Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries
Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Crusader Kings II 69946 Bug Reports 19719 User Modifications 10605 Suggestions 5969 Tech Support 6375 After Action Reports
Previous dev diary Next dev diary
Show only dev responses

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
 
  • 310
  • 230
  • 40
Reactions:
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
Konair0s said:
Russians made alliances with steppe people before that, also some joint campaigns. Plus it wasn't out of the blue, Cumans ("Polovtsy" how they are called here) had some marriage connections to Russians. It looks more like traditional "call to arms". Or possibly "call to arms extended".

It would be possible if PDX finally has lifted the restriction on inter-religious marriages.
Click to expand...

How is that situation unlike cross-faith pagan marriages for alliances now? Also the Holy War CB already functions as a coalition, so why do we need these new fantasy scenarios?
 
  • 3
Reactions:
The Great Bear said:
If I'm playing a Castile game and the Umayyads are going crazy then I don't see what is so unrealistic about me fighting along with some other Muslims to try and halt their expansions.
Actually I think Charlemagne himself was 'allied' with a great Islamic Empire in order to better protect himself against another expanding Islamic power.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but what will happen too, is that you will start the Reconquista as Leon, and suddenly, Charlemagne, your brothers and the Lombards will make an alliance with the Ummayad, because reasons.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Audoucet said:
Indeed, but what will happen too, is that you will start the Reconquista as Leon, and suddenly, Charlemagne, your brothers and the Lombards will make an alliance with the Ummayad, because reasons.
Click to expand...

Funny enough... something like this really was happening with Leon in the 10th century. Castile/Burgos did ally with the Caliphate of Córdoba to stop the expanions of Leon.
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Audoucet said:
Indeed, but what will happen too, is that you will start the Reconquista as Leon, and suddenly, Charlemagne, your brothers and the Lombards will make an alliance with the Ummayad, because reasons.
Click to expand...
Actually, this won't happen. Because a realm the size of Leon will generate barely any Infamy from winning a Holy war. My estimate (based on Leon's size relative to the Seljuk's) is they will generate only 3% Infamy for conquering the same amount of territory as the Seljuk's did in the screenshot Groogy posted. Hyperbole much?
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
heliostellar said:
How is that situation unlike cross-faith pagan marriages for alliances now? Also the Holy War CB already functions as a coalition, so why do we need these new fantasy scenarios?
Click to expand...

In game you can't marry inter-faith though outside of religous groups. You can marry Orthodox and Catholic, but not Orthodox and Pagan.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Khanwulf said:
1. If your neighbor really likes you, or if he is an ally otherwise, will they tend not to join a coalition against you just because you crossed 25%? How does the opinion score relate to infamy to determine at what point someone joins the coalition?
Click to expand...

At least in EU4, being an ally virtually gives you free pass to do almost anything.

On the other hand, keeping alliances is harder and the AI is very apt at boxing the player with tough alliance blocs. In most situations you can´t simply ally every neighbour and pounce on the one frontier you didn´t ally with. Most of the time you need allies that are a bit distant and thus see raising infamy with many neighbours.

Coalitions barely exist in EU4 anymore, BTW, as other mechanisms proved as good as it at braking relentless expansion. Above all, lack of manpower.
 
Beagá said:
At least in EU4, being an ally virtually gives you free pass to do almost anything.
Click to expand...

My experiences with EU4 is that some random European power will end up allying with a Mongol, some Indian nation, and a random Asian nation. I don't think I've ever had to face an allied force in that game because the AI is so amazingly dumb it doesn't realize alliances halfway across the world don't mean anything.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Finnway said:
My estimate (based on Leon's size relative to the Seljuk's) is they will generate only 3% Infamy for conquering the same amount of territory as the Seljuk's did in the screenshot Groogy posted.
Click to expand...
If you don't mind my asking, how did you get those numbers?

Are you assuming are direct proportion of realm size to infamy? Using an exponential relationship? Anything like that? I'm just trying to figure out how to do the math myself
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Basically by using Groogy's screenshots. We know that the Seljuk's conquered 7 provinces and generated an Infamy of 42%. We also know the Seljuk's have a realm size of 265 in the 1066 start date (which the screenshots are from). 42 / 7 = 6. So we can assume a country with a realm size of 265 will generate 6% Infamy per conquered province.

Of course, that number may not be accurate. Which is why I called it an estimate.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Finnway said:
Basically by using Groogy's screenshots. We know that the Seljuk's conquered 7 provinces and generated an Infamy of 42%. We also know the Seljuk's have a realm size of 265 in the 1066 start date (which the screenshots are from). 42 / 7 = 6. So we can assume a country with a realm size of 265 will generate 6% Infamy per conquered province.

Of course, that number may not be accurate. Which is why I called it an estimate.
Click to expand...
I understood that part. What I mean is how you go from 6 infamy at 275 size to 3 infamy at Leon size.

Leon is half the size, so half the infamy? (I'm assuming this)

Or a more exponential relationship?
 
@Zooboss No. It's not exponential. Leon only has a realm size of 20 in the 1066 start. 20 / 265 = 7.5%. 7.5% of 6 = 0.45%. 0.45 * 7 (the number of captured provinces) = 3.15% Infamy.

But like I say, we don't know how the game actually calculates Infamy. It very well may be exponential. It also might vary based on the type of CB used.
 
Xykon said:
I don't think I've seen this much arguing anywhere on the forums, ever. Then again, I've only been actively posting since October.
Click to expand...
oh this is nothing try looking at the fun forums when people talk politics, Hellenic lovers complaining on how Hellenic should be supported, and the EU4 forums half of the time. Really it could get worse.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Well, let's hope the Coalition do make sense.

And I do really hope that AI would use this against AI, because mechanics like these are usually triggered by humans only, while AIs in EU IV, for example, happily conquers left and right using Conquest CB, while if we use Conquest CB the AI is very quick to gather coalition against us.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Deathwatch said:
Well, let's hope the Coalition do make sense.

And I do really hope that AI would use this against AI, because mechanics like these are usually triggered by humans only, while AIs in EU IV, for example, happily conquers left and right using Conquest CB, while if we use Conquest CB the AI is very quick to gather coalition against us.
Click to expand...

I think that mostly comes down to the lucky nations, who (IIRC) get a reduction in AE, to the point that it generally doesn't impact them at all. Other nations get it as usual, they're just not as good at conquering so rarely get enough to generate a coalition.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back