Conclave Dev Diary #1

[Stars_and_Bars]

What happens if there are more powerful vassals than council positions? What are the repercussions?

Well... Have you ever heard the phrase "This is town ain't big enough for the two of us'? I suppose that would destroy a realm. or force you to have huge vassals.

 

[Phibs]

Well... Have you ever heard the phrase "This is town ain't big enough for the two of us'? I suppose that would destroy a realm. or force you to have huge vassals.

I was thinking that maybe there'd be a discount on a potential opinion modifier or smth. *shrug*

 

[brobman22]

dose this make centralization better because now you have a reason to avoid giving a few vassals a crap ton of land so they don't just crush your heir when you die?

 

[Cetan]

Whenever we did try to “deepen” the core gameplay in an expansion, it often turned out to be a mistake: The Retinue mechanic of Legacy of Rome should, for example, have been a part of the base game so we could have kept building upon it.

That's... kind of disappointing to hear.

I'm all for throwing money at Paradox for content, but if that results in key features becoming some sort of "untouchable" mechanic because people paid money for them... I hope you all are taking a good look at what gets considered "DLC features" in the future.

I would rather have retinues tightened up and fixed, even made free, without complaining that a "paid feature" is being taken. Tell the people who'd complain (example: the minuscule number of complainers about the Mediterranean Face Pack change) to get over it.

 

[TheDungen]

I agree, actually. They could make vassals very prone to joining factions to lower taxes.

Ideally, I want to see the ERE using a manpower mechanic and have to raise standing armies, with very few levies.

If they can't do that, then much larger retinue limits for the ERE, early; but at the cost of levies.




That wouldn't make sense. Just reduce the current bonus.

Why wouldn't it make sense, feudal realms don't get a boost to relations once per generation, being able to decide who you want as your viceroy is powerful enough without getting a relationship boost on top of that.

You can chose someone who likes you but it wont make them like you more. They know you know everyone in the empire knows that you need to appoint someone, you're not really doing them a favour.

 

[theKing1988]

That's... kind of disappointing to hear.

I'm all for throwing money at Paradox for content, but if that results in key features becoming some sort of "untouchable" mechanic because people paid money for them... I hope you all are taking a good look at what gets considered "DLC features" in the future.

I would rather have retinues tightened up and fixed, even made free, without complaining that a "paid feature" is being taken. Tell the people who'd complain (example: the minuscule number of complainers about the Mediterranean Face Pack change) to get over it.

Well to be brutally honest the new facepack was so radically different visually compared to the old one that you were basically receiving a completely new product for free. You're seriously reaching if you think that it is comparable to rebalancing the retinues.

 

[klopkr]

I think you guys messed up on the alert art. In the vanilla alerts the stain glass goes into the focal item but in the new ones it doesn't. It makes them look like they pop out more. You can easily fix it by just adding a few black lines into the focal item.

 

[Jorlem]

That's... kind of disappointing to hear.

I'm all for throwing money at Paradox for content, but if that results in key features becoming some sort of "untouchable" mechanic because people paid money for them... I hope you all are taking a good look at what gets considered "DLC features" in the future.

I would rather have retinues tightened up and fixed, even made free, without complaining that a "paid feature" is being taken. Tell the people who'd complain (example: the minuscule number of complainers about the Mediterranean Face Pack change) to get over it.

Isn't something similar part of what is stopping them from doing anything more with republics? (Partly that the code for the merchant republic DLC is a giant mess that would take ages to detangle, and thus doing it for free can't be justified?)

 

[Sphem]

I like these changes my main thing about this is I don't want my country to fall apart I just want my country to be weakened enough for an AI to attack me which sounds crazy coming from a player but I feel like I'm always the one attacking the AI and when I do get attacked it's when I'm in a regency and a faction goes off.

 

[NewbieOne]

Tell this Castille... They were not happy about Leon expanding into Taifa territory. So Castille allied with the Taifas against Leon. It's more about danger than about religion (And I think 'threat' would be a better term for 'Infamy' in this case).

