The Chivalry tree really needs to be toned down.

[Keinwyn]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned combat width, which will be suppressing your knights' kill numbers.
Other things: York holy site gives 20% knight effectiveness. 4 prowess guy could have been higher but was wounded/maimed before death.

 

[MatthewP]

I don’t know about the larger point of whether there are too many sources of knight effectiveness. But to the OP’s point that chivalry is too powerful, I don’t see it. The skill trees are supposed to be game-changing powerful. Look at intrigue with murder plots, buying claims, avarice quickly funding whatever building project. Basically all chivalry does is strengthen knights (plus some pretty minor romance stuff). If it didn’t do it well the tree would be useless. It’s a good thing, and consistent with the rest of the game, that picking it is a no-brainer if you want to go fight battles with knights as your centerpiece. TBH, in most of my games I don’t pick it past the very early game because men at arms are better.

 

[x4077]

On reinforcements, I'd agree, that unexpected or sudden replacement of knights (like from battles), should have some delay. In my view, losing one knight is like losing 25-30, so replacing that many should take a while. How do you do that in a game situation where each knight represents an abstract 30 knights? Is the "slot" kept open, even though a person has courtiers who can become knights?

Considering knights only start to leave the battle (unless killed) after levies and men-at-arms are gone, it is obvious that their inflated kill numbers are because they steal the kills (or just the credit) of your mooks doing the real hard work.

You both are misunderstanding my reinforcements comment a bit.

Let's say an MAA regiment takes half of its total HP as damage, and so half of the men in that regiment are killed. You now have a regiment at 50% strength for the next fight the next day and the foreseeable future until it slowly replenishes itself back up to 100%. Same is true for levy regiments, any losses they take are gone until they have time to replenish.

Now take a knight that takes half of his total HP as damage during a fight. As long as the knight isn't captured or killed during the fight via an event, the next day poof, the knight and his phantom retinue can be back in a new fight at 100% strength, no delays or loss of effectiveness whatsoever.

 

[CaptainChiatrol]

They aren't actually individuals. It's shown when you have a few places in missions and you hire some men who raise your prowess. The knight includes their personal retinue of men at arms that stay with him/her. So the kill count isn't that weird considering it's a group of guys with the absolute best equipment possible rolling a warhorse on the faces of some peasant farmers.

But other then that I have nothing. Chivalry's affect on knights is a tad wonky.

 

[NoUsernamesHere]

If you are a peasant armed with a stick, what levies represent, a person completely covered in steel with a warhorse as big as three of you is the closest thing you will get to a medieval terminator.

No actual army in the history of the world ever fielded “peasants armed with sticks”. If you’re going off to war, you bring people who have enough training and equipment to be effective warriors, full stop. Anything less would only be a liability. The representation of levies in ck3 is ahistorical.

 

[Grand Admiral Edward]

I don’t know about the larger point of whether there are too many sources of knight effectiveness. But to the OP’s point that chivalry is too powerful, I don’t see it. The skill trees are supposed to be game-changing powerful. Look at intrigue with murder plots, buying claims, avarice quickly funding whatever building project. Basically all chivalry does is strengthen knights (plus some pretty minor romance stuff). If it didn’t do it well the tree would be useless. It’s a good thing, and consistent with the rest of the game, that picking it is a no-brainer if you want to go fight battles with knights as your centerpiece. TBH, in most of my games I don’t pick it past the very early game because men at arms are better.

The problem with the buying claims is you can't buy Kingdom titles if you already have a claim on a Kingdom or Empire (or are actually a king or emperor), or Empire titles if you're already an Emperor (likewise, if you HAVE a claim on an empire title, you can't buy another).

 

[Secuter]

I think it would help a lot if the knights retinues weren't abstracted. Portraying actual numbers would be a lot better, and make it more balance-able. Either that, or do as another commenter said and make them into some sort of officers. Those officers could be attached to a retinue as its commander and provide a small boost to it.

 

[King Anund]

No actual army in the history of the world ever fielded “peasants armed with sticks”. If you’re going off to war, you bring people who have enough training and equipment to be effective warriors, full stop. Anything less would only be a liability. The representation of levies in ck3 is ahistorical.

Of course they didn't, in fact historically for much of Western Europe's Medieval History armies were but Knights and their pretty well trained companions. But that is not what is represented in game as levies are worse than light infantry, so they represent no more than peasants badly equipped and untrained. There is no surprise then than a legendary warrior of 29 Prowess like shown in the picture can kill so many of them. If you look at OP screenshots most of his kills are levies, while Men-at-Arms are not that decimated. I suspect that 95%, if not more, of those kills are just Levies.

