What to do with...raiding?

[Rylock]

So the changes I'd planned for Imperial Administration (some of which apply to empires in general) is now finished, the last of which will be in the next Plus update. Time to move onto the next project.

This time? Raiding.

What's my problem with raiding? For the most part, I don't think the in-game system jibes with what I believe raiding should be about...which isn't raising huge armies and sieging down holdings. It's not that I don't think the norse (or other raiding cultures) didn't do that sort of thing. One thinks of the norse and you imagine pillaging galore, after all. I just think that's something they did while conquering...and they already have CB's which allow them to do that. In my mind, raiding is a smaller group which went in, pillaged smaller settlements in the countryside before defenders had time to organize (or larger ones which were left undefended), and got out before things got hairy.

You can't do that with the way it currently works -- which is basically raising an army and playing a game of picking on OPM's or weaklings, and maybe playing a game with some larger opponents if their armies are busy. That can be alright if you have nothing else to do (as it involves a great deal of micro-management), but I'd hardly call it very evocative or fun outside of the vague thrill of roaming around the map sieging stuff without having to declare war.

It's much less fun if you're the one being raided (especially if you end up being a favorite target), and it's also one that the AI just isn't very good at responding to. I don't know how many times I've watched the AI nearly bankrupt itself trying to deal with viking raids, not to mention my suspicion regarding the AI becoming befuddled when it's at a state of "war" with raiders it can't touch. I've seen AI realms become paralyzed for years this way.

My solution? Moving raiding to be event-based.

Imagine selecting a decision called "Plan a Raid". There it would instruct you to select a target holding (by right-clicking on it) that is either neighboring your realm or in the same "sea zone" for seafaring raiders. An event chain would begin where you pick your tactics (and thus risk level) and see which volunteers offer to come along on your adventure...and then you and your cohorts receive a "Raiding" trait that sets you as absent in the same way that being on pilgrimage does. Your capital receives a reduction on its levies (since you take along a group with you). Then, upon reaching the target, an event chain fires that determines how the raid went, gains rewards/hostages, and applies any repercussions to the holding (via a modifier -- you can, in fact, also apply the "looted" modifier by event and get the "holding in flames" picture). The targeted ruler gets to read the story, as do you, and you would even get to hear about the exploits of your vassals or other daring raids performed by members of your culture.

This appeals to me as it's more story-focused. I can also control things like how often the same realm/ruler is targeted, how a raider's traits play into their success, and not clutter up the map with so many raiders...which sometimes go out of their way to raid in, say, Africa or the like. And it also means I could allow Christians or Muslims to raid in certain situations, regardless of their culture or government, and just give their events different localisation.

I could also leave some things to use the current raiding system -- like the "raiding adventurers" put in with Horse Lords (which are actually pretty decent), or allowing nomads to raid with their roaming bands (which seems appropriate with how they work).

Technically I could also allow the player to use the current raiding system if they wished. I could implement a decision which flips over their army to raiding, allowing them to use the system exactly as it is now...if that's something that players would really want. I'd appreciate hearing some thoughts here, especially if this is something I'd end up being surprised at having people come out of the woodwork to tell me how much they love the raiding system. Perhaps I'm alone in how I feel about it.

 

[Slayen]

Sounds like Reaving from the aGoT mod.

 

[Cody Spring]

I do really like the idea of the event planned raids. While I agree with your points about vanilla raiding, I do still enjoy it just for the fact of getting money. Sacking Rome and possibly capturing/sacrificing the Pope is always fun. As long as I can still do those things.

Maybe a system in the middle? Like you suggested, leave the option for players to raid vanilla but also have the event raiding, sort of like a "Grand Raid" or something.

My only real gripe is the events that would fire off. Me and my friends play CK2Plus multiplayer, and I know that's not a largely common thing and we may be the minority and you have to please the most people, but almost all of our desync's come from getting too many events firing off at once with personal battles and other events that fire during wars. It may also make raiding something you have to focus more on, where as now you can just move your troops onto a province and leave them there for a bit while you focus on other aspects of managing your realm, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how 'busy' things are.

