Player Army's Vastly Superior Issue HELP

[Axis89]

Okey so I need you, the community to discuss an issue with CK3 that makes me lose interest in the game unfortunately.
To me CK3 is very entertaining in many regards but I lose interest as I never encounter challanges from other realms.

So, I have narrowed it down to a question about levies and AI armies, regarding levies and men at arms.

If I play Norway, Portugal or Byzantine I sooner rather than later have a steady levy size that the AI cant compete with, so an AI realm must be much bigger or have plenty of allies to match me or outsize me. I am thinking this is something many are experiencing since I dont regard myself as very skilled in the game, just a veteran.

Now, I downloaded several mods and tweaked myself and the AI got som hefty boosts to economy, aggression, levy size boost etc etc.. all to make the AI artificially superior. It worked a little longer but at some point I (Playing Byz but intentionally lost Anatolia to weaken myself and start restoration immersion) still outmatched the Seljuk Empire which had Anatolia and strecthed to the Indus river.

How can modern day Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Constantinople + West coast of Turkey outnumber vast empires such as the Seljuk as I mentioned, or be even double the size of AI HRE which is half of Italy, large chunks of central Europe.

Also, I know the population density has changed through the ages etc but I find this problem everywhere(playing as Norway for example, Sweden, Scotland, Denmark cant compete at all).

Please discuss and also, do anyone have good solution until Paradox makes changes themselves?
Like tweaks I can do etc?
I havent been able to remove levies successfully because vassals themselves provide enough for steamrolling.
I want to get attacked and I want to plan carefully for war.. not know I am winning the game by 1066.

(Internal strife and struggle is a different discussion, though I find vanilla internal politics and intrigue a little easy)

 

[prismaticmarcus]

then start as a smaller, less powerful realm

 

[Axis89]

then start as a smaller, less powerful realm

Yes I agree, tried that but I rather quickly become a king anyway.
Problem of game play isnt whem youre a count or a duke, the gane struggles with challenging me or many others I suppose when youre king or Emperor.
I find levies to be problematic here as AI seems to have very low numbers amd hence never attacks the player for example.

 

[MarkFranz]

Yes I agree, tried that but I rather quickly become a king anyway.
Problem of game play isnt whem youre a count or a duke, the gane struggles with challenging me or many others I suppose when youre king or Emperor.
I find levies to be problematic here as AI seems to have very low numbers amd hence never attacks the player for example.

Levies is not real problem, becayse in CK3 they just useless cannon fodder. Problem is MaA and Knights stats bloat from (mostly) buildings and (less) perks, what lead to battles like this.

 

[Kanil]

Levies is not real problem, becayse in CK3 they just useless cannon fodder. Problem is MaA and Knights stats bloat from (mostly) buildings and (less) perks, what lead to battles like this.

Pretty much. The game is quite bit more challenging if you go with levies only. Maybe give yourself a siege or two for sanity's sake.

 

[Axis89]

Levies is not real problem, becayse in CK3 they just useless cannon fodder. Problem is MaA and Knights stats bloat from (mostly) buildings and (less) perks, what lead to battles like this.

Omg well thats a bigger problem I suppose, but on top of that a Player just has more levies on avarage.

But yes thats horrible, space marines I agree.
Well, some ideas for solitions? Mods to solve this? Or self modding help tips?

 

[TheRealRemus]

Levies is not real problem, becayse in CK3 they just useless cannon fodder. Problem is MaA and Knights stats bloat from (mostly) buildings and (less) perks, what lead to battles like this.

How do I get to 60 knights? I know of the 2 duchy buildings and the galant tree, but those would only give like +12 knights what else is there to stack?

Besides that yes MaA are super op, in late game the enemy needs like triple or quadruple the numbers of only my MMA to beat me. Plus the fact that levies become useless as they cant Siege.
Perhaps levies should become stronger over time to give them purpose and buffing the AI. The player could then adjust his own levie scaling in the game rules.

 

[brainiac1530]

The way the game works right now, there's only a small power gap between title tiers. Emperors are just a little bit stronger than Kings, and so on and so forth. This is because, in almost all useful measures of power which don't depend on vassals, they're only a little stronger. One more domain province, one more knight, and so on. Vassals provide almost nothing.

You made a false assumption. Your assumption that an Emperor with an enormous realm under him would be stronger than another Emperor, with a much smaller realm. That's just not how this game works right now. They'll be mostly equivalent in practice, so long as they have about the same domain size and have recruited their men-at-arms. The Byzantine emperor gets to use Primogeniture succession, which means that he's likely to be a lot stronger in practice than the Seljuk, who have to endure partition succession with polygamy. Also, the Seljuks have lay clergy faiths. Emperors will get way more from leased baronies, via the realm priest taxation chain, than they would from regular vassals owning those holdings.

