Why aren't abductions fixed yet?

[csward53]

In the abduction sheme's current form, it's very hard to use. The chance to abduct someone is so low that you're likely going to fail even on a maxed out character. I understand people abused this feature to insta-win wars, but there has to be a middle ground, and this isn't it. I hope the dev team is looking into fixing this rather than leave a feature nerfed to unusability. It might be slightly harder to abduct someone, but this nerf makes it pointless to add in the game.

Why not make a rule, like you can't abduct a ruler during war or you can't declare war on a country when you have their ruler captured (or give it a huge malus from others, like you can't make titles because you're not viewed as legitimate). They could also make the country not care about their ruler if he was abducted prior to a war to avoid cheese and then make it really hard to abduct a ruler during war, unless he's captured on the battlefield.

There are many ways to balance this and I hope Paradox fixes it soon because it's been a problem since launch from what I can tell.

 

[Karlington]

Why not make a rule, like you can't abduct a ruler during war

There's a big success penalty on this, which is one of the fixes instituted.

or you can't declare war on a country when you have their ruler captured

This is already the case.

 

[csward53]

There's a big success penalty on this, which is one of the fixes instituted.





This is already the case.

Then why is the chance so low on a guy with 30+ intrigue and the upgrade tree maxed out? It was either 5% or 25% at most whereas a murder play was almost always greater than 80% chance. I looked at several different people, but I didn't see any people with a high enough chance to kidnap that I would ever bother with. I'm not sure what kidnapping is for if you can't kidnap people of status.

There was only 1 other cannibal in the entire world that I wanted to make my priest on my court so I could use the "cannibalize Catholicism" decision. I had a strong hook on him, but because he was leading Bremen I couldn't recruit to court, so kidnapping would be great in this case, but it was a pitiful 5% chance, which seems typical. 20% if you're lucky. I even had the Pope excommunicated him to see if he would get fired/resign or something, but no. I'll play around with it more tonight to see if it's any use at all. Since it makes you a criminal it seems really bad.

 

[Nicolaes]

It might be handy to increase the chance in certain cases, although with a few rules for the AI to not simply kill their prisoner, or keep them imprisoned for the next 10 years, but instead use abduction a bit like a strong hook.

A very famous example of an abduction in this era was the Coup of Kaiserswerth, during which emperor Henry IV (aka the emperor in the 1066 starting date) was abducted by Archbishop Anno II of Cologne and several other noble accomplices, which was used to forcefully oust another faction at court through replacing Empress Agnes (Henry's mother) as regent with Anno II. I wouldn't mind the AI doing things like that - especially if the current top ruler is a child.

Then why is the chance so low on a guy with 30+ intrigue and the upgrade tree maxed out? It was either 5% or 25% at most whereas a murder play was almost always greater than 80% chance. I looked at several different people, but I didn't see any people with a high enough chance to kidnap that I would ever bother with. I'm not sure what kidnapping is for if you can't kidnap people of status.

There was only 1 other cannibal in the entire world that I wanted to make my priest on my court so I could use the "cannibalize Catholicism" decision. I had a strong hook on him, but because he was leading Bremen I couldn't recruit to court, so kidnapping would be great in this case, but it was a pitiful 5% chance, which seems typical. 20% if you're lucky. I even had the Pope excommunicated him to see if he would get fired/resign or something, but no. I'll play around with it more tonight to see if it's any use at all. Since it makes you a criminal it seems really bad.

What is the context to this though? It sounds like you're trying to abduct someone from another realm, which realistically should be pretty hard to do - like how it's harder to kill a liked (or atleast tolerated) king as a neighbouring ruler in comparison to trying to kill him as a vassal.

 

[Slow Bathroom]

Abduction lets you recruit foreign heirs into your court, it has to be hard to do or else it would break the game. If you want to have a decent chance of abducting someone you have to get agents to join your scheme.

 

[x4077]

I've mostly given up on all intrigue in its current state, since no matter what my or my spymasters intrigue is my hostile schemes get detected about 75% of the time.

 

[klopkr]

Because nothing's been fixed yet.

We barely got one patch.

I think one of the patch notes they teased last time said something about scheme chance being more accurate.

 

[Salazard260]

In the abduction sheme's current form, it's very hard to use. The chance to abduct someone is so low that you're likely going to fail even on a maxed out character. I understand people abused this feature to insta-win wars, but there has to be a middle ground, and this isn't it. I hope the dev team is looking into fixing this rather than leave a feature nerfed to unusability. It might be slightly harder to abduct someone, but this nerf makes it pointless to add in the game.

Works well for me outside of conflicts, do you have issues with recruiting plot members ?

