CK3 is too easy

[Benismann]

Worse, what if it's one of those giant rebellions that spawn a ton of little armies, running away all over the map, and even though you're clearing and winning the war the game says "Nope, sorry, you lost half your empire cause mechanics".

Yea i thought of this. The original suggestion does make some sense for rebellions that are tightly packed, being spawned in a certain region. But most of them are really not like that. And that makes dealing with them annoying af and AI will probably die to them a lot.
And none of this would be fun at all.

 

[Bisonmask]

I'm not sure about that, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to "lose" a war against rebels before you even get around to deal with them, even though they really didn't do or capture anything?

And that's why this game will never properly model territorial control, the players would hate it

Worse, what if it's one of those giant rebellions that spawn a ton of little armies, running away all over the map, and even though you're clearing and winning the war the game says "Nope, sorry, you lost half your empire cause mechanics".

Well no, you'd lose it for failing to put down a rebellion, irl rulers didn't have a decade or two to leisurely claim rebel strongholds. Also armies haven't run forever in years, what game are you playing? Ideally there would be a balance where having an army patrolling around would be sufficient to keep territory a d the presence of rebels would just decrease control

Otherwise how can guerillas be modelled?

I'd rather see rebellions being actually threatening instead so we can have threads like those guys complaining that in Stellaris, even though you're playing as a super pacifist carebear staying far under your fleet cap rebellions can spawn with maxed fleet cap from a few core worlds and create a massive, threatening civil war.

"Threatening civil wars" still just mean winning a couple battles under the current system, not sure how that can be done without truly enormous stacks that would cripple the AI in ways independence wouldn't

Then have an AI that's aware enough, like the one in Nobunaga's Ambition, to see that whenever you raise soldiers from the borders to fight a war elsewhere, the borders should be vulnerable, so other countries with claims are certain to try and invade while you're busy fighting with an army that may be even stronger than yours.

That or use a system similar to Imperator, when low loyalty armies can refuse to stand down, refuse commands, start gathering power for themselves, buying the loyalty of your soldiers and eventually use your own armies against you.

Agree with both of these

Of course, none of this matters in a game where any player can stackwipe every army in the planet with 2 MAA or just knights doing less than 1/10 of what actual minmaxers do, so any content related to warfare is pointless until this is addressed.

true, they need to gut Maa too, retinues were a mistake

 

[Genocidalvirus]

Ugh, I am really frusterated, I want to play this game so bad and honestly Khans of the Steppe was the DLC I was looking forward to the most, one of the coolest areas of history for me. That being said, all the negative reviews just add to my exisiting issue. So many stacking modifiers with no negatives. Why does paradox have games like Stellaris, where you can have so much difficulty and then have games like Crusader Kings that have nothing. No war pacts, no resistance to building the strongest knights or the best man at arms. In this DLC it seems they add more content that just makes it easier and easier for the player.
I am bumping this amazing thread of ideas to hopefully see that one day the devs will see it.
Until then I guess I will hold off buying any more from my favorite game.

 

[gamer78]

I've started again CK'2 yesterday with unfamiliar region in Africa Bori as religion- called in CK'3 and the generic African religion called in CK'2- It is too much difference in difficulty about human sacrifice (tells something about how designs changes and what is expected in modern world) in court members about religion and the amount of levy not comparable to neighbours. Levy was more natural with buildings amd no MAA. I've previously formed Hausaland kingdom before 40 in age in CK'3 just increasing MAA wth prestige only tactic.. Perhaps CK'3 better with the detailed religion and and culture mechanics. inspire other companies to do a game about it. Only that great about it.

 

[Genocidalvirus]

Devs another great idea for raising difficulty and buffing intrigue and diplomacy. You have to use intrigue to see the stats and information about characters.
You require scouting in so many other games, but in this I have some God like power to be able to see everyone's stats.
Hide a percentage of stats if they are not in your domain or of family. The percentage can scale based on your relationship initially and be improved based on intrigue and events where you interacted with them.

 

[Voidian]

Devs another great idea for raising difficulty and buffing intrigue and diplomacy. You have to use intrigue to see the stats and information about characters.
You require scouting in so many other games, but in this I have some God like power to be able to see everyone's stats.
Hide a percentage of stats if they are not in your domain or of family. The percentage can scale based on your relationship initially and be improved based on intrigue and events where you interacted with them.

So odd that in this game, where it's most needed, this doesn't happen when they've already added it to their other games.

