Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

CKII is released.

Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Modders will fix it.

The more I read about the coalition implementation the more absurd it becomes. Coalition members don't seem to care about culture, religion or distance (or if they do they certainly don't care enough). In case of far-flung realms they can even be out of diplomatic range of each other, with europeans joining the same coalition against muslims along with indians despite not being able to talk to one another. It's everything critics of the infamy system have been bitching about since it was announced.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
The most proper way to handle it would be for infamy itself to have a distance so you don't have Indians giving even a single shit much less two about Western Europe being rooted by a Scots psychopath.

EDIT: In itself Infamy is something that is a good idea since defensive alliances that aren't based on marriage are something smaller realms have been sorely lacking and the modder anti-blob measures based around instability are not reliable equalizers (CK2 is the sort of game where there really ought to be a sort of sweet spot holding:centralization ratio that acts as a power ceiling). I think the problem is that Infamy requires three scaling factors to fully work: Realm size, Religion, and Distance; as well as two stages: Defensive Coalition, and Anti-X Coalition (Dishonourable Scum CB).
 
Last edited:

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
Exactly like it was in EUIV right after coalition implementation. CK2 dev team simply have no connection with EUIV team and repeat ALL their mistakes.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Well the first mistake is that there can only ever be one coalition against someone. Even if someone goes on a world conquest that doesn't mean that everyone in the whole damn world would join hands against them. There should be multiple smaller coalitions instead, each looking after their own interests and not giving a fuck what happens on the other side of the known world (or even be glad if the big bad neighbor is busy crushing someone else and not looking at them).

Next, they should be strictly regional. If HRE is taking bites out of pagan neighbors that should be the local pagan problem. Have them create a defensive alliance, sure. But France or England should not care about it unless they themselves come under attack - then they should create their own clubs. Infamy should not be a global value.

And finally, cross-religion coalitions should be very, very rare. Pope creating a coalition against ERE that every muslim in the world joins along with a large piece of europe as well, all because ERE was holly warring muslims? Really Paradox?
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I made the mistake of going for some Charlie achievements as one of my first spins through he new content. The council and education stuff is great, the finnic portraits are good, the south indian ones are not great (dravidians seem lighter skinned than the indo-arayans and the children are bug-eyed). The devs saying raising status of women would be hard was BS, all laws are hard to raise without loyalists on the council and then stuff like status of women is easier to raise than taxation & levy changes because it only has a few stages. The infamy system sucks. Just following the Charlemagne plot means the pope, the umayyads, and the vikings decide to gang up on you all at once. Also ran a nantes game for a bit, infamy wasnt much of an issue there, and the new mercenary companies can rake in a good amount of cash for a smaller realm. Shattered retreat is annoying especially when it happens to you as I cant seem to figure out how it decides where your army should go. I lost a battle against super jorvik for Devon and instead of going to cornwall (which I controlled) my army decided to walk across hostile territory all the way to middlesex which was not controlled by an ally or anything...

So far Id say the conclave stuff is pretty good (better than way of life), but the patch sucks.
 

Machine

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 13, 2012
Messages
128
Location
cout<<
Modders will fix it.

Sadly, majority of new patch stuff dont seem that moddable apart from either turning it off or tweaking numbers, dont think you could enforce special conditions like "stick to religion group" etc, hopefully they will patch this later but its paradox we're talking about so I dont expect anything really.

I dont really care about "ahistorical" women/coalition stuff , cause this whole game is exercise in fantasy history (muh muslim vikings and scottish cathars in 780 ad), its the shitfest implementation of all of it.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
A good writeup of the DLC

Major
  • Marriages now create non-aggression pacts, so you will have to settle for making passive-agressive remarks about your in laws at feasts and/or plotting to blow them up with a shit bomb.

  • Alliances can now be formed and broken with characters if you already have a non-aggression pact, allowing the Queen of Asturias to decide she doesn't really need your help agains the Saracens because she's feeling particularly petty today.

  • The introduction of larger, more readable banners have allowed reinforcements to find their way to levy stacks in friendly territory without having to be told explicitly where to go by the giant hand in the sky.

