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CK2 Dev Diary #50: A Reason for War

Greetings!

The weather is slowly recovering from the chaotic mixture of snow/rain/hail/sun that has plagued the Swedish April and work is starting on the next, yet undisclosed, expansion! The next expansion is going to have a specific theme which most features will be focused around (we can unfortunately not go into any detail in this DD), though we also want to add some features that can be of use regardless of who or where you choose to play. One of these is planned to be a ‘Casus Belli Expansion’, where we want to add new and oft-requested CBs to the game. The Focus is going to be on CBs that enhance the early and late game (as well as a few more roleplay-focused CBs). While this is by no means a final list, it’s what we’ve made so far:


Forced Vassalization
This is a CB that can be used against neighboring realms to force them to become your vassal. To avoid making it too powerful it’s quite heavily limited, only realms that are of a lower tier, under 30 realm size and where the ruler is of either your culture group or religion are valid targets. It also has a direct cost (prestige). For example; this can allow England to, with time, extend ‘protection’ to the smaller Welsh and Irish realms.


De Jure Duchy Claim
This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.


Ducal County Conquest
At the very start of a game you might be stuck waiting for fabricated claims a very, very long time if you’re unlucky. This CB is available to Count and Duke tier characters, and allows you to go to war over any County that are part of a Duchy you hold land in, as long as the Duchy has no holder. The CB has a cost of prestige and gold, making it similar to a fabricated claim (as that’s essentially what it is). As an example, this gives count-tier characters in Ireland and the HRE an alternate way to claim a Duke-tier title, presuming that you can save up enough prestige and money.


Great Conquest
Unless you are playing as a Muslim, Nomad or Tribal-cultured ruler (who have access to invasions) you have no real way to expand in a meaningful way when you are playing as the ruler of a very large realm. While we still want expansion to be difficult, we also want to give players more static opportunities to expand. This CB is available to very powerful realms (at least 200 realm size) and can be used to claim an entire Kingdom from another character. Though the catch is that you have to fight someone that is as strong or stronger than you are, and using the CB itself costs a massive amount of prestige and piety.


Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).


Note that these CBs are by no means finished, and are currently being tested internally. Feel free to comment and feedback on them though, and also feel free to tell us what CBs you would like to see added!
 
'm open to the new expansion CBs, as the randomness on claim fabrication can be a bit frustrating at times... though I'd rather the fabrication be replaced by a meter with possible events complicating matters and technology and personality traits (of both ruler and chancellor) reducing time required. This would preserve some randomness while making claim creation more reliable. New CBs... I'm wary.

The "free prisoner" war I do like, though making hostages a guarantee of peace is also a good mechanic... Developing the whole prisoner/hostage system is promising, and should go beyond just a new CB.
 
The next expansion is going to have a specific theme which most features will be focused around
Chinese inland theocracies confirmed!

Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!
The only CB I really like, I'm affraid. The rest of them sounds like 'how to make my next world conquer even easier'.

Waiting for more, Paradox :)
 
Free Hostages
A long-requested CB, this allows you to go to war against a character in order to free any kidnapped concubines or wives, and release certain characters from prison (i.e. friends and dynastants). Rescued characters will, most often, be moved back to your court. It will also take hostages in turn, imprisoning a random close member of the target’s family!

It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).


Note that these CBs are by no means finished, and are currently being tested internally. Feel free to comment and feedback on them though, and also feel free to tell us what CBs you would like to see added!

Personally, I think that it would be fitting that rulers which have these hostages should have a tendency to execute (or humiliate etc) the hostages when pressed in war, based on their traits. For example, a very virtueous and pious ruler will not execute the hostages when provoked, but a satanic wrothful devil-worshipper might be so eccentric. The reason we can't press a war when hostages are within the court of the target ruler is for the reason, to my perception, that these hostages will be endangered by such an action. For this same reason this new patch could allow players to press other kinds of wars against a target ruler with hostages that are your close family members, adding the same risk of execution or such as previously described, essentially going to war as well but for a different purpose.

