Conclave Dev Diary #1

[BigPharma]

Money as in incentives to get the new DLC. Sure this will all be free patch, but things like a Council that is actually important and could threaten your realm? That'll be DLC. They are hyping people for the new DLC with promises of challenge instead of promises of substance. Coalitions did happen, but you know what they do? They stop further exansion. It does -nothing- to destabilize a realm. All it will be is a balancing factor, once a coalition gets large enough that the blob in question can't steamroll it anymore, that's when they stop expanding (or in the AI's case, enter eternal war). Blobs will still exist, they won't collapse because there is no pressure. They will simply be contained.

You, as a player, will not face any more opposition internally than you did before. You'll expand your borders as you did before, as far as you can, and then a coalition will appear that you can't beat and you'll realize that this new 'system' means you get to sit on your hands 60 years watching the rivers freeze and the spread of Lover's Pox. Then you expand more until a coalition appears again, and you go back to waiting.

Absolutely enthralling gameplay, no?

How scandalous for a company that requires profits to fuel further development of a title to *gasp* advertise a product! The game, while it could be improved into perpetuity, is playable and enjoyable as is, and has been more or less so since 1.0. Don't get me wrong, Paradox is far from infallible, but I wasn't aware that a game studio gets elevated to money-grubbing EA tier evil for releasing and advertising DLCs so they can actually add more to the game. As a modder, I know what it's like to work on something for free, and it's not particularly intrinsically rewarding.

 

[Hector of Troy]

If well executed, the ideas here are superb.

My only fear is that the developers will undo all of the so needed, requested and long awaited anti-blob changes once the first negative thread appears, full of people complaining about how unstable their empires are now or how unfair the new mechanics can be.

Since there are no customization sliders present in CK2, there will always be people complaining about game balance. Besides, let's not forget there are those who actually enjoy painting the map undisturbed, without the slightest sign of instability ahead.

Although I really like what I've read so far, sometimes I am under the impression the developers are not very secure about the direction they want to take, which makes me worry, and even doubt a little, this diary will effectively ever take place in reality.

That said, I prefer to wait until the expansion, hotfix and subsequent patches come out and see if all of this will stay true. I sincerely hope it will.

 

[Korashy]

Can factions be two sided? I.e. a rebellious and a loyalist faction, and actually count loyal vassals into the calculation?

To be honest, I'm not liking any of these changes much. It messes too much with the essence of what the game has become over the years.

 

[Thure]

Can factions be two sided? I.e. a rebellious and a loyalist faction, and actually count loyal vassals into the calculation?

To be honest, I'm not liking any of these changes much. It messes too much with the essence of what the game has become over the years.

What exactly do mess with the essence?

 

[brobman22]

Can factions be two sided? I.e. a rebellious and a loyalist faction, and actually count loyal vassals into the calculation?

To be honest, I'm not liking any of these changes much. It messes too much with the essence of what the game has become over the years.

The essence of the game has been placate vassals, kick/kill vassals, blob, repeat which I have gotten bored of and want to feel like my vassals matter beyond soldiers or being hindrances

 

[Korashy]

What exactly do mess with the essence?

You are trying to jury rig a bunch of mechanics that only half worked in other games onto a game that hasn't been anything else than an empire builder / map painting game with light roleplay for years. This whole going tall instead of wide nonsense has never worked in any paradox games, why should it work now in a game that is even less supportive of it.

Making blobbing harder doesn't prevent the underlining issue that there isn't really all too much to do except blobbing. You are curtailing the fun part of the game without really bringing in anything to replace the content.

Vassals are essentially faceless, they do something to annoy you and you retaliate (or don't) and they get replaced by the next faceless pesky vassal.

 

[tywinzo]

Conclave sounds like an interesting addition. The "govern by meeting your vassals" sounds historical and challenging!

 

[Immortal88]

Here's a crazy idea: How about you get the troops/money if you're in an opinion draw with the pope. I mean if he doesn't have a preference either way a bishop might as well send the money closer to home

 

[WeissRaben]

Yes, I know. But a point made in the dev diary is that blobbing is harder due to things like vassals being more uppity due to opinion modifiers (the main way to prevent rebellions in large empires) being lessened. This would be a problem for large empires like the ERE or any late-game centralized empire.

Yes, it makes perfect sense that feudal infighting, bickering, and power struggles would make very large feudal empires very unstable (even France, one of the largest feudal nations, was a giant s***t show most of the time, and the HRE became the decentralized mess it was during the EUIV era for a reason), but centralized, administrative empires shouldn't have this kind of stability problem due to...well, their not being feudal. They had their own problems, yes, but those would be an entirely different thing.

