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CK2 Dev Diary #50: A Reason for War

Greetings!

The weather is slowly recovering from the chaotic mixture of snow/rain/hail/sun that has plagued the Swedish April and work is starting on the next, yet undisclosed, expansion! The next expansion is going to have a specific theme which most features will be focused around (we can unfortunately not go into any detail in this DD), though we also want to add some features that can be of use regardless of who or where you choose to play. One of these is planned to be a ‘Casus Belli Expansion’, where we want to add new and oft-requested CBs to the game. The Focus is going to be on CBs that enhance the early and late game (as well as a few more roleplay-focused CBs). While this is by no means a final list, it’s what we’ve made so far:


Forced Vassalization
This is a CB that can be used against neighboring realms to force them to become your vassal. To avoid making it too powerful it’s quite heavily limited, only realms that are of a lower tier, under 30 realm size and where the ruler is of either your culture group or religion are valid targets. It also has a direct cost (prestige). For example; this can allow England to, with time, extend ‘protection’ to the smaller Welsh and Irish realms.


De Jure Duchy Claim
This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.


Ducal County Conquest
At the very start of a game you might be stuck waiting for fabricated claims a very, very long time if you’re unlucky. This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder. The CB has a cost of prestige and gold, making it similar to a fabricated claim (as that’s essentially what it is). As an example, this gives count-tier characters in Ireland and the HRE an alternate way to claim a Duke-tier title, presuming that you can save up enough prestige and money.


Great Conquest
Unless you are playing as a Muslim, Nomad or Tribal-cultured ruler (who have access to invasions) you have no real way to expand in a meaningful way when you are playing as the ruler of a very large realm. While we still want expansion to be difficult, we also want to give players more static opportunities to expand. This CB is available to very powerful realms (at least 200 realm size) and can be used to claim an entire Kingdom from another character. Though the catch is that you have to fight someone that is as strong or stronger than you are, and using the CB itself costs a massive amount of prestige and piety.


Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).


Note that these CBs are by no means finished, and are currently being tested internally. Feel free to comment and feedback on them though, and also feel free to tell us what CBs you would like to see added!
 
Oh, another thing I would love to see in the game if possible: County swaps. I know India&Bangladesh and Netherlands/Belgium have been swapping some territory in recent times due to border gore, and think it would be great in-game, too. If I have a county in your de jure duchy while you have a county in my de jure duchy, then I would love to swap counties with you, and it would benefit the both of us. This should at least be in place for vassals in the event that the king enforces realm peace or they're too weak to war others. County swap proposals could be altered by opinion, traits like ambitious, a county's value and prosperity, extra gold, favours, etc. Smack on a new administration penalty and a truce so it can't be exploited and it's looking pretty good. Swapping duchies or anything with a foreign realm sounds a bit too complicated, and county swaps alone within the realm would be amazing. Preserving dynasty claims on counties you swap away could also lead to some interesting scenarios

Your vassals can already suggest buying counties from you, so this is somewhat logical, I think. I'm not sure how historically accurate such swaps are, though
 
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This is awesome! Always felt like the Casus Belli in CK2 (god bless this game) were a bit limited in comparison to EU4, but this will make CK2 even greater than it already is!
 
While I do like the idea of adding extra CB's in the game (and I'm really glad that some of them are roleplay-oriented), there are either subtle logical failures in some of them, or obvious, yet unannounced (but hopefully planned) easy ways to massively improve them.

Why do

De Jure Duchy Claim
and
Great Conquest

cost prestige to declare? You either have a legitimate reason to declare a war (and thus are not viewed as lawbreaker by anyone) or, in case of Great Conquest, you declare yourself ballsy and powerful enough to fight for massive chunk of land. How does projecting that amount of power make you less prestigious?

