Prevent snowballing, ensure difficulty scale accordingly

[ray243]

A lot of video games, especially single-player video games operate by the rule of making the game more challenging as the player becomes more powerful. A player can go around collecting new powers, weapons, skill points or anything else that makes them more and more powerful the more they play in a campaign.

But this needs to scale in difficulty. So while a player can defeat your random spiders mooks more easily, them becoming stronger should mean they should be facing new tougher sort of challenges.

But so far, CK3 does not conform to such a rule. It has all the RPG elements of making a player dynasty and character more and more OP the more they play, that any decent player will have insane stats and buffs for their dynasty, character and empire. The issue? This creates a snowballing effect as everything starts stacking and it becomes more and more easy to just wiped out smaller AI realms from the map.

PDX have tried to deal with this late game problem by.... simply spamming and creating either late game Mongol army spawn, or have the new conqueror trait for AI, or create artificial challenges with eternal plague and uprising if you form pagan Roman empire. All these doesn't make the game more fun because the new "challenges" aren't a result of difficulty scaling accordingly. It's mostly just an arbitrary late game level 100 boss spawn because it's an easy solution to the problem.

I think one way to actually make the game more challenging is to ensure the gameplay difficulty scale as you grow your kingdom and dynasty.

The challenge shouldn't come from artificial new threats like Mongol spawn army or the black death.

Tech advancement : Even late stage tech needs trade-offs!

Even new tech unlock comes with opportunity cost. Say you unlock merchant guilds. Yes, you get new bonus for trade, but this also means you have traders starting to get grumpy about the power of the old landed nobility. Merchants seeks to turn castles into cities, they want higher court positions over your old nobility.

Tech that unlocks better infantry that makes knights MaA less effective? Well suddenly your army based around heavy armoured knights as noble warrior class isn't that important anymore!

Tech that unlocks gunpowder weapons? Well overtime, you should start to see castles becoming less effective as they can be destroyed by better and better cannons! A societal class that defined itself by castles for feudal nobility is less useful than a mass infantry army with cannons.

These aren't necessarily suggestion that is based on historical reality, but they should at least reflect some form of trade-off that tech advancement make. It might make some parts better and stronger, but it comes with certain trade-off that can affect your societal, economic and political structures in different ways.

 

[Citizen Caen]

I see this post as having two points the first about the difficult scale and the second about tech trade offs, I want to buttress the first.

When CK2 first came out, there was definitely a design idea that the higher up you were on the title rank, the harder it was to hold onto. You even see it in the game trailers around release, which humorously depicted an incompetent “King” struggling to stay in power. See the link:

Once factions were introduced in an early update it really was difficult to stay on top. It was not uncommon to see players post about enjoying the experience of falling from power and slowly crawling their way back up again.

This unfortunately decayed with time. About midway through ck2’s lifespan modifier creep and stacking bonuses via treasury and bloodlines made the game a lot easier. By Holy Fury, CK2 was pretty busted. And world conquest had become ubiquitous. I had thought that this was one of the things CK3 was going to address. But they proceeded to bring all those things back and make it even worse lol.

For me, the ideal For a Crusader Kings game would be each title rank, would be its own difficulty. Count is for beginner, duke is slightly more difficult, king is a challenge, and emperor is about seeing just how long your dynasty can hold it all together. I support all measures and gameplay mechanics that this more the case and oppose all that does the opposite. It should not be the case that it gets easier to hold on to everything the bigger you get. The Crusader Kings series is unique for its complexity in internal politics. It does not need to be a map painter to be interesting.

 

[WTH666444]

On re-reading, the title sounds like a translated Chinese CCP slogan.

“Strengthening the ‘Four Consciousnesses,’ remaining firm in the ‘Four Confidences,’ and achieving the ‘Two Protections’!’”

 

[peteoj]

I see this post as having two points the first about the difficult scale and the second about tech trade offs, I want to buttress the first.

When CK2 first came out, there was definitely a design idea that the higher up you were on the title rank, the harder it was to hold onto. You even see it in the game trailers around release, which humorously depicted an incompetent “King” struggling to stay in power. See the link:

Once factions were introduced in an early update it really was difficult to stay on top. It was not uncommon to see players post about enjoying the experience of falling from power and slowly crawling their way back up again.

