This Game Is Sadly Dead to Me

[SnowHawkKiller]

I started playing Crusader Kings II right around the time Charlemagne was released and it quickly became my favorite game in the whole wide world. I'm not exaggerating, it's my most played game in my Steam library and used to be the sole topic of conversation among my friends. You could reasonably say that I was obsessed with CKII. It was the game I had never known I wanted and yet it answered all my expectations for something in a genre I'd never played before.

Everything was going blissfully until the patch that accompanied Conclave was rolled out. Quite a lot of people have spoken about the patch features, but I've never played a game where an addition makes me not want to play it at all. As in ruins the entire gaming experience.

The DLC was for the most part great, but the patch features have destroyed CKII in my eyes. I used to sit down and craft stories as I played. CKII used to feel immersive and I always felt like what I was doing in game was history being written before my eyes and that I was making that history. It was always fun to discuss scenarios that had happened in game as though they were new alternate history and talk about how it would've changed the modern world. Did it bother me that my country was the only nation making history when playing single player? Occasionally but a little bit of RPing got around that.

But now when I play, I don't feel that magic spark anymore. The omnipresent threat mechanic always washes me out of my immersion and the stylus of history no longer writes itself. Coalitions feel so abstract and the removal of player interaction makes me feel so distant from this game. Naturally all this saddens me greatly as I used to think that CKII was the greatest game of all time.

In my multiplayer group on Steam after the release of Conclave less and less people started showing up for the Saturday Games that we host until it became only 3 people for 4 straight weeks. Before the Conclave patch, we'd usually get around 8-12 people every Saturday. Luckily I made the right decision and just last week switched the game to EUIV and got the 10 person turnout I'd been looking for after 4 weeks. People were even leaving the group, and with the game switch the flow reversed to coming instead of going.

I haven't even touched this game since that latest fix for the patch came out. I don't really count playing the Saturday Game with CKII as playing, since it quickly diminished to nothing and lots of people wanted to switch to EUIV. Nothing short of removal of coalitions could I honestly ever see returning CKII back to the fantastical game it used to be.

Threat and coalitions are just too boring, uninspired, and ahistorical to be in this game. As much as I didn't want to admit it to myself as I tried to love the game that had become unlovable, those added features have just killed it for me. I can live with shattered retreat, not forced CtAs (luckily that's being addressed), but most of all not features that completely and blatantly take a crap on what this game was and the historicity that it was built on. I never imagined that a game I loved so unbelievably much would in the blink of an eye become a game that I absolutely loathed and couldn't even bring myself to enjoy anymore.

 

[Sweawm]

I've come back from the distant realm of EUIV recently and found threat is still a little overboard. It would be maybe tolerable if it was halved, or even reduced to a quarter growth that it is now.

Also, the new education system is really devoid of flavor. With a large family, you'd usually have to pick wards and guardians wisely. You used to get events. Now you just set an education focus on birth, sit back and forget about them until you choose another focus based on whatever random traits they've picked up, then forget about them again until adulthood.

 

[Voy]

You ought to try the latest fix patch at least. It fixes some of the annoyances. It will be less of a painful experience.

 

[SnowHawkKiller]

I've come back from the distant realm of EUIV recently and found threat is still a little overboard. It would be maybe tolerable if it was halved, or even reduced to a quarter growth that it is now.

Also, the new education system is really devoid of flavor. With a large family, you'd usually have to pick wards and guardians wisely. You used to get events. Now you just set an education focus on birth, sit back and forget about them until you choose another focus based on whatever random traits they've picked up, then forget about them again until adulthood.

The new education system is such a vast reduction in player interaction and its so uninspired. Like you said, you just sit there and the game automates your child's education. The old system wasn't the best but anything is better than removing player interaction.

 

[Runite]

CKII MP experience is plagued with all kinds of desyncs. That alone is a good reason why CKII MP will never be active as EUIV MP where games can run smoothly. CKII MP games become tedious with rehosting, that alone drives many people away.

CKII MP is dead and Paradox has no reason to fix it. Wait for CK3 and play EU4 MP for the better experience.

 

[kviiri]

I felt the game had got a bit stale way before Conclave - I played it on-off, alternating between EU4. Mods have restored my love for the game, I recommend trying out something like CK2+ or HIP and see if that makes it fresher again.

 

[WarAngel]

I felt the game had got a bit stale way before Conclave - I played it on-off, alternating between EU4. Mods have restored my love for the game, I recommend trying out something like CK2+ or HIP and see if that makes it fresher again.

Hey this is somewhat relevant to the topic, but where can you still download CK2+? Both of the links for it on the wiki appear dead to me and I haven't found any other way to get to it.