 

[Rylock]

Sounds like Reaving from the aGoT mod.

Oh? I don't play AGoT, so I'm not quite certain what that would be. Might have to check it out, however.

 

[Rylock]

I do really like the idea of the event planned raids. While I agree with your points about vanilla raiding, I do still enjoy it just for the fact of getting money. Sacking Rome and possibly capturing/sacrificing the Pope is always fun. As long as I can still do those things.

You probably wouldn't be able to reach Rome unless you were actually based in the Mediterranean. That is a little silly, after all. Otherwise you would still be able to get money and take hostages from the targeted holding, if your raid was successful. That'd be the idea.

Maybe a system in the middle? Like you suggested, leave the option for players to raid vanilla but also have the event raiding, sort of like a "Grand Raid" or something.

Like I said, I do have the option of allowing players to still use the vanilla system, with a little finangling. I'd have to make certain they couldn't use both at the same time, of course.

My only real gripe is the events that would fire off. Me and my friends play CK2Plus multiplayer, and I know that's not a largely common thing and we may be the minority and you have to please the most people, but almost all of our desync's come from getting too many events firing off at once with personal battles and other events that fire during wars. It may also make raiding something you have to focus more on, where as now you can just move your troops onto a province and leave them there for a bit while you focus on other aspects of managing your realm, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how 'busy' things are.

It wouldn't be something you'd have focus on. Indeed, it would take less attention than having to babysit raiding armies...that'd be the point. It would, however, probably not be very multiplayer-friendly, that's true...not that much about CK2Plus is.

 

[Cody Spring]

You probably wouldn't be able to reach Rome unless you were actually based in the Mediterranean. That is a little silly, after all. Otherwise you would still be able to get money and take hostages from the targeted holding, if your raid was successful. That'd be the idea.

Like I said, I do have the option of allowing players to still use the vanilla system, with a little finangling. I'd have to make certain they couldn't use both at the same time, of course.



It wouldn't be something you'd have focus on. Indeed, it would take less attention than having to babysit raiding armies...that'd be the point. It would, however, probably not be very multiplayer-friendly, that's true...not that much about CK2Plus is.

This is true. But just for my own personal entertainment, I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to go in and edit the values to reintroduce world-wide raiding again.

Agreed

We actually don't have any problems with it over vanilla surprisingly, other than the personal battles. Something about them just loves to cause desyncs.

 

[zijistark]

So the changes I'd planned for Imperial Administration (some of which apply to empires in general) is now finished, the last of which will be in the next Plus update. Time to move onto the next project.

This time? Raiding.

What's my problem with raiding? For the most part, I don't think the in-game system jibes with what I believe raiding should be about...which isn't raising huge armies and sieging down holdings. It's not that I don't think the norse (or other raiding cultures) didn't do that sort of thing. One thinks of the norse and you imagine pillaging galore, after all. I just think that's something they did while conquering...and they already have CB's which allow them to do that. In my mind, raiding is a smaller group which went in, pillaged smaller settlements in the countryside before defenders had time to organize (or larger ones which were left undefended), and got out before things got hairy.

You can't do that with the way it currently works -- which is basically raising an army and playing a game of picking on OPM's or weaklings, and maybe playing a game with some larger opponents if their armies are busy. That can be alright if you have nothing else to do (as it involves a great deal of micro-management), but I'd hardly call it very evocative or fun outside of the vague thrill of roaming around the map sieging stuff without having to declare war.

It's much less fun if you're the one being raided (especially if you end up being a favorite target), and it's also one that the AI just isn't very good at responding to. I don't know how many times I've watched the AI nearly bankrupt itself trying to deal with viking raids, not to mention my suspicion regarding the AI becoming befuddled when it's at a state of "war" with raiders it can't touch. I've seen AI realms become paralyzed for years this way.

My solution? Moving raiding to be event-based.

