Raids in CK3

[kviiri]

I was initially a big fan of getting to play raiding pagans, and I feel the raiding made sense as a way to supplant the flimsy income of the poor pagan lands especially when the tribal government was introduced. However, I think after the first couple of raids the CK2 game mechanic became a chore at worst (because let's face it, tribals not only want but NEED the money), a huge annoyance but seldom a proper threat to deal with, and an exploit at best. With the ship system being changed, I hope we also see the raids of old disappear like a coin into Gotland.

I think the main problems with raiding in the CK2 vein are:

• It's too easy. Every ruler from count up can send some hundred men to collect loose dosh.
• It's too cheap and risk-free. Vassals for some reason don't mind their troops being used despite getting no money at all out of it.
• The income from raiding Rome, Venice etc makes them far too attractive targets while being trivial to reach.
• Getting raided oneself is all too often more of an annoyance than a real threat.
• It feels like a too easy way to get money from an incompetent AI, a busywork project to earn as much as non-raiding cultures do.
• It can be exploited for easy victories in proper wars.

I think raids should be more "event-like" with a limit on how often one can be called, and feature a greater breadth of outcomes for both the targets and the raiders. Failure to bring back a respectable amount of loot should come with penalties, and a portion of the loot should go to one's vassals who participated.

 

[Autar]

The introduction of the supply system shown in the last DD could severely limit how far you can raid and solve the third bullet point. With possible exceptions for organized (naval) raids or some cultures / religions like norse / germanic pagans.

 

[Ezumiyr]

I think raids are a pain to balance, and we've seen that during the development of CK2. Some parts of the world were almost unplayable due to norse raids at some point. Getting raided is often just an annoyance, but it's an endless annoyance that isn't fun.

I don't know if there's a good solution but I would be ok with a solution similar to pirating in EU4, except that it would work on land with raiding bands and patrols. Raiders could have some kind of annual decision to select targets for raids (with the need to invest "manpower" and wealth I guess), while defenders could use a share of their troops to patrol or invest in defensive buildings. Much less micro, raiders still get to plunder, and it's a system that makes more sense than just sending armies to siege castles (which was almost never how historical raids happened).

So yeah, an event-like system would work better imo. I never really liked the raiding mechanics in CK2 anyway, though I liked the Ironborn raiding system in the AGOT mod.

 

[Gurkhal]

Personally I love raiding and I'm a bit sad that feudal governments can't do it when it seems to have been pretty much used by a great many more peoples than just tribals and pagans.

But anyway to adress the issues put forward.

To start with I think that raiding someone should give them a causu belli on the raiders, see Charlemagne and the Saxons here, and that perhaps that raiding forces should have a penalty to sieges due to them being presumably a "smash-and-grab" operation rather than a proper invasion which could, especially as fortifications are upgraded, be a nerf of mid and late game small scale raiding.

I however also think that the AI commands we can give to armies in Imperator would be very helpful as that would allow us to command an army, or perhaps give such a responsibility to a vassal, as to guard a certain border against raiders without the player having to micromanage those operations. I think that in honestly though that for both players and AI that having a fast moving anti-raider response force active in the borderlands would be the best defense when fighting raiders. And if, like I said above, put on autopilot it should essentially remove much of this problem by mid-game when the realm has been developed economically and militarily to stan strong against presumably less developed tribal realms.

But like I said I love raiding in CK2 for all the good stuff it brings. So I am a bit biased here and don't see it as a major problem.

 

[Chlodio]

>It's too cheap and risk-free. Vassals for some reason don't mind their troops being used despite getting no money at all out of it.
Yeah, vassals should probably get a cut. If your raiding party is 400-man strong and 100 come from your vassal, 25% of the plunder should be received by the vassal.

>The income from raiding Rome, Venice etc makes them far too attractive targets while being trivial to reach.
They were definitely attractive targets. Trivial? I don't know... It took Richard's massive fleet to sail Dartmouth-Lisbon-Genoa-Messina around four months (with additional stops), if I recall correctly the same voyage takes around nine months in CK2.

>Getting raided oneself is all too often more of an annoyance than a real threat.
Why is this an issue? Most raiding parties were rather small (maybe just 400 men) enough to challenge any immediate resistance, but mobile enough to flee the scene before the bigger army could arrive. That was the whole issue with Norse raiders, it forced Anglo-Saxon to essentially rework everything with the hopes of ending it.

>It can be exploited for easy victories in proper wars.
You mean like Sweyn Forkbeard did when he raided England nearly a decade before deciding to use the raid money to fund his invasion of England?


