Far flung provinces of distant kingdoms harder to capture than any other province

[Mad King James]

This has been a problem with every single Paradox game I have played thus far and continues to be irritating.

Essentially if you are playing as a king of Armenia or something and the king of France owns a couple provinces in Palestine, if that French king ends up at war with the king of Germany and I swoop in and capture those provinces, there isn't a realistic way that France can hang on to those provinces without sending a large army to go and deal with me, but thanks to game mechanics this is unnecessary. Those provinces are his MOST SECURE provinces, much more secure than those nearby his home. He will lose every last province in France before he loses a single one in Palestine. The only way he will ever lose those provinces is to give them to a vassal, then at least people can capture those provinces from that vassal.

The only way around this I can see is if very distant provinces count for much more war-score than close provinces, like 2x their demand value, to emphasize their vulnerability (rather than 1/2 like is currently the case). Far-flung provinces should be a liability, not an enormous asset that prevents you from ever being forced to peace.

Less Distant provinces, say rather distant from your capital but not absurdly far away, should have a warscore value equal to their demand value as they are vulnerable as well. Only close provinces to your capital should have the super-low warscore value of the default value, as capturing provinces near the core of the kingdom can be easily recaptured and should not count for as much.

Also, in terms of "forcing peace", it should only be necessary to capture the capital of a realm to "force" peace, but in order to "force" the peace, the demand should be equal or less than the warscore.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Actually there is another way to do this and that would be to have rule-by-occupation whereby if you conquered the province and it remained uncontested in your control for say 30 years (long enough that people living their would have gotten used to your rule), ownership switches, de-facto peace is established, the opposing side gets the claim and you recieve extra BB for your round-about way of capturing the territory instead of negotiating it (similar levels to mass conquests when nations fell in EU games).

 

[unmerged(82381)]

Actually there is another way to do this and that would be to have rule-by-occupation whereby if you conquered the province and it remained uncontested in your control for say 30 years (long enough that people living their would have gotten used to your rule), ownership switches, de-facto peace is established, the opposing side gets the claim and you recieve extra BB for your round-about way of capturing the territory instead of negotiating it (similar levels to mass conquests when nations fell in EU games).

I think something like that is already implemented in EU3.

I must add that 30 years seems to be too long a time frame. Ten would be adequate in all but the most extreme situations. Possibly less.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

well less than 10 years (the next logicial mark being 5) is way to short. History is rife with terriroties that were occupied for even longer than 10 years not being controlled. 20 years I could see as that's the length of an entire generation; even 15 as most 5-year-olds won't remember rule under the former government.

 

[RedRooster81]

well less than 10 years (the next logicial mark being 5) is way to short. History is rife with terriroties that were occupied for even longer than 10 years not being controlled. 20 years I could see as that's the length of an entire generation; even 15 as most 5-year-olds won't remember rule under the former government.

I like the flexible core model in Magna Mundi, also implemented in The Dark Years (an excellent medieval mod for HTTT in what I think is late beta). If your new province has the same religion and identical or similar culture, you can adopt it as a core in a few years, in one case in my game a few weeks.

 

[SaberHRE]

I remember in HoI2 if you occupied a province it still theoretically belonged to the owner, but you could use it yourself for its resources. I think this could work for CK2. I mean if you occupy the province its simple that you have the ability to exploit it for its resources. And 20 years seems like a generation enough it formally add it to your kingdom as opposed to just being occupied.

 

[Arko]

well less than 10 years (the next logicial mark being 5) is way to short. History is rife with terriroties that were occupied for even longer than 10 years not being controlled. 20 years I could see as that's the length of an entire generation; even 15 as most 5-year-olds won't remember rule under the former government.

perhaps it shouldn't use fixed values ? the system of religious or cultural conversions of ck1 can applied here and would be more realistic as sometimes religious conv' never happen some far province could never accept you as its legitimate ruler

 

[.Spartan]

well less than 10 years (the next logical mark being 5) is way to short. History is rife with territories that were occupied for even longer than 10 years not being controlled. 20 years I could see as that's the length of an entire generation; even 15 as most 5-year-olds won't remember rule under the former government.

I would easily support 15 years.

 

[sortulv]

An idea might be that after 5 years of no fighting, the war ends with occupied provinces being given to the occupier, but no truce being set in place.
Not certain how this would work in regards to BB through...

 

[Antoine]

I think provinces more than 4 or 5 counties away from capitol should be treated like vassal provinces not like the directly ruled heartland.