Of course. And that's also why and how Frankish states were quite successful initially in the Levant. There were even coalitions with this or that brand of both local Muslims and Franks on either side (things got more complicated when there formed a class of local Franks, whose interests varied from those of the incoming crowds whenever a crusade was sent in). I took your side on this back in that last dev-diary thread in December. But it still needs to be said that just as much as religious lines could and even should be traversed (they ought to, for realism; the closest thing to which right now is friends from the trade-route event sometimes assisting holy-war defences), religion should not be a non-factor in an individual's subjective, flawed perception of infamy or even expansionism. What you think your best interests as the ruler of your realm are in the situation are one thing, but most people are going to be biased and more likely to excuse people who are more similar to them (unless there's a conflict resulting from competition).

What I worry about next, is that the engine is not likely going to be capable of making out the difference between expansion and restoration. So for example Byzantium in certain dates could get a metric heckton of infamy from just pushing back and regaining exactly what it lost 5 years before the starting date (or 20, but anyway). I hesitate to venture into amateur/armchair mediaeval psychology, but I think that the non-violence trend in Christian thought would have had an easier time getting applied to something like France vs England and still ostracizing the French king for using the force of arms to get back his lost practical power in areas nominally under his sovereignty, than a Byzantine emperor riding out to get the lost Asian (or, depending on the date, European) parts of his former empire.

Well, of course, neighbours and competitors could be worried by the resurgent power, sure, and consider it a threat forming all right, but they still wouldn't find the Basileus's action to be 'infamous' in any understanding of the word.

And while I'm sure that some Muslim rulers could find infamous the actions of the author of the idea of expanding into Anatolia or Armenia, I can hardly imagine such rulers finding infamous the getting back of provinces lost to the Franks.

Finally, in the Iberian example, as well as any other mixed neighbourhoods (small independents in Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia etc., Scandinavia perhaps, with some pagans still around), simply expanding into someone's territory, i.e. waging the usual religion-neutral war of conquest, would probably have been looked at in a different light than waging a formal religious war, complete with dispossesions and persecutions upon winning (though some rulers certainly wouldn't have been above bringing such misery on the heads of their coreligionists to further their own goals, we could probably find examples).

I'm not a new player and I like this expansion very much. It was allways asked to expand internal politics.And now we get it.

Same here, though I have my reservations about the whole non-aggression thing but especially the idea of automatically forcing one's actual allies into wars with no optout just in order to make the game easier for new players. The game shouldn't be gutted (dumbed down, but that's pretty much the same) for the old guard just to make some new sales or keep the new buyers (often at 75% off) happy.

It's also not going to be nice for me personally to play that way because I tend to refuse to get involved in wars I disagree with, even for my allies, but on the other hand sometimes support non-allies in wars I do agree with. For example a neighbour who's a perfectly legal heir and a good king in the process of getting toppled by some psychopath of a rebellious vassal, or — as a Catholic — somewhat more distant realms getting invaded or holy-warred.

I'm not looking forward to getting dragged into manifestly unjust wars such as an AI king pressing some country cousin's claim out of the blue, after 200 years of Agnatic Primo in the target realm, with no sense of distinction or propriety, or some kind of Byzantine Holy War for Tabaristan. Being allied to the AI is not going to be very pleasant now due to this characteristic of the AI.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure many of the old guard (if they're still around) will appreciate the changes to internal politics. I certainly do.

No more WC by 900 AD. This pleases me.

It pleases me too on a certain level, but I think WC by this or that date should ultimately not be a concern at all in a game that's not about WC. Rather, the game should be balanced around normal gameplay,

Historical accurace? Well it's not needed but having heredetary council membership and the council voting the the emperor actually modells the post golden bull HRE better than kings voting, you can have any number of kings the council is like the electors a set number.

Yup.

 

[Drekhead]

The thing I'm worried about is powerful vassals today are almost always negative and useless to your goals. I wouldn't want the new DLC to simply increase the effect of that. There are times when vassals do positive things for you - like go to war to conquer de jure provinces or go to war with someone or defend someone for whatever reason you can't. If they are going to be more difficult to deal with, there should be some sort of way to encourage good behavior, like 'I'll give you this dukedom/kingdom if you do this for me...' Just making bigger headaches would just make the game less fun.