That's what really catched my eye right after I read the notes - it doesn't make any sense. And while I understand the need of balancing these CBs for preventing brainless medieval mass-genocides, just slapping a pricetag of prestige and piety over them IS SUCH A LAZY WAY TO DO IT. Half this game's magic comes from different roleplay mechanics, which, for the most part, were masterfully preserved and enhanced over past years. Unlike EU 4, where you're constantly working with a lot of different heartless numbers, down to decimal values in some cases, in CK2 you can just relax, keep your eye on a couple of vital resources (mainly gold and manpower) and really get into your character's skin with all intrigues, wounds, romances and illnesses around. Please don't take that away from us with lazy solutions.

Here are my suggestions for balancing Great Conquest (since we pretty much concluded that you have every right to declare a De Jure war without losing prestige, and removing that pricetag would probably not lead to massive balance fluctuations) :

  • Remove prestige pricetag - as its ridiculousness is stated above. I would actually advocate for a slight prestige GAIN as you're basically boasting that you're about to do something truly epic (smth like +50, but this is open to discussion and not really necessary)
  • Introduce MASSIVE prestige penalty upon losing this war (as you claimed to do something epic, but only achieved epic failure) and slightly less crippling penalty for White Peace.
  • In addition to piety price (which I find kinda reasonable as you're pursuing fame and glory, and thus further yourself from God) introduce a relation penalty with your head of religion. I'll mostly talk about Christians now (since it's pretty much stated that this CB is being introduced to aid only them), but I'm sure there is a way to implement this kind of interaction for all applicable religions and cultures with corresponding flavor. So, in case of Catholic Christianity, this action would probably piss any decent Pope off - events of such scale usually were at least somehow sanctioned from Rome, and you basically question Pope's might by declaring such great war all by yourself. And he would get extra pissed if you would declare it on your fellow christian neighbor - for obvious reasons. Maybe to a point that he excommunicates you - who knows? Seriously, give heads of religious some love. I seriously doubt it that players really care about them much - apart from requesting divorces with their old and infertile wives, lol.
  • Introduce an extra opinion penalty with your new vassals you gain upon winning this war - as stated in OP, you gain only the King's title - vassal infrastructure is likely to be preserved and passed to you. And they would probably be pissed with you - not only you conquered them, you did it pretty uncivilized and insulting way.
I believe that would introduce more lively and believable balance to Great Conquest CB - expansion might seem a little easier with this new and easily available CB, but there will be many risks involved and many unexpected consequences -
- being excommunicated by Pope for being to cocky and spilling christian blood for no good reason, following by being devoured by pious neighbors.
- being assassinated by a newly gained vassal just a few days after such a major victory.
- having everyone you know turn away from you after you fail such conquest.


These are just a few outcomes of such CB that sprung to mind. It generates great stories out of thin air. And best thing about it - it doesn't require any new mechanics! Everything is already in the game. Just please, PLEASE be a little more creative with balancing.

P.S
Sorry for a lengthy post - I probably could have explained everything a little more structured. I did it because CK2 is a very special game to me, I LOVE how it generates stories as I play, and missing such excellent possibility to expand this feature of the game in favor of dumb and lazy solutions really aches my heart. Thank you for your attention.
 
Isn't the point of having a hostage that you kill them if someone declares war on you?

That is at least what my guide to villanry says.
I agree, it seems counter-intuitive. I also agree with Rallige, you're not supposed to lose prestige from wars, you're supposed to gain prestige. Still, balancing it can be tricky, and I can't think of any implementable conditions to make it balanced. It's also the issue of turning prestige into a currency.

