The absurdity of the new faction system

[indika_tates]

Something I noticed since the last patch (i'm currently playing the beta version) is that faction system is completely broken. I found the easiest way to avoid your vassals declaring civil war for you every time, is very simple. Having 2x their levies is enough. But when your empire grows and you make your first vassal kings there is no moment in the game where your king's vassals are not fighting either for council power or for warring oust the ruler.

I noticed that every time one of my vassal kings (vicerroyalties) die there is an active faction against him, and another thing that's is broken is that the current war don't end with the death of the current ruler and you "inherit" it. One of the reasons it happens is because every vassal is permanently plotting against their liege no matter if the relations are good (60-70+). The mechanic of it is that if vassals check that their levies united are stronger than the liege one is the moment for everyone to plot no matter for what.

And I mean permanently without any kind of exaggeration. I have had to wait 50 years to change an inheritance law because my vassals were permanently fighting theirselves. I tend to choose vassals with good diplomatic skills but it doesn't change anything. Also, the vassals usually are buying favors each other to force them to join their factions endlessly. What is hilarious is that I have seen the same exarch pushed out from the throne, then he warred against the one which pushed him out and as soon as he recovered the kingdom there was another civil war on the same terms. Just stupid I have to say.

 

[DarthDanMan]

On a side note, do you know what happens if you surrender to one of those "oust dead viceroy" factions? I'm too scared to find out if it ousts you.

 

[indika_tates]

On a side note, do you know what happens if you surrender to one of those "oust dead viceroy" factions? I'm too scared to find out if it ousts you.

In my case, the vicerroyal title converted to a feudal one so surrending was not an option. It's irritating because you have to land your retinue and spam assault until you get 100% score and when you have ten vassal kings it happens very often.

 

[indika_tates]

This is the current situation of my roman empire game. At the moment I have 4 civil wars and if there is not one active is because there is a truce. This is only an example, because i'm too lazy at moment to post screen of them because there are a lot.

And a full image where you can see that it's happening at the same time.

 

[furytale]

I had exactly zero faction rebellions in a 769-1200 campaign. I had entire Ireland for demesne, empire of Alba, 2 big king vassals (Andalusia and Aquitane), a bunch of small kings like Jerusalem, Scandinavia kings, Lithuania, Middle Francia etc. 20 kings and 1 merchant republic. 2 big kings usually were advisors so they can't join factions. NAPing them also works well. Council had full power except Council Authority. I focused military organization and town infrastracture like usual, so I had big retinue and a lot of money. I had to declare King's peace 2 times to change succession law. Most of the time vassal kings fought some kind of internal rebellion like you said but it doesn't concern me as a ruler. Expansion was somewhat slow because of coalitions, in late game I only did crusades and de jure county grabs to start kingom de jure drift into my empire.

So my opinion is : Theoretically factions can fire, if you have exceptionally bad ruler and exceptionally ambitious vassals, but in practice it does not happen. Just like it was since factions were introduced. Nothing new about them in HL & Conclave. I didn't even use Spymaster on vassals like I had before.

 

[kmh42]

I have a huge germanic Scandinavian empire with 10 vassal kings. Danmark, Norwegian, Finland, Ireland, Scotland Wales, pomeranian, Poland, Rus, Mongolia (for the achievement), Perm, Andalusien. I had little rebellions. One huge after a Succession but I won and now most of the vassal kings are viceroys. . I even managed to get a abolished council.
A huge (10) and build up demesne help a lot. It's still possible to get happy vassal in an empire but I admit it its much harder now which is great

After I read the OP again I see that I totally missed the point. Sorry

I have to agree that the faction system needs to be looked at but I don't think it's broken.

 

[szmik]

Problem with factions is members don't join wars, just sit at their castles with popcorn watching. One small change easily implemented could be to allow calling them to war as allies, just like Pagan vassals.

 

[Ultima_Ratio]

Problem with factions is members don't join wars, just sit at their castles with popcorn watching. One small change easily implemented could be to allow calling them to war as allies, just like Pagan vassals.

Except that the faction leader gets the faction members full levies. That's because the AI would otherwise be bad at coordinating their effort.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Except that the faction leader gets the faction members full levies. That's because the AI would otherwise be bad at coordinating their effort.

That's the way it used to work, though, and the AI were certainly more threatening than they are now. Prior to... I think Rajas of India? faction revolts were relatively threatening. Ever since the temporary title system, they've been neutered.

 

[Hecaton]

That's the way it used to work, though, and the AI were certainly more threatening than they are now. Prior to... I think Rajas of India? faction revolts were relatively threatening. Ever since the temporary title system, they've been neutered.

And the temporary title system caused a ripple effect of gamebreaking clusterfucks throughout the game system. Whoever implemented that wanted it to happen whether it was good for the game or not.

