Schemes need to be balanced

[Nicolas-]

So based on the stream, it seems that if you have good intrigue, it's generally easy for you to kill/kidnap most people if there are agents available.

I think base scheme success should considerably be reduced across the board. Grand Strategy is about overcoming challenges, not necessarily always having things easily done for you.

Based on what I saw in the stream today here's what I suggest:

1. Reduce scheme base success chance to always give a considerable risk to any plot. Or perhaps cap the maximum success chance at 80-85%. And increase discovery chance a bit.

2. If you kidnap the King of France, a country stronger than you, that should have some serious consequences. If you are discovered, the country should get a CB on you, and the regent of the king (if he likes the king) should threaten war on you. Furthermore, even if you ransom the king, the country should have a special CB on you for an X amount of years. This should discourage players from messing with countries that are much stronger than them, which is unrealistic.

3. If you are discovered assassinating a bishop, the Pope has reason to excommunicate, and weighed against the Pope's opinion of you, the Pope may indeed excommunicate you.

I would like to see that type of consequences for schemes incorporated into the gameplay. I think players will find it more fun when they find schemes to be riskier and more challenging, so that the success of the scheme feels really rewarding, and not something you're just used to seeing.

 

[Kanaric]

I'll wait until I actually can get my hands on the game before I say what needs to be balanced lmao.

 

[Heatth]

You need to remember that it is not only the player who had high intrigue. Their spymaster had as well. It is a fairly exceptional situation so I think it is silly to take broad conclusions based on just that.

Yes, it might be that schemes are imbalanced at the moment. But that playthrough is just not a good indication of that.

 

[Cronus865]

I'll have to see how it works with other characters. Starting as Alfonso of Leon in CK2 with his sister Urraca as spymaster is powerful for plotting as well. I was kind of surprised how easy it was for them to kidnap the king of France, but he could have also been despised.

 

[Nicolas-]

You need to remember that it is not only the player who had high intrigue. Their spymaster had as well. It is a fairly exceptional situation so I think it is silly to take broad conclusions based on just that.

Yes, it might be that schemes are imbalanced at the moment. But that playthrough is just not a good indication of that.

Right, but points 2 and 3 are also valid even when you have an amazing intrigue character.

 

[GingerContingent]

So based on the stream, it seems that if you have good intrigue, it's generally easy for you to kill/kidnap most people if there are agents available.

I think base scheme success should considerably be reduced across the board. Grand Strategy is about overcoming challenges, not necessarily always having things easily done for you.

Based on what I saw in the stream today here's how what I suggest:

1. Reduce scheme base success chance to always give a considerable risk to any plot. Or perhaps cap the maximum success chance at 80-85%. And increase discovery chance a bit.

2. If you kidnap the King of France, a country stronger than you, that should have some serious consequences. If you are discovered, the country should get a CB on you, and the regent of the king (if he likes the king) should threaten war on you. Furthermore, even if you ransom the king, the country should have a special CB on you for an X amount of years. This should discourage players from messing with countries that are much stronger than them, which is unrealistic.

3. If you are discovered assassinating a bishop, the Pope has reason to excommunicate, and weighed against the Pope's opinion of you, the Pope may indeed excommunicate you.

I would like to see that type of consequences for schemes incorporated into the gameplay. I think players will find it more fun when they find schemes to be riskier and more challenging, so that the success of the scheme feels really rewarding, and not something you're just used to seeing.

Agreed that it was a bit too easy to just throw the king of France in your dungeon, but this was a very high intrigue character with a great spymaster who had been implanted for years creating hooks and finding secrets, which is probably relatively rare unless you only play that way. It's not like there's a 100% chance and we all know that 5% will fire at the absolute worst possible time.

I do like the idea of a short term CB being generated from things like this though! A war to basically make the offending nation pay back the ransom plus extra for the trouble. I am very concerned by what appears to be a lack of regents in the game - that's just about the only thing I've seen that makes me really wonder what they were thinking, if it is the case.

No one discovered them killing the bishops right? I do agree that is should be excommunication worthy to murder your realm priest though for sure.

 

[Battlex]

So based on the stream, it seems that if you have good intrigue, it's generally easy for you to kill/kidnap most people if there are agents available.

I think base scheme success should considerably be reduced across the board. Grand Strategy is about overcoming challenges, not necessarily always having things easily done for you.

Based on what I saw in the stream today here's what I suggest:

1. Reduce scheme base success chance to always give a considerable risk to any plot. Or perhaps cap the maximum success chance at 80-85%. And increase discovery chance a bit.