 

[kviiri]

Hey this is somewhat relevant to the topic, but where can you still download CK2+? Both of the links for it on the wiki appear dead to me and I haven't found any other way to get to it.

No problem, the download link and installation instructions are in this thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2plus-v4-04-2-main-download-thread.876341/

The mod recently crossed the file size threshold so it's no longer available through Steam workshop, unfortunately. The installation process is easy, though, just download and unzip!

 

[mjohnson85]

Hey this is somewhat relevant to the topic, but where can you still download CK2+? Both of the links for it on the wiki appear dead to me and I haven't found any other way to get to it.

Register you game and go to the user mod section.

 

[Monphat]

You really felt like making the same thread again?

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

I think the threat and coalition mechanics make sense and they're quite easy to manage. Cool off your expansion a bit and it'll wear away, or attack people not joined in any coalition.

 

[Bernard95]

I can understand if Conclave and its patches is not everyone's cup of tea. We all have our playstyles and even I didn't like it much when it first came out but I got used to it after the fixes that came in 2.5.2. As I've said in other posts, threat just requires that you pace yourself a bit, and then when you get blobby you ignore it and blitz your enemies. If you ask me, it's basically the same idea as Victoria 2 in all honesty. Shattered retreat on the other hand is now a copy/paste of EU4 in the sense that armies are no longer going as far as they were in 2.5.1. At times, the AI can even be rather predictable in where its going to go next though admittedly it is a boon to the defender which can of course be a blessing or a curse.

Remember though, you always have the option to roll back to a previous patch or use mods. There are definitely mini mods on the Workshop that remove threat and shattered retreat, in addition to the big overhauls like CK2+ that have tweaked the mechanics from both the patch and DLC.

 

[Iron Chariots]

I've come back from the distant realm of EUIV recently and found threat is still a little overboard. It would be maybe tolerable if it was halved, or even reduced to a quarter growth that it is now.

Also, the new education system is really devoid of flavor. With a large family, you'd usually have to pick wards and guardians wisely. You used to get events. Now you just set an education focus on birth, sit back and forget about them until you choose another focus based on whatever random traits they've picked up, then forget about them again until adulthood.

Honestly, the old education system didn't have real choices either. You'd either assign somebody else as a guardian and forget, or if it was a potential heir you'd educate yourself and occasionally get an event where you pick the clearly correct answer to get a good trait instead of a bad one. At least now there's the consideration that, e.g., picking a brave guardian to override the potential slow trait your child might otherwise pick up if you choose that focus.

 

[es333]

In my multiplayer group on Steam after the release of Conclave less and less people started showing up for the Saturday Games that we host until it became only 3 people for 4 straight weeks. Before the Conclave patch, we'd usually get around 8-12 people every Saturday. Luckily I made the right decision and just last week switched the game to EUIV and got the 10 person turnout I'd been looking for after 4 weeks. People were even leaving the group, and with the game switch the flow reversed to coming instead of going.

I haven't even touched this game since that latest fix for the patch came out. I don't really count playing the Saturday Game with CKII as playing, since it quickly diminished to nothing and lots of people wanted to switch to EUIV. Nothing short of removal of coalitions could I honestly ever see returning CKII back to the fantastical game it used to be.

Paradox claims that the number of people who play CK2 has been stable after the horrific Conclave patch. I have been playing strategy games since 2001 and it's the first time when a patch to a game like this completely makes me lose interest in the game and hate it. People keep telling me that I'm a minority and most people love the new mechanics (claimed in the thread I started) while I think that a big chunk of long-time players have left CK2.

I cannot really understand why Paradox is trying to kill off one of its best titles. I think that I have only one of the older DLCs for EU IV so I'm not going to play that and I have't played EU IV in years.

 

[Aries666]

I started playing Crusader Kings II right around the time Charlemagne was released and it quickly became my favorite game in the whole wide world. I'm not exaggerating, it's my most played game in my Steam library and used to be the sole topic of conversation among my friends. You could reasonably say that I was obsessed with CKII. It was the game I had never known I wanted and yet it answered all my expectations for something in a genre I'd never played before.

Everything was going blissfully until the patch that accompanied Conclave was rolled out. Quite a lot of people have spoken about the patch features, but I've never played a game where an addition makes me not want to play it at all. As in ruins the entire gaming experience.

The DLC was for the most part great, but the patch features have destroyed CKII in my eyes. I used to sit down and craft stories as I played. CKII used to feel immersive and I always felt like what I was doing in game was history being written before my eyes and that I was making that history. It was always fun to discuss scenarios that had happened in game as though they were new alternate history and talk about how it would've changed the modern world. Did it bother me that my country was the only nation making history when playing single player? Occasionally but a little bit of RPing got around that.

