Some tweaks to viking prepared invasions?

[Vivs]

So in my current campaign I just found myself a target of a viking prepared invasion and it was very fun! Nice to see the game still has some challenges for you, even after you hit emperor-rank.

This got me thinking about the invasion mechanics. As it stands now, characters who are huge landowners, be they counts or dukes (and I think even kings with a small number of holdings) are able to launch prepared invasions. However, if my understanding is correct, the invasions that the game tries to simulate were, in real life, generally led by people who did not own larger tracts of land (i.e. in-game barons and counts).

They were mostly led by people who stood to gain little by remaining where they were and, once raiding Christian lands became the hottest craze of the time, decided to take it up a notch and not just take other people's wealth, but also their land. Afterall, if you're already a jarl, why would you leave your holdings unattended to chase some pipe dream across the sea? Obviously there were exceptions to this, and I'm no expert, so feel free to correct me anytime.

So, to get to the point, I think some tweaks could be made to the prepared invasion mechanics. To better simulate the feel of "uprooting your tribe and carving a kingdom across the sea", prepared invasions should:

• be limited to count-level rulers (seeing as we can't play landless characters or barons);
• have a drastically lower limit to the maximum number of holdings in the invader's realm;
• require a fairly larger amount of prestige, as well as some gold, so as to limit the chance of every two-bit viking attempting this every month; and
• have more generous troop events, to ensure that the invader has a fighting chance with all the new restrictions proposed above, seeing as the event troops scale with realm size.

This, I think, would make viking invasions be less like "the Norse king of Scotland basically gets a free, private Great Holy War for Andalusia" due to de-jure Scotland being just under 50 holdings (I believe), and more like "the chief of Telemark went from rags to riches and took over Brittany" due to spending his whole life making a name for himself, and using that to carve a new, albeit small, kingdom.

I'd also add one last mechanic: instead of keeping your old lands after having a successful invasion, and thereby creating something of a mini proto-maritime empire of sorts, maybe you should lose them. It could work kind of like a reverse Crusade, where in, upon achieving victory, you can appoint someone to rule your old lands (instead of the newly-conquered ones), which would be independent, but have an alliance with you.

I believe this would capture that "uprooting" feeling and flavor I mentioned before, and give players better dilemmas for their expansion strategies: do I stay put in Scandinavia and try to unify it, or do I leave it behind and become a king in my own right? Currently, the answer to this question is "why not both?" and that's not very interesting in a strategy game, if you ask me.

So, sorry for the long post, but what do you think?

 

[Willy Waggler]

Small Ai will be unable to gather prestige so it will become player only cb.

 

[Vivs]

Small Ai will be unable to gather prestige so it will become player only cb.

I'd still be OK with that, though I don't think we should refrain from suggesting improvements to the game just because of the poor AI.

 

[Sunshine Moon]

It's a good suggestion, with the caveat above that careful testing could probably resolve; my one concern is that in the immediate period after the invasion, your shiny new lands would all have "recently conquered" and "new administration" penalties. I think those are good and realistic mechanics overall, but inthis specific case where the new land is now your only land, maybe there should be some kind of mitigation to this penalty on your new demesne (or at least whatever you select as your new capital) to represent the somewhat stabilising effect of your entire court and administrative system now residing there and not having to devote any time to running your old chiefdom.

 

[Vivs]

It's a good suggestion, with the caveat above that careful testing could probably resolve; my one concern is that in the immediate period after the invasion, your shiny new lands would all have "recently conquered" and "new administration" penalties. I think those are good and realistic mechanics overall, but inthis specific case where the new land is now your only land, maybe there should be some kind of mitigation to this penalty on your new demesne (or at least whatever you select as your new capital) to represent the somewhat stabilising effect of your entire court and administrative system now residing there and not having to devote any time to running your old chiefdom.

That's a fair concern. Maybe a workaround could be to keep the penalties as they are, but also the event troops (with their free upkeep)? It could be enough to dissuade your new, larger neighbours from attacking you right off the bat, but not enough for you to be able to beat them and take their lands from the moment you get settled in.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

This feels weird. I mean prepared invasions are already pretty limiting. You basically get one on a large realm and you're already over the limit.

The AI doesn't abuse this mechanic enough to change the world every playthrough, so I see no reason to make it more stringent. A good barometer on whether a mechanic is broken or not is if even the braindead AI can do it every game. Some things like realm management (realms rarely if ever collapsing internally) or Crusades (haha Catholic 50,000k more men than other religions) would be an issue. Not so much this.

 

[Vivs]

This feels weird. I mean prepared invasions are already pretty limiting. You basically get one on a large realm and you're already over the limit.

The AI doesn't abuse this mechanic enough to change the world every playthrough, so I see no reason to make it more stringent. A good barometer on whether a mechanic is broken or not is if even the braindead AI can do it every game. Some things like realm management (realms rarely if ever collapsing internally) or Crusades (haha Catholic 50,000k more men than other religions) would be an issue. Not so much this.

I didn't say it was an issue, nor that the mechanic is broken. I'm merely suggesting tweaks (it's in the thread title) to a cool mechanic that I think could be even more interesting and more historically accurate. It wouldn't really decrease the overall frequency of prepared invasions, it wouldn't even be a nerf to them.

 

[Rags17]

+1 totally agree !

 

[junassa]

What about other pagan (reformed) religions?