Stellaris needs infiltration & espionage so you can see the territory, the fleets, or even the deals (and then secret deals) from other empires and if you don't have any intel in HoI4 you can't even see what kind of units are standing at your borders.

 

[MyLordFellington]

Just roleplay the difficulty in your head bro. It's a roleplay game.

 

[El-Tapicero]

Just roleplay the difficulty in your head bro. It's a roleplay game.

No

 

[Benismann]

Just roleplay the difficulty in your head bro. It's a roleplay game.

Real and factual. Just close your eyes and imagine having fun.

 

[Torredebelem]

Devs another great idea for raising difficulty and buffing intrigue and diplomacy. You have to use intrigue to see the stats and information about characters.
You require scouting in so many other games, but in this I have some God like power to be able to see everyone's stats.
Hide a percentage of stats if they are not in your domain or of family. The percentage can scale based on your relationship initially and be improved based on intrigue and events where you interacted with them.

There are two mods (at least) that implement such a system:

• Immersive Realm Espionage
• ObfusCKate

The first one is up to date with current game version, the second one is not but there is definitely hope the author will update to 1.16 standards.

 

[GhostDanny]

When China releases and the map gets expanded.
I'm going to go conquer the map, as a female only, female only heirs unreformed Tengri nomad ruler and never taking the become the greatest of Khans option.

Just like how united Africa starting as Daurama Daura and having only female heirs keeping Bori unreformed. ^^

 

[EmperorDweeb]

Just roleplay the difficulty in your head bro. It's a roleplay game.

Hey you could just not engage with the mechanics of the game, that would make the game harder.

Only min-maxing goblins actually use the game mechanics. By playing the game as it was designed to be played you've optimized the fun out of it you silly Billy. /s

 

[Comrade_Boris]

You all joke, but a legitimate way to make the game harder is to not allow actions or character browsing while paused... This has the downstream effect of slowing down player actions to make them occur at a more similar rate than AI (rather than much higher) and also means actions will be taken at less optimal times.

 

[Benismann]

You all joke, but a legitimate way to make the game harder is to not allow actions or character browsing while paused... This has the downstream effect of slowing down player actions to make them occur at a more similar rate than AI (rather than much higher) and also means actions will be taken at less optimal times.

speed 1 still exists. It does eliminate some cheesy things though, i'll give you that. And it's prob the least unfun way to make it more difficult via house rules.

 

[gamer78]

In CK'2 alliance was broken when not joining their war as far as I remember. In here even betrothed marriage can get alliances. Now only prestige penalty and very minor opinion penalty for not joining their war. Confederation idea is ok and working but as long as MAA recruitment AI -it is the obvious problem- is not well done I can conquer them by military without using decision panel. MAA recruitment AI and how fast they can do it is the major problem in this game I believe. It should be adressed before many DLC's. Conquerer trait, federation idea is good and somehow military AI is not too bad.

 

[Genocidalvirus]

There are two mods (at least) that implement such a system:

• Immersive Realm Espionage
• ObfusCKate

The first one is up to date with current game version, the second one is not but there is definitely hope the author will update to 1.16 standards.

Ok so first why should I have to mod the game to have it be playable.
Second it doesn't hide prowess for hiring knights, traits for marriage, or any of their stats.
Third, if it's so easy to do with mods why dont the devs just add it in as options?
It makes 0 sense, as the company would make so much more money from the game if it was harder. I know for one people would stream it, YouTubes would be created, and personally my friends and I would play it again.

 

[Torredebelem]

Ok so first why should I have to mod the game to have it be playable.
Second it doesn't hide prowess for hiring knights, traits for marriage, or any of their stats.
Third, if it's so easy to do with mods why dont the devs just add it in as options?
It makes 0 sense, as the company would make so much more money from the game if it was harder. I know for one people would stream it, YouTubes would be created, and personally my friends and I would play it again.

First, because your vision for CK3 and the way you may enjoy more the game can be different from the devs' vision.
Second, OBfusCKate hides a very significant amount of information that you dream about. If it fits 80% of the bill, certainly it is a significant improvement for your enjoyment of the game as a whole.
Third, again, because the devs might have (certainly have!) other vision for their project. Much more intriguing than this hidding stuff that might certainly hurt sales - see total numbers of subscriptions for both mods! - is the example of Nameplates where the simple and informative object of the mod is to add the names of characters to the event windows. Even such a simple job (it consumes at most five minutes to do it!) did not merit to be included in the main game.