The ERE did in fact become mostly feudal during CK2 timeframe because of vassals continuously pressing for hereditary land. Even at the points where it was recovering or almost stable, Byzantium was in a downward decentralizing spiral. And said spiral was long missing in CK2.

 

[kvk]

Hmm to me it looks like the taxation and levy laws have been simplified, goddamnit, that's not what I want. Why limit it to one thing, why can't we have both low levies and taxes (Edit: actually that's probably what the center represents)? or high levies and high taxes, maybe i'm misreading it, and it will be possible to select laws on both sides of the center at the same time, I hope that is the case, neat new tab.

 

[TheDungen]

As I said, my concern is about that new feature in this expansion. We won't be able to max out levies and tax at the same time.

No but ypu'll still be able to piss your vassals of like crazy, now you jsuthave to chose between doign it by asking for leavies, money of half and half.

If this keeps up they're going to nerf the casuals right out of the market. And that would be a shame...

Incidentally, the best way to make a Hard Game for the Elites, while keeping an easy game for the Casuals, would be to expand the Difficulty Slider to encompass all sorts of Easiness and hardness. By expanding the Slider, and giving it teeth, you could wind up with everything, all the way from an "I-win Button" at one end of the spectrum, to an "I-Lose" Button at the other end.

Balancing games should *NEVER* be about pleasing one side at the expense of another. Especially in a Single-player game...

I disagree, the game can be harder to de great at withou being harder to be good at. The anti blobbing feature is such a thing, it both prevents you from WC and protect you from the AI trying to game over you.

Money? The AE stuff is free patch stuff... And coalitions did happen...

Yup just ask the mongols. There's a reason the golden horde is nearly gone at the start of eu4 and cI'd sya it was a coalition.

Is the "Powerful Vassal" solely related to the vassal's military, or do other things (economy, titles) factor in? Is it possible to link the "Power" to some titles specifically regardless of levies, economy or other factors? For instance, in the AGoT mod, the Commander of the King's Guard could very well expect a place on the council as an advisor without actually having an army of his own, so to speak.

In short, can there be other conditions for a vassal to expect a place on the council?

Fair points, I hope these things are taken into consideration.

Then maybe they could FINALLY fix France so it's not the HRE's floormop anymore. That would go a long way to keeping the HRE in line.

Unless the devs have something against keeping Empires from blobbing, that is...

Fix it for historical accuracy, france will now instead be a floormop for the english... jokes aside this isn't EU, france in this era is just another frankish sucessor state and not one that does spectacular by any means.

To be honest, I'm not liking any of these changes much. It messes too much with the essence of what the game has become over the years.

What I has become over the years? Just load up the map in paint and go grazy with the paint bucket, that's what the game has become over the years

You are trying to jury rig a bunch of mechanics that only half worked in other games onto a game that hasn't been anything else than an empire builder / map painting game with light roleplay for years. This whole going tall instead of wide nonsense has never worked in any paradox games, why should it work now in a game that is even less supportive of it.

Making blobbing harder doesn't prevent the underlining issue that there isn't really all too much to do except blobbing. You are curtailing the fun part of the game without really bringing in anything to replace the content.

Vassals are essentially faceless, they do something to annoy you and you retaliate (or don't) and they get replaced by the next faceless pesky vassal.

You mean except that it did work wonders in EU4 both last two expansions. And blobbing is something you do because you have to becuase the AI will sure as hell be blobbing. Decreasing the blobbiness of the game is only a good thing it allows you to focus on the intresting parts like events and your characters.
Not being able to conquer all of europe is only realistic, you'll note very few countries did blobbing on that level in this era. Most struggles were internal to unify the kingdoms, or relating to who would sit on the throne.

 

[TheDungen]

Not even than... That would make no sense at all. Your vassals are still rulers. They don't do such missions on their own.

Depends on what kind of job it is I imagine, I could see a powerful noble going of on a diplomatic mission, if it was prestigeous enough, but itäs be a visit, not a permanent position.

 

[Ayeshteni]

When I saw the title of the expansion 'Conclave' my first thought was that they finally found a way for you to play the papacy/theocracies. But nope, ah well, can't have everything - so what is it then, I thought and read on...

CK2.5: EUIV Edition.

Bring out a bugfix patch before you bring out this abhorence Pdox and I'll stick with that (give us the option please).

Thx, bye.

Aye.

 

[udk450]

I wonder if we'll be able to appease powerful vassals with a honorary title

I'd think it might be appropriate with those who have the Content trait, but if they're greedy/ambitious, I doubt it would settle them.