Even if there is no vassal there, the presence of a local governor should be abstracted, and this governor should be able to surrender the province like if he was the local count, so it would be no longer more interesting to target small vassal states prior to provinces "directly" ruled by a far away liege, and no longer more interesting to keep far away fronteer provinces instead of giving them to vassals.

But I also think that both vassal states and governor provinces shouldn't surrender immediatly after being conquered when their liege/owner is still at war, forced annexation should only happen after some months to some years of occupation (according to the state of the war, the stats of the conqueror and target, the distance from capitol and the quantity of troops staying in the province),

In general a goal of the system should be to make feudal kingdoms more viable than directly owned blobs, and a big failure of CK1 is the way vassal states are the Achille's heel of a kingdom, easier to lose in wars than directly owned provinces, even if these provinces are very far from capitol.

 

[mangalore]

In my view the medieval times should allow rapid claiming of territory as it is conquered as thew whole peace deals should be about legitimizing claims or forcing someone to revoke them. So you taking French lands in Jerusalem should be easy, just convincing the French king that those lands are not his anymore should be difficult.

The peace settlements should really be about titles only. If you have conquered a province you may revoke your title on it at the peace table, thus giving it back for some other compensation or force the other side to revoke their claims. Aka the time before you can establish yourself as formal ruler should be quite short and relatively easy (peasants rarely cared who got their taxes). This essentially gives you access to the province as you rule it. As the province's army would be either destroyed or elsewhere it should start from scratch in building it's forces now under your command and maybe some other penalties that take time to ease off. But the overall loyalty of a province should be rather easy to switch as unarmed citizenry and peasants really had little choice here and imo none expected them to fight for their king like they did in the modern era.

That plenty of conflicting claimants ended up for the same land is imo quite fitting for the era.

 

[Vladislav]

My practical solution:

* EU3 has an event that is likely to happen if you have, for several years, been occupying an enemy province that has a different culture than the enemy country and the enemy country has high war exhaustion. This should be in CK2.

* The AI should not cheat with money as in CK1, and thus would not be able to field endless armies to retake its overseas provinces forever. Eventually it would give in and offer you the provinces (or a white peace if you have already received the provinces by event).

 

[unmerged(183166)]

well less than 10 years (the next logicial mark being 5) is way to short. History is rife with terriroties that were occupied for even longer than 10 years not being controlled. 20 years I could see as that's the length of an entire generation; even 15 as most 5-year-olds won't remember rule under the former government.

Quite the opposite, in those days, when you conquered some where, you 'owned' it. It just depends on the Mother-Nation actually giving up its war-claimant on you and accepting peace.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Quite the opposite, in those days, when you conquered some where, you 'owned' it. It just depends on the Mother-Nation actually giving up its war-claimant on you and accepting peace.

I don't think that system works well with game mechanics, however being able to pull some resources from the province after you control it would seem appropriate.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

Yes, this was always a problem. But what you are suggesting is losing a close to home provinces such as your capital should be less valuable than border provinces.

Now call me crazy but If I were a noble and saw that my King was too incompetant to defend his own capital I'd be like "Wow, why am I loyal to you again?"

Essentially what you have suggested is that as France if I have a war with, say, Germany (HRE) that I should defend my "colonies" in the levant as well as my borders, to the death, rather than to concede territory, concentrate my forces, and make a stand at my inner "core" provinces.

On the flip side, as Germany I should go straight for his "colonial" provinces rather than go straight for the heart?

The reason far flung provinces are a liability is because they are harder to defend. If I have no interest in gaining territory in the levant why would I waste men on an anphibious invasion or yet a long march to said province.

The real problem is how to prevent Kingdoms from thinking that one province in the levant is somehow keeping them alive. My solution is to have a Demense range, just like colonial range in EU. This makes sense because honestly, how on Earth am I, King of England, going to personally see over a province in the levant? Anyhting outside the demense range should be forced to become a vassal immediatly following it trading hands.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Anyhting outside the demense range should be forced to become a vassal immediatly following it trading hands.

That just exacerbates problems as I would expect that the range, like almost every other thing dealing with ruling your realm, would based on one of your stats, with some mitigating factors. One bad misfortune of having a newborn son take over and wham! your entire realm goes to shit which isn't what happened, doesn't make the game more fun and doesn't add anything to gamebalance. Since those vassals will be there to stay unless you revoke their titles, which will cause unrest, this just makes someone who gets unlucky seriously pissed off without offering any silver lining.

