Revolting vassals and reputation

[unmerged(32970)]

Playing as King of Aragon. One of my dukes dies and his underage heir takes over and immediately goes independent and declares war on me.

1 - I didn't do anything so the kid is a suicidal nut who wants to take everyone with him.

2 - It cost me around 1400 gold to crush his armies and take his titles. He has no money as the AI never goes into debt (meanwhile I am at minus 800 gold)

3 - Part of the cost is due to having to fight the armies of his vassals, although they do become my vassals when I take his titles. But it will take time for everyone to recover troop numbers.

4 - My reputation for taking the 4 provinces of my vassal goes from slightly tarnished to rather bad and the rest of my vassals get unhappy (feudal contract).

Obviously I would have preferred him not to rebel (his father didn't when he inherited from the original duke)

If he must rebel then he has stepped outside feudal law by breaking his oath of allegiance. So his liege (me) shouldn't get so much BB for crushing my ex-vassal.

What I would really like to see here is that his vassals take an immediate 25% loyalty hit so he can't mobilise their armies directly. After all, they should really be likely to wait and see who looks like winning before they commit themselves.

I don't like editing the save file but in this case I was sufficiently irritated to do so to get my money and reputation back.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Playing as King of Aragon. One of my dukes dies and his underage heir takes over and immediately goes independent and declares war on me.

1 - I didn't do anything so the kid is a suicidal nut who wants to take everyone with him.

2 - It cost me around 1400 gold to crush his armies and take his titles. He has no money as the AI never goes into debt (meanwhile I am at minus 800 gold)

3 - Part of the cost is due to having to fight the armies of his vassals, although they do become my vassals when I take his titles. But it will take time for everyone to recover troop numbers.

4 - My reputation for taking the 4 provinces of my vassal goes from slightly tarnished to rather bad and the rest of my vassals get unhappy (feudal contract).

Obviously I would have preferred him not to rebel (his father didn't when he inherited from the original duke)

If he must rebel then he has stepped outside feudal law by breaking his oath of allegiance. So his liege (me) shouldn't get so much BB for crushing my ex-vassal.

What I would really like to see here is that his vassals take an immediate 25% loyalty hit so he can't mobilise their armies directly. After all, they should really be likely to wait and see who looks like winning before they commit themselves.

I don't like editing the save file but in this case I was sufficiently irritated to do so to get my money and reputation back.

During the death of the liege or the death of the vassal their is a hardcoded chance for vassals to break free since this is historically the time that it would most likely occur.

The only real problem i see with your statement is #4.

 

[Duuk]

Which I've been arguing for a month now, and I think you're the only one that agrees with me.

 

[unmerged(5707)]

What I think might be a solution, if it's doable, is to have crushing rebelling vassals make loyal vassals more loyal and disloyal vassals less loyal.... how they'd code this, factor in BB, etc, I dont know.....maybe an event trigger with loyalty as the determining factor?.... but it does seem to me odd that 'doing your job' makes you a bad guy.... it might piss off some of your various vassals, but in general it would up your reputation, not downgrade it.

 

[gigau]

During the death of the liege or the death of the vassal their is a hardcoded chance for vassals to break free since this is historically the time that it would most likely occur.

The only real problem i see with your statement is #4.

I agree. It's quite frustrating.
Especially, when a vassal declares war to me after an inheritance... it's a quick road down. Vassals get more and more angry, and in a snap, you have your kingdom back to nothing. Moreover, in my case (does it occur to any body else ?), when i happen to have these problems, the computers fires me a dozen "A vassal goes independant, shall he go freely ?"... When that event fires in time of peace and good partnership, they usually come back, asking for being my vassal again.. but in time of trouble, they are happy to get away.

I definitely would ask, like Reddragyn :

What I think might be a solution, if it's doable, is to have crushing rebelling vassals make loyal vassals more loyal and disloyal vassals less loyal.... how they'd code this, factor in BB, etc, I dont know.....maybe an event trigger with loyalty as the determining factor?.... but it does seem to me odd that 'doing your job' makes you a bad guy.... it might piss off some of your various vassals, but in general it would up your reputation, not downgrade it.

 

[unmerged(32970)]

It was really the bad reputation that gets me. He broke his oath and I should be entitled to crush him with only a little BB, not so much that my other vassals start getting ideas of leaving themselves. A reduced BB for taking titles/land from rebelling vassals would be nice.