I do think it could be better with options to:

• pay Danegeld, essentially become a tributary state of raiders and be spared from raiders
• build navy (like Edward the Confessor did) to combat the raiders before they land

 

[PenitusVox]

Personally, I love raiding. I play Pagans the majority of the time because of it, although a large part of that is that I enjoy sniping items out of the inventory of rulers, and there will be no inventory upon release. It can feel grindy at times, especially if you're trying to get the Viking traits, Sea-King is a bit ridiculous, but I still think it's quite fun.

The main thing I worry about with changing it, and it will likely change in some way due to the way ships now work, is that there hasn't been a great track record so far with raiding. I believe CK2's version is pretty good, as I said above, but you can't really get any worse than what we have in EUIV. In EUIV, raiding from a defender's point of view is an annoyance that's nearly impossible defend against without fully annexing them, that ruins your land, and it pops up quite frequently. From the raider's point of view, it's a brainless button click that you're allowed to do every now and then with no threat at all.

I do agree, though, that at the very least vassal levies should get a cut of the loot that they helped generate.

 

[Varren]

You mean like Sweyn Forkbeard did when he raided England nearly a decade before deciding to use the raid money to fund his invasion of England?

It's not like he used existing to significantly soften England up. The main connection is that Aethelred's brutal reprisal against the Danes in England gave Sweyn a pretext for a proper invasion. None of which is possible in the CK2 raiding system.

 

[Biggie Smalls]

>It's too cheap and risk-free. Vassals for some reason don't mind their troops being used despite getting no money at all out of it.
Yeah, vassals should probably get a cut. If your raiding party is 400-man strong and 100 come from your vassal, 25% of the plunder should be received by the vassal.

Sorry to be that guy but the actual cut would be 20% and my vassals aren't getting a penny extra.

I do think it could be better with options to:

• pay Danegeld, essentially become a tributary state of raiders and be spared from raiders
• build navy (like Edward the Confessor did) to combat the raiders before they land

To start with I think that raiding someone should give them a causu belli on the raiders, see Charlemagne and the Saxons here, and that perhaps that raiding forces should have a penalty to sieges due to them being presumably a "smash-and-grab" operation rather than a proper invasion which could, especially as fortifications are upgraded, be a nerf of mid and late game small scale raiding.

These are both great ideas and I am someone who has played raiders tons of times whether it be the Norse, or in various mods that have more lenient raiding rules. Because I've played as a raider so often I worry that perhaps my view on them is skewed, that they really aren't all that bad.
You see my playstyle consists of this: focus almost exclusively on my own demense, build buildings and fatten the levy I can directly raise. It is a far more expensive playstyle but it grants me a lot of independence from relying on vassals, and that includes having to worry about raiders. So long as my own land isn't being sieged it isn't actually my problem. If they walk into one of my provinces I can probably raise about 1.5k troops on them with full morale in an instant or drop 7k troops on them in days, so yeah I never really had a problem with AI raiders, if anything weakening my vassals only served to help me out.

 

[Gurkhal]

It's not like he used existing to significantly soften England up. The main connection is that Aethelred's brutal reprisal against the Danes in England gave Sweyn a pretext for a proper invasion. None of which is possible in the CK2 raiding system.

Except, didn't it soften England and enrich Sweyn? And just because he got a pretext don't mean he wasn't thinking about invading England. If Sweyn wasn't interested in invading Engand he wouldn't have done it.

EDITED: So what I want to say is that, while the correct RP elements are not directly in the game, the actual events that followed Sweyn could be modelled well in the game.

 

[Limbojack]

It should be possible to raid secluded villages and monasteries would only a couple hundred men, as the vikings did historically. The viking raid on Lindisfarne was done by no more than three ships, and viking ships of that era typically had between 25 and 60 crewmembers meaning it's unlikely that more than 180 vikings participated in the raid. That being said, I get your concern with the current system as raiding can be extremely awarding for the raider while being nothing but a small nuisance for the victim.

I'd like to see a system where forts (like the ones we already have in CK2 to deal with occupation of nomad lands) can be constructed and manned in order to reduce the amount of available loot by a huge amount, but manning a fort would require levies from your pool (and those levies would not replenish as long as the fort is manned). This would allow us to follow in Alfreds foot steps when it comes to dealing with viking raids.

 

[Thrake]

I do think it could be better with options to:

• pay Danegeld, essentially become a tributary state of raiders and be spared from raiders

Aren't there instances where vikings were paid but raided anyway?

