Is paradox really telling us all to quit the game?

[El-Tapicero]

The problem is a lack of a squiring system and how you can't get a list of possible accolades to decide what you want ahead of time. The fact a "roleplay" and character focused game has no squires is honestly just funny

There are several problems, and I concede you without hesitation that this is one of them — but in my opinion, it is not the only one.


I still believe that having too many accolades is a bad thing. They become difficult to balance against each other, many are unnecessary, and they only serve to confuse the AI, causing it to choose inefficient accolades and further widening the gap between human players and the AI.

 

[Voidian]

They can’t tell you that, because they have exactly zero plans to address it.
They are about to release an extremely OP and broken nomad Government type, that will be a power fantasy right out of the gate, no challenge required. They will then follow it up with a China dlc that is guaranteed to be at least as broken as admin government, if not more so.
Somewhere along the way they’ll throw in a coronation activity which will provide additional pay2win buffs to prestige and legitimacy, only exacerbating all the modifier stacking issues

And that will be this year of development.

Wouldn't be a problem if the AI was actually playing the game, but since it isn't, yeah, it's as you said.

Would be nice if the chinese empire really was OP, and the AI actually did something with it.

Same goes for the nomads.

 

[gamer78]

Yes similar to the bastard OP, What I see in most games companies in UK particularly developers in Slitherine to much focus in Norman than the Seljuk in similar time frame. Guess what Anzac also pupular. But what ever reason even in reverse situaition this game doesn't pass for Paradox standards.

 

[bretjemaine]

That was... very poor phrasing on my part, and the criticism it's caused is completely justified.

The question as posed in the Q&A suggests that increased difficulty is an easy fix that we're just choosing not to do. What I was trying to say is that it's not that straightforward; it's hard to make content that's challenging for veteran players without wiping new players out, but that doesn't mean we're not trying. We just want difficulty that's fun to engage with, and not frustrating.

We want to make the player lose in ways that encourages them to adapt their strategy and try again, rather than sit there looking at a game over screen feeling like the game screwed them over with mechanics that were incomprehensible or completely out of their control. There's already a variety of ways to crank the difficulty up by artificially boosting the AI or hobbling the player themselves via game rules, but given that the discussion around difficulty persists I think it's safe to say that even the veteran players feel that's not an acceptable solution to the problem. And to be clear, I do consider it a problem.

Honest question, why are you as devs/designers so against asymmetric difficulty? The player will always be better than AI and should be 'hobbled' in many ways. In obfuscation, in some basic across-the-board penalties, in ahistorical get-out solutions like matrilineal marriage, and in not being able to stack modifiers for MAA.

Just making a new difficulty setting with these would change so much.

 

[El-Tapicero]

Honest question, why are you as devs/designers so against asymmetric difficulty? The player will always be better than AI and should be 'hobbled' in many ways. In obfuscation, in some basic across-the-board penalties, in ahistorical get-out solutions like matrilineal marriage, and in not being able to stack modifiers for MAA.

Just making a new difficulty setting with these would change so much.

80–90% of the game's difficulty issues stem from poor balance and the AI's inability to apply mechanics effectively.

Once those aspects are addressed, do you want a real challenge? Try playing as the independent Mozarabic county of Ávila, or as a Zoroastrian ruler isolated in the middle of Muslim territory, and so on.

Of course, new challenge features could also be introduced — my personal favorite would be one where, upon inheritance, you continue playing as a random child rather than necessarily the primary heir.

 

[Chaotic_Good]

The game needs urgently a big rework similar to the work that Tinto did with Eu4.
When more new content they release, more difficult will be repair the game.

 

[Benismann]

The game needs urgently a big rework similar to the work that Tinto did with Eu4.
When more new content they release, more difficult will be repair the game.

Sadly it will probably never come as it's really hard to attach a DLC to one like that. Best we can hope for is that Realm Maintenance updates like 1.15 will continue to come.

 

[bretjemaine]

80–90% of the game's difficulty issues stem from poor balance and the AI's inability to apply mechanics effectively.

Once those aspects are addressed, do you want a real challenge? Try playing as the independent Mozarabic county of Ávila, or as a Zoroastrian ruler isolated in the middle of Muslim territory, and so on.

Sure. But given they've said there's no AI magic wand that will fix their behaviour, then, if that's true, there are part-way solutions like I've mentioned.

The examples you gave of real challenges are only a challenge for the first 10-20 years of the game. The game is serviceably difficult enough at the Count level, not above. That's the issue. It's always been the issue.

(And even then you just need to get a 2-3 kids, list potential alliances by power, and boom you have won.)

