Struggle is a Pandora's Box

[Ilya Belkin]

I played a lot in Iberia and outside now after the struggle introduction, and I have to agree. It does feel off that so many characters' abilities are granted out of the skills trees only during a specific phase of the struggle. It does not spoil the game, because hey… ck3 is always asymmetric, but I do wish more of these skills were just available everywhere, while skill trees improve one’s abilities more. Befriend is probably number one.

The Iberian struggle does feel like the game was patched by someone who just wanted a lot more freedom and it worked! I wish it was less of a special case, or more accurately, I wish the flavor of Iberia were modeled more via cultures, events, and characters (El Cid's life story has so many gems!)

I hope we could see a bit of rebalancing of the skill tree after the summer break. If anyone could get Befriend, it would be one special case for struggles less. Maybe diplomacy perk instead could be the ability to deescalate rivalry, not just Befriend.

 

[Aregodas]

I agree with you that this is a Pandora's box entirely as it is right now, however... The whole struggle mechanic has just been implemented, likely we are witnessing a huge community based test of sorts. Now let's imagine all these freedoms and perks that the Iberian struggle unlocks being also replicated for an Arturian struggle, an Investiture struggle, a Balkan's struggle... you see where I'm getting at.
So long as the struggle as a mechanic isn't forgotten and relegated exclusively to Iberia, we should be good to go as more content comes in. The world will be "equalized" one area at a time. We might even get custom struggles, that'd be amazing.

Now we are only left with one last problem. Once the struggle is ended, regardless of where, all these perks and freedoms are lost... which doesn't incentivize the player to want to put an end to it unless you are very late into the game. This is the real deal for me; and it should be very carefully thought of in advance if struggles are to be implemented more widely across the map; better to do so prior than after the fact.

 

[SeraphAscending]

Because the idea came from this thread, i'll link a suggestion to change how the perk tree handles this.

I wrote this up a few weeks ago.
The idea is to stop barring players from having friends without the respective perk, but only to be less versed in making friends and having fewer benefits of friends without the respective perks.
The same can be done for several other actions.

The list of actions covered in this suggestion are:

• Fabricate Hook scheme (anyone can lie - the question is how good you are at it, and how much you get out of it)
• Demand payment (it's really not complicated... Just let some perks increase the base value - if the base value is lowered without perks)
• Abduct scheme (Really, really difficult already - non-intrigue characters should be very reliant on agents for this to work at all)
• Befriend (Anyone can make friends. Some are just better at it.)

You can read the detailed suggestion [here].

 

[Lord Asgar]

Suggestion to even out the balance between Struggle and non-Struggle realms more without nuking the Perk system altogether: Make a list of those perks which unlock actions people feel should be available to everyone. Then, upon switching to a new ruler, let players have a free pick of a certain percentage of that. Let's say if it's six perks, you can get two or three for free or the like.