How does dynastic cycle work and can a player controlled Chinese dynasty ever be in danger of collapsing?

[InsidiousMage]

Games have been solving this issue since the beginning of time, not sure why people still think the fix is impossible

Because the devs don't want to fix it. That is the entire issue here. AUH will come out around the 3rd anniversary of the Floor Plan DD and the issue the devs themselves highlighted as a major concern, modify stacking, has literally only gotten worse since then. I find it hard to believe that the devs are really interested in fixing the issue because it has only gotten worse at the game has went on, with RtP being little more than a bunch of extremely powerful modifiers simply handed out to the player. You could even argue that plagues and harm events point towards to the devs never fixing modifiers because instead of reworking how health works they simply threw in a couple of instant death mechanics. I honestly don't see how people still think the difficulty level of the game will improve/change because the dev have shown absolutely no interest in actually changing it.

 

[Delterius]

Now, maybe the features were badly designed but nevertheless they did (try to) add some friction, internal or external. I feel like they got scarred along the way and are too cautious right now unfortunately. I'm disappointed too, but to be honest I'm sympathetic with the developers, as player feedback to their tries is very mixed.

I think its important to note one thing you yourself wrote, which is that Conclave was hated on release though it is now praised. That's par for the course, which is to say that this sort of permanent game development is all about filtering and interpreting feedback. You do pick one portion of the fanbase to more or less, well, ignore is too strong an issue but whose feedback is taken with a grain of salt because players do have a very narrow understanding of what they want. Those CK2 features some people still have gripes over are still in the games. Most people play with them, some benefit from game rules made for them.

The devs have made a conscious choice on who they'd rather ignore, which is the players who feel the game is too easily broken. They count on that part of the fanbase buying all the DLC regardless of how much more broken CK3 gets over time. It's not a bad play tbqh, but I don't think throwing us a bone for once would collapse their DLC model. The response to 'ok you've beaten the game I'm sorry' here, on reddit and elsewhere has been pretty universally towards how 'beating the game' here isn't playing for 5,000 hours. It's literally just stacking your MaAs with buildings and going to town with the entirety of christendom as a lonely landless camp.

 

[ProfHardknocks]

Trying to make a dynasty last forever should be an extremely hard challenge imo.

Nah. This isn't a sport like MMA, we shouldn't have to sweat and develop a world class skill set.

I mean, so many things in this game should be an extremely hard challenge but aren't and the idea that AUH will break with this trend seems misguided to me. Like, as soon as they announced AUH, "break the dynastic cycle" was one of the first things that came to mind because the game is pathologically afraid of putting meaning barriers in front of the player.

Nope, we shouldn't have to train, sweat hard, and develop a world class skill set. We shouldn't be gated out of content we paid money for because "git gud". However you can use mods, modding, and custom rules to give yourself any kind of challenge you want. You can make a hard mode mod just by doing things like removing all bonuses from most traits and making positive congenital traits not available to players, capping education traits for players at Level 2, choosing not to cheese/exploit glitches and other things obviously not intended.

I don't want meaning barriers. I like meaning, and don't like barriers around meaning. As for meaningful barriers, define meaningful and define barrier - define the skill set, professional knowledge, and hours per day spent training that you think would be the right amount to overcome said barrier. Also, define which percentage of "only the best in the world" should be able to perform certain functions in the game such as maintaining a stable Byzantium, restoring Rome, or other "big" things like that. Should it be possible only by the Top 3% of elite players?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Nope, we shouldn't have to train, sweat hard, and develop a world class skill set. We shouldn't be gated out of content we paid money for because "git gud". However you can use mods, modding, and custom rules to give yourself any kind of challenge you want. You can make a hard mode mod just by doing things like removing all bonuses from most traits and making positive congenital traits not available to players, capping education traits for players at Level 2, choosing not to cheese/exploit glitches and other things obviously not intended.

I don't want meaning barriers. I like meaning, and don't like barriers around meaning. As for meaningful barriers, define meaningful and define barrier - define the skill set, professional knowledge, and hours per day spent training that you think would be the right amount to overcome said barrier. Also, define which percentage of "only the best in the world" should be able to perform certain functions in the game such as maintaining a stable Byzantium, restoring Rome, or other "big" things like that. Should it be possible only by the Top 3% of elite players?

And this is the kind of attitude that will forever hold back CK3 because god forbid a player actually have to learn how to play the game. Every great game I've ever played has required me to learn how the mechanics work, how to effectively use them, and yes, made me actually work to do the cool stuff. That's what makes a game rewarding. If I wanted to simply have things handed out to me, I'd go back to elementary school because I'd be little more than a child anyway.