Imagine selecting a decision called "Plan a Raid". There it would instruct you to select a target holding (by right-clicking on it) that is either neighboring your realm or in the same "sea zone" for seafaring raiders. An event chain would begin where you pick your tactics (and thus risk level) and see which volunteers offer to come along on your adventure...and then you and your cohorts receive a "Raiding" trait that sets you as absent in the same way that being on pilgrimage does. Your capital receives a reduction on its levies (since you take along a group with you). Then, upon reaching the target, an event chain fires that determines how the raid went, gains rewards/hostages, and applies any repercussions to the holding (via a modifier -- you can, in fact, also apply the "looted" modifier by event and get the "holding in flames" picture). The targeted ruler gets to read the story, as do you, and you would even get to hear about the exploits of your vassals or other daring raids performed by members of your culture.

This appeals to me as it's more story-focused. I can also control things like how often the same realm/ruler is targeted, how a raider's traits play into their success, and not clutter up the map with so many raiders...which sometimes go out of their way to raid in, say, Africa or the like. And it also means I could allow Christians or Muslims to raid in certain situations, regardless of their culture or government, and just give their events different localisation.

I could also leave some things to use the current raiding system -- like the "raiding adventurers" put in with Horse Lords (which are actually pretty decent), or allowing nomads to raid with their roaming bands (which seems appropriate with how they work).

Technically I could also allow the player to use the current raiding system if they wished. I could implement a decision which flips over their army to raiding, allowing them to use the system exactly as it is now...if that's something that players would really want. I'd appreciate hearing some thoughts here, especially if this is something I'd end up being surprised at having people come out of the woodwork to tell me how much they love the raiding system. Perhaps I'm alone in how I feel about it.

This is also my own personal preference. I hate micro-managing raiding, and the need to do it that way to succeed as a tribal/recently-feudal ruler makes me outright not want to play the tribal game at all.

Further, an event-based system not only has the opportunity for absolutely epic story-driven narrative about your own exploits but additionally those of other "legendary" rulers-- not to forget the interesting narrative opportunities for raid defenders as well-- but also it allows for far more intelligent AI targeting, more fair AI targeting in the overall simulation, and finally, it allows the event subsystem to build memory of people and places affected by a given raider's exploits/embarrassments, allowing for the possibility of very coherent and engaging long-term narrative which builds upon past raiding outcomes. [IOW, how to tell the kind of dynamic story expressed in, say, the infamous Vikings TV series-- except your own.]

This approach also has the advantage of potentially yielding significant improvements for AI economy and, as you mention, elimination of the many side-effects of the "whack-a-mole" problem for large realms.

My only real gripe is the events that would fire off. Me and my friends play CK2Plus multiplayer, and I know that's not a largely common thing and we may be the minority and you have to please the most people, but almost all of our desync's come from getting too many events firing off at once with personal battles and other events that fire during wars.

Actually, if anything such a system-- properly-designed as I'm sure it would be-- may reduce desyncs in multiplayer. Since there are no actual battles and sieges occurring, the number of nondeterministic player actions which need to be synchronized between clients rapidly due to traditional raiding's nature would be entirely eliminated. The reason that battle events tend to be related to desyncs is due to the fact that players are interacting with those events while the battle is simultaneously happening. Further, the Duel Engine battle events are downright nasty w/ desyncs due to an MP-unfriendly event chain design. None of that would be happening here.

It wouldn't be something you'd have focus on. Indeed, it would take less attention than having to babysit raiding armies...that'd be the point. It would, however, probably not be very multiplayer-friendly, that's true...not that much about CK2Plus is.

See above-- probably more friendly MP, if anything, assuming solid event chain design practices for MP are observed, which should be already exactly how you're thinking of coding this, except for one part where MP would need to be considered in terms of coding practices to minimize MP incoherency or desync issues: when raiding another player, how those events between those interacting players are fired becomes relevant (just don't emulate the Duel Engine with its interactive-immediate events, and you'll be fine).

This is true. But just for my own personal entertainment, I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to go in and edit the values to reintroduce world-wide raiding again.

This is true, and when Rylock had pitched this idea to me earlier today, I'd not considered how easy it could be made for a user willing and capable of editing a file in a relative simple way to switch the entire system back to vanilla raiding as they please.

