Threat needs to be changed for the sanity of the game

[indika_tates]

Hello. Well, I can't even start describing the monster you have created with the new threat system. Copying aggresive expansion from EU4 you decided to include in the game a system where minor nations can defend theirselves from major powers.

But I found a lot of problems. A lot of. First off, this is not Eu4, and not the same era. Since the beginning of the game with Byzantium i'm playing im on 99% threat and there is no way to lower it. This is a constantly ancient world war every time I declare war against anyone just because every nation on the world is on a defensive pact against me.

A screen describes it better:

So it seems that every pagan on this game is in a coalition against me. No matter if they are Norse, or Tengri or Animist. Does it make sense? Of course not. But this is not the only defensive pact. I have one of them for each religion of this game. For example, King of Lombardy have another one against me even without having been at war since the start of the game.

What happens in EU4? Well, a country can't join a coalition against you if they don't have enough aggresive expansion. Nearbiest nations of your conquests gets more aggresive expansion, and fartest ones don't. And there are other factors like culture or religion. For example, the Kingdom of Portugal don't care too much if you conquer a heathen province in Africa from an animist "nation" closer to their colonies.

Threat is a static number and this is the first error. For example I declared a holy war for the Duchy of Cilicia and my threat increased 25%. Why it increases the same for muslim nations than for pagan ones? Does the king of Sjaelland cares about what happens in the other corner of the world? It makes sense that nearly muslim rulers care about my expansion on Syria but not a pagan from Iceland which shouldn't be able to know that an empire called Byzantium exists. It's just a matter of distance and common sense.

In this particular coalition of the attached image, you can see that a guy of Gotland is in a defensive pact against me. What? They are about 10.000km far from my provinces And why pagan pact unites all kind of pagans? It should be a difference between norses, or tengris and the other pagan religions of the game. Because it's not too hard to see what happens at the moment.

And the worst thing about it is that it can't slow your expansion. If you choose your targets carefully you can insta-win every war just assaulting every fort with enough troops.

So it's hard to give a suggestion of how to rework it because it's completely broken at the moment.

 

[heliostellar]

Welcome to post-Conclave CK2...

 

[Moarice]

Not to mention that the amount of Threat generated makes really little sense. A holy war for Prussia gave me 6% threat. That's enough to start first defensive pacts. Come on, why should anyone even give a single damn about a king of a small (3 duchies) kingdom getting 3 more provinces?
Meanwhile, as a tribal count which conquered all of what is today Estonia and Latvia in about 20 years, I got... 0% threat. With anyone. Wha...?

 

[kmh42]

I am in a Norse game and I conquered Scotland, Norwegen, Sweden, and Wales and half of Denmark, Finland and England. Till now all defensive pact are very reasonable. I like the way it is now. Not perfect but much better than berfore. fine tuning is welcoming
To the OP: You started to play the strongest power in the game and you expand like crazy. You broke more then the threat mechanic. You ignore ever limitation in game just to get big. This mechanic is more for an roleplay or immersion play style.

 

[indika_tates]

I am in a Norse game and I conquered Scotland, Norwegen, Sweden, and Wales and half of Denmark, Finland and England. Till now all defensive pact are very reasonable. I like the way it is now. Not perfect but much better than berfore. fine tuning is welcoming
To the OP: You started to play the strongest power in the game and you expand like crazy. You broke more then the threat mechanic. You ignore ever limitation in game just to get big. This mechanic is more for an roleplay or immersion play style.

I don't agree. I conquered Rome, the Duchy of Alexandria, Jerusalem for mending the schism. And slavic pagan territories that are in my de-jure empire. I mean, reasonable conquering (with the exception of the Wallachia kingdom which was the latest one). Maybe your defensive pacts are going well in your game but as you can see in the screen, that's not happening to me.

 

[RforRush]

And what did you expected? That threat is just for empires which control half of Europe?

 

[indika_tates]

And what did you expected? That threat is just for empires which control half of Europe?

Well I expected not having a count from Gotland in a coalition against me. Do you think it makes sense?

 

[RforRush]

Well I expected not having a count from Gotland in a coalition against me. Do you think it makes sense?

Okay, he leaves the coalition and joins a defensive pack. Are you happy now?

 

[Xinkc]

Copying aggresive expansion from EU4 you decided to include in the game a system where minor nations can defend theirselves from major powers.

I hate it when people mention that Infamy/Threat is a copy of EU4's Aggressive Expansion because they're not the same. If Infamy/Threat was the same, it would be much more reasonable.

Anyways, I'm a little annoyed that simple inheritance of a title leads to infamy. It's not my fault that a kingdom I married a daughter off to matrilinearly elected her husband to be king, their daughter inherits, then somehow I become the elected heir.

 

[indika_tates]

The way that aggresive expansion works in EU4 is a refined improvement during expansion and patches. It has changed since it's beginning a lot. It has been polished multiple times and nowadays a majority of players agree that is in a good shape. I understand that is the first patch where a similar mechanism is introduced to CK2 but to be honest they didn't have tested it at all, just because if you do so you understand quickly that it's not working as expected.

