CK2 Dev Diary #39 - As you wish...

[BOOMER BOOM! MAN!]

That's great!

 

[Lord Cuddlesworth]

This should be nice. Looking forward to more info on Monks and Mystics.

 

[loup99]

Very handy feature! Always appreciated it in EU4, so it is good to see it here too.

 

[moscal]

Will be feedback for human-player, when he is eg. tribal vassal or normal allies? Or this is only for player stuff?

You know - simple info "focus on this land" or "this is main ally army - join to us"

 

[Sforzesco]

M&M are gonna taste delicious! (pun absolutely intended...)

Hopefully ally will have small relation penalty everytime you keep giving new commands?

 

[Asiak]

Hopefully ally will have small relation penalty everytime you keep giving new commands?

I vehemently disagree with this, this is a basic functionality that cannot be tied to balance or opinion. It is a basic and natural thing for the leader of an alliance, or the instigator of the war, to give his allies some direction / orders.

And when you picture yourself using this, of all the times you will use it, of all the times you might change your mind and issue a new order to how many allies.

And then you remember the post-Conclave world we live in where all of the opinion modifiers were cut in half. And that at times even 5 opinion and being able to make up for it can be the difference between life and death, a faction not firing you, or a vassal not giving you the troops or money you need.

When I think of these things together I really couldn't see even a -1 opinion per order being implemented it would make a perfectly logical function less worth it.

A perfectly logical function that does not need a negative attached to it, game tools should not have negative attached to their use, why should the player be penalized for something as basic as allied army management?

 

[TerrorBlades]

I switch to seduction focus, and then try to seduce Gwenael.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

This is part of the DLC.

Err....

.......
We’ve also improved the AI’s goal selection in wars, and general pathing so they’re more useful to have around in general.

...and that's at least the patch part i hope.

 

[Meneth]

...and that's at least the patch part i hope.

Of course.

 

[Urzhail64]

It's definitely needed. I've seen AI controlled allied armies do truly boneheaded things like wander into Tarsos while I was sieging down Muslim holdings near Jerusalem and I saw three huge Muslim armies barrelling down towards me.

At least I hung on cause I was defending in Mountain terrain until my allies finally came to their senses and reinforced me in the nick of time during the battle. To quote Wellington "It was a damn near-run thing" And I'm pretty sure my ruler acquired a few strands of white hair in the process.

 

[Urzhail64]

Good, having allies stack on you when partying in tribal town at 1000 supply limit always ruined my weekend

Yeah, painful. Very painful. I try not to invade tribal lands until I lose that pagan homeland attrition penalty in my military tech tree....

 

[Urzhail64]

I wonder if the order ally armies could lead players into using their allied armies as "cannon fodder" to absorb casualties while preserving their own troops as much as possible ? Especially if the players already have underhanded shenanigans for their erstwhile allies' land and titles already (or their noble men and womenfolk)

"There's a Mongol doomstack headed for us and we might not get away in time"

"Quick, throw an ally's army in front of it to delay them while we flee !"

 

[Philadelphus]

Fun fact: exclaves are a real thing. There's a lot of them in Europe and Africa, and you can also count Alaska for the United States.

Hey, don't forget Hawaii! We're a state too!

On-topic, these look like great features.

 

[sreckom92]

There's a lot of silliness in the AI behavior.
In the picture below, I prepared an army, basically consisting of everything I could muster. The enemy would've had a solid chance of beating me, if it gathered all of it's forces at one spot. Instead, he sent the biggest stack to the furthest corner of the realm.

I kinda doubt this "feint to the northeast" is a good strategy in this case.

 

[klopkr]

Great change. Please keep taking things out of EU4s book. It has much much more polished mechanics for army coordination and movement.

 

[Metz]

Fun fact: exclaves are a real thing. There's a lot of them in Europe and Africa, and you can also count Alaska for the United States.

I said enclaves not exclaves.

Most enclaves and exclaves today are sovereign nations which is different. The exclaves that aren't sovereign nations are coastal which is not the same as being a landlocked enclave. Even if it were, today we have air transportation which bypasses going through another territory. Enclaves existed back then but not at the levels that the game tends to show after a century has passed by.

I don't see how anyone could be fine with these types of things happening:

 

[Meneliki]

Sweet! Can we get something similar in Stellaris?

 

[Dahoota]

This is going to make tribals and nomads considerably stronger in the players hands if it can be used with them (In the case of tribals, perhaps not a bad thing)

Is the AI going to have this kind of ability to coordinate too? Would certainly be a good thing for AI tribals to be stronger in this regard IMO, they seem to get consistently run-over in the . current patch and make few gains. Maybe that's WAD, but I feel like it shouldn't have so much inevitability.

 

[Rags17]

. . . I do welcome the changes but I feel their should be some sort of prestige penalty for people like me who will declare war on paper against my allies enemies but don't actually send any soldiers to fight.

I had an idea once that your ally's opinion after the war should depend upon your contribution to the warscore. Agreeing to join your ally's war but doing nothing should be worse than saying you won't come, if he counts on your agreed help but you don't send it he should be majorly pissed off.

I vehemently disagree with this, this is a basic functionality that cannot be tied to balance or opinion. It is a basic and natural thing for the leader of an alliance, or the instigator of the war, to give his allies some direction / orders.
:
A perfectly logical function that does not need a negative attached to it, game tools should not have negative attached to their use, why should the player be penalized for something as basic as allied army management?

Logical functions can and do have negative impacts, just check out the penalty for keeping your levies raised for too long. Forming up a band of yahoos and letting them all seek fame and glory on their own initiative is far different to treating your allies and vassals as mere tools in YOUR mighty army, especially if the ally or vassal in question is Proud, Ambitious or whatever.

I think that a simple minus zero to five per per order would be fantastic - it would mean that you could happily push around that Content, Slothful vassal but if you tried to change the orders of Duke Angryface the Ambitious of the the de Proud dynasty then you should expect all sorts of recriminations and intrigues after the war is over.

"And then the moron made me siege Paris when everyone knows we could have easily beaten their army in the field and cut three years off the war in one battle !"

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Moah, and wonderful to see some control over allied armies creep into CK2 . Probably a more useful feature for CK2 than any other Paradox game .