 

[Krajzen]

I think honestly raiding should be turned into off-map passive army stance or whatever which gives raider an income but with some limitations and downsides (and can generate events)

It is small scale, irregular military action by tiny forces avoiding open combat, so it always by its very nature is going to be whack-a-mole if shown on map

 

[kviiri]

>The income from raiding Rome, Venice etc makes them far too attractive targets while being trivial to reach.
They were definitely attractive targets. Trivial? I don't know... It took Richard's massive fleet to sail Dartmouth-Lisbon-Genoa-Messina around four months (with additional stops), if I recall correctly the same voyage takes around nine months in CK2.

They're disproportionately attractive, compared to IRL. Real-life Viking raids were concentrated on France and Britain, while a CK2 raider is foolish to attack feudal holdings instead of the lucrative-but-defenseless Rome and Venice. Venice is also historically a well-defended city, and yet it's essentially free money for the first raiders to arrive there.

As for the voyage taking long, remember we're talking about free sea travel (vassals pay for the ships) without anyone dying, no need to think about logistics, no mutinies, no attrition casualties. It doesn't take long enough to be a serious cost.

>Getting raided oneself is all too often more of an annoyance than a real threat.
Why is this an issue? Most raiding parties were rather small (maybe just 400 men) enough to challenge any immediate resistance, but mobile enough to flee the scene before the bigger army could arrive. That was the whole issue with Norse raiders, it forced Anglo-Saxon to essentially rework everything with the hopes of ending it.

Because it's an annoyance. Even if historically true the game mechanic could try to represent that in a way that isn't an annoyance. Also see the part where raids are essentially risk-free.

>It can be exploited for easy victories in proper wars.
You mean like Sweyn Forkbeard did when he raided England nearly a decade before deciding to use the raid money to fund his invasion of England?

Isolated example and could use better mechanics, eg like the ones you suggested, to support it.

 

[Chlodio]

Sorry to be that guy but the actual cut would be 20% and my vassals aren't getting a penny extra.

Um, 100/400 = 25%, not 20% last time I checked. I guess you thought the 400 were not the total, but your own men, when I specifically said the raiding party's size was 400.

I'd argue that having your raiding party being strengthened by your vassals is worth of it, even you'd have to split. With the large realms, vassalic levies tend to outnumber your domestic forces. So, gathering everybody for the siege of Paris might be more lubricative than leaving your vassals home and going for York.

 

[sortulv]

A primary reason for the historical success of raiding was lack of a unified defense - i.e Raiding a county would see the local count gather his men to resist, not the King.
In game, it is kind of the opposite - raiding bigger realms is silly because it will be the king/emperor that comes for you. This is one of the reasons Venice and Rome are so popular targets.
At the same time, the raiding using huge armies is likewise somewhat strange - would be nice if only the men-at-arms can be sent raiding in CK3.

 

[klopkr]

What matters to me is that there's TONS of raiding being done, as it was historically in 867. Raids heavily impacted the european world at this time so they have to be there, not something you can always defend against, and common.

I think the way baronies are represented will help. Hitting and running from raiding a single temple should be easy, especially at first. But the BIG loot is to be had after you siege down the baronies of a county.

 

[JonathanViking]

As someone who loves playing as pagans im worried with this new ship system whil limit the ammount of raiding alot since the economic for pagan rulers is really bad in the beginning of the game.

I hope Paradox gives them their own way of using ships because viking is so mutch diffrent compared to other religions aka christians and stuff like that.

A small idé is that maybi the could make it so you can only raid during the Januari and then untill winter start if you do raid there whil be major dissatvantages in that perhaps (or no raiding at all during winter maybi)

Also small things i noticed is that when i was being raided my city had bigger levies then the raiders but they were stil able to raid my castle and take money even tho there is bigger armys i hope that is fixed sortof for CK3

 

[Denkt]

There was alot of raiding between happening between the romans and muslims but in CK2 neither religion could raid even although these raids make the vikings ones look pathetic.

 

[Varren]

As someone who loves playing as pagans im worried with this new ship system whil limit the ammount of raiding alot since the economic for pagan rulers is really bad in the beginning of the game.

We obviously have no idea how raiding works in CK3, but if it still involves moving armies around, I'd wager good money that Vikings will get an impressive discount on sea travel.

Also small things i noticed is that when i was being raided my city had bigger levies then the raiders but they were stil able to raid my castle and take money even tho there is bigger armys i hope that is fixed sortof for CK3

Raiders can still claim unprotected loot, regardless of size. They only need a *larger* force if they want to take the holding.

 

[sortulv]

The lack of ships presumably means that loot will be carried by armies instead - which I think is an improvement - as that means that it will actually be possible to stop the raiders getting away with their loot if they stay too long... Would be nice to have raids as quicker hit and run sort of thing.