At least since so-called "North Korea mode" got nerfed into the ground, big realms look super impressive on the map, but they're nothing to worry about. Realm size tends to grow geometrically with title tier, but real power grows basically linearly. It's also shockingly easy to run up your siege score on them; you can siege just a few counties out of dozens and end up with a fairly high occupation score. Thus, even the one way you'd think their huge size would protect them, really doesn't. I've been running a lot of games lately where I can beat the Abbasid Caliph as a King. I didn't get to stackwipe him, though; that's possibly the one way having a huge realm helps you. When you get fucking owned and shattered retreat, your enemies would have to endure a ton of attrition to chase you down.

As far as I can tell, all of this is working as designed. CK2 tended to have a problem with mega-blobs. They certainly fixed that.

 

[Nevars]

Yea like above said, realm size doesn't really mean much for military power, the more useful indicator is personal domain cuz a lot of gold and levy are lost on chain of vassals but your personal domain give you full benefit.

And partition is one of many thing that divide you personal domain consistently which the Seljuk should be subjected to from the very begining (high partition don't shatter your empire true but your personal domain still dwindle which is more important than intact empire that has lot of vassals instead of own personally) unlike the Byzantine that got primo thus no lost of your personal power.

Then ther is theocratic being better than lay clergy cuz lost of power from chain of vassals unlike theocratic that every thing from temple go to your realm priest and you got about half of it from said realm priest, basically there is no middle man in theocratic unlike lay clergy.

One of the fix I think can be that the vassal that his/her land is targeted in war should get off of their castle and help their liege personally instead of just sending some levy from feudal contract, this should be even the odd for weak liege aka the emperor that has few personal domain.

 

[Karlington]

The way the game works right now, there's only a small power gap between title tiers. Emperors are just a little bit stronger than Kings, and so on and so forth. This is because, in almost all useful measures of power which don't depend on vassals, they're only a little stronger. One more domain province, one more knight, and so on. Vassals provide almost nothing.

You made a false assumption. Your assumption that an Emperor with an enormous realm under him would be stronger than another Emperor, with a much smaller realm. That's just not how this game works right now. They'll be mostly equivalent in practice, so long as they have about the same domain size and have recruited their men-at-arms. The Byzantine emperor gets to use Primogeniture succession, which means that he's likely to be a lot stronger in practice than the Seljuk, who have to endure partition succession with polygamy. Also, the Seljuks have lay clergy faiths. Emperors will get way more from leased baronies, via the realm priest taxation chain, than they would from regular vassals owning those holdings.

At least since so-called "North Korea mode" got nerfed into the ground, big realms look super impressive on the map, but they're nothing to worry about. Realm size tends to grow geometrically with title tier, but real power grows basically linearly. It's also shockingly easy to run up your siege score on them; you can siege just a few counties out of dozens and end up with a fairly high occupation score. Thus, even the one way you'd think their huge size would protect them, really doesn't. I've been running a lot of games lately where I can beat the Abbasid Caliph as a King. I didn't get to stackwipe him, though; that's possibly the one way having a huge realm helps you. When you get fucking owned and shattered retreat, your enemies would have to endure a ton of attrition to chase you down.

As far as I can tell, all of this is working as designed. CK2 tended to have a problem with mega-blobs. They certainly fixed that.

The notion that a larger realm or more vassals, as you put it, "provide almost nothing," is a very stubborn myth here on the forums, that I hear repeated often. But make no mistake, it is a myth. After all, does this look like "almost nothing" to you?

 

[Axis89]

Well if I am not to argue against anyones opinion or ideas of what causes for example the Byzantine to be OP and players to be OP (thank you all for the info though), how could I create a game in CK2 where I can play the Byzantines (i also use the Rhomanoi mod for stability challange) and still fear thr Seljuks?
Should I give them Primo?
Should I mod all buildings and remove MaA buffs? So no more stacking?
Should I reduce the knight damage to 10 instead of 100?
Boost levies skills?

I wish a game where I struggle to get back to classic Eastern Roman Empire borders (Egypt + Levant), and still worry about Mongols or Jihads.

Btw is there a way to limit Byzantine diplomacy specifically so they can have less allies or none? Only non aggression perhaps?

Other ideas? How to solve this and get challanged?

 

[oakshield]

Yes I agree, tried that but I rather quickly become a king anyway.
Problem of game play isnt whem youre a count or a duke, the gane struggles with challenging me or many others I suppose when youre king or Emperor.
I find levies to be problematic here as AI seems to have very low numbers amd hence never attacks the player for example.