 

[peteoj]

Honest question, why are you as devs/designers so against asymmetric difficulty? The player will always be better than AI and should be 'hobbled' in many ways. In obfuscation, in some basic across-the-board penalties, in ahistorical get-out solutions like matrilineal marriage, and in not being able to stack modifiers for MAA.

Just making a new difficulty setting with these would change so much.

The ai is also just fundamentally unable to play the game, it doesn't do anything half the time it can't deal with stress, the economy, warfare it can't even deal with tyranny and education, nearly all mechanics are just impossible for the ai to use. The devs have GOT to know this yet they continue to ignore this and instead focus on adding big flashy dlc with even more mechanics that the ai can't use, it's such a glaring flaw that it's wild to me that the devs haven't even tried to, if not fully overhaul the ai, then at least give it artificial buffs to actually engage with the player. I haven't bought chapter four and don't intend to because of this exact reason, I can't keep giving the devs money knowing they'll just keep pumping out mechanics that are good in a vacuum but simply unplayable for the ai due to the broken foundations of the game. I'm not even really sure the ai will be capable of handling any of the new government types being added because the ai isn't even capable of handling admin or clan at all.

 

[Voidian]

The ai is also just fundamentally unable to play the game, it doesn't do anything half the time it can't deal with stress, the economy, warfare it can't even deal with tyranny and education, nearly all mechanics are just impossible for the ai to use. The devs have GOT to know this yet they continue to ignore this and instead focus on adding big flashy dlc with even more mechanics that the ai can't use, it's such a glaring flaw that it's wild to me that the devs haven't even tried to, if not fully overhaul the ai, then at least give it artificial buffs to actually engage with the player. I haven't bought chapter four and don't intend to because of this exact reason, I can't keep giving the devs money knowing they'll just keep pumping out mechanics that are good in a vacuum but simply unplayable for the ai due to the broken foundations of the game. I'm not even really sure the ai will be capable of handling any of the new government types being added because the ai isn't even capable of handling admin or clan at all.

This might be completely unfounded, but I'm wondering if it's a tech issue.

Back during the CK2 days there was a time in which the game was in a much better state, before most of the DLCs, a few people would argue that the best times of CK2 were before any, or at least most of the DLCs.

One of the reasons was because some of the DLCs added too much content that made it easier for the players, like retinues, while they were a fun idea, they never really worked and even though levies weren't trash over there (jn fact, feudal levies were VERY powerful) a giant army of retines could bypass the restrictions of raising armies before wars, instantly finishing some of them before the AI could gather their armies/allies, they were too powerful AND they were extra armies capable of doubling your actual army size.

Which meant, as an example, if you were playing as the byzantine emperor and you faced a giant revolt of nearly everyone of your vassals, as I had (happens when your daughter is a genius and young, so you really want to put her on the throne), without retinues you'd be toast unless you had a very powerful ally like the Abbassid or HRE empires and even then it wouldn't be an easy war, but with retinues you could just start wiping the vassal armies out before they could gather together and beat them into submission without any actual power from your lands, an extreme case that's possible in CK3 with 1/100 of the prep work, but it was still possible.

The other reason was the AI.

Around the time when Rajas of India was released people were flooding them forums claiming the game was broken and unplayable, the game was already having severe performance issues at the time so they decided to expand the map even further, as a result the game was lagging to hell on the best computers, everyone was complaining, nobody could play the game.

Suddenly a performance optimization patch droped and the game ran smoothly ever since.

But some players have noticed something odd... The AI, which was rather challenging and vicious was no longer doing... Pretty much anything, I mean, they were still more active than the CK3 one, but far less active compared to how they used to be, players still call that the "lobotomy patch", this behavior was never fixed.

I wonder if the problem is that they don't know how/if it's even possible for PCs to handle an AI that actually plays the game in CK3 due to performance issues, specially now that they are greatly expanding the map?

 

[El-Tapicero]

Sure. But given they've said there's no AI magic wand that will fix their behaviour, then, if that's true, there are part-way solutions like I've mentioned.

An important part of what I consider "improving the AI" is not designing mechanics that are overly complex for it or easily exploitable for human players.


If you don’t make the game unnecessarily complex, the AI improves on its own xd.

 

[Citizen Caen]

l

This might be completely unfounded, but I'm wondering if it's a tech issue.

Back during the CK2 days there was a time in which the game was in a much better state, before most of the DLCs, a few people would argue that the best times of CK2 were before any, or at least most of the DLCs.

