a larger coalition at 100% infamy than 26%).
- If you have a CB against them.
- Their size in comparison to you.
- Their army size in comparison with you.
- There's also a hard block where you can't have a coalition member that's 90% or larger than their targets realm size (so the HRE could never coalition France, for example).
Some people groundlessly claim that large Kings and Emperors would care about the Infamy of small Dukes. This is
objectively false and would never happen.
2. If you get a non-aggression pact or alliance with a coalition member, they will instantly leave the coalition against you. This means that it's more important than ever to
have a large family and marry them off tactically. Remember that you can use favors to force cross-religious marriages, and as such you can also remove threats of foreign religions from your coalition.
3. No, the Pope won't defend the Abbasids if you decide to
Holy War them. Even if the Abbasids and the Pope is in the same coalition against you, they won't necessarily join wars declared on each other. CB's marked as '
Holy' will not incur the wrath of your coreligionists, this most notably applies to the common '
Holy War' CB.
4. Infamy & Coalitions is designed to be a challenge in the mid-to-late game. You will be hard pressed to
even gain a coalition unless you're ruling a very large realm or attack multiple neighbors
very rapidly. It was designed like this on purpose. Also, the infamy decay scales on your size. Some example scenarios:
- France 1066, 184 realm size. If you take all of de jure Brittany in 1 day (total of 6 provinces) you'll just hit 25%. Your infamy decay allows you to get rid of this Infamy in 7 years, but remember that it's only infamy over 25% that matter, so values between 0-24% will not see you have a coalition at all. So in other words, you have to wait but three months until the coalition's gone.
- HRE 1066, 375 realm size. Now, with a nation this large you'll inevitably gain a coalition when taking a large chunk of land (i.e. the duchy of Obotritia, a common target, 4 provinces). If you wish to wait for the coalition to pass, you need to wait three years (a minuscule time in a game spanning up to 700 years). Though remember, if you're strong enough you can just fight your coalition.
5. Coalitions are not designed to ruin your nation, merely to contain it. Coalitions will not attack you with the implicit intent of dismantling you. This is
not EU. Coalitions are defensive by nature, and while coalition members
can start offensive wars against you, they won't join if the goal is to take a lot of land from you. It's very, very uncommon for the AI to do this.
Tips & Tricks
If you're having a hard time with coalitions, here's how I deal with them. I play the game a lot, and I find that there's several interesting ways to work around coalitions. Here's a picture of my currently ongoing game, where I'm at 100% infamy (note that I'm
not trying for a World Conquest, if I were I'd be much bigger):
As you can see, the coalition against me is but a fraction of my massive size (my realm size is 1000+). How come I don't have a massive coalition against me? One of those you've seen posted around the forums? This is how
I do it:
- Non Aggression pacts! I have a massive family, and have nestled my family's blood into almost every other major nation in Europe. This allows me to keep all powerful nations out of the coalition, as they're either of my family or married to my close kin. This requires careful planning though - but that's what a dynasty simulator like CK2 does best!
- Favor usage. By buying favors off of foreign rulers who are in distress, i.e. when they need money for a costly war, I can force NaP's on them through marriages/betrothals. This has allowed me to force both Christians and steppe people to leave me alone.
- Infamy-clearing conquest/independence grants. Sometimes I decide to invade a nation just to remove it as a potential enemy. I claimed many major European Kingdoms for characters who could be considered my friends - groomed by me and married to my close kin. I then grant them independence. This results in a loyal ally who not only won't join coalitions against me, but also support me in my wars! I also lose a large chunk of Infamy (in my case 100%).
- Attacking revolts. Major revolts of other nations don't join coalitions. This is by design, as there's an inherent danger of attacking a revolt - if it ends, so will your war. I've used this to opportunistically expand my realm wherever there's strife.
- Let my vassals expand for me! I make sure to set up my vassals in such a fashion that they have juicy targets next to them. Infamy gained by vassal conquests is but a fraction of what you'd get yourself, and vassals don't trigger coalition wars!
Though most importantly I've paced myself. I've realized that I don't have to be at war constantly to do well. I spend a lot of time managing my council and my vassals while waiting for infamy to tick down.
Notes
We're aware that a lot of the info presented here is obscured or not available in-game, we're working on making the information readily available to the player.
We're planning a few tweaks to how infamy is gained, currently adding individual infamy-levels to different types of CB's and re-balancing how many nations join against you at various levels of infamy.
Note that this thread only exists to explain to you how the feature works and how you use it. Please keep discussion civil.
