Returning player help

[Kurblius]

Not a beginner to CKII or this forum but it's been a while since I played. Need some help to get up to speed. I haven't played since before Charlemagne was released. Can anyone give me a rough run-down of the major changes since then? I have all DLCs up to and including Charlemagne (though I just bought Charlemagne today). I'm not playing as Tribal so let's leave that out for now. I've done a run-down of the patches since Charlemagne and the only one that radically alters things for me is Patch 2.5.1.

The two changes that's caught my immediate attention are the changes to infamy into threat - I've read the Wiki on that part of the patch, but I'm not sure exactly how the threat works in practice yet. I've located the threat icon for characters - it appears when you right click a character. It seems to be a percentage.

The defensive pact/alliance thing has really thrown me. Can anyone give me some advice on how one should approach this in game that is different from before? My understanding it basically means you can make defensive pacts with relatives one step removed from your siblings, children, wife to now include nephews, nieces, uncles, cousins. Or do cousins not count? And how about 2nd cousins? Who else constitutes a "close relative"? Also, apparently you can't go into an alliance immediately now, right? So how long do you have to wait between making a non-aggression pact and an alliance?

For what it's worth, I'm starting as a Sicilian Count at the 8th century start date. I hope I'm not going to be holy warred before I get going. :/

 

[Kollatius]

Defensive pacts are like coalitions from EU4, with one crucial difference: They don't attack you. Threat builds up everytime you conquer something. The bigger you are, the more threat you get. It's not unusual to see 25% threat for a single county if you are the Byzantine Empire, Abbablob, Charlemagne, etc. 25% Threat creates Religion based Defensive pacts. Pacts of all religions apart from your own will merge together at 50% threat (unless I'm mistaken). Your own religion will join all the others at 75% threat. At 100% Threat, your own religious head can and will join against you. (You have to do quite the conquest spree to get to 100% threat from 0%)

By marrying of relatives, you esthablish a NAP, Non-Aggression Pact. You then need to manually form an Alliance with one click of a button, no wait needed... Once you're in an alliance, you will automatically get called to all wars that Alliance partner is in. You cannot currently decline this Call to Arms. (Might change in the future though, there's been A LOT of complaints about this)

Infamy was added in the Conclave patch, was changed to threat in 2.5.1 (the religious pacts didn't exist in 2.5.0)

 

[LucidFugue]

Defensive pacts are related to threat /infamy. Basically as threat increases from conquest, more independent realms enter defensive pacts against the expanding realm. These alliances are only valid for defensive wars against the target ruler, so they simulate leaders banding together to protect themselves against an expansionist neighbour. I wouldn't rely on them to protect you from being eaten.

For that you still want to forge alliances through marriage. That has changed whereby instead of getting the alliance you get a non aggression pact, and you have to request the alliance as a separate action. I don't think there is a delay if you want the alliance right away, I haven't tried.
NAPs prevent the other party declaring war on you, but doesn't allow you to call them into wars. Allies are automatically brought into wars, which means you can no longer be left high and dry by them, but carries with it a range of other considerations. As a small count you can use a big neighbour to bully other counts, but the alliance will break down if you aren't contributing to their war efforts as well. And the more alliances you have, the more wars are going to disrupt your realm management.

 

[Kurblius]

Thanks for the info guys. It was helpful