  • Armies have been instructed on the historical "retreat" tactic, leading to far fewer cases where they stand around and get killed to the last man by a force only 50% bigger than theirs.

  • Non-elective succession allows you to preserve 50% of your predecessor's positive opinion modifiers, so maybe you'll try the other succession laws for a game or two.

  • Death sounds differ depending on age, gender and violency of reason for death, which I guaran-fucking-tee you will make you leap out of your chair and chuck your headphones across the room the first time an elderly, female courtier in your realm is murdered.

  • Fixed "problem" in "combat casualties calculation" that could result in 2 million undead rising to join your side. The creepy old guy in the tower in the woods insists he has no idea what we're talking about.

  • Added infamy and coalitions. Literally the end of the world. Might as well go play League instead of this casual trash game.
Minor
  • Rivals who are below your status can now be removed as a rival with an event where you realize you don't really give a shit what such a smelly wretch thinks of you, and you could imprison them and cut off all of their fingers if you wanted to.

  • Patricians can no longer appoint monks, eunuchs, or turnips as their designated heir.

  • Barons must now wait until at least the age of 16 to demand hunting or prima noctae rights.

  • Monks can no longer be Mercenary Captains. We found that this particular multiclass build was far too broken.

  • Your vassals will now be more understanding about your desire to execute someone who murdered your goddamn son.

  • Fixed bug in AI selection of seduction targets - Duke Guillaume should no longer be looking at your 14-year-old son that way. At least, not in public.

  • Inheritance of dwarfism more properly implemented (Word for word. I can't really improve on some of these.)

  • Unemployed nomads no longer hate you if they're not eligible for any of the jobs available. Go back to school, Hulegu!

  • AI has been made aware of matrilineal marriage, so it should be even more of a pain in the ass to marry that Karling princess.

  • When a merchant republic conquers the capital county of another one, the patricians from the defeated republic are no longer added to the winning republic, creating a zany sitcom about 10 elderly Italian men with way too much money trying to get along within the bounds of a single city.

  • Made Invite to Court easier by adding some air fresheners to your audience chamber and clearing out all the turkey bones, half-empty ale tankards, and severed arms.

  • Eunuchs can no longer take the seduction focus. Sorry Varys.

  • Attempting to imprison your guru through an event will no longer imprison yourself. We understand he said he was trying to teach us a transcendental lesson or something, but considering we never saw him (or that solid gold tiger statue) again, we're not going to believe him next time he asks us to meditate with him one last time before submitting to our justice.

  • Blind chancellors should no longer look inappropriately at your spouse (Again, can't improve on that one)

  • Your spymaster should no longer remain intent on spying on someone who is already dead. You really might want to keep an eye on that guy. He's weird.

  • Pregnant women can no longer win duels quite as effortlessly.

  • "Become King" now does something for non-pagans other than serving as a post-it note reminder to get fabricating claims.

  • Decadent Muslims forced to go home and rethink their lives will now usually wait at least five years to return to a life of unmitigated debauchery.

  • Some Christian Holy Orders who got really drunk in Jerusalem and had to go on a zany adventure to retrace their steps from the night before and find a missing Templar have now gone straight to DVD and will be returning to fighting Saracens immediately.

  • Eunuch sons will no longer knock up the serving maids through some fucked up scheme you don't even want to ask questions about.

  • Most soldiers will no longer fight to the last man before even considering retreat. Cowards.

  • Soldiers are now aware of losses their subunit has taken in combat, and will react accordingly. That whole "only look forward and don't worry about the guy next to you" thing was nice while it lasted, but the giant, metal blinders were expensive and causing issues.

  • Courtiers given land in nomad realms by a feudal liege will now be less likely to go native and abandon all trappings of civilization. You're not a Mongol, Sæmundr. Take that ridiculous hat off.

  • People are likely to remember that you're an insufferable tyrant for a bit longer after you do something horrible.

  • The AI has been given some books on military history and is now aware that constant, headlong offense is not always the best way to win a war.

