Dev Diary 11: Stopping The Snowball

[Finnway]

And now you have lost me.

Amazing. Considering I quoted your post in my response.

 

[Slayen]

Amazing. Considering I even quoted your post in my response.

Look, I'm getting a headache from this so could you kindly just break it down for me.

I'm clearly missing something.

 

[Finnway]

@Slayen Sure. Here is your post in its entirety.

Ignoring that we can't yet say that with 100% certainty, defending a bad feature by saying "you can just mod it out" is a very poor defense.

This argument also doesn't much help those who don't like it and actually like to play Ironman mode for achievements.

I personally don't, but I can empathize with those that do.

Here is the part I quoted.

This argument also doesn't much help those who don't like it and actually like to play Ironman mode for achievements.

I personally don't, but I can empathize with those that do.

Then you told me my response (which was about Iron-Man) had nothing to do with your post

 

[ImperatorLJ]

I'm okay with the idea of having the speedbump Infamy is, BUT, there also needs to be more peacetime activities and disasters to counter the increased wait time between player activity.

 

[Tom013]

@Slayen Sure. Here is your post in its entirety.



Here is the part I quoted.

Then you told me my response (which was about Iron-Man) had nothing to do with your post

I'm not 100% on-board with @Slayen's arguments, but your response that you didn't play Ironman really was not a refutation of his statement that people want to play ironman for achievements.

I guess it had something to do with what he said. Maybe. However, only in the sense that I could now say "Nonsense! I like responding to things" and that would be related to the fact that you were talking about responses. Yes, I guess I made a statement related to responses, but it doesn't really do anything to dispute or strengthen your point: that your original statement was actually arguing against him...

In conclusion, regardless of my opinions on what is a valid argument and what is not in general, when you said:

Dumb argument. I have played Iron-Man. But I don't anymore because it's so damn easy it's boring. Why would I want to play a 700 year campaign when it only takes 200 years to become the most powerful realm on the map? After that, it's just a cake-walk.

you made no argument that supports modding as an alternative for everyone. It's just a statement of preference. Which is fine, but still not what one would call normal flow of discussion.

 

[Slayen]

@Slayen Sure. Here is your post in its entirety.



Here is the part I quoted.

Then you told me my response had nothing to do with your post

Oh... OH!
Ok, I get it now.

You do realize that nothing you just said in any way invalidates what anything you just quoted right?

This does not mean what you seem to think it means. It does not mean that what you posted had nothing to do with what I had previously posted.

It's that your statement here:

Dumb argument. I have played Iron-Man. But I don't anymore because it's so damn easy it's boring. Why would I want to play a 700 year campaign when it only takes 200 years to become the most powerful realm on the map? After that, it's just a cake-walk.

Does not change the fact that telling someone who both:

A) Likes to play Ironman for achievements
and
B) Does not like a given mechanic

to mod it out is a shitty argument to use.

 

[brobman22]

I don't have a positive opinion because I don't like what I see so far.

Not sure why this is hard to grasp..

Ah whatever we will see whether or not the outrage was warranted or not in the next few weeks.

 

[NewbieOne]

We want to slow down the snowball and prolong the time it takes to conquer the world, so it shouldn’t be as easy to do.

What kind of challenge level are you aiming at making it? I mean, obviously neither 'perfectly achievable' nor 'completely impossible', but where on the scale in between these two extremes?

I've enjoyed the way this game seems to be not about pulling off a WC but rather about the accumulation of prestige and piety through character achievements.

Just as with the shattered retreat mechanic we took inspiration from Europa Universalis 4 in our decision to add Coalitions. Our coalitions however are based on an Infamy value instead of Aggressive Expansion. You might recognize the name Infamy from our old games, but even though it shares the name it will work quite differently.

Yeah, I like the use of tried and true concepts in other titles.

You gain infamy primarily by conquering land through war or by inheriting a fair maidens huge tracts of land.

1. Do you get variable amounts depending on the CB used? For example we could probably agree that the Liberate CB from HL shouldn't really generate much infamy, even though it takes land (back). Getting your own de iure back sounds to me like something that should generate less apprehension than expanding outside.

2. Well, I can see the reason for some form of 'badboy' in aggressively pursuing marriages for land, but you said Infamy is going to be different from Agressive Expansion. I can't really see anything infamous in something like inheriting some titles from your mother (especially when she accidentally inherits after the deaths of her two childless brothers that wasn't caused by your own meddling) or binding two countries in a marriage for peace/collaboration through joint succession (e.g. Barcelona-Aragon, Poland-Lithuania), not really sure about something like marrying your own vassal or liege.