Why not make a rule, like you can't abduct a ruler during war or you can't declare war on a country when you have their ruler captured (or give it a huge malus from others, like you can't make titles because you're not viewed as legitimate).

That's already the case, you can still declare faction revolts tho

They could also make the country not care about their ruler if he was abducted prior to a war

That would be very weird from a RP standpoint

 

[Karlington]

Then why is the chance so low on a guy with 30+ intrigue and the upgrade tree maxed out? It was either 5% or 25% at most whereas a murder play was almost always greater than 80% chance. I looked at several different people, but I didn't see any people with a high enough chance to kidnap that I would ever bother with. I'm not sure what kidnapping is for if you can't kidnap people of status.

There was only 1 other cannibal in the entire world that I wanted to make my priest on my court so I could use the "cannibalize Catholicism" decision. I had a strong hook on him, but because he was leading Bremen I couldn't recruit to court, so kidnapping would be great in this case, but it was a pitiful 5% chance, which seems typical. 20% if you're lucky. I even had the Pope excommunicated him to see if he would get fired/resign or something, but no. I'll play around with it more tonight to see if it's any use at all. Since it makes you a criminal it seems really bad.

I couldn't tell you, but if you hover over the success chance it'll tell you the exact modifiers and you can see why the success chance is as it is.

PS. You can't appoint your own priest under Catholicism, and you can't recruit landed people anyway.

 

[csward53]

Works well for me outside of conflicts, do you have issues with recruiting plot members ?

In murder schemes you have to bribe people to join, whereas CK2, people want to join in for free. Probably more realistic this way. I haven't found any willing participants without a bribe for a murder plot, but they were everywhere in CK2. Still, without any help, my rulers intrigue/bonuses were so high that most characters would be already at the max chance.

That's already the case, you can still declare faction revolts tho

That's fine, I'm brainstorming ways they can make kidnapping of rulers/important folk worth your time to do. 5-25% chance of success, plus 100% chance of being a criminal (tooltip says there's no way out of this) seems not worth it. I don't personally want to kidnap kings for easy wars, like I mentioned earlier, capturing the cannibal bishop (ruler) of Bremen form my court was my goal, but I read they nerfed kidnapping due to war exploits.

That would be very weird from a RP standpoint

Well by "not care about their ruler", I mean that they go on fighting without them without an auto-loss in the war. In EU4 if your ruler dies in combat the fight goes on. Outside of special historical events like 1444 China, rulers don't really get captured though in EU4. I'm still trying to get used to CK2/3 wars where you have no control of when they end. Wars can be frustrating when you're about to turn the tide with mercenaries and the AI get huge chunks of warscore to end the war juuuust as you're about to launch a counter offensive. I like the wars, they're just different, which is good I think.

 

[csward53]

I couldn't tell you, but if you hover over the success chance it'll tell you the exact modifiers and you can see why the success chance is as it is.

PS. You can't appoint your own priest under Catholicism, and you can't recruit landed people anyway.

Okay, then how do you get a cannibal on your court for the "catholic cannibal" decision? I had read elsewhere you have to appoint your own Chancellor Bishop, but I never saw the option to swap them out, so it's luck based then. If I have hook on my Chancellor bishop, why can't I use that hook to force cannibalism? I can force him to change religions with a hook, why not cannibalism (maybe not all people but some people might, right)?

I have over 2k hours in EU4, but maybe 10% of that in CK 2/3, so I'll admit I'm still learning the nuances of this game. Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

[csward53]

It might be handy to increase the chance in certain cases, although with a few rules for the AI to not simply kill their prisoner, or keep them imprisoned for the next 10 years, but instead use abduction a bit like a strong hook.

A very famous example of an abduction in this era was the Coup of Kaiserswerth, during which emperor Henry IV (aka the emperor in the 1066 starting date) was abducted by Archbishop Anno II of Cologne and several other noble accomplices, which was used to forcefully oust another faction at court through replacing Empress Agnes (Henry's mother) as regent with Anno II. I wouldn't mind the AI doing things like that - especially if the current top ruler is a child.


What is the context to this though? It sounds like you're trying to abduct someone from another realm, which realistically should be pretty hard to do - like how it's harder to kill a liked (or atleast tolerated) king as a neighbouring ruler in comparison to trying to kill him as a vassal.

Murdering someone from another realm should be harder by that logic as well, but it's not. Romancing a complete stranger in a foreign land of different culture is relatively easy, especially with the intrigue skills. I feel like kidnapping is a weird place balance wise, so they nerfed it hard from CK2 (from what I have read).