 

[Harald Fairhair]

What's my problem with raiding? For the most part, I don't think the in-game system jibes with what I believe raiding should be about...which isn't raising huge armies and sieging down holdings. It's not that I don't think the norse (or other raiding cultures) didn't do that sort of thing. One thinks of the norse and you imagine pillaging galore, after all. I just think that's something they did while conquering...and they already have CB's which allow them to do that. In my mind, raiding is a smaller group which went in, pillaged smaller settlements in the countryside before defenders had time to organize (or larger ones which were left undefended), and got out before things got hairy.


It's much less fun if you're the one being raided (especially if you end up being a favorite target), and it's also one that the AI just isn't very good at responding to. I don't know how many times I've watched the AI nearly bankrupt itself trying to deal with viking raids, not to mention my suspicion regarding the AI becoming befuddled when it's at a state of "war" with raiders it can't touch. I've seen AI realms become paralyzed for years this way.

You are wrong about Viking raids being preformed by only small bands. There are exampels of vikings raiding in great numbers for the sake of raiding an not conquest. There are exsampels in england, frankia, skottland, ireland, bjarmia, spania, italia (thou Spain and italy was something they rarely visit and it's kinda anoying seeing them there all the time), byzant. But you are correct about they raided while conquering like in the great heathen army or Svend Tjugeskjegg's couquest of England.

Is it not realistic that reamls get bankrupt to pay of raiders? There were english kings and frankish ones that payd insanly large amount of silver to thes raiders to get them away (thou this action led only to more raiders).

 

[l1l1l1l1]

I think the eu4 mod The Rome That Did Not Fall has a really good raiding system

 

[Velorian]

Imagine selecting a decision called "Plan a Raid". There it would instruct you to select a target holding (by right-clicking on it) that is either neighboring your realm or in the same "sea zone" for seafaring raiders.

I like your idea a lot, while amusing for a while it's a bit weird to roam the mediterranean with thousands of vikings repeatedly.

I am, however, a bit worried by what you mean by "sea zone", just one sea province? Because the Vikings needs to be able to raid from Scandinavia into the British Isles and the whole coast from France to the Balkans. Plus river provinces in Russia.

Maybe generic raiders can be restricted by one or two sea provinces as range, but the vikings should be excepted. Maybe the event can pick from a list of regions with sea access made available by your location?

 

[Rylock]

You are wrong about Viking raids being preformed by only small bands. There are exampels of vikings raiding in great numbers for the sake of raiding an not conquest. There are exsampels in england, frankia, skottland, ireland, bjarmia, spania, italia (thou Spain and italy was something they rarely visit and it's kinda anoying seeing them there all the time), byzant. But you are correct about they raided while conquering like in the great heathen army or Svend Tjugeskjegg's couquest of England.

Is it not realistic that reamls get bankrupt to pay of raiders? There were english kings and frankish ones that payd insanly large amount of silver to thes raiders to get them away (thou this action led only to more raiders).

Depends on what you mean by "raiding in great numbers". Hundreds? Thousands? Was it that common? Did they actually battle other armies and siege down settlements? Even if that was occasionally the case outside of actual wars, does it make for a good system to have in the game -- where a realm of any size is playing constant whack-a-mole with raiders crossing into their territory? I don't think it does, regardless of how well the AI does or does not handle it.

Not only that, I think the question of whether the current system is enjoyable and playable verses whether one considers it historically accurate is separate. I will not sacrifice the former for the latter -- that's not how we do -- and I notice you didn't address the former at all with your post. Do you like the raiding system?

 

[Rylock]

I am, however, a bit worried by what you mean by "sea zone", just one sea province? Because the Vikings needs to be able to raid from Scandinavia into the British Isles and the whole coast from France to the Balkans. Plus river provinces in Russia.

You can see the sea zones in-game, actually. It encompasses a body of water (like, say, the North Sea) and all coastal provinces that touch on it or are within easy access. So a viking in Norway or Denmark has access to the British Isles and the northern coasts of Brittany, France and Germany. A viking in Sweden or Denmark has access to the entire Baltic coasts up to Russia and Finland.