Landed women and female heirs are by definition supposed to be good catches. I would hope this mechanic won't discourage AI from marrying them. They shouldn't be left for lowborns and randomly generated courtiers to marry matrilineally, that would be OTT.

The amount of Infamy you gain is based on the action you do, how much land you take and how large your realm already is.

So I presume that those CBs which don't lead to land acquisition (e.g. tribute wars, pressing people's claims without becoming their liege) will also generate Infamy for the aggressor?

So for instance the Kaiser of the HRE declaring a war for Flanders and taking it is going to make the neighbours more worried than if Pomerania manages to take Mecklenburg.

That's not necessarily logical, actually. The HRE is always going to be more of a threat than Pomerania in terms of how hard they can hit you if they decide to. But a duke who gobbles up a neighbouring duchy and doubles his territory in a single lifetime is more of an aggressive troublemaker than an emperor who tries to readjust his border (especially with a de iure CB, meaning he's the legal liege there).

Next, suppose you're Henry VI. Richard Duke of York's son Edward (Earl of March), or one of the Nevilles, is about to marry the female holder of a duchy in your realm. That's gonna work you up more than Castillian war for Castillian Claim on Aragon and vice versa. Also if you're Somerset (illegitimate Lancaster) or Suffolk (Lancastrian aide), that's going to make you much more worried for your hide than whatever France and the HRE might be doing to each other right now. I'm pretty sure you've included distance/proximity as a factor in some way, but care to shed a bit more light on this?

For an AI to join a coalition they will consider the relative strength between the target and themselves, how threatened they think they are and how much infamy the target has accrued.

Does how threatened they think they are also include strength or is strength only covered once, in relative strength between you and them?

View attachment 146614

I definitely don't want to say a coalition featuring Georgia and a bunch of Muslim states against a dominant Muslim power is not possible, but if they Invasion CB is available to the Seljuks because of their religion, then shouldn't fellow Muslims look at their gobbling up of Armenia in a different light than the Georgians do? Or are we talking about a Muslim Armenia there (like the Uqaylid Sultanate in 769)?

See, this is like the one major problem area I can see with the new Infamy mechanic (with the trouble surrounding female-line inheritance also being important but less) — it doesn't seem to capable of taking religious differences into account. Making your coreligionists dislike you less for having high infamy wouldn't solve the problem of not seeing the difference in who you earned that infamy against.

 

[USAF_777]

Coming from primarily playing EU2 -- I hope this doesn't end up being like the badboy mechanic in that game. That was a pretty artificial-feeling and poorly-executed mechanic.

Essentially, you'd accrue BB for aggressive conquests regardless of religion/culture, and at high levels your internal stability would plummet and you'd start drawing DoWs. Cross the magical limit and you'd get constant forced civil wars (just rebel-crushing turned to 11) and "badboy wars" in which literally everyone on the same continent as your capital or neighboring you would attack you as often as possible.

It was crude in that it was actually worse for conquering same-religion nations but applied equally to everyone, so, for example, Europeans would consider the Ottomans more of a threat if they conquered their own Sunni neighbors than if they expanded into Eastern Europe. The civil wars were silly, in that an OE that smashed through nothing more than the small Anatolia countries, Byzantium, and say, Serbia, would be on the verge of unending civil wars. Had to game the system by feeding allies to avoid accruing BB, which just felt really constructed and fake.

Worse, you had to essentially sit around for 50-100 years waiting for the number to tick down before doing anything else, once you were near the limit, if you didn't want to pass it. Kind of a cooling-off period without any real reason for it other than the existence said number.

It also could be exploited to get free wars. Since everyone would DoW you constantly once over the limit, you could freely fight them and expand without having to take the negatives for declaring war yourself. In CK that wouldn't be as much of an issue, as you can't just grab territory in random defensive wars, but it'd still give you the opportunity to take prisoners and smash other realms' armies to nothingness, which can certainly set the table for wars of conquest later on.

I also worry how this would apply to the Byzantines or Iberians -- realms that face both expansion opportunities and threats from holy wars. I don't think expanding Christendom into southern Iberia or the Mideast would be seen by other Christian countries as a threat (though it certainly would by Muslims), but it sounds like this mechanic could treat it as such (as it appears to be just a single univeral number). And their vulnerability to holy wars means it could punish such border lands disproportionately.

 

[Finnway]

It's that your statement here:



Does not change the fact that telling someone who both:

A) Likes to play Ironman for achievements
and
B) Does not like a given mechanic

to mod it out is a shitty argument to use.

I didn't respond to the first line in your post because someone else already had. But since you seem unable to read I'll keep quoting posts.