In addition, capitals moved more frequently in this era and thus a nearby province today could become far-flung tomorrow thereby forcing it to immediately become a vassal. There would be an eventual demise in number of demense by simply doing what historically was done that didn't result in such in most cases.

The bottom line is that while its a nice idea, its not practical for a game like CK.

 

[sortulv]

How about this: it must be in the same country as your capital, or share a border with the capital. If it fails to do this, it will get a -100 desmene modifier (or similar). (seems slightly better than autosetting it to a vassal, as it is better to give a chance to deal with it than just suddenly appointing a random courtier to lord).

 

[the_legion]

In addition, capitals moved more frequently in this era

The idea of a capital city itself was not common.
In the HRE, the capital was where the King/Emperor was. There was
a crowning city (Aachen) which can be considered as "capital" (A City
which had more value than it had in a pure strategic/military way) but
I don't think it fits. Same goes for France: I don't know how to decide
if it was Reims or Paris.
I would say: No capitals in CK. There should be a way to represent
that the loss of Paris or Reims was more important then the loss of Frogtown
(Immaginary City in France) but the concept of capitals fails.

 

[Antoine]

Itinerant (or not) capitols (= courts) may very well be in the game, as long this time the player can chose where he holds his court. Also while kings capitols were arguably moving, lower nobles capitols weren't, they just stayed in their biggest castle or main city. The capitol of France may have been somewhere else than Paris when the king was travelling (but for sure it wasn't Reims out of the very day of the crowning), but the duchy of Toulouse capitol was always Toulouse.

Imagine that each province has its lord authority bar. Every month or so provinces near the actual court position see their lord authority being strengthened as he personnaly delivers justice there, and provinces too far see it weakened, demesne penalty and how hard it is to force annex a province being based on that.

If you own a big realm and want to have non adjacent personnal demesne provinces you have to move your court often to maintain your authority in the different regions (of course travel time need to be simulated, and while your court is on the move you don't gain authority at all, so maintaining your autorithy on say Jerusalem and Paris is impossible). But if your demesne is contiguous you don't have this problem, you just have to hold your court in the middle.

This system would also dissuade to make too long wars, if it's assumed that the "capitol" moves with the king army. While you are far away with your army, your authority is decreasing in the hearth of your realm.

So if you want to fight a very long war far away, like crusades, you may have to appoint a regent to maintain the court in your lands (iirc there was some historical case, where this kind of regency didn't ended too well).

 

[Olaus Petrus]

I think there should be some limitations how the realm can expand. When Christian princes first conquered the Holy Land they formed independent realms there. Ruling the area from Europe would have been very difficult. One of the greatest medieval rulers Emperor Frederick II ruled the Holy Roman Empire, Sicily and Jerusalem, but in practise it was impossible for him to rule in other realms than where he currently was (most of the time Sicily) and he had to trust that his representatives could keep things at bay, which failed relatively often.

Usually kings ruled only the areas near their main kingdom. English monarchs tried to gain control of the other parts of the British Isles and France, but keeping these areas was somewhat difficult. It took long time to gain control over Wales and Ireland and it was done mostly by French nobles and king's had to be careful so that they could keep them at control. Scots didn't often listen even their own king, so it's not surprising that they revolted against English king as soon as it was possible. French duchies had their own powergames and counts were happy to ally themselves with other dukes or King of France against their English overlords.

French and German kings had troubles keeping their own vassals under control and Holy Roman Empire gradually lost it's control over Eastern Europe (Poland had been nominally vassal) and Italy. Naturally this didn't prevent their vassals from expanding into those directions. Russia and Poland had interesting internal power struggles of their own and weren't very united.

Muslim and Mongol realms also had tendency to disintegrate.

These are just few examples which come to mind. So while I think that it should be possible to conquer distant provinces, medieval political power had tendency to disappear further you went from the king's person. Merchant republics were able to keep tradeposts in the distant places, but even those had their own uprisings. So I hope that this will be even clearer in CK2 than it is in CK1. I think that distant vassals should be able to refuse to pay homage/tribute without consequences and distant demense provinces should try to instal local ruler. In CK1 those often caused silly wars, but I think that AI and human rulers should have option to ignore that. It's unlikely that German ruler would send large armies to Cyprus or Ascalon if local crusader prince takes control there.

EDIT: Another thing I would like to see is that if you have multiple king titles and vassals in some secondary kingdom are unhappy they elect their own king, like Swedes did when they didn't like the Danish monarch. It could also happen in your main kingdom, but then it should be rival emperor of HRE or royal usurper.