Please implement some kind of decay system for empires and large realms

[DukeDayve]

This has been my biggest problem with CK2 (and EU4 I guess, but I don't play or enjoy that one nearly as much as CK2) for many years now... that empires very rarely fall apart and every game ends with 2-4 enormous blobs owning the entire map. Please create some kind of system where you have to manage decay in large realms and empires. The most fun I ever have in CK2 is when interesting stuff happens on the map, like large empires totally collapsing and being put back together by their successor states, or just collapsing and never recovering.

I know a lot of people would hate this as they just want to paint the map in their colour, but you could make the decay system optional in the game setup menu... you know like how you can turn many things on/off in CK2 before you start the game? Like "seduction focus for the AI on/off" you could have "large realm decay on/off".

 

[Atalvyr]

/signed

While it is not quite as problematic in CK2 due to being a vassal still being quite fun, the game generates far too many empires of Alexandrian proportions, without any of the fun of having feuding successor states after the great ruler dies.

Having elective gavelkind for everyone somewhat solves the issue, but in the least fun way. CK3 should give more incentives to split inheritances among heirs, rather than being all about figuring out how to leave as little as possible for anyone but your chosen successor.

 

[d12ddd]

I bet you had a lot of fun in the Charlemagne start date.

 

[DukeDayve]

I bet you had a lot of fun in the Charlemagne start date.

769? I quit playing that a long time ago. In 769 the Umayyads, Abbasids and Byzantines all reign supreme after less than a century, while Europe ends up irreperably broken (except 1% of the time when Charlie forms the HRE or Empire of Francia, in which case they join the other 3 blobs in reigning supreme).

Same goes for 867. Umayyads own the west, Byzantines own the east, rest of the map is a horrific mess.

1066 and 1081 are dominated by the HRE, which never falls and ends up conquering all of Africa and wins all the crusades.

1204 is probably my favourite. It's not perfect, but there's a power balance in the west, the Byzantines are smashed, then the Mongols come along and make the game fun.

 

[wielkicien]

The problem with CK2 is, IMO, the relation between your ruler stats and stability of the realm. If you have 20 diplomacy then almost no vassal will revolt against you. As a player it is very easy to manipulate and exploit game mechanics in such a way to have at least good rulers all the time. If you've played CK2 for 1k hours then you know what to do in order to keep your realm safe. For a newbie players it's the opposite - by not knowing the ways to exploit mechanics they often get shitty rulers and are prone to large revolts.
All in all - the more knowledge about the game you have, the more stable and boring your game will be....
Unless you are trying to suggest to add some non-character related modifiers/mechanics to make large empires dissemble. In that case.... I don't know. It would mean that we are treating CK2 tag as a political realm which it actually was not. It should be treated as a collection of one persons titles, that can be gained or lost on succession. There should be no modifier like +100 provinces = vassals 10% willing to rebel. That would be just silly and anti-fun.

 

[cristofolmc]

The problem with CK2 is, IMO, the relation between your ruler stats and stability of the realm. If you have 20 diplomacy then almost no vassal will revolt against you. As a player it is very easy to manipulate and exploit game mechanics in such a way to have at least good rulers all the time. If you've played CK2 for 1k hours then you know what to do in order to keep your realm safe. For a newbie players it's the opposite - by not knowing the ways to exploit mechanics they often get shitty rulers and are prone to large revolts.
All in all - the more knowledge about the game you have, the more stable and boring your game will be....
Unless you are trying to suggest to add some non-character related modifiers/mechanics to make large empires dissemble. In that case.... I don't know. It would mean that we are treating CK2 tag as a political realm which it actually was not. It should be treated as a collection of one persons titles, that can be gained or lost on succession. There should be no modifier like +100 provinces = vassals 10% willing to rebel. That would be just silly and anti-fun.

While you do have a point, he is not exactly talking about the player experience. But that even the AI who doesnt exploit game knowledge to keep characters over +15 diplomacy, manages to keep this realms together. Yes, they have a lot of internal revolts and such, but the system is designed so the big blob remains ever strong and that outside kingdoms have no chance of bringing it down. So they empire keeps blobbing, with an internal civil war every now and then, but with no real effects for its stabilitt after the civil war is over. And the more they blob the more powerful the emperor is, when it should be the opposite. Its ridiculous that all of africa and big chunks of middle.east get conquered by europe, mostly the HRE, like it was the 19th century. And meanwhile, the blob keeps expanding over europe. And the stupid AI impedes that characters can form competent factions agains the empreror/king once youre b(or the AI) is powerful enough.

I reaaaaally hope they tackle that.