 

[MarkFranz]

but let's keep in mind that knights can often be injured or killed in battle... so it's not like they are immortal space marines.

And there goes person who know Warhammer lore only by memes. Space marines too can be killed or injured in battle, but before it they will kill thousands or more enemies. And that's the point. There phrase what says one space marine worth one hundred mortals. And i see many screenshot where one knights kills more than just hundred soldiers in one battle. So for me, they when properly buffed and with decent proweress can be easy count as space marines.

But real question is, why so? As i say before, anwer is simple - Realm wide buffs. 3 Militarry academy, 8 elephantry/camelry/Warrior lodges, and you have unstopable killing machines what can wipe armies like on this screenshot. And number of buildings what i provide above, is not upper limit, but just are example of fairly accessible size of realm, what still make knights feel like genetically modified warriors from 30 millenia and forward.

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

And there goes person who know Warhammer lore only by memes. Space marines too can be killed or injured in battle, but before it they will kill thousands or more enemies. And that's the point. There phrase what says one space marine worth one hundred mortals. And i see many screenshot where one knights kills more than just hundred soldiers in one battle. So for me, they when properly buffed and with decent proweress can be easy count as space marines.

But real question is, why so? As i say before, anwer is simple - Realm wide buffs. 3 Militarry academy, 8 elephantry/camelry/Warrior lodges, and you have unstopable killing machines what can wipe armies like on this screenshot. And number of buildings what i provide above, is not upper limit, but just are example of fairly accessible size of realm, what still make knights feel like genetically modified warriors from 30 millenia and forward.

Nearly all of that army is levies, which are just bad. I do not expect the AI to be capable of maxing out on knight numbers and effectiveness, but ten seems rather few for the Basileus. He is very far from men-at-arms cap too. AI sucking in Paradox games is nothing new of course.

I suppose pushing quite this far in knight numbers and effectiveness does have hilarious results as their effect on the army power is multiplicative. On the other hand, to tie it back to this thread subject, chivalry tree is rather small part of that power. Granted, domain boosts in the opening post were not as ludicrous.

 

[Ivashanko]

As far as I am aware there is no reason to believe the in-game knights each represents several hundred men. Otherwise those men would be represented in sieges, or attrition calculations, or something.

 

[Amtep]

As far as I am aware there is no reason to believe the game represents each knight represents several hundred men. Otherwise those men would be represented in sieges, or attrition calculations, or something.

Well, there's one reason: the events where you get a bigger "personal guard" and this is reflected as an increase in your Prowess.

Which doesn't really make sense for duels, unless you're cheating, but okay.

 

[Ivashanko]

Well, there's one reason: the events where you get a bigger "personal guard" and this is reflected as an increase in your Prowess.

Which doesn't really make sense for duels, unless you're cheating, but okay.

True say. But, for the most part, the game suggests that the knights are individuals instead of leaders of lances.

 

[Torredebelem]

I actually made a thread about this problem once before, last year, but after starting up playing again recently I see that it's still every bit as much of an issue as it used to be. The kill counts caused by knights whose liege has gone down the Chivalry tree is cartoonishly ludicrous for a game that should try and keep things at least semi-realistic. Battles that should be a major defeat for one side can instead turn into a pyrrhic victory for the other, just due to a handful of characters that don't even necessarily need to have extremely high levels of prowess. A few screenshots from a recent battle against Ivar the Boneless' army in 876:
View attachment 720088View attachment 720089View attachment 720090

797 out of 1,354 kills were caused by 9 men (and potentially abstracted retinues), against an army of 6,208, with the technology that was available in the year 876...which is total nonsense. His army also had 25 Huscarls, which should be representative of upper echelon soldiers of that day and region - and they managed a total of 27 kills. As demonstrated in the third screenshot, an Earl with a prowess level of 4 managed that exact same number of kills even though he died partway through the battle.

If knights are deemed to have too low of an impact if they're "only" killing a much more reasonable number of enemy troops, perhaps they could also be treated like officers, providing some sort of bonus to whatever army they're a part of. I'm fine with them being relevant, and even "super soldiers" to some extent, with the high prowess characters being individually superior to even high-end men-at-arms. But there needs to be an upper limit that is dramatically lower than what is currently possible.