This unfortunately decayed with time. About midway through ck2’s lifespan modifier creep and stacking bonuses via treasury and bloodlines made the game a lot easier. By Holy Fury, CK2 was pretty busted. And world conquest had become ubiquitous. I had thought that this was one of the things CK3 was going to address. But they proceeded to bring all those things back and make it even worse lol.

For me, the ideal For a Crusader Kings game would be each title rank, would be its own difficulty. Count is for beginner, duke is slightly more difficult, king is a challenge, and emperor is about seeing just how long your dynasty can hold it all together. I support all measures and gameplay mechanics that this more the case and oppose all that does the opposite. It should not be the case that it gets easier to hold on to everything the bigger you get. The Crusader Kings series is unique for its complexity in internal politics. It does not need to be a map painter to be interesting.

Exactly! The name of the game should be "The Higher You Get, The Harder You Fall." The more successful you become, the harder it is to maintain control. As your wealth grows, expenses increase. Expanding your empire makes it more difficult to govern. Having more children complicates succession. A larger army becomes more expensive to maintain. Stronger castles require costly upkeep. Gaining the favor of the clergy alienates the barons, while pleasing the barons turns the people against you. It is impossible to satisfy everyone, and the more power you have, the more people will conspire against you. There should be no way to endlessly accumulate wealth, exploit overpowered dynasty traits, or rely on infinite resources like prestige and piety.

 

[ray243]

Exactly! The name of the game should be "The Higher You Get, The Harder You Fall." The more successful you become, the harder it is to maintain control. As your wealth grows, expenses increase. Expanding your empire makes it more difficult to govern. Having more children complicates succession. A larger army becomes more expensive to maintain. Stronger castles require costly upkeep. Gaining the favor of the clergy alienates the barons, while pleasing the barons turns the people against you. It is impossible to satisfy everyone, and the more power you have, the more people will conspire against you. There should be no way to endlessly accumulate wealth, exploit overpowered dynasty traits, or rely on infinite resources like prestige and piety.

It feels like somewhere along the lines, the game development just becomes focus on "new DLC give you new ways of getting even stronger!" And their only counter is to make give more artificial external challenges in the case of "conquerors"

 

[Citizen Caen]

It feels like somewhere along the lines, the game development just becomes focus on "new DLC give you new ways of getting even stronger!" And their only counter is to make give more artificial external challenges in the case of "conquerors"

The consistent problem I’ve noticed is many of the dlc mechanics could very well be challenging (and they often advertise them as such before dlc releases) but they always gimp them in such a way that they’re toothless, or worse only a benefit.

Take royal courts for example. Court Grandeur could be this mechanic that squeezes you, forces you to choose, spend Your money on the court to keep vassals impressed and happy, or spend it on practical concerns and risk their ire

But instead Balance is such that Grandeur expectations are minimal and court costs inexpensive. So you can do both, and all it is, is an elaborate power creep buff. But paradox hasn’t even tried to balance this two years after it was first released… sigh

 

[peteoj]

It feels like somewhere along the lines, the game development just becomes focus on "new DLC give you new ways of getting even stronger!" And their only counter is to make give more artificial external challenges in the case of "conquerors"

Every DLC seems to be designed to give the player yet another way to exploit an already easy game another resource to stockpile, another method to stack modifiers without addressing the real issue: the lack of meaningful mechanical depth.

Instead of focusing on intricate, strategic gameplay improvements, the developers create flashy, over-the-top expansions tailored for YouTube reaction content. You can’t expect a YouTuber to make an hour-long video analyzing a complex court politics system, so instead, the devs release something like a "Become a God in 3 Seconds" DLC with yet another redundant currency. This leads to the inevitable flood of clickbait videos: "WE BROKE THE NEW DLC AND BECAME GOD'S!!"

