One of the great things about meeting our dear players - you folks - in real life (such as at PDXCON) is getting to hear such a lot of constructive, persuasive suggestions for improvements.
Well, I'm happy for you, and I mean this for real, but I think there's a bit too much emphasis being put by the company & staff on criteria that either criticism or suggestion has to meet in terms of tone, protocol and such like. Being really open to interacting with the community means you should also be able to deal with player frustration and thinking about reaching to the player rather than making staff comfort top priority. Something to consider. (Some progress has in fact been made in this area.)
For example, two things that were brought up last week were how annoying the “Fabricate Claim” job is,
Turns out I just might end up disagreeing with everybody on this, but I don't think the councillor job is in itself the source of annoyance.
Rather, the availabality of claims might be not wide enough. I realize this is a unique personal style, but I tend to fabricate claims when it looks like my ruler could be justified in thinking he has a claim. So this means resurrecting, strengthening or exaggerating his claims rather than fabricating them from scratch.
In more detail:
– Direct heir of last legitimate holder but having only a weak claim or none. 'Fabricating' in this case means
resurrecting old claims. Or plugging some leaks in the claim system actually, starting from how claims are awarded gavelkind-style even in primo, with the result that old brothers, uncles etc. have claims but eldest sons of eldest sons could end up without.
–
Historical claims at starting dates that should be in the game but aren't. For example the Komnenoi of Trebizond have a claim on BYZ, but there are a lot of folks who historically should have some claims on neighbouring territory (recently lost, e.g. Dorset and Somerset are recent losses for Cornwall versus Wessex as of 769 AD) or their liege (a lot of starting characters who are sons of deposed previous lieges etc. don't have claims on the higher title).
– Making up for distance limitations with holy wars (or occasionally tier limitations for de iure vassals), or for the fact that whoever I want to grant the county to no longer has a (strong) claim. This can represent the chancellor striking a deal with local nobility and getting foreign courts to recognize the legitimacy of the whole thing (sort of like the defections in EU3). This means
dealing with CB limitations largely.
This is different from outright fabrication like King of Trinarcia fabricating a claim on c_Paris. For most of its 'natural' uses, one shouldn't interpret 'fabricating' too literally.
So, to cure the cause rather than the symptoms, I would:
– make the claim system less restrictive especially for senior agnatic descendants in primogenitural realms
– come up with different ways to press claims so they can be inherited and/or preserve strong claims from turning into weak
– come up with a way to upgrade weak claims to strong, to deemphasize naked conquest but enable succession wars
– perhaps create a sucession window (e.g. during Short Reign, hence Majesty helps) after the ruler's death, during which claims are easier to press (especially for any previously deposed lieges and their heirs and/or anyone who is already supported by a claimant faction)
– revise limitations on certain CBs, especially (to focus on roleplaying rather than naked powergaming) if you have the same religion and/or culture as the county's population and the owner does not (unless the owner does not but someone up the liege chain does)
– limit the AI from fabricating claims on its neighbours — border adjustments are one thing, but it's pretty easy to verify that entire provinces have consistently belonged to a specific realm or dynasty, making neighbours' claims laughable; hence you do need a different way for the AI to expand if it wants to (it's also annoying when you lose prestige for declining to join AI allies in some of those clearly bogus claim wars)
Alternatively, you could vary the cost based on whether there's some basis versus just conjuring a claim out of think air.
and the fact that Siege Assaults are rather overpowered when you have the numbers to just blitz down even heavily fortified Holdings.
They are powerful, but I'm not sure they're overpowered. Just like any other legit advantage, if you have particularly large numbers gathered in one place and attrition isn't biting you in the ass, then you should be able to use them and enjoy the benefits. Just like prices shouldn't go up simply because you've stashed some gold or made a big income.
The assaulting army still loses a lot of its initial number after going through a large county's worth of holdings. If you start with a 30K army and go through several 2–3K holdings you aren't going to have a large army remaining in the end. And you still need to wait 3 years or defeat the enemy in a major battle in the field.
The biggest problem with assaults is when the Mongols come with their 50–100K stacks, but the Mongols are the Mongols. Fort levels and assault intervals aren't exactly what makes them OP in so many scenarios.
So, we decided to experiment with some changes…
I'd rather you did the experimenting in alphas, betas and open betas than on live patches. Alternatively, introduce some variable rules and get reports from those players who want to try something new without knowing whether it's good or bad.
First off, we’re going to deemphasize the “Fabricate Claim” job by giving all playable entities (including Christians) a form of “Unjustified War” Casus Belli that will allow you to seize a single County for an upfront cost of Piety, Prestige or Gold (depending on your Religion and Government Form.)
Republics already have a post => city => county system for straight-out conquest of coastal provinces. I don't think they need more.
Ideally, I’d also like to replace the “Fabricate Claim” job with something else
Nah, it's a cool action, and useful. Even random duration is cool (realism), and there's already a high cost to pay.