 

[Harald Fairhair]

Depends on what you mean by "raiding in great numbers". Hundreds? Thousands? Was it that common? Did they actually battle other armies and siege down settlements? Even if that was occasionally the case outside of actual wars, does it make for a good system to have in the game -- where a realm of any size is playing constant whack-a-mole with raiders crossing into their territory? I don't think it does, regardless of how well the AI does or does not handle it.

Not only that, I think the question of whether the current system is enjoyable and playable verses whether one considers it historically accurate is separate. I will not sacrifice the former for the latter -- that's not how we do -- and I notice you didn't address the former at all with your post. Do you like the raiding system?

Nope, don't like the rading system. It's anoying to see vikings in the meditteranean all the time, and theres only one record of large Viking raid on Italy (even that redord is questionable). And have you notice that theres no raid on Ireland, Skottland, Bjarmia, Finland, Vendland, Baltic and Russian countries? I find it unrealistic that weak viking band raids Frankia and England only to be destroyd by it's armies all the time. Vikings went "often" after weak targets.

My thougths on the matter is that each viking province has a raiding sea-zone. Like Norwegians in Northen/West Britain and Bjarmia, Danes in Southren Britain, Frankia and Vendland, Sweds in Baltic sea an Russia, Russians and other raiders should have a raiding zone as well. And even have oppoturnity (rarely) to travel far like Bjørn and Hæstein in Italy or Ingvar Vidfarne in the Black sea and Kaspian sea. But also be able to chose raid on churches instead of castles. Vikings rarely (but did some times) raid castles. And dukes and counts should be able to counter attack on these vikings without the liege have to interfere all the time.

To answer your question about how often these raids went on and numbers of viking host. Yes they often could appear in numbers like tousands. When the Kings and Chiefs of Scandinavia realized that the coast of christian world was defensless and rich after hearing from small bands that came home and told their adventure made an escalation of larger and more organized raids. Depending on the leader if he had land he have to tend to these raid would have some breaks for some periods, but like the heathen army raids could go longer and could lead to conquest.

 

[Andrzej I]

Sounds absolutely brilliant. There's only one flaw...

... that it isn't already in CK2+ and so we need to wait

That said, for a bit more substantive remark: though we don't want to create something that increases the risk of desyncs like the duel engine sometimes does, will it be possible to bribe off raiders with gold? Or perhaps land, à la Normandy? Either way, definitely looking forward to this. Making it hard for me to want to play with all these neat features you're designing.

 

[RhaegarTelcontarTargaryen]

Well, the other topic, in which you noted that current system limits possibilities of making it possible for realm to pay ransom to raiders does make it harder. But...

On the one hand, it is good having your army / raiders, and being able to personally order them were to go, and being able to actually fight a battle, and so on.
On the other, it is clear that AI can not handle it. Even worse, I am unsure how well it represents raiding, especially Viking raiding, since that part of history is one of the main reasons they introduced raiding.
Maybe it would not be a bad idea to have smaller event driven raids, and larger where you raid leading an army just like you do now. Or make AI use event based, and let player be able to either use both, or use the current system.

To be honest I do not know what are the engine and AI limitations, so I have no good idea and answer, but I do think that current CKII+ raiding system needs improvement. If for nothing else, than for willingness of AI to ransom prisoners.

Oh and also, when it comes to raiding, I would like to add that Vikings did actually reach Mediterranean, on few ocassions, so.. maybe some vent for large raiding expedition at least for Vikings?

edit: I think it might be good idea to separate raiding into regular raids, and "large" raids and invasions.
Small raids would be like regular raids, "large" raids would be something like Björn and Hasteinn's venture into Italy or Ragnar / Reginherus raid on Paris in 845, or the failed raid on Paris in 886, and invasions being conquest of land, like they are now, example being The Great Heathen Army, or Sweyn Forkbeard invasion.