Ignoring that we can't yet say that with 100% certainty, defending a bad feature by saying "you can just mod it out" is a very poor defense.

But how do you know its bad?

Too add to @brobman22 's response. Sometimes Paradox makes changes to their games that upsets a portion of their player base. Paradox's usual response is "suck it up, or mod it out." Plus, people have been asking Paradox to limit expansion in CK2 for a while. So it's not like this change is unwarranted.

Also - about Iron-Man. I ask you how exactly you think this change affects Iron-Man players? It doesn't. All it does it delay the amount of time it takes to earn an achievement. If before it took 200 years to form Britannia, now it'll tale 300.

To emphasize this. I'll quote my earlier post again.

Dumb argument. I have played Iron-Man. But I don't anymore because it's so damn easy it's boring. Why would I want to play a 700 year campaign when it only takes 200 years to become the most powerful realm on the map? After that, it's just a cake-walk.

Before playing Iron-Man was too easy. Infamy isn't a perfect solution, but it does take a step in the right direction.

 

[TheStrangerOrg]

leon conquering all of muslim spain would definitely alert france, but it would indeed be unlikely that theyd ally with the muslims, instead an alliance with genoa or barcelona for example would be more likely.

i think people are overvaluing the influence religion had on rulers decisions when it came to staying in power or not.

 

[Zolotaya]

When are you guys going to add naval warfare to this game, rather than unneccessary mechanics like this? Being a Mediterranean power should be about naval power, I want ships to matter!

I hope they only add naval warfare once the many ai issues involving naval provinces are addressed. They are so serious that more "straits" were added into the game to alleviate movement logic recently. Something that is quite alarming.

Coming from primarily playing EU2 -- And their vulnerability to holy wars means it could punish such border lands disproportionately.

While I do not believe this mechanic will be a copy-paste from EU, your post is a well written summary of some of my concerns. One thing that is spelled out in this DD that is not addressed in EU is the defensive nature of the coalitions, something lacking in EU badboy.

I honestly wish the dev team had chosen a new, separated identity from infamy because the term itself is tied to concept that has a decade or more of history behind it. They are fighting that association more than anything at the moment, whether this association of terms is justified or not.

The way alliances are receiving an overhaul at the same time leads me to believe the holistic picture is changing. Some basic assumptions about waging warfare we have in the current release may no longer apply once the new patch hits live.

 

[CplKatie]

Easier? So now needing to actually spend all that gold you have acquired to support mercenaries - that you currently don't need - means it is faster and easier to conquer your neighbours.

Still will be possible, but needing to hire mercs to do the job you didn't need to do before isn't easier.

You need to remember there has not been any mention of changing CB's. So winning against a large coalition doesn't mean you get to conquer them all, just what you declared war for. You are not going to have an eaiser time because you have cash, it will be harder, because you actually have to spend the cash.

Because the "coalitions" will declare on you with your gigantic bankroll and come at you with smaller armies from multiple sides and locations while you sit there with a giant merc army oncall. And when they lose this war you gain money and prestige to boost your standing with your internal vassals and secure the costs for said mercenaries you used to trick these now weak neighbors after losing. Then you turn around and declare upon them as many wars as you want because the new thing to do is piss everyone around you off cause they will constantly throw away their money and feed you with prestige. Sure there will be games where a player may not have multiple cb's at their disposal but I suspect there will be plenty of "heresy" or pagan games where the snowball is so bad that they conquer the map within 2 generations. Before you go into the crazy realm understand that there may be totally viable situations where this may not work, I'm simply saying that how I'd play with this new needless feature is amazingly OP and exploitative. I really wished they had gone with more internal things cause when you are a blob, least when I am, I turn inward more than outward and would have loved to see more management gameplay and politics instead of simply handing us money and prestige. Unless these coalitions coordinate like the new revolt system does, they will be just as broken as the old revolt system was where you picked counts and dukes off and got easy realm management off it.

If I had to play dev for the moment and think of a way to prevent my exploits, I'd simply tie in a gold cost inflation to infamy levels to prevent north korea mode gameplay. And if Groogy wants to forward me a version of the patch to exploit I will gladly do it with him watching me via steam streaming the whole time so he could finally block North korea modes Oh and also give opposing coalitions a troop modifier effected by the target blobs infamy level and tie the difficulty setting of the game to these new settings so that people who are bad at the game don't have such a hard time if they drop the setting down and people like me who exploit to the high heavens can finally have a challenge.

 

[USAF_777]

While I do not believe this mechanic will be a copy-paste from EU, your post is a well written summary of some of my concerns. One thing that is spelled out in this DD that is not addressed in EU is the defensive nature of the coalitions, something lacking in EU badboy.