Besides,
duchies. If you add a county-level CB and remove FC for duchies, there won't be a way to grab duchies other than by grabbing the counties and usurping the dukes midway through. That would be too tedious.
maybe something to do with foreign embassies
Already included in Perform Statecraft.
Arranging marriages for courtiers is fun but still incredibly tedious and eventually I end up inviting folks instead. You could introduce something similar to asking for help dealing with excess titles; in effect the chancellor would be playing matchmaker for your unrelated courtiers, either popping up reminders about single courtiers or making proposals for the player's acceptance, or even taking it off your hands but potentially producing troubling or less than ideal matches.
or something to do with Laws. Suggestions are welcome!)
Laws would fit either with Perform Statecraft (Chancellor) or Administer Realm (Steward). But the only thing to do with them would be reduce the cooldown. Well, you could launch a campaign to convince or override uncooperative councillors or perhaps try to circumvent the requirements, but that's it (not that there are many requirements outside of Legalism level, which is low).
If you want something that is both diplomatic (fit for a chancellor) and law-related, then perhaps working on revolt risk / levy/tax reductions in recently conquered provinces, assuaging peasant or other unrests and other such things that go beyond the Marshal's security duties and beyond the usual justice/administration of the Steward. Or make the chancellor work on culture tech and give the chaplain a different mission.
But all in all just leaving Fabricate Claims is probably the best idea. Just tweak it, i.e. tweak the underlying problems in the claim system and, to a lesser extent CB system. And history files.
However, we might decide leave it there as it is (it does still have some uses.)
Yup.
Next, we’re adding a Game Rule for Siege Assaults. The options are “Unlimited”, which works like before, “On”, which disables Assaults against Holdings at Fort Level 6 or above, and “Off”, which disables Assaults entirely. We’re currently playing around with these changes, so the exact rules for the “On” setting might change.
Well, it's variable, so as long as you keep achievements on for Unlimited, it's not going to be that bad. Still, I don't think any level of anything should arbitrarily cut off an entire mechanic/action, unless there is a very solid rationale explained in a juicy bunch of flavour text. Still, the Turks were allowed to storm C'ple in 1453 in real life, so why not in CK2?
Instead, you may want to tweak fort levels so that they incrementally reduce the importance of the advantage in numbers. This is what fort level is, after all: the non-human factor, how strong the walls are, how well designed, how many and what kind of traps and all sorts of cool devices on the battlements.
Also the defence commander could use Narrow Flank if he has it.
On a related note, the time it takes to siege down Holdings is also being tweaked, to make it quicker overall but also making the Fort Level matter more.
That could defeat your purpose if you want to nerf blitzing. On the other hand, I would probably welcome it because it would allow me to survive attrition more easily. Not nearly as cool when it's the enemy who can.
Also, it only makes sense for fort level to matter more, yes. Fort level is precisely the kind of stuff — a number that stands for materials, quality, design, state of repair etc. — that decides whether the attacker needs complex siege engines.
When we sat down and talked about the above tweaks, we also decided to (rather dramatically) increase the “Ticking Warscore” rate for the attackers in wars. This necessitated splitting some defines (CONTESTED_TITLE_OCCUPIED_WARSCORE_BONUS, etc) into defender and attacker versions.
Not sure where I stand on that one, though I guess it isn't bad. I too often end up sieging some enemy holdings as defender just to be done with the war faster.
Next, the date the war started could matter less versus the date occupation last changed. I see a lot of huge chances based on temporarily clearing all occupations in the war target. I think the clock should be more forgiving when holdings change hands a lot. Instead of the war score, the prolonged duration of the war — scandalous in itself — should attract the attention of religious heads and internal religious vassals, relatives in common (give Family focus a chance to end wars between your relatives, especially if they're related to each other also), the liege (chance for AI to use 'peace with') etc.
While at CONTESTED_TITLE_OCCUPIED you really need to do something with the AI not realizing what has to be done to end the war and instead wasting resources beyond 100% for years when it could finish the war quickly if it knew what to do (e.g. when its rebels have wars with outsiders).
We are still evaluating how well these changes turned out. It’s likely we’ll tweak some numbers (or even backtrack on something.) So far though, it appears quite promising, positively altering the “rhythm” of warfare!
If you want to play with the rhythm, you could also introduce vassal opinion penalties for being in an unjust war and/or being a clumsy attacker (biting more than you can chew and wasting your vassals' lives and limbs away along with their levies and gold).
Or excom. Or papal intercession even in just wars (similar to Realm Peace and to the church peace from Medieval: TW).
Also make it easier for allies to avoid supporting you in an unjust war (important from the roleplaying perspective when allied to AI as the human player).
That’s all for now, stay tuned for the CK2 livestream, starting at 16:00 CET today. Until next time!
I can't really follow those but always check out Steam almost daily for any news.