Also, wouldn't it be realistic if hostages have a chance to be freed by a player when taking the capital of the ruler (In any kind of war or raid) which took them as hostages? Much in the same way that this currently has a chance to take your own hostages from the target ruler. This could even be extended to having a chance to free hostages of rulers with which the player has an alliance or vice versa, in exchange for an opinion boost, the size of which depending on the importance of the hostage(s) which are freed. Just brain storming here.

Edit: To make these plans more user friendly, the execute risk of declaring war against a ruler with hostages of your court should be made clear in the window where the player chooses to declare the war.
 
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Forced Vassalization sounds interesting and I'm kind of ok with the limitation too in the setting of Ck2.

It could have been implemented without the limitation, tbh. When a major realm tries to subdue a smaller neighbor, other big power in the region has the option to join in. Thus, it can only be used for smaller factions with no friends in the region, it's auto-balanced. Similar implementation would make even more sense for EU4.
 
Although I welcome a more refined CB-system - and especially the RP-related CB's sound promising - I want to second the already mentioned critique that before implementing new mechanics you should please fix the problems introduced by M&M.
By this I mean the secret cults, which have gone wild as you sure must now, since numerous threads regarding this issue have popped up.
What could be an interesting mechanic that a.) offers small religions the possibility to survive, b.) depicts underground proselytizing in a reasonable way and c.) adds a certain layer of paranoia / not-knowing / secrecy to the game, has turned out to be a potential onslaught against which the player & the AI cannot do anything effective at all.
Right now hunting apostates feels like cutting a hydra's head, with the hydra spawing several others in exchange for one head lost - the difference being that other than Hercules we cannot see the newly spawned heads! For secret cults to be an enjoyable feature, their speed of gathering followers should be toned down considerably, while their opponents - i.e. the official government - should have the ability to counter them more meaningfully. This means the often-mentioned possibility for them to torture cult-members in order to make them reveal the identity of other cult-members.
Right now secret cults feel like a force of nature, against our only hope is that RNG won't generate any in our realm. If so, we have acquired a plague we cannot get rid off.
After the prolongued absence of DD's due to all your well-earned holiday's (no irony, I mean that), I had really hoped you would announce a massive 7.2 patch, which adresses the secret-cult issue and adds more societies, like gnostics, Sufi-orders and military orders as well as "good"-societies for all the pagans out there. Giving norse-pagans for example only the possibility to join the devil-worshippers is ridiculous. Instead at least it seems so as you would abandon M&M as it was not that well received as Reapers Due in favor of starting anew with the next DLC.
I think this is a mistake, since the above-mentioned issue persists. Some, and I include myself here, consider it game-breaking.
I had a nice Sunni-Conquista going in Hispania for 200 years and everything was well. Now, within 5 years, due to my generosity and the wish for cultures to survive, a former Castellano count, which I demanded to convert, has created a Christian cult, which made 4/5 of my vasalls convert secretly to Christendom. I find the pace horrofying and I have no means to counter this development. As for now, I have stopped playing. I want this issue adressed.
Maybe there is a 7.2 in the works, which removes these flaws - if so, you should communicate that soon.
 
Interesting that you decided to add these new CBs, which certainly already to be matters of contention and debate amongst those replying, but I look forward to seeing how they materialise in the release.
 
After the prolongued absence of DD's due to all your well-earned holiday's (no irony, I mean that), I had really hoped you would announce a massive 7.2 patch, which adresses the secret-cult issue and adds more societies, like gnostics, Sufi-orders and military orders as well as "good"-societies for all the pagans out there. Giving norse-pagans for example only the possibility to join the devil-worshippers is ridiculous. Instead at least it seems so as you would abandon M&M as it was not that well received as Reapers Due in favor of starting anew with the next DLC.
Maybe there is a 7.2 in the works, which removes these flaws - if so, you should communicate that soon.

