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Dev Diary 11: Stopping The Snowball

Hey! So today we will talk about some mechanics we’ve added to make other rulers react to what happens in the world. 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. Snowballs are pretty evil, just like medieval rulers.

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.

Infamy is limited to be within the range of 0 to 100% and will slowly decay over time based on how strong your max military potential is. When you hit 25% infamy, coalitions will be unlocked and AIs will start joining them based on how threatened they feel.Your infamy will serve as a hint on how aggressive and dangerous other rulers think your realm is. You gain infamy primarily by conquering land through war or by inheriting a fair maidens huge tracts of land.

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 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.
capture(56).png


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.

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. You can view the current coalition someone has against them by the diplomacy field on the character screen.

capture(54).png


But it might not be the easiest way to view it so we also added a mapmode to more easily visualize Coalitions. A nation which turns up white is the nation you have currently selected, blue will be targetable for coalitions, yellow means they have a coalition against them and Red means they are members of the coalition against the currently selected one.

capture(55).jpg
 
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TheStrangerOrg said:
i can understand people critizing the value of this feature from a game-design point of view, but its really annoying when people claim it has no historical basis without even knowing what they are talking about...

what makes you think that there is no historical basis, while one glance at wikipedia will show you atleast a dozen historical alliances that work pretty much the same way that the DD described coalitions will work. The infamy part might be a bit crude, but its not like gaining large pieces of land, either trough war or marriage wouldnt alert your neighbours about what you might potentially do with all that new gained power.
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Coalitions were organized by not pressing join a coalition war, but crafting alliance with promises, marriages and could have been exploited by aggressor giving a better deal, which also could have been a lie. If alliances weren't just marrying each other's daughters and sisters and AI capable to know how to forge such alliances and when to call them, there wouldn't be a need for such stupid feature, which again - adds nothing but arbitrary band aids to a problem caused by completely other reasons.
 
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My god please dont add this. I already hate the coalition mechanic in eu4 because you made it so punishing for the player with the latest patches, and forced me to have me revert back to a older patch. which means no new content anymore. And now you add this to ck2? The coalition mechanic atleast made historical sense in eu4, but it doesnt fit in ck2 at all. Well i guess i need to set my ck2 also to: no new patches.
 
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Ritmas said:
Coalitions were organized by not pressing join a coalition war, but crafting alliance with promises, marriages and could have been exploited by aggressor giving a better deal, which also could have been a lie. If alliances weren't just marrying each other's daughters and sisters and AI capable to know how to forge such alliances and when to call them, there wouldn't be a need for such stupid feature, which again - adds nothing but arbitrary band aids to a problem caused by completely other reasons.
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well if you are saying that ck2 is an abstraction of reality, then obviously i agree... that the feature as its described is crude and lacking in depth and subtlety, i agree. but to say it has no basis in reality... cmon

im not sure how this feature will work out, it can go either way, but if they flesh it out and give it depth, i think it can be really nice. Because basically it will be an extension of the current alliances, but these alliances are not based on marriages and the benefits of gaining lands through inheritance. But rather based on mutual interest and keeping what you already have, or gaining through conquest from a mutual enemy. and if your enemy is strong and u fear he will attack you, then you will look to people that have the same problem and try to band together. at the same time it should also be a reason why people will flock to your protection if they hate their neighbours more. it shouldnt just be negative to have high infamy or whatever yo want to call it
 
TheStrangerOrg said:
well if you are saying that ck2 is an abstraction of reality, then obviously i agree... that the feature as its described is crude and lacking in depth and subtlety, i agree. but to say it has no basis in reality... cmon
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That abstaction is abstaction of abstaction and in such form it yes, doesn't have basis in reality.
 
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I fully intend to keep my snowball at 100% infamy most of the time. I was declaring war of conquest on all neighbours at the same time anyway when had army strong enough. Gathering armies once for 10 wars is easier then gathering armies 10 times for each war.
 
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Konair0s said:
I don't think I've ever seen a DD (or a dev's post for that matter) gathered so much respectful disagrees.
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That's because the way they're implementing infamy is merely as a band-aid solution for how ridiculously easy conquest is. Rather than putting in the work to figure out how to satisfactorily implement the campaigning season, or how to make warfare expensive in a way where you have to struggle to find the money rather than sit on your hands and wait for your war chest to build up, they're just telling the AI to form defensive coalition against the player.

The gameplay and AI are both fundamentally flawed in a way that feeds on itself (poor active opposition from the AI, and game mechanics that make conquest far simpler than in history), and rather than solving the problem they're adding infamy.
 
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GC13 said:
That's because the way they're implementing infamy is merely as a band-aid solution for how ridiculously easy conquest is. Rather than putting in the work to figure out how to satisfactorily implement the campaigning season, or how to make warfare expensive in a way where you have to struggle to find the money rather than sit on your hands and wait for your war chest to build up, they're just telling the AI to form defensive coalition against the player.

The gameplay and AI are both fundamentally flawed in a way that feeds on itself (poor active opposition from the AI, and game mechanics that make conquest far simpler than in history), and rather than solving the problem they're adding infamy.
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How do you know they aren't going to implement more features to stop snowballing why do you think they won't add more in the actual dlc?
 