 

[The Shacks]

Something somehting grand strategy shouldent be challenging hahahahha.... This thread got derailed.

 

[ProfHardknocks]

Ah yes, the strawman of "I just don't wanna learn the game". That the best you got, kid? Every great game I've ever played required some level of learning the game, but did NOT require players to become hardcore sweaty athletes, with content locked behind walls only the best 3% in the world can jump over. This isn't League of Legends, this is Crusader Kings. Learn the difference. Also back when games were "harder", there were nowhere near as many elements to micro as there are right now. Do you just want a no mechanics game that can be made hard and sweaty? Some people don't want to watch/read a disney style book based on a chase the cat set of perpetual events that leave no breathing room for plot or story. Some people don't want to play a game where you have to spend 2 years in an elite training camp just to get started. Your attitude is exactly why game developers struggle. There's always an esport guy who wants everything to be hard, sweaty, the most difficult thing ever. There are games like that, go play them.

 

[Delterius]

"I just don't wanna learn the game"

Is this a bit? We just wish there was something to learn.

 

[ray243]

Nah. This isn't a sport like MMA, we shouldn't have to sweat and develop a world class skill set.



Nope, we shouldn't have to train, sweat hard, and develop a world class skill set. We shouldn't be gated out of content we paid money for because "git gud". However you can use mods, modding, and custom rules to give yourself any kind of challenge you want. You can make a hard mode mod just by doing things like removing all bonuses from most traits and making positive congenital traits not available to players, capping education traits for players at Level 2, choosing not to cheese/exploit glitches and other things obviously not intended.

I don't want meaning barriers. I like meaning, and don't like barriers around meaning. As for meaningful barriers, define meaningful and define barrier - define the skill set, professional knowledge, and hours per day spent training that you think would be the right amount to overcome said barrier. Also, define which percentage of "only the best in the world" should be able to perform certain functions in the game such as maintaining a stable Byzantium, restoring Rome, or other "big" things like that. Should it be possible only by the Top 3% of elite players?

Or if you want no challenge, just turn on console command and cheat? That's an option too.

 

[Benismann]

Something somehting grand strategy shouldent be challenging hahahahha.... This thread got derailed.

Yeah, par for the course - the game is broken, thus any challenge-adjacent discussion inevitably falls back onto being a discussion about how the game is lacking in friction, coz there's no challenge to discuss.

Mark my words - it will either be very easy to maintain your rule over china on launch, or it will be made easy in a patch in a month or two.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

In an attempt to drag the thread back on opening topic:
I am leery of the very notion of a "dynastic cycle" or "ages/phases" mechanic. It wasn't that Chinese dynasties don't want to last 400 or even 800 years - there were sets of problems that generate over the course of a state's existence that in the geopolitical context of China, with the productivity of an agrarian economy, were simply impossible to solve. It wasn't b/c they hit an arbitrary "decline phase" that Chinese dynasties went into decline and collapse.

 

[The Shacks]

As the above poster alludes too, I think/HOPE these hinted natural disasters will play a big part in this. I also lowkey hope the devs listen to us and implement fertilty in a way across non steppe territories so that these natural disasters ( and manmade mistakes / and river salination ) can really start to eat into fertility and thus impact legitamacy and local unrest.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

As the above poster alludes too, I think/HOPE these hinted natural disasters will play a big part in this. I also lowkey hope the devs listen to us and implement fertilty in a way across non steppe territories so that these natural disasters ( and manmade mistakes / and river salination ) can really start to eat into fertility and thus impact legitamacy and local unrest.

You know, I did bring this up some time ago, but people mostly disagreed. Maybe it's something wrong about my delivery of the problem.

 

[vyshan]

We don't know yet, but I imagine that once we get the Dev Diaries for AUH we will get some idea.

 

[Bisonmask]

Also, define which percentage of "only the best in the world" should be able to perform certain functions in the game such as maintaining a stable Byzantium, restoring Rome, or other "big" things like that. Should it be possible only by the Top 3% of elite players?

Yes, literally yes. Imo restoring Rome should only be possible for 1% of players too. The systems that should exist to make these things difficult would in turn make playing as a count or duke fun and engaging. More importantly their absence is the reason doing either of these feels so boring now

Even if I agreed that more people should be *able* to do these I don't agree that they should be doable with as little effort as they currently take