2. If you kidnap the King of France, a country stronger than you, that should have some serious consequences. If you are discovered, the country should get a CB on you, and the regent of the king (if he likes the king) should threaten war on you. Furthermore, even if you ransom the king, the country should have a special CB on you for an X amount of years. This should discourage players from messing with countries that are much stronger than them, which is unrealistic.

3. If you are discovered assassinating a bishop, the Pope has reason to excommunicate, and weighed against the Pope's opinion of you, the Pope may indeed excommunicate you.

I would like to see that type of consequences for schemes incorporated into the gameplay. I think players will find it more fun when they find schemes to be riskier and more challenging, so that the success of the scheme feels really rewarding, and not something you're just used to seeing.

Richard the Lion heart got imprisoned by I think the Hungarian king on way back from the third crusade. De Montfort also imprisoned Richard II when a baron basically, artificial limits like that are dumb, the free captives CB was in ck2 and could be used if ported probably.

Any character could ask any character to be excommunicated in ck2, slaying a priest could have a unique character modifier along with "known murderer"

 

[Nicolas-]

Richard the Lion heart got imprisoned by I think the Hungarian king on way back from the third crusade. De Montfort also imprisoned Richard II when a baron basically, artificial limits like that are dumb, the free captives CB was in ck2 and could be used if ported probably.

Any character could ask any character to be excommunicated in ck2, slaying a priest could have a unique character modifier along with "known murderer"

There is a difference between being captured while leading an army in foreign land, and being removed from your own court as a king. The latter should be much more difficult. I have no issues with monarchs leading armies risking being captured. It is historical. Many kings, including the King of France, Francis, were captured while leading an army.

Nonetheless, there should be consequences, especially if you are a weaker country. The best way is to ask yourself how the situation would've been handled had it happened in real life? Of course the abduction of the King will absolutely give France reason to attack a weaker nation like Leon to retaliate, even after the King was ransomed.

 

[Vanhal]

easily done

It's called specialization. If you specialize and still fail for no reason then the game has bad design.

 

[Nicolas-]

It's called specialization. If you specialize and still fail for no reason then the game has bad design.

And that's not mutually exclusive with the need to make it more challenging. You can specialize in intrigue as I said but still it shouldn't be this easy to abduct monarchs of powerful nations with little effort and no serious consequences.

 

[Vanhal]

And that's not mutually exclusive with the need to make it more challenging. You can specialize in intrigue as I said but still it shouldn't be this easy to abduct monarchs of powerful nations with little effort and no serious consequences.

Is it easy? All we saw is character specialized with literally everything he could and managing to kill some people that happened to be super low hanging fruits that had bad intrigue. Serious consequences? Like for example investigation for hook by some enemy? Or getting invaded by someone that have specializations in war?

 

[vandevere]

As others have said already, the Player Ruler had a super high Intrigue stat, and so did his Sister Spymaster. Not all Rulers will have that same advantage.

We need to see how the Game plays, on the whole, before we start screaming, OMG! OP! Nerf Nao!

 

[Riamus]

Keep in mind also that we haven't seen what happens if it is discovered that he killed those people. If his secret gets out, then there may very well be some significant consequences. Or not... we'll have to see. Consequences definitely should be added to the game so you at least have a decent risk even with high intrigue. But in terms of difficulty/ease of scheming, the high intrigue of the character and spymaster versus the low intrigue of the people schemed against makes sense for easily achieving your schemes. In a more normal situation, the schemes are probably much more difficult, perhaps even being more difficult than in CK2. Remember that although it might take a long time to successfully kill someone in CK2, it wasn't exactly difficult to do and the opinion malus if you were discovered wasn't really a big deal. I never cared much about it in my games as it really had no effect on me if some people had a relatively minor opinion penalty toward me or if the children/family has a larger opinion penalty toward me. I think CK3 will end up being far better regarding scheming once you get into a game of your own, though that is just a hunch.

 

[Nicolas-]

As others have said already, the Player Ruler had a super high Intrigue stat, and so did his Sister Spymaster. Not all Rulers will have that same advantage.

We need to see how the Game plays, on the whole, before we start screaming, OMG! OP! Nerf Nao!

While I agree that generally speaking being able to play a game allows you to give more accurate feedback, sometimes, certain things can be quite obvious from gameplay. None of the claims I made in my original post insinuates that every character will be as successful as this one. I acknowledged that the character had very good intrigue. But these points should apply even when the character has very good intrigue. I feel some people respond based on the title alone rather than reading the original post first.

And I don't think people should reserve their feedback until the game is released. If anything, I feel that the game was streamed a bit too late for any feedback to be implemented before release and we've seen with Imperator how launch reception is very critical for the destiny of a video game.

So now, the only thing I can hope for is that there were some good beta tests that provided devs with good feedback that was already implemented.