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brobman22 said:
How do you know they aren't going to implement more features to stop snowballing why do you think they won't add more in the actual dlc?
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Pattern recognition. I mean, I'd be happy if they did, don't get me wrong, but they have a track record of band-aid solutions (look at development and estates in EU4: whether you think they're good or bad, they don't actually solve what they're meant to solve).

Also, why would they introduce a lame solution in the same patch they're introducing a good one in? It doesn't make much sense; if conquest becomes unviable, it's tough to tease out if it's because of one thing or the other sometimes.
 
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GC13 said:
Pattern recognition. I mean, I'd be happy if they did, don't get me wrong, but they have a track record of band-aid solutions (look at development and estates in EU4: whether you think they're good or bad, they don't actually solve what they're meant to solve).

Also, why would they introduce a lame solution in the same patch they're introducing a good one in? It doesn't make much sense; if conquest becomes unviable, it's tough to tease out if it's because of one thing or the other sometimes.
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1: this isn't eu4 and while I get that coalitions are transplanted from eu4 both games work differently from each other and I hope the same for infamy.
2: What if infamy is what makes the other mechanic good or uses it to balance the other mechanic they might introduce in the actual dlc.
3: Conquest isn't unviable it just makes it harder for bigger empires who get more infamy and lose it slower than a count
4: Maybe we should all just wait before we start passing judgement on a mechanic we really don't have much info on other than one DD and while I do have some ideas of how this could end up badly im going to wait for more information before I decide whether or not this is a bad idea but that doesn't mean im against speculation on how this could end up.
 
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brobman22 said:
1: this isn't eu4 and while I get that coalitions are transplanted from eu4 both games work differently from each other and I hope the same for infamy.
2: What if infamy is what makes the other mechanic good or uses it to balance the other mechanic they might introduce in the actual dlc.
3: Conquest isn't unviable it just makes it harder for bigger empires who get more infamy and lose it slower than a count
4: Maybe we should all just wait before we start passing judgement on a mechanic we really don't have much info on other than one DD and while I do have some ideas of how this could end up badly im going to wait for more information before I decide whether or not this is a bad idea but that doesn't mean im against speculation on how this could end up.
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1. It may be a different team, but it's still the same company working in the same engine which gives the same limitations.
2. Maybe so. We can hope.
3. I never said it was no longer viable or would certainly become no longer viable. All I said was why you really only want to make one big change at once if you can help it.
4. Maybe we could register our displeasure as early in the process as possible so that Paradox doesn't see rancor coming out of left field if people don't like the patch when it hits; communication is important. Besides, it's not like the infamy will be the end of the world or anything; I know I'm not displeased because I think it will make gameplay worse. I'm upset because it's just another band-aid attempting to cover up flaws in the gameplay by forcing a more realistic outcome (smaller empires) in an unrealistic way (automatic coalitions)—if people feel threatened by me, they should form coalitions against me whether I'm a saint or a scoundrel. All infamy does is give you an arbitrary speed limit.
 
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GC13 said:
4. Maybe we could register our displeasure as early in the process as possible so that Paradox doesn't see rancor coming out of left field if people don't like the patch when it hits; communication is important. Besides, it's not like the infamy will be the end of the world or anything; I know I'm not displeased because I think it will make gameplay worse. I'm upset because it's just another band-aid attempting to cover up flaws in the gameplay by forcing a more realistic outcome (smaller empires) in an unrealistic way (automatic coalitions)—if people feel threatened by me, they should form coalitions against me whether I'm a saint or a scoundrel. All infamy does is give you an arbitrary speed limit.
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yes but why would they change anything if they know something we don't and what do you mean by automatic coalitions.
 
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Audoucet said:
So, essentially, "Shut up or respect my authority".

Well, no. I will disagree with you when you say something wrong, and using your "3000" hours experience as an argument to say that the game is too easy is wrong.
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Not what I said. You want to support his argument, by disagreeing with my response, then you will get the response you deserve.

I have 479 hours on CK2 and 64 hours on EU IV.
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When someone throws around their hours in their argument, yea I will bring up mine as a hyperbole.
 
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*brzzzl*

It's advent time in the Paradox forum


everyone goes
serveimage

on each other


silently
serveimage

fly through the night


Let's hope we'll all have a jolly, bonny christmas time

der-weihnachtsfrieden-von-1914.jpg

serveimage

together ! :)


..and if you are not nice, then St. Nicholas comes after you with his birch !


*brrrzzzl*

We are sorry for the interruption of the program.
It will continue in a second.....
 
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I'm not sure how slowing down snowballing in this way is actually supposed to help the game. It just sounds like a speed limit that will increase the amount of time where I sit on my hands doing nothing. Spending so much time being idle, having nothing (or next to nothing) to do in my own realm is basically the entire reason why I tend to conquer whenever I can anyway, so yeah.

Now, I'll still wait and see what the DLC and the rest of the patch brings, but this change on its own sounds as though it would just slow the pace of the game with nothing to fill the added downtime.
 
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brobman22 said:
What is that?
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http://www.relikte.com/meppen/index.htm (one of the pictures down right; link changed as the ealier one was a blog)

Sorry for the OT.
I like to remind everyone that we are actually not in any HOI forum. *surprise*
Sadly i coudln't find game time period equivalent pictures that quickly...and that one is simply too good. :D
 
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