Too easy to get claims in this game, plus the AI is just garbage. Mods alleviate but don't solve it. It just is what it is for now.

 

[brainiac1530]

Btw is there a way to limit Byzantine diplomacy specifically so they can have less allies or none?

I think you would have to remove marriage alliances from the game, which seems to be just barely possible. I've been playing around with trying to make this work. The comments imply you have to create new marriage interactions to replace the originals, else there would be errors when the code references them by name. It's not clear if you can actually dummy out the original interactions; I haven't been brave enough to try that yet. But, you can make working marriage interactions, which don't create alliances.

Once that's done, all that would be left would be to create some additional restrictions on manually-requested alliances. This isn't just for people with the Defensive Negotiations perk; close relations provide opportunities for alliances too. This is a big part of the reason I think it would be okay to mod out automatic marriage alliances.

P.S. AI Byzantium hates alliances, probably because they see the rest of the world as food. Fair enough, if so. It leads to clowny scenarios in my games, though, with heirs to the Empire betrothed to people who wandered off to the other side of the world somewhere.

 

[Kainser]

Despite popular reputation so is CK3 much like CK2 not actually very difficult once you figure out the initial UI quirks. You pretty much have to use house rules or come up with personal challenges to not have every game end up with world conquest. This is not assisted by the inverted difficulty curve where the game gets easier the bigger you get.

And no, "pick a weaker start" is not a solution. That just means you have a few more decades before reaching "untouchable by the AI" status.

 

[Drstrangelove5]

One thing that the AI currently does a very bad job, or no job at all in some cases, in managing it's own court, breeding it's own dynasty, importing / befriending quality people in other courts, or managing it's own dynastic practices in any consistent manner. Decisions that we know are wrong, the AI still makes, so that's a rich area to work on.

E.g., it's impossibly easy to "import" knights, councilors, spouses, and children with quality traits. If the AI allows this, but humans won't, that's a problem. But, the AI doesn't seem to even know about importing people to it's own court or "how" to keep their people.

 

[SupremTurtle]

I think the problem with the game is partition more than anything. In the start, all but the ERE starts with partition(except for Bohemia 1066, which starts with house seniority). While a realm may seem as big as it is, after a few generations the king only control two counties, one being the capital and one seized from a criminal vassal.

The problem, in my opinion, is not that AI dont handle inheritance, but rather the fact that players know how to manipulate inheritance so that the primary heir would always inherit a certain chunk of land, while the AI would just follow whatever gravelkind tells them to do.

I’m not saying the player should not manipulate succession due to “roleplaying” as it’s a large part of the game, I’m saying the AI should reasonably get good in succession so that not all land is partitioned.

 

[Olden Weiss]

The notion that a larger realm or more vassals, as you put it, "provide almost nothing," is a very stubborn myth here on the forums, that I hear repeated often. But make no mistake, it is a myth. After all, does this look like "almost nothing" to you?

View attachment 687093

It looks to me like you have 14 personal landowning titles and Gandalf as your monarch. This is hardly an average circumstance, even among emperors.

 

[Torredebelem]

Omg well thats a bigger problem I suppose, but on top of that a Player just has more levies on avarage.

But yes thats horrible, space marines I agree.
Well, some ideas for solitions? Mods to solve this? Or self modding help tips?

You can easily mod the amount of MaA regiments you can attain and their size. It did wonders for my experience.

 

[Karlington]

It looks to me like you have 14 personal landowning titles and Gandalf as your monarch. This is hardly an average circumstance, even among emperors.

My domain counties do not increase my vassal tax income. In fact, what you are saying strengthens my point: despite having such a large domain, my vassal tax income is greater than my domain income.

I assume that by Gandalf you mean good. Same point as above, a good monarch increases income from domain more than income from vassals.

In short, if I had a smaller domain and/or a worse monarch, it would only further increase the relative advantage of vassal tax income vs domain income.

The reason is simple, and exactly what I said before: the notion that vassals hardly contribute anything is a myth, as evidenced by that screenshot.

 

[Olden Weiss]

My domain counties do not increase my vassal tax income. In fact, what you are saying strengthens my point: despite having such a large domain, my vassal tax income is greater than my domain income.

I assume that by Gandalf you mean good. Same point as above, a good monarch increases income from domain more than income from vassals.

In short, if I had a smaller domain and/or a worse monarch, it would only further increase the relative advantage of vassal tax income vs domain income.

The reason is simple, and exactly what I said before: the notion that vassals hardly contribute anything is a myth, as evidenced by that screenshot.

No I mean your monarch literally looks like Gandalf after a beard trim. Just look at him.