I also don't like the idea his vassals were willing to help out. When you are a lowly count the idea that your liege has just gone to war with his king (who outnumbers the duke 3:1) isn't good and you don't want to be on the losing side. A lot of vassals would be finding excuses not to supply troops until it becomes clear which way the war is going.

I'm not sure how it could be coded but having the vassals of both parties become either more or less loyal would make this interesting.

 

[Riddermark]

What I would really like to see here is that his vassals take an immediate 25% loyalty hit so he can't mobilise their armies directly. After all, they should really be likely to wait and see who looks like winning before they commit themselves.

thats a very good point i support that idea!

maybe it can be done so after he breaks up you can grab his titles at the same price if he was "Excommunicated".

of course all this will then the other way around too - if you are the declaring independence duke/count it would be rather hard for u which is a good thing!

 

[unmerged(7924)]

I agree. I've got enough BB as it is from neihbours, don't need even more from taking care of my own realm.

 

[unmerged(29883)]

Its a difficult one, I agree.

I think the simplest solution would be to lower the liege's BB when a vassal declares their independence. If this could be tied to the size of the departing vassal, so much the better, but I'm not sure that's possible. Either way, an arbitrary figure would suffice. My only issue would be if you had a situation where bringing your vassals back into your kingdom would result in a BB loss, which is bad.

With regard to a Duke's vassals supporting them, its a tricky situation in the feudal code. Technically, everyone is loyal to the King first and foremost, but in practice it wouldn't be too surprising if the Counts mobilised their armies in favour of their most direct liege (ie, the Duke). If the Duke has declared his independence, or is pressing a claim, then it almost certainly isn't an arbitrary decision - its probably been thought of a little beforehand, and he's probably 90% sure that his vassals, whom he would be relying on, are going to support him.

Inheritance changes are traditionally the time when the entire Kingdom goes tits up, and what looks to be fairly stable suddenly shows up all the cracks at the edges. Norman England had a rebellion following the death of every king in the norman dynasty, and some of those were very dragged out affairs!

Its wrong that putting down these rebellions should cause major jumps up in BB (hence why I'd go for a BB loss when vassals break away), but if we're looking for a return to BB status quo, then the rebellion events will need to be made much worse, otherwise they'll just be a mild annoyance for the player which can easily be put down, which is why I'm not a fan of having the rebelling Dukes unable to mobilise their vassals. They should have a chance of being able to influence the way things go - they did enough times historically!

 

[unmerged(5707)]

If the BB aspects cant be fixed, at least change the parameters of 'A Vassal Declares His Independence' to ONLY fire if the vassal's loyalty is ALREADY 30% or less (could be 40 or 50, but pick a max level from the %s where allegiance change is possible). Do not have the event lower his loyalty, just have it fire for vassals with ALREADY low loyalty. I DO like the concept of this giving the liege a BB bonus to offset the coming BB hit of retaking the revolutionaries.

 

[unmerged(29883)]

Pah! Even 'loyal' vassals changed their colours at times of disputed inheritance. Their loyalty, after all, was to the former liege - and that didn't necessarily transfer immediately over to a new heir. Especially not if a more favourable (to them) alternative was available.

The problem with fixing DoIs to loyalty is that loyalty in-game is very easily controllable. The situation you describe would cause DoIs only to occur in truly troubled times of succession, or when the ruler simply forgot to look at his vassals and give emergency money donations.

Think of it from your point of view. If your liege paid you to remain loyal, wouldn't you just take his money, spend it on military improvements, and then DoW from a vastly improved position once his son inherited (and you were ready?).

I think that disloyal vassals should be more likely to DoI, or join existing DoWs against the liege, but that'd probably be too much to code for CK. I still think that even your apparently trustworthy vassals should have the chance to stab you in the back (remember that, technically, their loyalty is subjective - you have no real idea whether they *are* that loyal, except that you trust the game statistics not to lie. )

Any BB bonus should only reduce the malus caused by dealing with revolting vassals, not necessarily eliminate it, and certainly not more than compensate it! The 'best' BB situation would be to let them go and pursue them at a later stage. Naturally, this applies even more to larger kingdoms than smaller ones, but that'd be a proper Mr. T / Byak fight to write complex code for, so don't hold your breath.