 

[Blackfang12]

Could maybe restrict the maximum vassals softcap more, and make vassals further away from your capital less obedient and likely to revolt. Things that over time could be counteracted by tech and expanded Bureaucracy at the cost of higher upkeep (and maybe peasant hostility)

That way the frays of the Empire may be constantly fraying, and if you have a great ruler that expanded greatly in a short time, you might not have a government in place to let his successor keep the Empire together

Edit: and such a centralized state would probably be expensive to run. So if you suddenly lose a lot of money, the Empire may implode as well

 

[wielkicien]

While you do have a point, he is not exactly talking about the player experience. But that even the AI who doesnt exploit game knowledge to keep characters over +15 diplomacy, manages to keep this realms together. Yes, they have a lot of internal revolts and such, but the system is designed so the big blob remains ever strong and that outside kingdoms have no chance of bringing it down. So they empire keeps blobbing, with an internal civil war every now and then, but with no real effects for its stabilitt after the civil war is over. And the more they blob the more powerful the emperor is, when it should be the opposite. Its ridiculous that all of africa and big chunks of middle.east get conquered by europe, mostly the HRE, like it was the 19th century. And meanwhile, the blob keeps expanding over europe. And the stupid AI impedes that characters can form competent factions agains the empreror/king once youre b(or the AI) is powerful enough.

I reaaaaally hope they tackle that.

Maybe the real problem is that most civil wars end up with different person in charge of the same land instead of splitting the land itself? Currently independence wars in CK2 are so rare and if they happen they are easily crushed.

 

[Leyrann]

I would like to see vassals being more likely to revolt if their liege loses wars (because they're discontent with how their liege handles external threats) and big enough independence or tyranny revolts being able to destroy the title they are revolting against if they are successful. So basically, if there is a HRE in a 769 start, and they lose a few wars against the Umayyad, then a Prepared Invasion for Frisia from Norway, and then the emperor tries to revoke, say, Allemania, and the guy says "no thanks" and gets Franconia and a few others to go along with him, and they win the war, they split off and the Empire title is destroyed, leaving the former emperor as king of West Francia. EDIT: And perhaps, if there's the King of Italy under the emperor, he then says "well yeah, you clearly can't take care of your empire, f*ck off" and becomes independent as well (as a way to deal with a king not being allowed to be the vassal of another king).

 

[Bluekkis]

I would make it harder and increasingly less profitable to expand, even for empires. Some form of 'control' range and implementation of nominal vassal or de-facto independent rulers would be needed for furthest edges of large empires/kingdoms. Also make having tributaries more interesting/profitable so that conquest is not only option to expand. And raising and moving large armies should be expensive so that even smaller rulers at the empire edges would have defensive chance.

 

[Will Steel]

I support this. Most empires and civilizations collapse (externally or internally) after an average span of 2-3 centuries, but neither CK2 nor other Paradox games have featured this successfully. CK2 was particularly a major culprit with unbeatable blobs across the map, forming up after a while, eating everything around them and never dying.

 

[Andrzej I]

Most empires and civilizations collapse (externally or internally) after an average span of 2-3 centuries

I might add a word to this: "most empires and civilizations collapse (externally or internally) after an average span of two to three centuries max."

History is littered with petty empires that rose and fell within a generation or two, such as Alexander's Hellenic empire or, for a more CK example, Great Moravia. Either way, minor detail, but I felt it important to nuance the comment

 

[Pyoro]

We need some sort of supply system so people can nibble away at the fringes of Empires and the Empires can't respond by casually marching all their troops wherever they like. I give this roughly a zero chance of happening in CK3.

And character locations need to matter. A big challenge for the HRE was that the Kaiser rode off to Jerusalem or Sicily or even just Rome and everyone back home instantly revolted - because why the heck not? In CK2, the ruler just teleports home and sorts everything out. Compared to supplies I give this an even more zero percent chance of happening. ^^

 

[Will Steel]

I might add a word to this: "most empires and civilizations collapse (externally or internally) after an average span of two to three centuries max."

History is littered with petty empires that rose and fell within a generation or two, such as Alexander's Hellenic empire or, for a more CK example, Great Moravia. Either way, minor detail, but I felt it important to nuance the comment

Yes, that as well. There have always been exceptions on both sides of the spectrum - some empires fall within a generation of their creation, some survive for over a thousand years in a shrunken state or evolve into something else. Most standard empires rise, last 2-3 centuries, and then lose power.

 

[Cassilda]

I completely support this proposal, a growth/decadence system for empires and big realms is something that will keep the game interesting also when your dynasty controls large amounts of land. And even better if it's a turn on/off rule, so it won't become a controversial design decision like the defense pact (that are generally more irritating than fun, despite stopping AI blobbing well enough).

 

[cristofolmc]

We need some sort of supply system so people can nibble away at the fringes of Empires and the Empires can't respond by casually marching all their troops wherever they like. I give this roughly a zero chance of happening in CK3.

And character locations need to matter. A big challenge for the HRE was that the Kaiser rode off to Jerusalem or Sicily or even just Rome and everyone back home instantly revolted - because why the heck not? In CK2, the ruler just teleports home and sorts everything out. Compared to supplies I give this an even more zero percent chance of happening. ^^

The new I:R supply system for warfare sounds absolutely revolutionary and new to PDX games. Maybe it can work for CK3.