Where is your data to backup your claim the "company would make so much more money from the game if it was harder"? Do you believe that for some reason you are alone smarter than a team composed of dozens of talented persons evaluating the product they have in hand? Maybe it is just me, but I plainly doubt your business acumen...

If I am wearing my cap of investor, I can only commend the way Paradox so diligently maximize its profits. With my gamer cap on, I also root for something more challenging, also knowing that the most complex mod - in my knowledge - that turns the game harder only have about 14000 subscribers. So, the only metric I have available doesn't sit very well with my tastes as a gamer. Counter to this, I can only add the fact that other Paradox products don't have this easy approach to design, being more challenging games, so it seems significant profits can also be enjoyed by harder designs.

 

[NarcomancerPL]

In CK'2 alliance was broken when not joining their war as far as I remember. In here even betrothed marriage can get alliances. Now only prestige penalty and very minor opinion penalty for not joining their war. Confederation idea is ok and working but as long as MAA recruitment AI -it is the obvious problem- is not well done I can conquer them by military without using decision panel. MAA recruitment AI and how fast they can do it is the major problem in this game I believe. It should be adressed before many DLC's. Conquerer trait, federation idea is good and somehow military AI is not too bad.

In CK 2 bethrothed also can get you alliance, but to have an alliance no matter if betrothed or actual marriage you need to click on your spouse or in-law and click form alliance and he/she will only accept it if it benefits him/her or if they like you. Marriage or bethrothed in itself gives you only non-aggression pact. Non answearing the call to war or not sending soldiers, if you are not occupied with your own wars, to their war after accepting the call may break your alliance

 

[Scanz]

There are two mods (at least) that implement such a system:

• Immersive Realm Espionage
• ObfusCKate

The first one is up to date with current game version, the second one is not but there is definitely hope the author will update to 1.16 standards.

awesome mod!
this is what we need to implement into CK3 by default and calld like "Hard mode" or something like that

 

[Genocidalvirus]

First, because your vision for CK3 and the way you may enjoy more the game can be different from the devs' vision.
Second, OBfusCKate hides a very significant amount of information that you dream about. If it fits 80% of the bill, certainly it is a significant improvement for your enjoyment of the game as a whole.
Third, again, because the devs might have (certainly have!) other vision for their project. Much more intriguing than this hidding stuff that might certainly hurt sales - see total numbers of subscriptions for both mods! - is the example of Nameplates where the simple and informative object of the mod is to add the names of characters to the event windows. Even such a simple job (it consumes at most five minutes to do it!) did not merit to be included in the main game.

Where is your data to backup your claim the "company would make so much more money from the game if it was harder"? Do you believe that for some reason you are alone smarter than a team composed of dozens of talented persons evaluating the product they have in hand? Maybe it is just me, but I plainly doubt your business acumen...

If I am wearing my cap of investor, I can only commend the way Paradox so diligently maximize its profits. With my gamer cap on, I also root for something more challenging, also knowing that the most complex mod - in my knowledge - that turns the game harder only have about 14000 subscribers. So, the only metric I have available doesn't sit very well with my tastes as a gamer. Counter to this, I can only add the fact that other Paradox products don't have this easy approach to design, being more challenging games, so it seems significant profits can also be enjoyed by harder designs.

Let’s be real. Mods like OBfusCKate are useful, but expecting players to rely on community-made content for core gameplay improvements is a problem. The “Hard Difficulties” mod adds challenge, but it disables achievements. That is not a proper solution, just a workaround.


As I sit here Crusader Kings III is currently averaging under 100 viewers on Twitch. You might argue that does not matter, but engagement absolutely impacts visibility, content creation, and long-term sales. Let me ask you this. Would the community be making more YouTube videos, tutorials, and guides if the game provided real challenge and variety, or in its current state where everything is predictable?


You are right. I am not the voice of the entire community. But I have spent thousands on Paradox titles and other strategy games. I am also developing games myself. If this game were in a better state, most of the people in my Discord would be buying the base game and the DLCs again without hesitation.


And here is the reality. Even if Paradox released a DLC called “Balance of Power” that simply rebalanced existing mechanics and added meaningful menu options like War Pacts, Scouting systems, or consistent AI rules, I would personally buy every DLC from this year and commit to the next wave too. This is not hypothetical. That is real revenue being left behind.