These expansions aren’t designed with grand strategy or deep mechanics in mind; they’re built for fleeting internet hype, something easily digestible, reaction-friendly, and ultimately forgettable. Like I can literally already see these videos for the new nomad dlc "WE BROKE THE HERD MECHANIC AND USED OUR MILLIONS OF HORSE ARCHERS TO CONQUER THE WORLD AND FORM MONGOL ROME IN ONE LIFETIME"

 

[Citizen Caen]

Like I can literally already see these videos for the new nomad dlc "WE BROKE THE HERD MECHANIC AND USED OUR MILLIONS OF HORDE ARCHERS TO CONQUER THE WORLD AND FORM MONGOL ROME IN ONE LIFETIME"

It hurts because it’s true.

 

[WTH666444]

View attachment 1257315
It hurts because it’s true.

And behold, a pale Swede: and his name was Johan, and salvation followed with him. And power was given unto him over Tinto, to develop EU5, help us, save us and give our frustrations an outlet.

 

[DeanTheDull]

When CK2 first came out, there was definitely a design idea that the higher up you were on the title rank, the harder it was to hold onto. You even see it in the game trailers around release, which humorously depicted an incompetent “King” struggling to stay in power. See the link:

Once factions were introduced in an early update it really was difficult to stay on top. It was not uncommon to see players post about enjoying the experience of falling from power and slowly crawling their way back up again.

This unfortunately decayed with time. About midway through ck2’s lifespan modifier creep and stacking bonuses via treasury and bloodlines made the game a lot easier. By Holy Fury, CK2 was pretty busted. And world conquest had become ubiquitous. I had thought that this was one of the things CK3 was going to address. But they proceeded to bring all those things back and make it even worse lol.

I agree that CK2 was easy to stay on top of, but I disagree that it was the later half where dificulty ended. Realm stability really came with the Retinue system, which was part of the second major update within the first year of release. By that point Ambitions also already existed, including the expansionist-enabling ones for rising up to King. Internal realm management died after year 2, when the Charlemagne DLC introduced vice royalties which shattered vassal power and all but guranteed loyal vassials via spamming vice royalty bestowments. These were all baked in very early on.

They were also, more to the point, popular. When people appeal to CK2 as what they wish CK3 was more like, they aren't doing so on the basis of the earliest stages of CK2, before the DLC. Holy Fury is the golden years of greatest nostalgia, not the point where people turned against CK2.

 

[GoGoDuck]

Maybe Paradox is a publicly traded company, and all they care about is making more money and pleasing the mass-market players. Just think about it—to release the console version of CK3, they even simplified army mobilization. As long as you own a small piece of land on the other side of the world, your entire army can be teleported to there . It's ridiculous.

In CK2 your levies and your vassal's levies are separated. They are rised in their real location. In this way you can not teleport your army.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Teleporting armies were a signature of CK2 expansionist strategy. In fact, the teleporting army shenanigans were in some respects more extreme, as if you gave, say, the multi-King of all of the UK a single county in India, you could raise and return the army from the UK and India with no delay time.

This was even easier with Vice Royalties, since you'd just hand out a viceroyalty to a monarch to get the teleportation fields agoing.

Tech-rushing was even more broken in that game than in a CK3 867 campaign, but even there vice royalties were something else. Charlemagne DLC was just 2 years into it the run, and it fundamentally broke the large empire management challenge sidewise due to how it let you abuse not only opinion modifiers but teleporting the armies of a vassal vice-royal king.

 

[GoGoDuck]

Every DLC seems to be designed to give the player yet another way to exploit an already easy game another resource to stockpile, another method to stack modifiers without addressing the real issue: the lack of meaningful mechanical depth.

Instead of focusing on intricate, strategic gameplay improvements, the developers create flashy, over-the-top expansions tailored for YouTube reaction content. You can’t expect a YouTuber to make an hour-long video analyzing a complex court politics system, so instead, the devs release something like a "Become a God in 3 Seconds" DLC with yet another redundant currency. This leads to the inevitable flood of clickbait videos: "WE BROKE THE NEW DLC AND BECAME GOD'S!!"

These expansions aren’t designed with grand strategy or deep mechanics in mind; they’re built for fleeting internet hype, something easily digestible, reaction-friendly, and ultimately forgettable. Like I can literally already see these videos for the new nomad dlc "WE BROKE THE HERD MECHANIC AND USED OUR MILLIONS OF HORDE ARCHERS TO CONQUER THE WORLD AND FORM MONGOL ROME IN ONE LIFETIME"

Real strategy needs cash

 

[Cronus865]

Teleporting armies were a signature of CK2 expansionist strategy. In fact, the teleporting army shenanigans were in some respects more extreme, as if you gave, say, the multi-King of all of the UK a single county in India, you could raise and return the army from the UK and India with no delay time.