One of the reasons was because some of the DLCs added too much content that made it easier for the players, like retinues, while they were a fun idea, they never really worked and even though levies weren't trash over there (jn fact, feudal levies were VERY powerful) a giant army of retines could bypass the restrictions of raising armies before wars, instantly finishing some of them before the AI could gather their armies/allies, they were too powerful AND they were extra armies capable of doubling your actual army size.

Which meant, as an example, if you were playing as the byzantine emperor and you faced a giant revolt of nearly everyone of your vassals, as I had (happens when your daughter is a genius and young, so you really want to put her on the throne), without retinues you'd be toast unless you had a very powerful ally like the Abbassid or HRE empires and even then it wouldn't be an easy war, but with retinues you could just start wiping the vassal armies out before they could gather together and beat them into submission without any actual power from your lands, an extreme case that's possible in CK3 with 1/100 of the prep work, but it was still possible.

The other reason was the AI.

Around the time when Rajas of India was released people were flooding them forums claiming the game was broken and unplayable, the game was already having severe performance issues at the time so they decided to expand the map even further, as a result the game was lagging to hell on the best computers, everyone was complaining, nobody could play the game.

Suddenly a performance optimization patch droped and the game ran smoothly ever since.

But some players have noticed something odd... The AI, which was rather challenging and vicious was no longer doing... Pretty much anything, I mean, they were still more active than the CK3 one, but far less active compared to how they used to be, players still call that the "lobotomy patch", this behavior was never fixed.

I wonder if the problem is that they don't know how/if it's even possible for PCs to handle an AI that actually plays the game in CK3 due to performance issues, specially now that they are greatly expanding the map?

Your description of CK2 was my experience as well. Something definitely changed around Rajas of India. AI was still more challenging than CK3, but the feel of the game was different, difficult to describe.

I remember thinking at the time: sword of Islam to Old Gods was CK2 at its best. From then on it started to really suffer from feature bloat. Not that the dlc after were all bad and the previous were all good, just that you started to feel the underlying engine literally creak from the strain. As much as I loved Holy Fury, with end of development CK2, there’s a distinct feeling that the game was barely holding together

 

[Benismann]

This might be completely unfounded, but I'm wondering if it's a tech issue.

Back during the CK2 days there was a time in which the game was in a much better state, before most of the DLCs, a few people would argue that the best times of CK2 were before any, or at least most of the DLCs.

One of the reasons was because some of the DLCs added too much content that made it easier for the players, like retinues, while they were a fun idea, they never really worked and even though levies weren't trash over there (jn fact, feudal levies were VERY powerful) a giant army of retines could bypass the restrictions of raising armies before wars, instantly finishing some of them before the AI could gather their armies/allies, they were too powerful AND they were extra armies capable of doubling your actual army size.

Which meant, as an example, if you were playing as the byzantine emperor and you faced a giant revolt of nearly everyone of your vassals, as I had (happens when your daughter is a genius and young, so you really want to put her on the throne), without retinues you'd be toast unless you had a very powerful ally like the Abbassid or HRE empires and even then it wouldn't be an easy war, but with retinues you could just start wiping the vassal armies out before they could gather together and beat them into submission without any actual power from your lands, an extreme case that's possible in CK3 with 1/100 of the prep work, but it was still possible.

The other reason was the AI.

Around the time when Rajas of India was released people were flooding them forums claiming the game was broken and unplayable, the game was already having severe performance issues at the time so they decided to expand the map even further, as a result the game was lagging to hell on the best computers, everyone was complaining, nobody could play the game.

Suddenly a performance optimization patch droped and the game ran smoothly ever since.

But some players have noticed something odd... The AI, which was rather challenging and vicious was no longer doing... Pretty much anything, I mean, they were still more active than the CK3 one, but far less active compared to how they used to be, players still call that the "lobotomy patch", this behavior was never fixed.

I wonder if the problem is that they don't know how/if it's even possible for PCs to handle an AI that actually plays the game in CK3 due to performance issues, specially now that they are greatly expanding the map?

If you worry about perfomance - just cull the levy scaling, armies lag the game A LOT and, frankly, if levies are something that's raised all the time, they probably really shouldn't be that large....

And imo there're substantial improvements that can be done to AI with little to no impact on performance by changing existing numbers/scores/weights for things and adding some sensible checks in some places.

 

[ray243]

This might be completely unfounded, but I'm wondering if it's a tech issue.

Back during the CK2 days there was a time in which the game was in a much better state, before most of the DLCs, a few people would argue that the best times of CK2 were before any, or at least most of the DLCs.