 

[b_raven]

The thing I'm worried about is powerful vassals today are almost always negative and useless to your goals. I wouldn't want the new DLC to simply increase the effect of that. There are times when vassals do positive things for you - like go to war to conquer de jure provinces or go to war with someone or defend someone for whatever reason you can't. If they are going to be more difficult to deal with, there should be some sort of way to encourage good behavior, like 'I'll give you this dukedom/kingdom if you do this for me...' Just making bigger headaches would just make the game less fun.

Disagree with you. Vassals are too easy to deal with now.

 

[yezhanquan]

The thing I'm worried about is powerful vassals today are almost always negative and useless to your goals. I wouldn't want the new DLC to simply increase the effect of that. There are times when vassals do positive things for you - like go to war to conquer de jure provinces or go to war with someone or defend someone for whatever reason you can't. If they are going to be more difficult to deal with, there should be some sort of way to encourage good behavior, like 'I'll give you this dukedom/kingdom if you do this for me...' Just making bigger headaches would just make the game less fun.

If they tie this in with traits, it'll make managing vassals more challenging. Also, you missed out a crucial point: your goals and your vassals' MAY NOT ALIGN. At least, not always.

 

[James_Manring]

At this point wouldn't it be best to consider rolling some of the older expansions into the base game or just including them as free DLC from now on? The amount of expansions is prohibitively expensive to new players and it is obviously holding back the development team from doing what they want with the design of the game. Please, have the financial department look at it and try to convince them that you can use it as a marketing ploy to increase sales to new people while also freeing the developers.

 

[Cetan]

Well to be brutally honest the new facepack was so radically different visually compared to the old one that you were basically receiving a completely new product for free. You're seriously reaching if you think that it is comparable to rebalancing the retinues.

And I was one of the many who thought the facepacks were better than the original. I'm glad for the change.

 

[Ruwaard]

That's... kind of disappointing to hear.

I'm all for throwing money at Paradox for content, but if that results in key features becoming some sort of "untouchable" mechanic because people paid money for them... I hope you all are taking a good look at what gets considered "DLC features" in the future.

I would rather have retinues tightened up and fixed, even made free, without complaining that a "paid feature" is being taken. Tell the people who'd complain (example: the minuscule number of complainers about the Mediterranean Face Pack change) to get over it.

It's a delicate balancing act, not only to prevent complaining paid customers, but also to prevent people from waiting until features become better for free. DLC are here to improve the game, but at same time Paradox is a company, so DLC also needs to generate money for them.

The Mediterranean face pack was an improvement, but it also required an additional new dlc to have all cultures present in the old dlc to benefit from the change. Something similar might be the outcome, if retinues are fixed. Nothing is untouchable, nor is everything for free.

 

[Atlantians]

The ERE (Byzantine Romans) was never a feudal system.
The closest it ever came to being Feudal was under the Komnedids.

Land owners never even reached the widespread control of a full county.
Counties and Themes were granted to administrators.

I would really like to see playable baronies and playable inland republics.

Until then, this is what I would propose within this new system:
Imperial Bureaucratic Administration should work this way -
It should function in a way very different from a Feudal Government, as much as Hordes or Tribes, even if it is still listed under 'Feudal' for the sake of programming simplicity.

It should be able to devolve into a Feudal system.

A very well run Feudal with a powerful Emperor should be able to break down the Feudal traditions and turn their land into a Roman-styled bureaucratic administrative monarchy.
(As in, imagine if Charlemagne had a single strong/genius son with midas touched or brilliant strategist. The whole realm was inherited to this one super-heir who forged Francia into a new Germanic Roman Empire to rival the Greek Apostates!)

Spoiler

1)
Revoking a Theme title or a County title each costs Prestige and an opinion malus just with the administrating character of the title (like with themes now).