 

[Karlington]

Okay, then how do you get a cannibal on your court for the "catholic cannibal" decision? I had read elsewhere you have to appoint your own Chancellor Bishop, but I never saw the option to swap them out, so it's luck based then. If I have hook on my Chancellor bishop, why can't I use that hook to force cannibalism? I can force him to change religions with a hook, why not cannibalism (maybe not all people but some people might, right)?

I have over 2k hours in EU4, but maybe 10% of that in CK 2/3, so I'll admit I'm still learning the nuances of this game. Thanks for the replies everyone.

Unfortunately the answer for any faith which doesn't let you appoint a Court Chaplain is that most likely you don't. Cannibals are so rare that the odds of one being randomly picked for Realm Priest is close to zero.

The good news is that it doesn't matter much, though. Contrary to the implications of the decision it doesn't actually make your faith tolerate cannibalism. All it does is make it so that if you reform your faith you'll get a Piety cost discount if you pick the Ritual Cannibalism tenet. Your current faith will remain as intolerant as ever, and your Close Family (and maybe others, I can't quite remember) will openly become Cannibals and liable to imprisonment.

 

[x4077]

In murder schemes you have to bribe people to join, whereas CK2, people want to join in for free. Probably more realistic this way. I haven't found any willing participants without a bribe for a murder plot, but they were everywhere in CK2. Still, without any help, my rulers intrigue/bonuses were so high that most characters would be already at the max chance.

You can still do the old CK2 standby of marrying someone that likes you more than the target into their court to support your scheme. A lot harder to do now though since polygamy and concubines don't apply to courtiers. Even better, marry someone into their court that you have a hook on already.

 

[ulriquinho]

I absolutely agree that abduction was overly nerfed. I am interested in playing an intrigue game—not just a war game. Let me kidnap a foreign king (which should be hard but not impossible), an heir (should be less hard but still hard), etc. from foreign realms. All I want is to play a minority religion and force convert neighbors so I can work to acquire land through marriage. I want it to be challenging—at the same level of challenging as going down the war path, but not impossible. Just remove the war cheese and let us kidnap people from other realms again. It’s really frustrating. I could not seduce foreign heirs into my court (despite relations being at 100+ because I had seduced them successfully). I couldn’t abduct them either. No amount of hooks could get you to overcome those penalty levels. And you can’t marry people from other religions with that 3000 modifier (which, from a historical standpoint, fair). But yes, people did kidnap kings and heirs in other realms in the past. And people did seduce foreign monarchs or heirs and invited them to hang out at court (hello Cleopatra). So please, give me my RP style back. I am not really the war type player. And it is frustrating to have this so nerfed that I have no choice but to play the war game to acquire land as a small region with a minority religion where marriage is off the table. Rulers, historically, absolutely needed to play the intrigue game in such a scenario and the successful ones did. I bought CK3 for having a diversity of play style options, so I found this nerf to be absolutely frustrating.

I still absolutely love the game. This topic is just a major pet peeve for taking away a major play style option. That’s never a good look for a game.

 

[Yuanshu]

And more really the kidnapping has become ridiculous it's so nerfed that there's no justification for it to be used
And I wanting to play as a queen a lot of intrigue wanting to kidnap a certain son of a certain king to fuck him and have his children (consort) I can't because practically this form of gameplay was deleted with this nerf

 

[ulriquinho]

And more really the kidnapping has become ridiculous it's so nerfed that there's no justification for it to be used
And I wanting to play as a queen a lot of intrigue wanting to kidnap a certain son of a certain king to fuck him and have his children (consort) I can't because practically this form of gameplay was deleted with this nerf

And to be fair, I am new to the game. But I literally bought it for intrigue/diplomacy potential. So you can imagine my disappointment. Yes I was also trying to play a queen. Actually, I started off as a bisexual king and realized there weren’t enough bi/gay leaders to try the play strategy I was hoping to do. So I started the game over and worked on seduction with a queen. When I realized I couldn’t do that after investing hours in that play style. I started again and this time went for kidnapping. And well, that didn’t work either. So I said, fine, I will go the conquest route and started yet again. Which worked for half a life time until Scotland, England, and the Christian Irish Duchies all ganged up on me because I was Muslim.

So trying to create a Muslim Ireland turned it into hard mode/impossible mode since my closest and only possible marriage alliances were all in Spain and fairly weak next to my big neighbors. Not enough to defend against the combined forces of Scotland and England and the larger duchies of Ireland. As a whole, this game became kind of a massive disappointment when I realized these playstyles not only weren’t an option, but used to be an option.

My RPG vision was to create an alternate history where ireland’s first Muslim Monarch was a woman and so in honor of their founder, created a matriarchal Irish Islam that then took over britania. So my long game RPG vision being squashed kinda stung.