 

[DukeDayve]

The problem with CK2 is, IMO, the relation between your ruler stats and stability of the realm. If you have 20 diplomacy then almost no vassal will revolt against you. As a player it is very easy to manipulate and exploit game mechanics in such a way to have at least good rulers all the time. If you've played CK2 for 1k hours then you know what to do in order to keep your realm safe. For a newbie players it's the opposite - by not knowing the ways to exploit mechanics they often get shitty rulers and are prone to large revolts.
All in all - the more knowledge about the game you have, the more stable and boring your game will be....
Unless you are trying to suggest to add some non-character related modifiers/mechanics to make large empires dissemble. In that case.... I don't know. It would mean that we are treating CK2 tag as a political realm which it actually was not. It should be treated as a collection of one persons titles, that can be gained or lost on succession. There should be no modifier like +100 provinces = vassals 10% willing to rebel. That would be just silly and anti-fun.

Obviously being an expert at the game, playing it for 2,000 hours in my case, makes you better at holding your realm together than a newbie. However, if you remember all the way back to before Rajas of India, the faction system used to be a lot harsher.

If you were playing as the Byzantine Empire and the dukes of all the duchies in Greece joined a faction and revolted against you, each one of them became independent for the duration of the rebellion. Each one of them could call up 100% of their levies, each one of them could hire mercenaries and each one of them could call in their other allies. This made rebellions potentially extremely deadly. I recall one particularly deadly rebellion as the Byzantine emperor, when more than half of my vassals rebelled against me and called in their allies and hired mercs and it was literally impossible for me to match their numbers, even when I blew my enormous treasury on mercenaries. I lost the throne. Also, this system meant that weaker neighbours of large realms could snag counties or even whole duchies (or hell, even an entire kingdom) during a rebellion, which meant smaller nations had a way of taking land from larger nations - they just had to wait for a rebellion and then attack the rebelling duke/count.

Then Rajas came along and weakened the faction system, uniting all rebelling vassals under one single ruler. Only the leader of the rebellion could hire mercenaries and call in his allies, as opposed to every member of the faction like before. And the leader of the rebellion could only call up a small portion of the levies of his temporary vassals, as opposed to each rebelling leader calling up 100% of them before. Ever since then factions have been a joke.

CK2+ mod made them deadly again, but CK2+ runs like treacle even if you play CK2 on a NASA supercomputer.

 

[the glory of plain]

a law system cause constant struggle
or give vassal yearly choice to pay tax
choice to support liege in every war or not

 

[The Shacks]

Obviously being an expert at the game, playing it for 2,000 hours in my case, makes you better at holding your realm together than a newbie. However, if you remember all the way back to before Rajas of India, the faction system used to be a lot harsher.

If you were playing as the Byzantine Empire and the dukes of all the duchies in Greece joined a faction and revolted against you, each one of them became independent for the duration of the rebellion. Each one of them could call up 100% of their levies, each one of them could hire mercenaries and each one of them could call in their other allies. This made rebellions potentially extremely deadly. I recall one particularly deadly rebellion as the Byzantine emperor, when more than half of my vassals rebelled against me and called in their allies and hired mercs and it was literally impossible for me to match their numbers, even when I blew my enormous treasury on mercenaries. I lost the throne. Also, this system meant that weaker neighbours of large realms could snag counties or even whole duchies (or hell, even an entire kingdom) during a rebellion, which meant smaller nations had a way of taking land from larger nations - they just had to wait for a rebellion and then attack the rebelling duke/count.

Then Rajas came along and weakened the faction system, uniting all rebelling vassals under one single ruler. Only the leader of the rebellion could hire mercenaries and call in his allies, as opposed to every member of the faction like before. And the leader of the rebellion could only call up a small portion of the levies of his temporary vassals, as opposed to each rebelling leader calling up 100% of them before. Ever since then factions have been a joke.

CK2+ mod made them deadly again, but CK2+ runs like treacle even if you play CK2 on a NASA supercomputer.

This! Internal gameplay became waaaaaaay too easy. Once you realised ok I just need to bribe my main vassals and marry a couple of them, you never suffered any unrest. Even as Charlamagne you could easily neuter every vassal before you unpaused the game and never suffrer a rebellion. I noticed after Rajas or maybe Conclave that vassals seemed to almost stop intelligently marriage alliancing eachother.

 

[cristofolmc]

This! Internal gameplay became waaaaaaay too easy. Once you realised ok I just need to bribe my main vassals and marry a couple of them, you never suffered any unrest. Even as Charlamagne you could easily neuter every vassal before you unpaused the game and never suffrer a rebellion. I noticed after Rajas or maybe Conclave that vassals seemed to almost stop intelligently marriage alliancing eachother.

It became even easier with the Conclave nerf. Put them in the council and all of a sudden they stop plotting. Yeah, right.