I know I'm spamming suggestions now, but what about invading a foreign realm to protect a minority of your religion (or a religion you have sympathy for)? Let's say the devs implement an event which allows you to pursue a more aggressive religious conversion (similar to native suppression policy in EU4) at the cost of more unrest. Then, neighboring realms of the minority's religion may wish to interfere in order to protect them. If the foreign realm wins the war, they may wish to install a baron of the minority's religion, gain moral authority, while the other religion loses MA. If they lose, the minority is expelled from the province(s)

Less powerful realms are less likely to intervene, arbitrary leaders are less likely to intervene, zealots are more likely to intervene, and Jews/Jew sympathizers can also intervene if the decision "Expel Jews" has been used (maybe). This could be one way of avoiding a religious melting pot
 
While I do like the idea of adding extra CB's in the game (and I'm really glad that some of them are roleplay-oriented), there are either subtle logical failures in some of them, or obvious, yet unannounced (but hopefully planned) easy ways to massively improve them.

Why do

De Jure Duchy Claim
and
Great Conquest

cost prestige to declare? You either have a legitimate reason to declare a war (and thus are not viewed as lawbreaker by anyone) or, in case of Great Conquest, you declare yourself ballsy and powerful enough to fight for massive chunk of land. How does projecting that amount of power make you less prestigious?

That's what really catched my eye right after I read the notes - it doesn't make any sense. And while I understand the need of balancing these CBs for preventing brainless medieval mass-genocides, just slapping a pricetag of prestige and piety over them IS SUCH A LAZY WAY TO DO IT. Half this game's magic comes from different roleplay mechanics, which, for the most part, were masterfully preserved and enhanced over past years. Unlike EU 4, where you're constantly working with a lot of different heartless numbers, down to decimal values in some cases, in CK2 you can just relax, keep your eye on a couple of vital resources (mainly gold and manpower) and really get into your character's skin with all intrigues, wounds, romances and illnesses around. Please don't take that away from us with lazy solutions.

Here are my suggestions for balancing Great Conquest (since we pretty much concluded that you have every right to declare a De Jure war without losing prestige, and removing that pricetag would probably not lead to massive balance fluctuations) :

  • Remove prestige pricetag - as its ridiculousness is stated above. I would actually advocate for a slight prestige GAIN as you're basically boasting that you're about to do something truly epic (smth like +50, but this is open to discussion and not really necessary)
  • Introduce MASSIVE prestige penalty upon losing this war (as you claimed to do something epic, but only achieved epic failure) and slightly less crippling penalty for White Peace.
  • In addition to piety price (which I find kinda reasonable as you're pursuing fame and glory, and thus further yourself from God) introduce a relation penalty with your head of religion. I'll mostly talk about Christians now (since it's pretty much stated that this CB is being introduced to aid only them), but I'm sure there is a way to implement this kind of interaction for all applicable religions and cultures with corresponding flavor. So, in case of Catholic Christianity, this action would probably piss any decent Pope off - events of such scale usually were at least somehow sanctioned from Rome, and you basically question Pope's might by declaring such great war all by yourself. And he would get extra pissed if you would declare it on your fellow christian neighbor - for obvious reasons. Maybe to a point that he excommunicates you - who knows? Seriously, give heads of religious some love. I seriously doubt it that players really care about them much - apart from requesting divorces with their old and infertile wives, lol.
  • Introduce an extra opinion penalty with your new vassals you gain upon winning this war - as stated in OP, you gain only the King's title - vassal infrastructure is likely to be preserved and passed to you. And they would probably be pissed with you - not only you conquered them, you did it pretty uncivilized and insulting way.
I believe that would introduce more lively and believable balance to Great Conquest CB - expansion might seem a little easier with this new and easily available CB, but there will be many risks involved and many unexpected consequences -
- being excommunicated by Pope for being to cocky and spilling christian blood for no good reason, following by being devoured by pious neighbors.
- being assassinated by a newly gained vassal just a few days after such a major victory.
- having everyone you know turn away from you after you fail such conquest.


These are just a few outcomes of such CB that sprung to mind. It generates great stories out of thin air. And best thing about it - it doesn't require any new mechanics! Everything is already in the game. Just please, PLEASE be a little more creative with balancing.