One of the reasons was because some of the DLCs added too much content that made it easier for the players, like retinues, while they were a fun idea, they never really worked and even though levies weren't trash over there (jn fact, feudal levies were VERY powerful) a giant army of retines could bypass the restrictions of raising armies before wars, instantly finishing some of them before the AI could gather their armies/allies, they were too powerful AND they were extra armies capable of doubling your actual army size.

Which meant, as an example, if you were playing as the byzantine emperor and you faced a giant revolt of nearly everyone of your vassals, as I had (happens when your daughter is a genius and young, so you really want to put her on the throne), without retinues you'd be toast unless you had a very powerful ally like the Abbassid or HRE empires and even then it wouldn't be an easy war, but with retinues you could just start wiping the vassal armies out before they could gather together and beat them into submission without any actual power from your lands, an extreme case that's possible in CK3 with 1/100 of the prep work, but it was still possible.

The other reason was the AI.

Around the time when Rajas of India was released people were flooding them forums claiming the game was broken and unplayable, the game was already having severe performance issues at the time so they decided to expand the map even further, as a result the game was lagging to hell on the best computers, everyone was complaining, nobody could play the game.

Suddenly a performance optimization patch droped and the game ran smoothly ever since.

But some players have noticed something odd... The AI, which was rather challenging and vicious was no longer doing... Pretty much anything, I mean, they were still more active than the CK3 one, but far less active compared to how they used to be, players still call that the "lobotomy patch", this behavior was never fixed.

I wonder if the problem is that they don't know how/if it's even possible for PCs to handle an AI that actually plays the game in CK3 due to performance issues, specially now that they are greatly expanding the map?

They created retinues but they never give it a downside with making them having commanders who could potentially rebel. Which was a big issue for the Byzantine empire with powerful generals revolting with professional armies over various reasons. CK3 turned this to MAA but the problem grew even more without any real trade offs.

 

[klopkr]

They created retinues but they never give it a downside with making them having commanders who could potentially rebel. Which was a big issue for the Byzantine empire with powerful generals revolting with professional armies over various reasons. CK3 turned this to MAA but the problem grew even more without any real trade offs.

Generals in general have no presence.

 

[EmperorDweeb]

Generals in general have no presence.

Maybe this is a good thing, I play in Byzantium and it would suck to get a new Imperial claimant and rebellion anytime time one of my generals win a battle. /s

 

[EricArthur]

The ai is also just fundamentally unable to play the game, it doesn't do anything half the time it can't deal with stress, the economy, warfare it can't even deal with tyranny and education, nearly all mechanics are just impossible for the ai to use. The devs have GOT to know this yet they continue to ignore this and instead focus on adding big flashy dlc with even more mechanics that the ai can't use, it's such a glaring flaw that it's wild to me that the devs haven't even tried to, if not fully overhaul the ai, then at least give it artificial buffs to actually engage with the player. I haven't bought chapter four and don't intend to because of this exact reason, I can't keep giving the devs money knowing they'll just keep pumping out mechanics that are good in a vacuum but simply unplayable for the ai due to the broken foundations of the game. I'm not even really sure the ai will be capable of handling any of the new government types being added because the ai isn't even capable of handling admin or clan at all.

It is pretty clear those concerns are being ignored; half of the threads on the front page are about these issues and we still get no response...

 

[ray243]

Generals in general have no presence.

This should be one of the major areas to improve the warfare aspect of the game. Not in that it gives the players even more ways to micro and win battles against AI, but managing your powerful generals should be a big thing.

Prior to retinues being a thing in CK2, your dukes and kings vassals are usually your main internal powerful generals as they basically command large part of your levies. Retinues made this part of gameplay unbalanced and it's not really dealt with even into CK3.

In theory, a general that you appoint that keep winning battles should develop a good reputation, and also potentially someone that can threaten your power base. This can make deciding on whicj generals you appoint to head a army into battle and interesting decision for the players.

Do they want the nice stats that the good generals can bring? But what if it comes at expense of making the general too popular with the soldiers?

 

[ray243]

Maybe this is a good thing, I play in Byzantium and it would suck to get a new Imperial claimant and rebellion anytime time one of my generals win a battle. /s

See. A natural way to balance Byzantines from being too OP!

 

[EmperorDweeb]

See. A natural way to balance Byzantines from being too OP!

It would be an funny and interesting situation for the player if a system like this were implemented. Like you'd actually be slightly afraid if one of your Armies stack wipes and enemy army in a miraculous battle because it sows the seed of your next civil war. Or getting an opportunity to climb if you're the general leading the army, just pull one of these: