Some suggestions for improving warfare that I have not yet seen discussed

[tonilopez12]

Howdy all. I have seen a lot of criticisms about the current implementation of Warfare in CK3. While the systems are serviceable, we all seem to agree that it is not the brightest aspect of the game right now. I have been thinking a bit about less talked about pain points, and I have some thoughts I consider interesting.

-The AI feels quite passive at the time. It is not that rare to see a powerful, Ambitious or Greedy ruler not going to war at all because they can't find an appropiate casus belli. It is also quite frequent to watch AI rulers not selecting the most appropiate casus belli available for them (going for individual counties one by one instead of using a duchy casus belli, or not managing to use the extremelly overpowered Invasion casus belli). For this reason, the world feels a bit stale at times, since other than the scripted great conquerors, and maybe the recent appearence of the HRE forming in 867 starts, there are really no truly great powers forming. I think that enhancing the aggresiveness of the AI towards war, as well as teaching them how to better use or fabricate some casus belli, could go a long way to make war more interesting. Adding some system ala ambitions for AI to form empires could certainly help here as well, or maybe a system for making one in x characters act really aggresively and try to consolidate their own empire.

-Almost all wars are conquest wars, and that is really not that interesting. In my opinion, there are mostly only two playstyles when it comes to war at the moment: continual expansion and ignoring offensive war altogether. While it is true that there are some casus belli that do not end in direct expansion, they are far too difficult to access and their rewards too weak to make a difference. I think that some of them, like the border raid from Iberia, should be available outside of Iberia and with greater rewards (a chunk of prestige to go along with gold, for example). Besides, we should also have access to punitive campaigns for gold and captives against our rivals and houses we are feuding against, and also a way to establish tributaries via war. To sum up, I think rendering offensive wars of expansion a bit weaker while adding more and more powerful rewards for going on the offensive without directly expanding your realm would enable military campaigns that don't focus on contiuous landgrabs.

-For a historical period where skirmishes were really frequent, and there was definitely a whole lot of small mountain peoples being almost unconquerable because of their hit and run tacticts, I definitely think defending smaller armies should be more annoying than they are right now. I don't really know how I would improve this point, but I think the game could benefit from better modelling the advantages a smaller army has when it comes to harassing and demoralizing a bigger, slower army.

-For a historical period full of interesting, sometimes gruesome, sometimes really full of intrigue sieges, they all play quite in the same boring way. I think there should be more ways to interact with them, and that would definitely bring a lot of medieval flavour to the table. Some suggestions that come to mind: some way for the defender to further boost their defensive capabilities during war (maybe some court position task for seneschals that improves fort defense based on the Seneschal's aptitude in exchange for a lump of gold, or something similar?), more events that involve major sieges, the attacker deciding on a "siege policy" (a more savage approach would maybe add some siege speed and loot when conquering the city, but could net you loss of cultural acceptance/legitimacy/prestige/piety, as well as some major loss of development after the conquest, while a more diplomatic approach could be slower while giving you the appearance of a merciful and legitimate ruler). Tying sieges into diplomacy and intrigue would also be neat, but I've seen that you are already testing that idea .

-Mercenaries and holy orders have everything they need in their skeleton to be more interesting, since they have constituent charachters which you can marry, make alliances with, send your sons to, etc. It would be really awesome to see that expanded upon. Allying mercenary leaders offering them one of your children should definitely reduce their cost, and so should giving them/promising them land in exchange for their services. Similar thing with holy orders, that were actually pretty important as landholders during the period themselves. Besides, there should be a chance for mercenaries/holy orders to act as a double edged sword. Why would not a mercenary leader or grandmaster that hates your guts desert you, or even join your enemy/sack your holdings? Why would ever a grandmaster agree to join the offensive wars of a sinful or excommunicated ruler? Adding personality to these two groups could result in more interesting wars without major overhauls, only by adding interactions to what is already in place.