P.S
Sorry for a lengthy post - I probably could have explained everything a little more structured. I did it because CK2 is a very special game to me, I LOVE how it generates stories as I play, and missing such excellent possibility to expand this feature of the game in favor of dumb and lazy solutions really aches my heart. Thank you for your attention.

I would like to add, whoever your declaring war on should get a huge opinion boost with his vassals, especially the vassal title in question for higher manpower. That way these wars are a bit more difficult for the attacker to be successful..

I really really don't want this game to turn into a blob fest..
 
i would like to go to war against characters that hold close dynasty members hostage simply because i like freedom of choice in these types of games. there could be some sort of drawback to it like maybe the character holding your son or w/e hostage might execute him if he is losing the war, and that in turn gives you a right to execute him when you win the war. i havent really given it much thought i just like freedom of choice
 
i would like to go to war against characters that hold close dynasty members hostage simply because i like freedom of choice in these types of games. there could be some sort of drawback to it like maybe the character holding your son or w/e hostage might execute him if he is losing the war, and that in turn gives you a right to execute him when you win the war. i havent really given it much thought i just like freedom of choice

You don't go to war against the people who keeps your family member captive. A plot makes sense, a war does not. Especially since treaties usually were enforced through exchanging hostages to be kept by both sides in the treaty. I would prefer that to be added to the game.

One of the principles behind the just war of the medieval period was that war shouldn't be declared for selfish gains. War should only be declared for the good of the realm, or it was condemned by the church. And I can't think of a single war in history which has been started over hostages, I'd love to be contradicted on this, but the closest example I can think of is when Temüjin reclaimed Börte.
 
You don't go to war against the people who keeps your family member captive. A plot makes sense, a war does not. Especially since treaties usually were enforced through exchanging hostages to be kept by both sides in the treaty. I would prefer that to be added to the game.

One of the principles behind the just war of the medieval period was that war shouldn't be declared for selfish gains. War should only be declared for the good of the realm, or it was condemned by the church. And I can't think of a single war in history which has been started over hostages, I'd love to be contradicted on this, but the closest example I can think of is when Temüjin reclaimed Börte.

Speaking war and hostages.. I just finished The Last Kingdom. Haha there's a pretty good episode detailing hostages to ensure peace.. I go agreeing with you. You shouldn't declare war to release them, its almost guarenteed the enemy will execute them. (Which defeats the purpose of the war... )

A intrigue plot makes 1000 times more sense. *Cough* season 2 of The Last Kingdom lmao
 
If this Dlc is about warfare, what about be able to choose between Armies or Legions? It'd be a law option and the Legions would take place of the armies.
Also, idk where to suggest to the game, but i'd love to see the game timeline expanded to something like a few bookmarks, for example: Renaissance, War of the Roses, Napelonic Wars... or even a DLC dated from the Ancient ages: like Rome..A good book mark would be Gaulic's War, Caesar's Civil war and the Triumvirate
 
If this Dlc is about warfare, what about be able to choose between Armies or Legions? It'd be a law option and the Legions would take place of the armies.
Also, idk where to suggest to the game, but i'd love to see the game timeline expanded to something like a few bookmarks, for example: Renaissance, War of the Roses, Napelonic Wars... or even a DLC dated from the Ancient ages: like Rome..A good book mark would be Gaulic's War, Caesar's Civil war and the Triumvirate

Or what about a bookmark going as far forward as the First World War?

Ah sarcasm, the greatest killer of bad jokes .....
 
i think this has been said before but i would like to see a create a heresy option, i think that would be pretty awesome. Another thing might be another pagan religion native to Britannia, say a Druid based religion based in northern Pictland and Ireland.
 
i think this has been said before but i would like to see a create a heresy option, i think that would be pretty awesome. Another thing might be another pagan religion native to Britannia, say a Druid based religion based in northern Pictland and Ireland.
You can't just create a religion
 
While I do like the idea of adding extra CB's in the game (and I'm really glad that some of them are roleplay-oriented), there are either subtle logical failures in some of them, or obvious, yet unannounced (but hopefully planned) easy ways to massively improve them.