 

[Alexander Seil]

I dislike gutting key mechanics in favor of event-based chains. It makes the whole thing much less transparent to the player, and I would imagine it would be a nightmare to code believable raider/victim interactions that take into account their military position and capability, if it's possible in the first place.

A better idea would be to tune down AI propensity for small scale raids, if it's feasible, and create a Grand Raid CB. Geheimsnacht has a variety of CBs along those lines, including things like slave raids and grave-robbing (against Khemri), alongside the regular raiding system.

As for defense against raiders, would it be possible to script some kind of local militia events, which would raise and disband troops in raided counties to combat the invaders? Perhaps through a vassalized rebel tag that would be disbanded within a short amount of time?

 

[Rylock]

A better idea would be to tune down AI propensity for small scale raids, if it's feasible

It's not.

and create a Grand Raid CB. Geheimsnacht has a variety of CBs along those lines, including things like slave raids and grave-robbing (against Khemri), alongside the regular raiding system.

I don't see how it would be particularly helpful to have CB's which would require even more sieging to achieve enforceable victory in order to simulate raiding.

As for defense against raiders, would it be possible to script some kind of local militia events, which would raise and disband troops in raided counties to combat the invaders? Perhaps through a vassalized rebel tag that would be disbanded within a short amount of time?

No, it's not. Such forces would be created with no morale and would be instantly defeated, same as if you raise levies in a province where troops already exist. Also would be rather aggravating to encounter if you're a raider.

 

[Alexander Seil]

I'm just uncomfortable with taking a fundamentally military event out of the realm of military mechanics and replacing it with fluffy, over-complex and opaque event chains. Event-driven mechanics have their place, but it's also a rabbit-hole into a situation where the game starts to feel like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, more than dynamic computer game (see VIP for Victoria...). Many of the stated problems with raiding (though, personally, I'm fine with it as it is) are really up to Paradox to fix, anyway, and may well be addressed in future patches, especially if people of some stature (i.e., you, Rylock) actually post/ask about it.

 

[Parsidius]

This would actually take care of another situation that has vexed me; namely, it being too expensive to raid while starting off as a pagan ruler, esp. in the 769 start. When I've played as a Norse Pagan in that scenario, I will only quickly pop a band of raiders in and out of an enemy province to avoid the Peace penalty, since it costs me more than I will take in.

It could help make it less tedious for a ruler trying to unite one of the Scandinavian kingdoms, where otherwise they would need to wait around accumulating enough money to be able to create the title they want.

 

[Rylock]

I'm just uncomfortable with taking a fundamentally military event out of the realm of military mechanics and replacing it with fluffy, over-complex and opaque event chains. Event-driven mechanics have their place, but it's also a rabbit-hole into a situation where the game starts to feel like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, more than dynamic computer game (see VIP for Victoria...). Many of the stated problems with raiding (though, personally, I'm fine with it as it is) are really up to Paradox to fix, anyway, and may well be addressed in future patches, especially if people of some stature (i.e., you, Rylock) actually post/ask about it.

Raiding has been around for some time. I honestly doubt Paradox intends to do much about it.

And while I agree that raiding using the game's military aspect makes it transparent (ie. you know exactly what you can do with that many troops, and it works the same way you lead any other troops), my main issue is that I don't think that should be how raiding works. It's also something that's easy for players to game (when it's not just being annoying for them to deal with, on the receiving end) and difficult for the AI to contend with.

All those make it worthwhile to consider replacing, even if it's with a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style event chain (which, I dunno, but that's most of CK2 anyhow). Especially considering the advantages that brings: the ability to control when and where they can be used, the ability to have more options for both the attackers and defenders, the ability to allow raiding in some instances for those who can't raid at all currently, and more story. That lost one means something to me, even if not to everyone.

I don't doubt what I'm proposing might not be everyone's favorite idea. I'm sure I can make it interesting even so (I've made some extremely complex event chains, so you don't have to worry about the complexity side of it), and I'd really prefer that someone not envision what a crappy vision of it would be like and assume I'd make it that way. I kind of think I deserve a bit more credit than that, to be frank.