-Levies, the elephant in the room. Many people want to ditch them altogether, many want some (at least the way I see it) unrealistic overhaul that turns the game on its heels. In my opinion, the distinction between levies and MaA is not that bad, and the only (but great in importance) problem is that levies don't ever get stronger over the course of the game, no matter what you do. A simple solution would be to add certain buildings that buff them, as well as maybe certain politics/laws you could enact or tenets, cultural traditions, innovations, etc. A build that heavily relies on irregular troops should be at least somewhat viable, otherwise levies will always be a heated topic. In my opinion, it also wouldn't hurt to have three or so (ranged, light infanty and light cavalry) types of levies in the game, since it would add some regional flavour as well as strategic depth, but I don't really know how feasible it would be from a technical standpoint, considering devs have already stated multiple times that warfare is by far the most difficult to alter system in the game.

So there's my 2 cents on the topic after a lot of hours sunk in the game and realizing that I enjoy most things about it, other than warfare.

 

[FormerlyUN1]

For modelling skirmishes, guerilla armies and asymmetrical warfare, the devs would just need to try some new options for how armies are deployed. I had this idea in my head for a way to make asymmetrical warfare work for EU4 & maybe Project Caesar, but I will try adapt it for CK3 real quick so that I can respond here.

Allow people to take stacks of levies or MaA and 'embed' or 'deploy' them in hiding inside a barony. They then set up headquarters inside the specific barony where they are deployed. Whenever an enemy army walks over one of the baronies in the same county, there is a random chance that the hidden stack will attack the moving army. Obviously, since the guerillas are likely to be outnumbered and lose in a standup fight, you give them a very strong combat buff for the first few phases of combat (think of the EU4 Horde shock damage bonus), then force the guerillas to retreat from battle shortly afterward, going immediately back into hiding. Basically, I imagined the Eu4 native uprising mechanic / chance per province, if you know how that works. This would allow guerillas to trade against the enemy favorably, even when outnumbered. Add culture specific MaA (like mountaineers) which are good at this kind of combat, as well as some terrain bonuses, and you could go even further!

Because this has the potential to be quite unbalanced, we'll introduce a limitation: units deployed as guerillas cannot replenish. This means that each loss they take is significant, and means they cant just be a nuisance forever. If the defender wants to replenish (or pull back) their guerilla fighters, they need to be prepared to reveal them to the enemy by coming out of hiding. Now, lets say you are the invader. How do you root out guerillas? Basically, you need to search around and figure out which barony they are headquartered in, then siege them. Once the barony is sieged, they are immediately forced out of hiding and into battle with your troops, where you can destroy them for good.

Ok, sure. But what does this system actually ADD to the game?

1. Well, it could add new ways to use troops, which would be some nice gameplay variety. Not every battle would have to start with smashing stacks together.
2. It could allow outnumbered nations to fight against large powers, if they are willing to know the terrain, strategize, and use their cultural bonuses to their advantage.
3. It could allow for ambushes and strategic traps to be added to the game.

Ambushes? Well, yeah. Imagine you have two army stacks in Dagestan, right? One is an army of guerillas hiding inside a mountainous barony, while the other is standing on a different barony within the same county. The enemy sees your second stack and thinks "hey, he's vulnerable and alone" and goes in for the kill. As soon as the battle starts (maybe a phase or two later to model reinforcements taking time to arrive) your guerillas suddenly descend from the mountains to assist, breaking the aggressors morale. Basically, just have any guerillas in the same county reinforce friendly armies in battle. In order to balance this properly, maybe we make it so that the reinforcing guerillas will do more morale damage than casualties when they show up to reinforce. The enemy might break and run from the sudden surprise of the ambush, but they might not have lost that many men, and they will be back with a vengeance.

Now you've got a basic system that allows you to plan ambushes and battles ahead of time, makes defensive play an actually worthwhile play style, and isn't (in theory) that complicated to program or add. The core combat system doesn't really need to change that much in order to accommodate something like this. We literally already have stationing in the game! If a system like that was repurposed, it could totally be done.