Why do

De Jure Duchy Claim
and
Great Conquest

cost prestige to declare? You either have a legitimate reason to declare a war (and thus are not viewed as lawbreaker by anyone) or, in case of Great Conquest, you declare yourself ballsy and powerful enough to fight for massive chunk of land. How does projecting that amount of power make you less prestigious?

That's what really catched my eye right after I read the notes - it doesn't make any sense. And while I understand the need of balancing these CBs for preventing brainless medieval mass-genocides, just slapping a pricetag of prestige and piety over them IS SUCH A LAZY WAY TO DO IT. Half this game's magic comes from different roleplay mechanics, which, for the most part, were masterfully preserved and enhanced over past years. Unlike EU 4, where you're constantly working with a lot of different heartless numbers, down to decimal values in some cases, in CK2 you can just relax, keep your eye on a couple of vital resources (mainly gold and manpower) and really get into your character's skin with all intrigues, wounds, romances and illnesses around. Please don't take that away from us with lazy solutions.

Here are my suggestions for balancing Great Conquest (since we pretty much concluded that you have every right to declare a De Jure war without losing prestige, and removing that pricetag would probably not lead to massive balance fluctuations) :

  • Remove prestige pricetag - as its ridiculousness is stated above. I would actually advocate for a slight prestige GAIN as you're basically boasting that you're about to do something truly epic (smth like +50, but this is open to discussion and not really necessary)
  • Introduce MASSIVE prestige penalty upon losing this war (as you claimed to do something epic, but only achieved epic failure) and slightly less crippling penalty for White Peace.
  • In addition to piety price (which I find kinda reasonable as you're pursuing fame and glory, and thus further yourself from God) introduce a relation penalty with your head of religion. I'll mostly talk about Christians now (since it's pretty much stated that this CB is being introduced to aid only them), but I'm sure there is a way to implement this kind of interaction for all applicable religions and cultures with corresponding flavor. So, in case of Catholic Christianity, this action would probably piss any decent Pope off - events of such scale usually were at least somehow sanctioned from Rome, and you basically question Pope's might by declaring such great war all by yourself. And he would get extra pissed if you would declare it on your fellow christian neighbor - for obvious reasons. Maybe to a point that he excommunicates you - who knows? Seriously, give heads of religious some love. I seriously doubt it that players really care about them much - apart from requesting divorces with their old and infertile wives, lol.
  • Introduce an extra opinion penalty with your new vassals you gain upon winning this war - as stated in OP, you gain only the King's title - vassal infrastructure is likely to be preserved and passed to you. And they would probably be pissed with you - not only you conquered them, you did it pretty uncivilized and insulting way.
I believe that would introduce more lively and believable balance to Great Conquest CB - expansion might seem a little easier with this new and easily available CB, but there will be many risks involved and many unexpected consequences -
- being excommunicated by Pope for being to cocky and spilling christian blood for no good reason, following by being devoured by pious neighbors.
- being assassinated by a newly gained vassal just a few days after such a major victory.
- having everyone you know turn away from you after you fail such conquest.


These are just a few outcomes of such CB that sprung to mind. It generates great stories out of thin air. And best thing about it - it doesn't require any new mechanics! Everything is already in the game. Just please, PLEASE be a little more creative with balancing.

P.S
Sorry for a lengthy post - I probably could have explained everything a little more structured. I did it because CK2 is a very special game to me, I LOVE how it generates stories as I play, and missing such excellent possibility to expand this feature of the game in favor of dumb and lazy solutions really aches my heart. Thank you for your attention.

To add to this, close nations should have the option of assisting the defendant in the war. But not like in 867 where LITERALLY THE WHOLE OF BRITANNIA DEFENDS AGAINST THE VIKINGS (seriously, that pisses me off so much), they'd consider their troops and how much it affects them etc.
 
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