Why does CKII need to be more like EU?

[Sabotage13]

Two of the original CK2's central design conceits were:
1. The game is based on characters and dynasties, not countries or nations.
2. Wars should be limited, but battles should be decisive.

So, what was the reason for introducing EU's Bad Boy mechanic and its Ping-Pong Battle feature in the latest patch? Just curious about the recent reversal of the game's basic design philosophy.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Well, I think pretty much the entire dev team has changed.

This was asked when retinues were nerfed too, despite Legacy of Rome clearly advertising them as a replacement for Levies, and when they were nerfed number wise their boni to stats were cut and it took a couple of patches for the current Dev team to realise that made them worse than equivalent troops from fully upgraded counties because they didn't get building bonuses.

As far as these mechanics go, coalitions have become necessary to oppose blobs and the ping-pong battles are probably there because the current Dev team think CKII should be more like EUIV in that regard.

 

[Admiral Fisker]

I'm beginning to think that Paradox is only altering the game for the sake of altering it.

 

[FatCatAttack]

Yeah I don't get it either. It's ok for them to be two different games. SigurdStormhand is probably right about the dev team situation. I feel like there's two factions in paradox. One is the more goofy group that made the orginal CK2 promos about the seven deadly sins, and then you have the grognardy group that likes all these fiddly mechanics. I think the fun-havers must all be working on Stellaris or something.

 

[RforRush]

Infamy: make mid-late game more chalenging.
Retreat: make the outcome of war not be decided in one battle.

 

[Nirmara]

I don't see why CkII and Eu4 should not take inspiration from each others since they both share a lots of core mechanics.

The problem with shattered retreat and infamy is not their introduction but their implementation.

Infamy just have to be rebalanced and the shattered retreat should simply not work when there are no owned/allied holding to retreat to.

While were at it, I would really see them add to CK the 50% distance lock for moving army that Eu4 have right now. This alone removed about 90% of the ping-pong there was in Eu4.

 

[Provenance]

EU4 is a good game, I glad that they too some influences from it. I like that they made character's actions and life more significant by adding Infamy. I am glad that wars are riskier with shattered retreat and replenishing armies.

 

[qbln]

Battles were decisive back in medieval times. Shattered retreat make no sense in ck2.

 

[Drake_Hound]

They explained in stream today they wanted to prolong the mid game. make it more interesting.
Sadly the early game are so severly affected by it. a small oversight, so while mid game it makes sense that battles are not decided by 1 battle and no way to come back. (unless you have gold reserves)
I already said my opnion too many times so not going to repeat agree with Qbln.

So I understand there feature even that bad boy or infamy, cause it is a bit tyranny in Elder kings and AGOT. and I don´t even feel the effect from it. cause I am so used to it already.
And most off all in the end it still the same cause all the AI gank up on you sooner or later but atleast this time you got a explanation why.

I am not sure at this moment maybe the patch release soon, can motivate me to go mod again. or maybe am just excited for Xcom 2 (been waiting for that one since november)
But all in all I did my testing, now I just need to motivate myself to update mods

And after testing I do see the merits in many of the things, but it is the combination of it all and early game difficulty. that can cause people to be frustrated. so not really fun gameplay wise.
Watch the stream on paradox twitch tv lol see groogy understand the frustration of seeing a returning adventurer

 

[R'hllor]

They definitely shouldn't be made too similar, and they need to think quite a bit more which mechanics to port into CK2 and in which form. These games are set in a different period of time, so they should be developed with different philosophies and goals in mind. It's just bad business from Paradox if they fail to see that not all additions are necessary or fitting.

 

[Sabotage13]

I don't see why CkII and Eu4 should not take inspiration from each others since they both share a lots of core mechanics.

They may be similar in that they are both province-based RTS-with-pause 4X games that feature lots of conquest, but they also differ significantly in a lot of core mechanics. For example, CK2 is supposed to be a primarily character/dynasty driven game, and for that, a country-based coalition mechanic would look misplaced even if it was well implemented (which the new BadBoy system obviously isn't).

One of the initial design conceits was that the primary threats to outward expansion ought to come from an inherent instability of large empires; obviously the current designers think that the exact opposite should be the case.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

They may be similar in that they are both province-based RTS-with-pause 4X games that feature lots of conquest, but they also differ significantly in a lot of core mechanics. For example, CK2 is supposed to be a primarily character/dynasty driven game, and for that, a country-based coalition mechanic would look misplaced even if it was well implemented (which the new BadBoy system obviously isn't).

One of the initial design conceits was that the primary threats to outward expansion ought to come from an inherent instability of large empires; obviously the current designers think that the exact opposite should be the case.

I would say the problems began when Temporary Revolt titles were introduced in RoI. Prior to this when your vassals revolted they revolted as a group of allies, each with their entire levy and retinue, and they could call in other vassals as allies. This meant that a revolt which started out relatively small could snowball and end up including everyone, gradually stripping you of troops and revenue.

Added to this you have to worry about outside forces as other realms, particularly of a different religion, can gobble up entire kingdoms by fighting the individual vassals, I once ate most of the Holy land like this.

Now the faction fires and forms a new realm, with levy laws that limit the amount of troops the revolt leader can call on. They also tend to clump into bigger armies meaning that you can strike and defeat them more easily because rather than chase six to ten stacks you're only facing two or three.