I mean, the #1 Norse knight in the screenshot above killed 224 men with his 25 prowess, which was 1 kill shy of being triple the amount of my side's top 4 knights combined, which ranged from 19-23 prowess. And the aforementioned Norse Earl with 4 prowess had 2 more kills than my top knight, who had 23 prowess. If that doesn't demonstrate that something is seriously wrong with the Chivalry tree - especially when that Earl died partway through the battle (listed in events as simply killed, and not "killed while running away") - I don't know what does.

You need to mod the value of Knights in order to achieve your suggestion. That's what I did, with success. Now the Knights cause a much more sensible amount of casualties.

 

[Tuo]

Well, there's one reason: the events where you get a bigger "personal guard" and this is reflected as an increase in your Prowess.

Which doesn't really make sense for duels, unless you're cheating, but okay.

I actually thought about that a while back - the personal guard doesn't fight with you in the duel, sure, but that doesn't mean they can't support you from the sidelines. You might have trained with them recently, and they might give you advice that puts you ahead of a duelist who goes without such company. Perhaps you even copied the move you won the duel with from one of the armed men in your retinue. Even in single combat, it helps to have company.

 

[Riamus]

I've seen a couple posts here from devs stating that the knights represent the knights and their retinues and not just single individuals. Whether that should be better represented in game so it doesn't seem so strange is really up to the individual. I think it's fine as-is, but I also don't really care if they clearly state "knight and retinue" or whatever in the game. As far as ludicrous numbers, that can happen but it doesn't seem to happen all that often. Or perhaps I just don't bother looking at all the details of every battle so may miss some of it.

 

[newtlord]

I feel like there's two questions to be asked here: "are knights overpowered in general", and "is the Chivalry perk which says it boosts knights by 75% but actually boosts them by 750% overpowered".

 

[Bscheetz]

I mean, the #1 Norse knight in the screenshot above killed 224 men with his 25 prowess, which was 1 kill shy of being triple the amount of my side's top 4 knights combined, which ranged from 19-23 prowess. And the aforementioned Norse Earl with 4 prowess had 2 more kills than my top knight, who had 23 prowess. If that doesn't demonstrate that something is seriously wrong with the Chivalry tree - especially when that Earl died partway through the battle (listed in events as simply killed, and not "killed while running away") - I don't know what does.

Perhaps the way to reconcile this is to say that the kill total given for a knight reflects not only personal kills with his own weapon, but his impact on the battlefield overall.

A very high-prowess knight raises the morale of everyone around him, foils enemy maneuvers that might have succeeded against another opponent, etc.

Maybe those 224 casualties resulted because the knight in question held a particularly valuable piece of ground, and that broke an enemy charge. And so forth.

 

[Keinwyn]

I feel like there's two questions to be asked here: "are knights overpowered in general", and "is the Chivalry perk which says it boosts knights by 75% but actually boosts them by 750% overpowered".

No, chivalry does not boost knights by 750%.

Here is a break-down of why OP's knights produced so many fewer fatal casualties than his opponent:

OP knight effectiveness: 100%
Opponent knight effectiveness: 195% (chivalry: +75%, holy site in Jorvik: +20%)

Assuming no reinforcing occurred, combat width at the beginning of battle: 3840 (total soldiers/2*0.8[hills])

OP day 1 damage reduction from combat width: 38%
Opponent day 1 damage reduction from combat width: 0%

Though at the end of the battle damage reduction would reach 60% for the victor, so lets average it at 49%

Then consider damage multipliers from advantage. I have no way to know in which direction these went.

Then consider fatal casualty reduction increase. Chivalry has 'Never back down' Perk -20% fatal casualties. There are also strategist, unyielding defender, and aggressive attacker traits.

So, from the things we know, inflicted fatal casualties should be:
OP knights: 39%
Opponent knights: 195%

It's a 5:1 disadvantage.

 

[MatthewP]

Right, I think the OP isn't saying anything against knights per se, he's saying that Chivalry, instead of having a +75% bonus on knight effectiveness, seems to accidentally have +750% bonus instead, which needs to be scaled down.

I feel like there's two questions to be asked here: "are knights overpowered in general", and "is the Chivalry perk which says it boosts knights by 75% but actually boosts them by 750% overpowered".

the OP doesn't say this. Is there any reason to think it's the case? If it's true it seems obvious it should be fixed, but I don't think it is (of course could be convinced by evidence). There are many possible explanations for why the OP's opponents had more kills: buildings giving knight/champion ability, combat width, the player having troops with lower toughness (levies, bowmen), etc. Of course all on top of the 75% from Chivalry.

Edit: Ninja'd by @Keinwyn's more thorough post saying the same thing.