If no news comes out, then might as well drop the expansion all together; they will, once again, go towards the path of 'fix once' then do minor bug fixes the next patch after, while being oblivious to the fact that there is so much more to be fulfilled.

I'm definitely not pleased with the route this is taking; we just got Monks&Mystics released and yet they're talking about adding a new expansion while ignoring the previous one. So much potential content lost, and this is a definitive lesson to never pre-order DLC from this company again. Smh
 
De Jure Duchy Claim
This CB was added to try to avoid situations where massive realms would fight over one single county, essentially destroying their armies for near no gain. Players often think these types of wars aren’t worth fighting, and do not usually declare them themselves - instead they turn to Holy Wars or invite duchy claimants to expand in a more meaningful way. This CB provides interesting opportunity for conquest at the point where you form your first Kingdom or Empire. Any vassals present in conquered lands are preserved, and this CB also comes with a prestige cost.


This makes me disappointed. It solidifies an anachronistic notion that wars were always huge mobilization of the entire realm. People disliked county and barony wars because they required a silly amount of mobilization. Rather then raising the rewards, you could have reduced the level of mobilization. You could have made it possible for limited wars that maybe the big kingdom wouldn't always win or consider worth the effort.

This is overall part of a long trend in CKII towards a realm that increasingly resembles an early modern nation state then a feudal kingdom. The characters matter less and less and the size of the demesne and the kingdom matters more and more. This is disappointing because it takes away from what makes CKII cool and distinctive in the first place: the character interactions.

I'm all for quality of life improvements and streamlining the game experience but some of the wrinkles that you are streamlining out are the flavor!
 
This primarily makes Christian/Zorastrian/Dharmic expansion much easier. While I don't have a problem with that, I believe they should eat a corresponding nerf to stability in exchange, just like how Muslims have Decadence, Pagans have Elective Gavelkind, and Nomads have unstable realms.

Games can get blobby enough as is, making it easier with these CBs without any corresponding nerf just makes christians even more powerful than they already are.

If we are to make expansion easier, we should make collapse easier as well. Christian superblobs are quite frankly more of a problem than Muslim or Pagan ones, as there is no real mechanic to permanently shatter a feudal realm.
 
It’s currently not possible to attack anyone who holds a close dynastic member in their prison (i.e. your child), is this something you’d like to see changed specifically for use with this CB? Otherwise it'll be of use primarily for freeing concubines (something that has been requested for a long time!).
Yes! I think that would be a fun feature, especially useful if someone gets captured in a raid, for example.
 
The claim-system is what makes ck2 different. I can see no need for this unhistorical arcade-style changes. If you want to conquer large areas in a short time, you can already play as pagan or a mod or total war.
 
I'm definitely on the side of "let us declare war, but at a risk of having hostages executed". A lot of potential flavour here, eg if a reputation for ruthlessness lets you deter people from declaring war while you have hostages.
 
Stop Raids

Response to a target raiding you, if you win you get some money and prestige, and the target (inc. vassals) cannot raid you while both you and they still live.

You can already stop raids by defeating their armies in a battle, while hostile due to raiding. Although that doesn't help when you're trying to stop all of Sweden's vassals from raiding you.

Making Sweden your tributary should work, although I'm not sure it actually does, and might not be available if you're far away in England.
 
I hope there is going to be more patches coming soon.. Still lots of things need improving or fixed. Also don't you still have unimplemented promised content still not in the game yet? Like Gnostics?
 
Finally! A free captives CB! It has always been extremely frustrating when my daughter or son gets robbed out of court becomes I'm off crusading and some random horse lord wanders all the way into Italy. I would like to see it extended to close kin, because in my eyes, that would be a much more motivating factor than a distant kinsmen.

One concern I have for that CB is if the target of the CB is killed by the defender. Will this end the war? To me, I think that that would be weird. "I was trying to free my stolen wife, but then you killed her so we're on good standing now!" (If I was in that case I'd want to imprison the defender as the victory reward (with no tyranny penalty for execution :3 ) )
 
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