From a gameplay perspective this makes it much easier for the player, and you're only likely to lose one Duchy to enemies outside the realm rather than three or four. I think the driving force behind the change was the player's ability to exploit this mechanic to rapidly expand when a neighbour was in Civil War, which is historically accurate, but the player was inevitably better at exploiting the opportunity whilst keeping their own realm together than the AI.

Anyway, since these temporary faction titles came along realm stability hasn't been a big problem once you got your retinue and demesne up together - it's only a problem initially because you haven't built many upgrades in your capital, saved any gold or built any retinues. Conclave seems like an attempt to add more instability into the system, something else the player needs to juggle but people are already finding that the Council is quite easy to game because they are the only people who vote now and you get to choose who they are.

Hence, I suspect, the new bad-boy mechanic and the reduction in the demesne limit.

 

[Rationalsanity]

Its not that they aped the coalition mechanic from EU that's bad, its that they did it so damn poorly.

 

[durbal]

What's funny is that Personal Unions (basically a chance to inherit land) in EU4 are a good way to expand without generating Agressive Expansion. In this game, your brother can die and you inherit his kingdom and get a big Infamy hit.

 

[Damocles]

Same lazy developers cross-pollinating their own titles. And like a previous poster said, the main sin isn't that they re-used the same dodgy mechanics. It's that they did it so haphazardly.

 

[Xinkc]

They definitely shouldn't be made too similar, and they need to think quite a bit more which mechanics to port into CK2 and in which form. These games are set in a different period of time, so they should be developed with different philosophies and goals in mind. It's just bad business from Paradox if they fail to see that not all additions are necessary or fitting.

Coming from EU4 and starting CK2 over a year ago, I thought they were already very similar. Maybe I'm just weird.

a country-based coalition mechanic would look misplaced even if it was well implemented (which the new BadBoy system obviously isn't).

I haven't had the chance to play much 2.5 or Conclave yet but this stuck out to me. Are you saying that infamy is attached to titles instead of characters?

 

[heliostellar]

Infamy should not be in this game. Full stop. There is no basis for a broad coalition of states in this time period, and it's a crude, ham-handed fix.

Ofc we'll end up having to live with this and mod it like seduction for the AI. People keep mentioning all sorts of ad hoc alliances in history, but they are completely different to what we are seeing in this patch. A better fix should allow small, regional, non-marriage alliances to take hold. The idea of coalitions, especially for anger over what OTHER people had done (inheriting infamy, infamy from vassal actions) is completely out of place and nonsensical. I really wish they'd scrap it completely, but I know they won't. We'll just have to wait for CK2+ to fix this

 

[Rinmaru]

I think... These new developers need to go. Ever since they took over we've had to deal with them breaking not just the game's core game mechanics but some of the backend mechanics that deal with modifiers and such... And then they have the audacity to whine and complain about having to fix their mess. The recent addition of the coalition mechanics from EU series shows just how out of touch these guys are as to the kind of game CK is supposed to be. It also shows an alarming rise in incompetence in this new dev team.

Don't they have the mental fortitude to come up with a better system that fits into the CK timeline? Why the h*** does a Caliph in Baghdad care about some warmongering German Duke eating up his German neighbors? Why would he join a coalition to contain this guy when he's living no where near Germany? The Caliph has probably seen only one German in his life and couldn't tell you where the Duchy of BurgBurger is located. And what is up with getting infamy for using the Holy War cb? I'm crusading and last time I checked. This was called Crusader Kings not "We're too dumb to come up with something to help balance the game, so here's a game mechanic from another game that doesn't fit the game's setting, enjoy!"

Jesus.

 

[wthomas]

Crusader Kings not "We're too dumb to come up with something to help balance the game, so here's a game mechanic from another game that doesn't fit the game's setting, enjoy!"

Yikes! Tone it down a little. They didn't revoke your titles. They didn't seduce your spouse. They just need to fix things. It'll take time, but they'll get there. I definitely think people need to let them know we're not happy. But calling them stupid is uncalled for. They are trying to make the game better. They just failed in one feature of an otherwise solid DLC.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

Yikes! Tone it down a little. They didn't revoke your titles. They didn't seduce your spouse. They just need to fix things. It'll take time, but they'll get there. I definitely think people need to let them know we're not happy. But calling them stupid is uncalled for. They are trying to make the game better. They just failed in one feature of an otherwise solid DLC.

I think that, in its turn is a bit over-generous. This DLC needed another month to cook - in particular they took out CA but didn't add mechanics in to cover the gaps, so now there's no way to curtail vassal wars other than arbitrary "enforce peace" button that has the same cooldown as a Claim War.

In fact, the new "Enforce Peace" button is an excellent example of a "Bacon Button" as the Devs used to describe the assassination tooltip and the retinues. Press buttons and in three months wars stop, but you can only do it once every ten years.

Nothing about that makes sense - not the "press button for peace", not the slow time it takes to take effect and not the cooldown.

It would make sense if you had a "Call for peace" button where vassals had to immediately stop all wars or you had the opportunity to arrest them.

Even so, the lack of restrictions on vassal warfare and the accompanying opinion malus are a big hole in this update.