 

[Korashy]

You mean except that it did work wonders in EU4 both last two expansions. And blobbing is something you do because you have to becuase the AI will sure as hell be blobbing. Decreasing the blobbiness of the game is only a good thing it allows you to focus on the intresting parts like events and your characters.
Not being able to conquer all of europe is only realistic, you'll note very few countries did blobbing on that level in this era. Most struggles were internal to unify the kingdoms, or relating to who would sit on the throne.

I don't get this. Blobbing has become easier than ever in EUIV, people are onetagging in <200 years. Numerous TTM were done in 1.13

And sure, I would love to focus on events, the problem is that I've seen every event 200 times already (which is precisely what I mean with "no new content"), and sitting there at speed 5 while generic event takes another trait isn't exactly fun. The game has some interesting and fun event chains (charriot race for Byz) but they are rare and after the 2-3 time they aren't that exciting anymore either. At this point killing the White stag is just "okay cool, hunter trait and a life time modifier". Demigods are running around with stats of 30-40 plus everywhere, when 10 per the games tooltips is supposed to show excellence in that field.

At this point I would rather pay to have expansions a la way of life that add mostly events, and story. Craft events that give claims to force some great wars/struggles, add events that make inheritance less predictable. Make it actually worth getting your dynasts on foreign thrones again instead of just conquering them yourself. That's what is missing and I don't see provided here.

 

[MelancholyRoar]

Any chance to change the mechanics of electors for empires? For example making Kings only be electors?

 

[Zolotaya]

I am disappointed with this DD. Not only does it lack anything new being disclosed but more troubling, it brings things into question which were not prior. On to some specifics:

I left out the quote but I am disturbed by the way the 2nd tier of alliances are still being framed by marriage. What was written before made me think the alliance system was changing for the better; what I read today puts those conclusions to question and it raises the possibility that even less flexibility will occur in the existing mechanic. Now the realm relations aspect of the dlc is muddier than before.

Whenever we did try to “deepen” the core gameplay in an expansion, it often turned out to be a mistake

This sums up my fears for this expansion after I read this DD. I do not think there is a singular "depth" expansion I felt worth the purchase price. Perhaps, after some sleep, I will think of something.

Reduce the “positive opinion inflation” of vassals vs their liege. (We ended up cutting many important positive opinion modifiers in half.)

I guess a ham-fisted approach here can be taken. I already see future re-adjustments needed and a action-reaction balance taking place - one, which if the past is indicative, means it will stall incomplete down the road, only to be corrected by community mod efforts later.

Perhaps the more elegant solution of restricting modifiers in applicable characters is being undertaken in addition to the above but without confirmation I won't assume.

Experiencing these types of adjustments in the past, does this mean the Ruler Designer gets emasculated again? Will older events and chains be placed behind firewalls such as was done in WoL?

So far, I see echos of past "depth" improvements haunting this dlc and I see the same mistakes being made.

Has there been a singular "depth" improvement fully fleshed out to this point? I can name several promising improvements introduced but none were ever fleshed out in their entirety ... this is most depressing to me.

Highlight the most powerful vassals by making them strongly desire a Council seat.

As long as ai logic improved the regularly assigned ambition. Too often an ambition does not match their ability. An ai vassal with a military of 25 should not keep pushing for non-Marshal position time after time.

We also took this opportunity to address an unrelated weakness in the game, namely the education of children. If you have the expansion, that whole experience should now be more interesting…

This is the brightest and most exciting part of this DD for me so far. I look forward to seeing this more detailed.

... You want to know what is really going to happen? Players are going to find a way to cheese past all these limitations (like Vassal Limits and Imperial Administration, or Gavelkind and bum-rushing CA to succession law changes) and then come back to the forums to whine and complain about how the game is easy again.

As the community grows in understanding and knowledge, what was once considered deep is no longer considered such. This is the biggest drawback to every "depth" dlc released to this point in time.

 

[LudskyL]

They are just saying, that the LAST DLCs expanded the map. Not that THIS expansion expands the map.

Thanks you, I have don't understand :/

 

[udk450]

With the new Marriage Mechanic, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BABY LENIN allow for inter-religious marriages?

I could understand if you're trying to marry a child to someone who's liege is Zealous, but if they're indifferent, or even a Cynic, they should definitely be more open to interreligious marriages.

 

[King Dave]

Hmm to me it looks like the taxation and levy laws have been simplified, goddamnit, that's not what I want. Why limit it to one thing, why can't we have both low levies and taxes (Edit: actually that's probably what the center represents)? or high levies and high taxes, maybe i'm misreading it, and it will be possible to select laws on both sides of the center at the same time, I hope that is the case, neat new tab.

If it's one or the other then that's a step backwards and offers us less choice.