 

[szmik]

Except that the faction leader gets the faction members full levies. That's because the AI would otherwise be bad at coordinating their effort.

But then factions with player involved are twice as threatening, not the least because player uses his levies too.

Anyway, AI logic is awful when it comes to using warscore system. It sieges just whatever is there instead of going for the throat (capital and domesne). Surely it goes for war target if there's one, but without it ... meh. It should just default for throat when there's no specific target or when specific target is already conquered.

 

[Zolotaya]

the AI were certainly more threatening than they are now.

no, they were even easier to game and defeat and taking advantage of faction wars from the outside was far too simplistic. Going back to the old system would make CK2 the most boring it has ever been.

 

[yezhanquan]

In short, I don't mind seeing the old system when troop numbers are concerned, but I like the new system of the rebels having a head so that the lesser rebels don't get wars declared on them and losing land to opportunistic players.

 

[szmik]

In short, I don't mind seeing the old system when troop numbers are concerned, but I like the new system of the rebels having a head so that the lesser rebels don't get wars declared on them and losing land to opportunistic players.

Wait, I'm just doing that when picking off blobs.

 

[fanoI]

The old faction system not difficult but was simply boring you will always win in the end but you have to fight 20-30 micro wars at the same time... annoying.

The new system is better and probably more historical too the faction head declares himself an Anti King and create an Anti Realm which you fight.

There are nevertheless problems:

1. The example in the OP should not be a valid faction target a Viceroy set by the liege can never be removed via faction and the liege cannot ever accept a random character ruling the realm this is not the feudal system anymore! I could accept a sort of "petition" to the Emperor to remove a Viceroy with a process maybe too...
2. A faction to make a character King should have the assent of the character in object and if he accepts he would become the faction head automatically. How many times IA declares a war in your behalf and loses it and you - that were not interested too - are put in jail?
   
3. Sometimes yes they join faction only for "fun" for example why your chosen successor should create / join a faction to make weak the realm? The realm that in future he is meant to govern!
   
4. IA seems to not cope well with it. While for the player is easy to win factions (or to avoid them to fire too) IA sometimes loses wars that could easily won simply because "forget" to spawn the troops

 

[Rascar Capac]

In short, I don't mind seeing the old system when troop numbers are concerned, but I like the new system of the rebels having a head so that the lesser rebels don't get wars declared on them and losing land to opportunistic players.

But rebels are currently denying their feudal contract. They should be defenseless and in chaos with no one to protect them.

 

[Robert II]

In short, I don't mind seeing the old system when troop numbers are concerned, but I like the new system of the rebels having a head so that the lesser rebels don't get wars declared on them and losing land to opportunistic players.

Why though? If rebels are losing land then the empire is also losing land which would make a nice change.

 

[Silversweeeper]

Why though? If rebels are losing land then the empire is also losing land which would make a nice change.

Agreed. If the old "attack as many revolters as you want and the pre-war liege at the same time" strategy had been prevented (by e.g. putting a cooldown on war declarations (which wouldn't affect the AI at all as it doesn't start multiple wars at the same time) and allowing the revolters to call in one another as allies) it would have made it harder to exploit while still making it likely that the ruler that was being attacked in the civil war would have to fight hard to avoid losing any land during the revolt. With the old system, a guy with two duchies might attack a duke rebelling as part of a faction revolt and have a reasonable chance of winning his war unless the duke's liege signed a peace treaty or walked over there to drive off the attackers, while the chances of weak neighbours trying to make opportunistic gains vs. someone holding a revolt title are close to zero as the revolter outnumbers them on paper and the AI doesn't start wars if it is massively outnumbered.

Aside from the 200k event troops that sometimes rose in the same province despite it making no sense (which would be very easy to reduce to a reasonable number), the old system was great. Both sides had the ability to call in foreign allies, allowing a war to quickly turn from "Free imprisonment and an opinion bonus with the loyalists? Thank you for rebelling!" to "The faction leader is a Karling? Oh gods! Hire all the mercenaries that are possible to hire and seriously consider assassination or white peace!", and it was possible that enough of your rebelling vassals' land was taken by other realms during a long civil war that you ended up in a position where the conquests of the last few decades before the civil war had been undone and realms that you once had little to fear from had grown enough to make attacking them unthinkable for the forseeable future.


I don't think that I lost more than a few faction wars with the old system (at least not once I knew how it worked and started keeping a war chest at all times), and I didn't white peace out of many either, but the number of faction wars that I managed to walk away from without losing any land was also relatively small. The wars that didn't cause me to lose any land generally took a lot of time and money to fight as I had to divert my armies to fight neighbouring realms from time to time, allowing my traitorous vassals to retake land I had sieged down, and it was possible that the gains made during the reign of an emperor would be measured in counties rather than duchies or kingdoms due to civil wars dragging on and other realms taking the opportunity to steal land during said civil wars.