True, "can't press claims on lil Irish count without France+HRE defending him" is more interesting/useful than "Norway+Persia+Songhai throw their troops at you out of sheer hatred over that one extra province." Something more along the lines of a later-era balance-of-power system. And arguably a high "infamy" should draw in smaller orbiter allies to you who hope to gain something as well, or are themselves afraid of a defensive coalition. Could essentially be massaged to function as something that brings about more of a nation- or dynasty-based alliance system if a character's holdings grow too powerful. Maybe they could attempt to split your holdings between heirs if you lose a war against them?

 

[Dracko81]

And when they lose this war you gain money and prestige to boost your standing with your internal vassals and secure the costs for said mercenaries you used to trick these now weak neighbors after losing.

Coalitions are not aggressive. So your exploit wouldn't work. You would need to be the aggressor. So you don't get any money gain from winning this imaginary war.

Your internal vassals therefore wouldn't like you any better. Your entire plan revolves around the AI attacking you with a coalition, that is either not going to happen, or be very rare. You would need to attack them, so you might get away with attacking several neighbours at once. But then you would either need to keep declaring war before people joined a coalition or would need to fight it eventually anyway. At which point your infamy would likely be very high and everyone would be in it against you.

So no based on what the dev diary says, your exploit wouldn't work.

 

[Zolotaya]

True, "can't press claims on lil Irish count without France+HRE defending him" is more interesting/useful than "Norway+Persia+Songhai throw their troops at you out of sheer hatred over that one extra province." Something more along the lines of a later-era balance-of-power system. And arguably a high "infamy" should draw in smaller orbiter allies to you who hope to gain something as well, or are themselves afraid of a defensive coalition. Could essentially be massaged to function as something that brings about more of a nation- or dynasty-based alliance system if a character's holdings grow too powerful. Maybe they could attempt to split your holdings between heirs if you lose a war against them?

You are on the right track. Dynasty seems the likely vehicle for delivery (please excuse my poor analogy). Your conclusion would be ideal, and is supported by historical example (thinking of Karling wars post-Charlemagne).

Our challenge at the moment is that we are operating with incomplete information. Not only are the individual mechanics shown to us incomplete in their reveal, the overall uniting system tying everything together is still behind closed doors. Until we see the entirety we must withhold judgement ... past experience aside.

 

[StJimmyRocks92]

Coalitions are not aggressive. So your exploit wouldn't work. You would need to be the aggressor. So you don't get any money gain from winning this imaginary war.

Your internal vassals therefore wouldn't like you any better. Your entire plan revolves around the AI attacking you with a coalition, that is either not going to happen, or be very rare. You would need to attack them, so you might get away with attacking several neighbours at once. But then you would either need to keep declaring war before people joined a coalition or would need to fight it eventually anyway. At which point your infamy would likely be very high and everyone would be in it against you.

So no based on what the dev diary says, your exploit wouldn't work.

Coalitions themselves are mostly defensive in Crusader Kings, if any member gets attacked by the target of the coalition they will automatically be called into the war. If a member starts a war against the target they only get a normal call to arms which they can choose to decline.View attachment 146616

 

[Dracko81]

You think that the AI is going to support a war any more than the AI would support a war in the current version?

Here is the thing, the AI will not declare war on a target they can not defeat by themselves. If the AI is in a coalition Vs anyone, chances are they are not going to attack them because they are already weaker. That condition is more likely in place so that if you the player wish to try and force the issue, you can. Chances of seeing a coalition attacking a target will probably be so rare it isn't even worth mentioning.

Add to this that the AI will then look at whether it likes you or them more and then take into consideration other things like other wars. At which point you likely wouldn't get a lot of support from the coalition.

Coalitions are clearly designed to be defensive, although they have a possibility to be aggressive. His suggestion that he could use defensive coalitions to farm cash and prestige and thus make expanding easier still wouldn't work, because the AI is not going to attack someone so much stronger than themselves.

 

[Thure]

You are missing one point, @StJimmyRocks92 . Yes. Members of coalitions can start a war against you. If they have a claim etc. But not 'We don't like you and because of this declare war' or because they are an coalition.

 

[Mudcrab]

"... Being a Mediterranean power should be about naval power, I want ships to matter!

This by a very handsome and dapper forum member, not long ago:

"So does Venezia, Genova and Amalfi". What a guy.

*

After reading the majority of this thread, anything that makes ironman harder is going to be a better experience for a game that's starting to get varicose veins or sciatica, as old age creeps forward.