This was even easier with Vice Royalties, since you'd just hand out a viceroyalty to a monarch to get the teleportation fields agoing.

Tech-rushing was even more broken in that game than in a CK3 867 campaign, but even there vice royalties were something else. Charlemagne DLC was just 2 years into it the run, and it fundamentally broke the large empire management challenge sidewise due to how it let you abuse not only opinion modifiers but teleporting the armies of a vassal vice-royal king.

Alright, this is a bit much. You came up with a situation where you have a single multi-king vassal where you can raise all of their own levy troops in one province in India you give to them. This is absolutely possible in CK2, but if you have a multi-king vassal of Britain you can do this with, the game is already over anyways. It means you're already have a large empire who can have a vassal that powerful, while also being in diplomatic range of India to take provinces there.

In CK3, you can teleport your ENTIRE army to anywhere in your realm from day 1. It takes them time to gather, but let's be real, it's not long at all no matter where you teleport them to, and CK3 doesn't have morale, which in CK2 even if you raise a large vassal's army in one spot overseas, they still have to gather morale, which honestly kind of makes up for some of the gathering time you have to deal with in CK3. You also can't teleport any of your retinues in CK2, and you can only raise that one vassal's army in their own territory. Again, in CK3 you can raise your entire army including domain troops, vassal levies, and MaA in any single spot in your realm.

I really don't understand how someone might think it's more extreme in CK2.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Alright, this is a bit much. You came up with a situation where you have a single multi-king vassal where you can raise all of their own levy troops in one province in India you give to them. This is absolutely possible in CK2, but if you have a multi-king vassal of Britain you can do this with, the game is already over anyways. It means you're already have a large empire who can have a vassal that powerful, while also being in diplomatic range of India to take provinces there.

In CK3, you can teleport your ENTIRE army to anywhere in your realm from day 1. It takes them time to gather, but let's be real, it's not long at all no matter where you teleport them to, and CK3 doesn't have morale, which in CK2 even if you raise a large vassal's army in one spot overseas, they still have to gather morale, which honestly kind of makes up for some of the gathering time you have to deal with in CK3. You also can't teleport any of your retinues in CK2, and you can only raise that one vassal's army in their own territory. Again, in CK3 you can raise your entire army including domain troops, vassal levies, and MaA in any single spot in your realm.

I really don't understand how someone might think it's more extreme in CK2.

I'm not clear what your confusion is. You can more quickly teleport chunks of your empire in in CK2, which offered more means for managing personal domain across your primary vassals who provided the majority of your troops, which has multiple strategic benefit for letting you raise armies aggressively on wars on opposite ends of the empire. This is, in turn, helps you get a game-winning blob in the first place. This was a strategically optimal capability to race for, which could be done within the first generations of your player's rule and generally was done once a player was content with their capital. In CK3, the time it takes to gather (and return) forces mitigates this multi-front advantage, and this applies to MAA as well, and tends to take longer rather than getting faster with scale.

The teleporting accusation is more an accusation of the speed of assembling, but CK2 enabled actual teleporting of war-winning swarms of vassal troops across the planet once you had your tech game threshold, which could be as soon as the second character. That CK2 retinues didn't have the same enabling function is in turn paralleled by the CK3 time-to-raise again mechanic, in which it can be faster to move your MAA from war zone A to B than to dismiss and re-raise. Which is to say, the general premise of CK2 moving the retinues manually.

CK2 and CK3 have different breaking points on the military advantage for a snowballing player. However, it is CK2 that falls more on the teleporing-armies side of the spectrum of strategic mobility. In CK3, the issue is the stacking modifiers of MAA in particular that breaks difficulty... but this is also reflected in CK2, it's just that CK2 it mattered less because of the front system that favored teleporting armies mattered more, whereas in CK3 the power of MAA means you're not trying to win off of assembled levies alone.