The amount of prestige depends on how many vice-royalty counties and theme titles are held by the title holder.
It would also depend on how many counts are under him.
The more powerful the viceroy, the more prestige the revocation costs. The more titles you revoke from the same character, the more each revocation costs.

a) this would mean that if you give an administrator a theme, and he has a good stewardship stat, he might revoke counts under him (for an opinion malus with his other underlings unlike the prestige system of the emperor).

This would mean that if you revoke the Theme from him, he is still just as powerful and a threat, so you would either need to place him under another strategos or revoke all his county viceroyalties. This would of course keep encouraging a rebellion.

b) this would be a path to a powerful viceroy declaring a title hereditary.

2) If you allow a Theme level viceroy to become too powerful, with multiple themes and counts, he may invest prestige to demand the title as a family title, to pass down to his children.

If you do this, every viceroy that likes him gets an opinion boost, and he and his progeny get opinion boosts.

However, this will encourage further requests, more counties, even the theme itself, and denying these requests will eventually erase that opinion boost, remove the hereditary opinion boost towards the royal family, and anger them and their allies.

3) This would result in a hybrid system of l powerful semi-feudal landholding families mixed with Strategoi and Provincial County Administrators. Basically: what it currently looks like, except more messy.

Landowners and Viceroyalties would also have separate laws. You could set Landholders at max manpower and viceroys at max tax, for instance.

4) Exarchs would be the same as now, just a smaller universal malus if revoked, and a major prestige hit. Exarchs would not ask for any additional land as an inheritance.
This is a benefit because you can keep your viceroys content, but you are still giving an individual tremendous power over a large region which might bite you in the rear later.

5) Diminishing returns from granting multiple viceroys. So, all opinion bonuses should be reduced for viceroy grants; they also should only stack with diminishing returns.
Granting a vice-royalty would give a small malus like now (but higher), but only among other viceroys, and only if you are granting the vice-royalty to a character who already has a title.

6) Viceroys should not provide levies, instead they should contribute manpower (using the levy/tax scale earlier) to standing armies that function like retinues but cost much less per unit (but also cost prestige to form, as well as draw from that manpower pool) and can become loyal to their assigned middle general. The same would be true of Clergy and Republics: tax or manpower; not levies.

After a certain amount of loyalty, attempts to divide the standing army, reassign the general, or other actions might result in them defecting to that general depending on how powerful that General is as a vassal/viceroy of the ERE. (Inspired by the EU: Rome army loyalty like system)

Retinues of the Emperor would still exist as would the Varangian Guard; and these would remain loyal to just the Emperor.

7) Viceroys would still have levies they can call, the size of which would depending on how much manpower they are donating to the central standing armies.

This would allow viceroys to actually rise up and defend their themes when attacked, but their armies would not be controlled by the Player/Emperor.

(They would basically act like how tribes or hordes can call their underlings to war, except weaker. and limited by how much of their manpower is being drawn towards the standing armies of the Emperor).

However: only the themes/counties actively being attacked and the allies of those themes/counties would rise up to defend.

The only way the entire empire would raise the local levies of the themes would be if a jihad is called against the ERE, or if a Horde declares a war for the title of the ERE.

Again, these armies would be small if the Emperor has set the manpower commitments of the Strategoi to max.

Thoughts?

Additions?

Simplification?

Please take this apart constructively if you disagree with something; and please try and find something you think could work or is a good idea if you find something you think is a bad idea.

Thanks!

 

[highsis]

Great, please make it as hard as possible because I know whichever difficulty you end up putting in the DLC it will turn out easy in the end.

 

[highsis]

Can we please have coalitions within a realm with much faster AE gain? I want to fight a coalition as a count or duke, or even as a king who tried to consolidate his power too quickly.

 

[Thure]

At this point wouldn't it be best to consider rolling some of the older expansions into the base game or just including them as free DLC from now on? The amount of expansions is prohibitively expensive to new players and it is obviously holding back the development team from doing what they want with the design of the game. Please, have the financial department look at it and try to convince them that you can use it as a marketing ploy to increase sales to new people while also freeing the developers.

Sadly the world isn't that easy... something like this could end very badly for a developer. Especially for a game they still want to sell.