  • AI rulers will no longer piss themselves in fear at the mere mention of a raiding adventurer two kingdoms away, who has never set foot in their lands, and grant them titles as a pre-emptive measure to avoid being raided in the future.

  • Terrain such as forests will now actually be an issue for horse nomad armies. Whatever spell they were using to make the trees get out of the way has been rendered inert.

  • Nomads now have a CB that lets them kidnap all the cool people from their enemies' realms.

  • The Mongol Great Khan should no longer become a paragon of peace and harmony whose mild and tranquil nature is remembered for generations.

  • AI Mongols will continue to wage war even if they're eating their meals through a straw and need to be reminded periodically who they are, what kingdom this is, and why we're burning it.

  • Fix that should stop humans from giving birth to horses. Knowing the Internet, that will be modded back in sometime later today.

  • Female horses can now be placed on the council. Down with Glitterhoof and his equine patriarchy!

  • Genghis Khan's mere presence will now send his subjects into a sexual frenzy.

  • Mongols no longer make friends. They make corpses.
 

Renegen

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
4,062
Paradox is really speccing in the jewish skill tree because this latest sale has all of the DLCs on sale for 66% instead of 75%, ugh. I've been paying Paradox for years now so I can play CK2 and they want more, wake me up when it's on bigger discount because I think I'm a whole year behind in DLCs now.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
It's paradox, they are becoming progressively more lazy in their DLC, and employing clear anti-consumer tactics with their pricing and sales.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Modders will fix it.
Sadly, majority of new patch stuff dont seem that moddable apart from either turning it off or tweaking numbers, dont think you could enforce special conditions like "stick to religion group" etc, hopefully they will patch this later but its paradox we're talking about so I dont expect anything really.
Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic. Modders for this game are quite good, no doubt. But the answer to shitty game mechanics should not be change it yourself.

Ok, I have tested the new stuff for a couple of hours and I can say that as far as I'm concerned the whole thing is a lost cause. Not because of infamy or shattered retreat, shitty though they are. But because they have gutted the one thing I found fun more than anything else in this game - the eugenics game. The new educational system is a complete fucking mess. Each kid is assigned one focus at age 6 and a vocation at age 12. Only some combinations of focuses and vocations seem to make sense, and even then results are disappointing. Most of the time kid will grow up with one or maybe two traits - that's it. Amusingly (not really) often that is a congenital trait they somehow (Lamarck was right, who knew?) picked up while growing up. The most common child trait in the short test run I did in my realm was slow - by a wide margin.

Apart from that you have next to no control over the education of your wards or kids. Maybe you will see one event that will give you something over the 16 years, maybe two, maybe none. Oh, and you cannot set focuses or vocation for anyone outside of your court, not even if you make them your ward. Their education is just random. I don't even know what to say to that.
 

Mr. Pink

Travelling Gourmand, Crab Specialist
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
3,042
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Modders will fix it.
Sadly, majority of new patch stuff dont seem that moddable apart from either turning it off or tweaking numbers, dont think you could enforce special conditions like "stick to religion group" etc, hopefully they will patch this later but its paradox we're talking about so I dont expect anything really.
Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic. Modders for this game are quite good, no doubt. But the answer to shitty game mechanics should not be change it yourself.

Ok, I have tested the new stuff for a couple of hours and I can say that as far as I'm concerned the whole thing is a lost cause. Not because of infamy or shattered retreat, shitty though they are. But because they have gutted the one thing I found fun more than anything else in this game - the eugenics game. The new educational system is a complete fucking mess. Each kid is assigned one focus at age 6 and a vocation at age 12. Only some combinations of focuses and vocations seem to make sense, and even then results are disappointing. Most of the time kid will grow up with one or maybe two traits - that's it. Amusingly (not really) often that is a congenital trait they somehow (Lamarck was right, who knew?) picked up while growing up. The most common child trait in the short test run I did in my realm was slow - by a wide margin.