If the defense of CK2's system is that by the time you can have king-level vassals you've already won the game in terms of map painting... okay. But then this also applies to CK3's stacking modifier issue. By the time you can get absurd modifier stacking, you have also functionally won the military side of the game.

 

[WTH666444]

I'm not clear what your confusion is. You can more quickly teleport chunks of your empire in in CK2, which offered more means for managing personal domain across your primary vassals who provided the majority of your troops, which has multiple strategic benefit for letting you raise armies aggressively on wars on opposite ends of the empire. This is, in turn, helps you get a game-winning blob in the first place. This was a strategically optimal capability to race for, which could be done within the first generations of your player's rule and generally was done once a player was content with their capital. In CK3, the time it takes to gather (and return) forces mitigates this multi-front advantage, and this applies to MAA as well, and tends to take longer rather than getting faster with scale.

The teleporting accusation is more an accusation of the speed of assembling, but CK2 enabled actual teleporting of war-winning swarms of vassal troops across the planet once you had your tech game threshold, which could be as soon as the second character. That CK2 retinues didn't have the same enabling function is in turn paralleled by the CK3 time-to-raise again mechanic, in which it can be faster to move your MAA from war zone A to B than to dismiss and re-raise. Which is to say, the general premise of CK2 moving the retinues manually.

CK2 and CK3 have different breaking points on the military advantage for a snowballing player. However, it is CK2 that falls more on the teleporing-armies side of the spectrum of strategic mobility. In CK3, the issue is the stacking modifiers of MAA in particular that breaks difficulty... but this is also reflected in CK2, it's just that CK2 it mattered less because of the front system that favored teleporting armies mattered more, whereas in CK3 the power of MAA means you're not trying to win off of assembled levies alone.

If the defense of CK2's system is that by the time you can have king-level vassals you've already won the game in terms of map painting... okay. But then this also applies to CK3's stacking modifier issue. By the time you can get absurd modifier stacking, you have also functionally won the military side of the game.

This is clearly gamebreaking cheese, neither intended nor in any way a natural occurrence for the AI.

Absolutely fucking redundant. I don‘t know what else to say

 

[Cronus865]

I'm not clear what your confusion is. You can more quickly teleport chunks of your empire in in CK2, which offered more means for managing personal domain across your primary vassals who provided the majority of your troops, which has multiple strategic benefit for letting you raise armies aggressively on wars on opposite ends of the empire. This is, in turn, helps you get a game-winning blob in the first place. This was a strategically optimal capability to race for, which could be done within the first generations of your player's rule and generally was done once a player was content with their capital. In CK3, the time it takes to gather (and return) forces mitigates this multi-front advantage, and this applies to MAA as well, and tends to take longer rather than getting faster with scale.

The teleporting accusation is more an accusation of the speed of assembling, but CK2 enabled actual teleporting of war-winning swarms of vassal troops across the planet once you had your tech game threshold, which could be as soon as the second character. That CK2 retinues didn't have the same enabling function is in turn paralleled by the CK3 time-to-raise again mechanic, in which it can be faster to move your MAA from war zone A to B than to dismiss and re-raise. Which is to say, the general premise of CK2 moving the retinues manually.

CK2 and CK3 have different breaking points on the military advantage for a snowballing player. However, it is CK2 that falls more on the teleporing-armies side of the spectrum of strategic mobility. In CK3, the issue is the stacking modifiers of MAA in particular that breaks difficulty... but this is also reflected in CK2, it's just that CK2 it mattered less because of the front system that favored teleporting armies mattered more, whereas in CK3 the power of MAA means you're not trying to win off of assembled levies alone.

If the defense of CK2's system is that by the time you can have king-level vassals you've already won the game in terms of map painting... okay. But then this also applies to CK3's stacking modifier issue. By the time you can get absurd modifier stacking, you have also functionally won the military side of the game.

You're trying to make teleporting sound like it's common part of CK2 when anyone who's played knows it absolutely isn't.

 

[klopkr]

I've had an insane idea to quickly and efficiently solve this problem and make blobing hard. I think it's actually somewhat historical too, but it would absolutely end a core concept of CK's concept of feudalism.