But now when I play, I don't feel that magic spark anymore. The omnipresent threat mechanic always washes me out of my immersion and the stylus of history no longer writes itself. Coalitions feel so abstract and the removal of player interaction makes me feel so distant from this game. Naturally all this saddens me greatly as I used to think that CKII was the greatest game of all time.

In my multiplayer group on Steam after the release of Conclave less and less people started showing up for the Saturday Games that we host until it became only 3 people for 4 straight weeks. Before the Conclave patch, we'd usually get around 8-12 people every Saturday. Luckily I made the right decision and just last week switched the game to EUIV and got the 10 person turnout I'd been looking for after 4 weeks. People were even leaving the group, and with the game switch the flow reversed to coming instead of going.

I haven't even touched this game since that latest fix for the patch came out. I don't really count playing the Saturday Game with CKII as playing, since it quickly diminished to nothing and lots of people wanted to switch to EUIV. Nothing short of removal of coalitions could I honestly ever see returning CKII back to the fantastical game it used to be.

Threat and coalitions are just too boring, uninspired, and ahistorical to be in this game. As much as I didn't want to admit it to myself as I tried to love the game that had become unlovable, those added features have just killed it for me. I can live with shattered retreat, not forced CtAs (luckily that's being addressed), but most of all not features that completely and blatantly take a crap on what this game was and the historicity that it was built on. I never imagined that a game I loved so unbelievably much would in the blink of an eye become a game that I absolutely loathed and couldn't even bring myself to enjoy anymore.

Sorry to say this and it's not meant personally but this is about as wishy washy a critique as one could write and can be summarised thusly, "I don't like coalitions".

 

[Aries666]

The new education system is such a vast reduction in player interaction and its so uninspired. Like you said, you just sit there and the game automates your child's education. The old system wasn't the best but anything is better than removing player interaction.

In the old system you select a guardian and that's it, I fail to see the difference. Even if you educate a child you only get occasional choices that are almost always false choices (like choosing between gluttonous and temperate).

 

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Also, the new education system is really devoid of flavor. With a large family, you'd usually have to pick wards and guardians wisely. You used to get events. Now you just set an education focus on birth, sit back and forget about them until you choose another focus based on whatever random traits they've picked up, then forget about them again until adulthood.

I haven't bought Conclave, and I haven't noticed any change to the education system, so I don't think it's part of the patch.

To be honest, I'd prefer to be less involved in education. It's not a really interesting part of the game, and it means that the game keeps pestering me with the chore of choosing guardians. I'd be happy either to remove education from the game entirely, or to automate it completely so that I don't have to spend time on it.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

I love Conclave, the new patch is decent.

Just because the way you used to play is much harder right now, doesn't mean that the game isn't any less fun.

In it's core, CK2 is a game of intrigue, not war.

You're supposed to get claims on an entire kingdom, or become heir to a kingdom. The game isn't designed for people to covert to a heresy, holy war a kingdom to death, and then convert back to the main religion.

The Devs recognize that people play in different styles, hence the "Bonsai Tree" post a few weeks ago.

Soon, the alliance mechanic will be fixed. That will good. However, you must recognize that you need to adapt to the game, nothing you play will be a perfect fit.

 

[NathanD77]

I am in the same boat OP , it used to be open to role playing , now it is just dull . They turned a feudal simulator into ...I'm not sure . It's no longer CK2 and it's not quite EU4 . The SR is ridiculous as they somehow expect armies with no direct communication to all meet up in a distant realm and resupply ....whilst sprinting .

 

[Rognvaldr19]

I kind of would sympathise with you, but this the third thread I've seen with you in it and turning simple discussions into about how you specifically do not like the game anymore (and getting toxic with people for not agreeing with you), I mean I totally get that you don't like Conclave or the patch, but have you ever thought about turning Conclave off and getting a mod to disable patch features? It really would be that simple to get rid of your problems with CKII.

For example, I used to really hate the Decadence system back when Sons of Abraham was coming out and I had a slow laptop that was having trouble running the game, so I just popped over to the workshop and downloaded two mods that returned the Decadence system back into it's first original form and a map mod that got rid of the lag. It really is that simple.

I hand on heart suggest that's what you do to stop this obsession you have with this issue.

You really felt like making the same thread again?

It's not just here either, he's going to other people's threads and complaining about it too. I'm starting to wonder if he's a troll, or really think spamming the issue will magically change things.