 

[Vivs]

What about other pagan (reformed) religions?

Well, I focused on Germanic pagans for this post because their religion is the one that can launch prepared invasions even without being reformed, and the one I see more often doing that in my campaigns. However, I suppose these tweaks to the rules I've proposed could apply to any other religion with the same mechanic.

 

[Duskwave]

My experience with prepared invasions when playing as Germanic has always been "the AI calls fifty million of them and every single one of them fails, tanking Germanic MA" and "I am somehow always too big to call one whenever I've wanted to". I like the theory of them- if I were designing a CK3 or extreme mod, I'd make the vast majority of wars carry a very similar "rallying/preparing/persuading neutrals of validity of your claim" period, and for a lot of historical wars event troops feel more right than how levies work- but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[N1ghteyes]

Love the op idea. It'd stop me always going the below strat.

My favorite strategy if starting as norse tribal was to rush a king title, vassalise all the little counts in other dejure kingdoms, smash any other big norse realms with my subjugation and then revoke all titles higher than count.

This way my only vassals are non dejure counts and dejure dukes. You can release vassals until under the cap and fire off a new prepared invasion every generation until the whole world is single provence norse germanic counts which can be revassalised at will.

 

[sortulv]

I think what the OP is thinking of is better reflected in adventurer invasions. The prepared invasions at the time was more a way to gather miscreants with promises of loot in foreign lands.
A bigger issue is that the attacking ruler gets the provinces - would have been more reasonable to have those that support it get the titles as counts and barons of the conquered lands. (could be an interesting mechanic if instead of event troops, you get troops donated from neighboring rulers, commanded by "spare" sons of theirs. These sons would then become the rulers of the land. (event troops and characters might be added to the mix)

 

[Vivs]

I think what the OP is thinking of is better reflected in adventurer invasions. The prepared invasions at the time was more a way to gather miscreants with promises of loot in foreign lands.
A bigger issue is that the attacking ruler gets the provinces - would have been more reasonable to have those that support it get the titles as counts and barons of the conquered lands. (could be an interesting mechanic if instead of event troops, you get troops donated from neighboring rulers, commanded by "spare" sons of theirs. These sons would then become the rulers of the land. (event troops and characters might be added to the mix)

Well, if you think about it, prepared invasions are just adventurer invasions for players, since we can't play landless characters. Maybe in CK3 they'll be playable, and both types of invasions will be merged.

I do like your idea of gathering support and distributing the conquered lands accordingly. Very cool!

If I may, perhaps it could work like this (a merger of your ideas and mine): the event troops are actually donated from neighbouring rulers, commanded by spare sons (as you've proposed). Upon conquering the targeted kingdom, you still get all the counties all to yourself, per usual, but: your vassals (the "spare sons") will expect to get some land, and will get very mad at you if you don't reward them with any.

Maybe their expectations can scale with how many troops they contributed, and if you don't placate them enough, they can turn on you (like a mercenary band often does). So, in the end, you still get all the counties (as it currently works), but because you lose your old lands (part of my original suggestion), and because your new holdings will all receive "recently conquered" penalties, your only armies will be the event troops, which you can only keep if you give out land.

This could simulate not just the "rags to riches" stories I mentioned before, but also the vikings adapting to the feudal realities of their newly-conquered realms. This is a big departure, however, so I wouldn't call them "tweaks" anymore, haha. Maybe in CK3?

 

[sortulv]

If I may, perhaps it could work like this (a merger of your ideas and mine): the event troops are actually donated from neighbouring rulers, commanded by spare sons (as you've proposed). Upon conquering the targeted kingdom, you still get all the counties all to yourself, per usual, but: your vassals (the "spare sons") will expect to get some land, and will get very mad at you if you don't reward them with any.

Would you really care that some landless nobles are angry at you? Better to hand out the land automatically, and then if you want it back you'd need to scheme in the typical CK2 fashion...

 

[Sunshine Moon]

Maybe the "getting very mad at you" would result in them becoming hostile with their portions of the event troops?

 

[Vivs]

Would you really care that some landless nobles are angry at you? Better to hand out the land automatically, and then if you want it back you'd need to scheme in the typical CK2 fashion...

In fairness, I said that they would work like mercenary bands, i.e. they can turn on you and invade your lands. Seeing as they'd be the bulk of your initial army, I'd say that, yeah, you would care.

I wouldn't be against just handing out the land automatically, though.

 

[ArzhurG]

This is starting to sound like a mini Crusade, where each contributor gains land for their relative. In this case the initiator of the invasion should be able to directly accept/decline help. That way you can choose to have more allies, making the invasion war easier, but in return you would gain less land for your personal demesne. The other option would be a more difficult war, but a larger demesne at the end. This would give a nice risk vs. reward situation.

 

[Vivs]

This is starting to sound like a mini Crusade, where each contributor gains land for their relative. In this case the initiator of the invasion should be able to directly accept/decline help. That way you can choose to have more allies, making the invasion war easier, but in return you would gain less land for your personal demesne. The other option would be a more difficult war, but a larger demesne at the end. This would give a nice risk vs. reward situation.

Great idea!

 

[BrokenSky]

Small Ai will be unable to gather prestige so it will become player only cb.

I'd still be OK with that, though I don't think we should refrain from suggesting improvements to the game just because of the poor AI.

The game could have lower prestige requirements for AI players to do it.