 

[Rags17]

:
Anyways, I'm a little annoyed that simple inheritance of a title leads to infamy. It's not my fault that a kingdom I married a daughter off to matrilinearly elected her husband to be king, their daughter inherits, then somehow I become the elected heir.

Boo hoo, tell it to Charles V - threat is threat whether it is from conquest or inheritance.

 

[Xinkc]

Boo hoo, tell it to Charles V - threat is threat whether it is from conquest or inheritance.

Would be nice if there was the ability to decline randomly inherited titles for a prestige hit. I didn't want that threat, didn't expect it, and it was the kingdom of Africa when I was all the way up in Brittany.

 

[crukin]

Would be nice if there was the ability to decline randomly inherited titles for a prestige hit. I didn't want that threat, didn't expect it, and it was the kingdom of Africa when I was all the way up in Brittany.

If you don't want it you can give it away.

 

[gdj]

This thread is example why Pdx should not remove threat/infamy or whatever you like to call it.

So, it is only 819 and you have rolled over Egypt, Georgia, most of the Balkans, Wallachia and even Rome, and you wonder why the world hates you. Really?

It has been demanded since the very first version of CK2 that something has to been done about this blobbing nonsense, now we finally have a mechanic for this. Some things have to be tweaked as always, but the concept is just fine. A few weeks back i would not have believed that his game would mature to this level (even seduction was finally fixed!), but now it has become enjoyable again for me. There is no way Pdx could take all these "damn i cant conquer the planet between breakfast and noon"-threads about threat seriously, and i´m very glad about it.

 

[Castorem]

This thread is example why Pdx should not remove threat/infamy or whatever you like to call it.

So, it is only 819 and you have rolled over Egypt, Georgia, most of the Balkans, Wallachia and even Rome, and you wonder why the world hates you. Really?

It has been demanded since the very first version of CK2 that something has to been done about this blobbing nonsense, now we finally have a mechanic for this. Some things have to be tweaked as always, but the concept is just fine. A few weeks back i would not have believed that his game would mature to this level (even seduction was finally fixed!), but now it has become enjoyable again for me. There is no way Pdx could take all these "damn i cant conquer the planet between breakfast and noon"-threads about threat seriously, and i´m very glad about it.

A pagan who is thousands of kilometres far from you, should not give two shits, when you conquer a duchy in the part of the world he never heard of. What defense? You aren't expanding in his direction, you are not threatening him. This is ridiculous, if they want to keep this mechanic, at least fix it to seem slightly reasonable. I never heard of an enormous coalition against the Seljuks or the whole world uniting to fight the Mongols.

 

[gdj]

A pagan who is thousands of kilometres far from you, should not give two shits, when you conquer a duchy in the part of the world he never heard of. What defense? You aren't expanding in his direction, you are not threatening him

A pagan who is 1000 km away should not be a obstacle for your expansion either, no matter whether he joins the pact or not.

I never heard of an enormous coalition against the Seljuks or the whole world uniting to fight the Mongols.

I never heard or read about empires whose strenght grows linearly with his size either. Under this logic, the HRE or ERE (or China..) would already have conquered the entire world. In reality, large empires had a much harder time to muster troops than smaller compact kingdoms.

The way i see it, there are only 2 reasonable ways to limit this blobbing: 1) a threat/infamy mechanic that is punishing as it is now, or 2) stiff penalties in terms of levies and taxes for growing, making p.ex. Byzantium neraly as weak as Sicily/Apulia in 1066.

I´m pretty sure that option 2 would cause even more whining and ranting than threat/infamy. Regardless, all the threads about this topic i have seen in the past weeks all point to the demand that expansion should be easier - and it shouldn´t be.

 

[kmh42]

It has been demanded since the very first version of CK2 that something has to been done about this blobbing nonsense, now we finally have a mechanic for this. Some things have to be tweaked as always, but the concept is just fine. A few weeks back i would not have believed that his game would mature to this level (even seduction was finally fixed!), but now it has become enjoyable again for me. There is no way Pdx could take all these "damn i cant conquer the planet between breakfast and noon"-threads about threat seriously, and i´m very glad about it.

I agreed wit that.

We are talking about a game and game mechanics, not about history. There are endless things that are unrealistic and unhistorical in CK2. Threat is just one of them. But that's OK. Because it's a game. This mechanic was long needed.

 

[indika_tates]

This is the current situation of the defensive pact, a bit hilarious. Everything you see colored is part of the defensive pact which means that with the exception of France and England every declaration of war is a first world war of the ancient world.

 

[Rationalsanity]

All these people saying that coalitions stop the blobs, well they don't. The only way to check blobbing is to put some kind of internal management mechanic in the game; and the devs have constantly rejected that as an option.

 

[AjayAlcos]

Threat needs to be changed for the sanity of the game

I agree with your points, but I must stress that Crusader Kings II purpose has always been to destroy human sanity as part of Paradox Interactive's scheme for world domination. You can read about it in the bible and Feast by Nigella Lawson.