Please paradox tell me if this is intended or a bug?

[General Samson]

Dear Paradox,
first of all i would like to say, that i love all of your historical games and that i am with you since EU1 and really looking forward to HOI4.

I have a question now to my byzantian empire game in which i have already become the roman empire. I now try to restore the old borders (of course i do).

The savegame was started with version 2.5.0 and now playing on with 2.5.2. Maybe this is a problem. But now the problem i have:

You state in your Changelog for patch 2.5.2:
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%

So yesterday i reclaimed one single province "Krain" (west of Venice) with the restoring empire boarder claim (don't know what it is in English, i play the game in German). Still this single province gave me 17% threat.
1) This is more then your claimed 15% in the Changelog, so maybe its really a bug?
2) I have no idea how i should restore the old borders if a single provinces gives me already such a huge amount of threat. There are still literally hundreds to conquer.

I understand that the concept of making defense alliances should make the game more interesting and prevent blobbing. But for someone who never before blobbed and now tries to get an achievement where you have to blob, this feels really unfair because it now seems to be impossible.

Best Regards,
Simon

ps: the independence in the screenshot was given, not taken ;-)

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Err..the tooltip mentions 15% for Kärnten, which is the duchy.

How do you get 17 and are you sure you got it for one province only ?



PS: I 'm also of the opinion that one gets too much threat for feudal holdings ...Tribal seemed much cheaper the last time i checked....or make decay higher.
Overall it's unrealistic and a cheap mechanic. Causes mini-world wars and as such is rather stupid.
Changed my opinion of it again.

 

[Talq]

Judging by your screenshot, you currently have 17% threat total. You gained 15% threat from your last war, but evidently you were not at zero threat when you got it. Threat decays over time.

 

[General Samson]

Damn! I could swear it was 17% by the one province. But obviously i mad a mistake on that.
But still the question is, why getting the full 15% max threat for this one? When do i get minimum? Or close to minimum? And how to reconquer what was roman again?

 

[richvh]

You get the minimum if you're small. If you're already large, you don't get the minimum.

If you're going for a blobbing achievement, you're just going to have to learn how to deal with coalitions.

 

[General Samson]

Well learn how, i would like to. Tell me how? I can not easily marry someone to the foreign religions and being a orthodox who healed the great schism means, I can only prevent France and Germany to go into an alliance against me (by making an own alliance) but i have to conquer both of them, so an alliance is not really an option.
I really would like to here some advice about handling defense pacts (I already read another post from the paradox guys who has try to give some advice).

 

[richvh]

Anyone bigger than a certain threshold (determined by your threat) will never join a defensive pact against you. That big green blob to your south-east? Yeah, it won't be in a defensive pact against you until you've cut it down considerably.

Defensive pacts will never start a war against you. (Some members may but won't pull in the full pact, and even that is unlikely because you're big and scary.)

If you achieve your war goal quickly enough, you can force a surrender before most of the coalition is even in the fight.

 

[General Samson]

Well the green blob to my south-east is in the pact all day long! AFAIK they only won't join if they have less army then me. (Un)-fortunately, this is not the case.
And blitzkrieg without tanks is not sooo easy if you ask me.

 

[Olrox]

I managed to get the SPQR achievement in 2.5, starting as the OPM count of Orvieto, and you dont need tanks to blitzkrieg. All you need is a strong pike retinue. Italian and scottish pikes are the best, but generic defense retinues can do it.

 

[General Samson]

And you basically blitzed your way up? Startet wars even with so many guys in a defense pact?
I relay on heavy cavalry. Cataphracts for the win.

 

[Olrox]

I did. The last two centuries of the game were one world war after another. Of course, thanks to constant assaults and a 40k italian pike retinue, each and every war ended in 3 months or less. Even against the HRE.

Edit: cataphracts are, unfortunately, a shadow of what they used to be. They're currently one of the less optimal retinues. Of course, if you have a bunch of them, you can still do fine, but generic defense will perform better.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

Ha, terms like World War and Lightning War being used in the 900's instead of the 1900's. With this latest patch this game should really change it's name from "Crusader Kings" to "Kings of Iron".

 

[Olrox]

Well, I think it's only fair to fight napoleonic era style coalitions with 20th century war tactics, no? After all, it's all for the good of the roman empire!

 

[General Samson]

Thats true. Just wanna add another observation from yesterday. I managed to grab nearly all of the area of the empire of France and big parts of Germany and Spain in ONE single war. I pressed the claim of a guy for the french crown (France was controlled all of this areas). And before doing so, i made the guy a baron of one of my counties. Being a de jure vasal now, he stayed one after i conquered this massive area for "him". In this way, i have nearly doubled my empire on the funny (and really unbalanced) part is, because it was not my own claim, i have only got 50% threat.

This shows that something is not right adjusted. For a single province i get 15% and for an area as big as a whole empire i get 50% ? That is a bad joke if you ask me!

 

[SerGN]

I did. The last two centuries of the game were one world war after another. Of course, thanks to constant assaults and a 40k italian pike retinue, each and every war ended in 3 months or less. Even against the HRE.

Edit: cataphracts are, unfortunately, a shadow of what they used to be. They're currently one of the less optimal retinues. Of course, if you have a bunch of them, you can still do fine, but generic defense will perform better.

Hey Orlox, im relatively new in CK and im not using retinues at all... I looked for it in the wiki but it is not very helpful...

AFAIK it is like a permanent army, right? What are the advantages? That you have instant troops? Is there any thing more to take into account?

 

[Heinrich4]

This shows that something is not right adjusted. For a single province i get 15% and for an area as big as a whole empire i get 50% ? That is a bad joke if you ask me!

This is due to

- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
[...]
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.

So yeah, it is better to take whole duchies/kingdoms instead of single provinces.

AFAIK it is like a permanent army, right? What are the advantages? That you have instant troops? Is there any thing more to take into account?

You have instant troops (you can move retinues next to your target and declare war, which you cant do with levies). Retinues are also taken into account of factions, so if you have a large retinue army factions are less dangerous.
But retinues are really really expensive while reinforcing. In my current game i have about 20 k retinue troops which cost about 6 gold maintance per month. But if they take damage and must be reinforced these troops cost about 100 gold per month.

 

[Olrox]

Basically, what Heinrich4 said. If you play EU4, retinues work a lot like armies in that game. Sure, they cost quite a bit of cash, but the greatest advantage of retinues is that you can decide which troop types to use. So instead of getting a mixed bag of troops like with levies, retinues can be tailored to only fire specific tactics in combat, making them absurdly superior to mixed levies.

Melee heavy retinues that are mostly comprised of pikes or heavy infantry are also ungodly powerful at sieges assaults, thus making a "blitzkrieg" strategy viable.

This reddit thread might be of some use https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/4533oo/optimal_retinue_calculator_conclave/

 

[General Samson]

Hey Heinrich4, i do understand where this 50% come from. What i say is, that it is still total crap to get 50% for something for what you would get otherwise 100 times more threat even you have a really good reason to take the land. Don't you think so too?