My idea: You still have to deal with sub vassals the same way you do direct vassals.

As it is now, it's incredibly easy to maintain massive stable realms, honestly I'd even argue easier than smaller realms. The main reason is that you can just stick all the unruly vassals under a handful or even one direct vassal. Even if that vassal screws up royally and loses the throne or a few vassals become your direct vassal again, you can just stick them under him again or another vassal. Problem solved easy peasy, Emperors only need to deal with a few kings, kings a few dukes, and honestly being a mega duke is the hardest it gets.

But what if we just got rid of that all together? Suddenly vassals of your vassals can still join factions against you, they still care and plot against you. There's no get out of jail free card with smaller vassals by just sweeping them under another vassal. Hell the whole "grant kingdoms to one king so his opinion is always maxed out" doesn't matter if his vassals hate your guts.

Yes it would make the idea that your vassals are in charge of maintaining your sub vassals go away, but this gamey aspect is already the only way they actually manage your sub realm for you.

What this would do though is that you would quickly gain absurd amounts of vassals. Suddenly keeping an empire all together is significantly harder, you'll have much wider and more granular rebellions and factions won't have to be filled as often with people with 100 opinion as you as there'll be plenty of people with lower opinions around. Plus now it's not enough to just bribe a king vassal, you have to bribe his vassals and his vassals vassals too.

Multi-empires were incredibly hard to maintain in this games era. Part of it is that realistically it didn't matter if the far flung parts of the empire liked their local duke or king, if they hated the emperors guts they'd hate you too.

This would very much end most of the game map painting beyond a certain point.

A softer alternate idea is that the average opinions of sub vassals towards the top liege is added to their lieges opinion of the top liege. So a King that may normally have 100 opinion of you may have only 10 if most of his sub vassals have negative opinions of you. It might take too much to calculate but you could weight it on their interpersonal relations too.

I know it's bold, I know it would end blobbing on the spot, I know the AI would need to be better at realm management, and I know it would shake up core concepts of the game. But I think it's just crazy enough that it would work. The game would become significantly more interpersonal and about actually being popular in your whole realm.

 

[Slime99]

The actual issue here is that unraised armies are incredibly fast in comparison to raised armies.

    MOVEMENT_SPEED = 3                                # Normal movement speed
    UNRAISED_LEVY_REGIMENTS_SPEED = 40.0            # How many distance units do unraised regiments travel per day when gathering

 

[DeanTheDull]

You're trying to make teleporting sound like it's common part of CK2 when anyone who's played knows it absolutely isn't.

Teleporting was absolute a common part of CK2 player experience once you reached the Empire-of-Viceroyalties stage, which itself wasn't exactly hard to reach given that the game's systemic bias was for empire-tier play and blobbing. As you reached the viceroyalty stage, you made your leaders closest to your expansion targets into the vice royals of more distant realms, so that you could raise (teleport) the levy-taxes of those distant realms closer to your war target. This was especially true when crossing the english channel or any major body of water, as a way to mitigate the cost and tedium of raising vassals to ferry forces back and forth.

Again, if you want to argue the game's military strategy broke down by this point of a playthrough, that's fine- but that's a time consideration of how long the game is expected to be balanced, not a defense that the game was balanced.

This is clearly gamebreaking cheese, neither intended nor in any way a natural occurrence for the AI.

Absolutely fucking redundant. I don‘t know what else to say

'CK2 was not actually a well built military strategy game, was easy to dominate, and the AI was bad' would be a good place to start.

As any sort of military strategy game, CK2 was broken cheese for most of its lifespan. This wasn't just that Retinues were broken, or that viceroyalties were broken, or tributaries were broken, or that flank-tactic systems were broken, or that the ships were broken. It was also that they were always broken in ways the AI could not keep up in. The AI would never kit you with ships, or optimize their retinues for flanks, or hire generals for the tactics rolls, or so on. Even things like the coalition systems were cracked- despite the massive player base loathing, it was a generally acknowledged truth that you could just out-conquer the arrival of the world trying to stop you.

Once the playerbase developed to the point of understanding the dominant strategies, about the only way to militarily fail in CK2 was to deliberately hinder your own growth with self-imposed limits and then get out-massed.