Apart from that you have next to no control over the education of your wards or kids. Maybe you will see one event that will give you something over the 16 years, maybe two, maybe none. Oh, and you cannot set focuses or vocation for anyone outside of your court, not even if you make them your ward. Their education is just random. I don't even know what to say to that.

there is a more intelligent way to improve education: make your avatars actions effect your child.

examples

- leading an army while responsible for wards makes you random all your character events until your ward is 13, and old enough to join you in the battlefield. Wards in a army will get new decisions that tend to impact martial at the expense of other stats. Losing a battle with a guardian participating can cause the death/injury/bad trait of your ward. Winning battles with your ward can trigger good events. Guardians that are ticked "forbidden to lead armies" will not join armies. if it is a vassal, the designated regent/commander/highest martial in court is chosen instead to lead the forces of the guardian. AI should be programmed to prefer giving guardianship to the mother, for the sake of practicality.

- your wards are always where you are, unless you are leading troops. Wards in foreign countries can be kidnapped and held at ransom/assassinated far easier, so holding a job and having kids simultaneously isnt good.

- courtiers around your ward impacts what kind of events they get and can subtly boost/stunt stats. Bad influences like sin traits can spread easily.

- wards will now make friends with other children of their age in the same court. Trait spread is more likely between friends. You can kill your child's friends if they annoy you/have bad traits. a less extreme option is to forbid child from seeing a friend, which removes them from the friend list (same one adults use). Some traits decrease the likelyhood of making friends, like shy and stutter. If a child has friends with heretics or heathens, "sympathy for x" trait might get added. When a child comes of age, the childhood friends list is pruned leaving only the top relation at the time as an adult friend like the one you get from carousing. The others just get a mild "childhood friend" diplo bonus. Adult friendships are rebalanced to be only +75 diplo.

- Childhood events should be rebalanced overall. They should be less random and trigger from certain situations, like summer fairs, tournaments, hunting trips, having your court occupied and death of a family member.

- Family deaths can cause grief now, for adults and children. Grief is a trait that's similar to depression but can be removed in more ways. Making a ancestral rune stone, high learning/piety and carousing can remove grief. Grief can also be replaced with bad traits like alcoholism, lunacy or depression depending on what your actions are. Kinslaying someone you have a high diplo with should have a chance to trigger bad traits (wroth, arbitrary, depression ect.) Ordering assassinations should totally remove good traits.

these ideas may not be that good, but atleast I tried to make it more fun than this bullshit. No special interface nessessary, just using mechanics that already exist.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
This could be interesting, yes. Also make events and traits less clear cut, with positives and negatives to most choices. HIP mod does something as well - about half of child traits are not result of guardian events, but randomly assigned, with higher chances for particular trait if one or both parents have it. That way if you have charitable/gluttony/whatever, your kid is also more likely to have it, but it's not a sure thing.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Modders will fix it.
Sadly, majority of new patch stuff dont seem that moddable apart from either turning it off or tweaking numbers, dont think you could enforce special conditions like "stick to religion group" etc, hopefully they will patch this later but its paradox we're talking about so I dont expect anything really.
Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic. Modders for this game are quite good, no doubt. But the answer to shitty game mechanics should not be change it yourself.

Ok, I have tested the new stuff for a couple of hours and I can say that as far as I'm concerned the whole thing is a lost cause. Not because of infamy or shattered retreat, shitty though they are. But because they have gutted the one thing I found fun more than anything else in this game - the eugenics game. The new educational system is a complete fucking mess. Each kid is assigned one focus at age 6 and a vocation at age 12. Only some combinations of focuses and vocations seem to make sense, and even then results are disappointing. Most of the time kid will grow up with one or maybe two traits - that's it. Amusingly (not really) often that is a congenital trait they somehow (Lamarck was right, who knew?) picked up while growing up. The most common child trait in the short test run I did in my realm was slow - by a wide margin.

Apart from that you have next to no control over the education of your wards or kids. Maybe you will see one event that will give you something over the 16 years, maybe two, maybe none. Oh, and you cannot set focuses or vocation for anyone outside of your court, not even if you make them your ward. Their education is just random. I don't even know what to say to that.

I don't actually mind the new education changes. Having it easy to lose control how your heir turns out leads to a more interesting game where it's not just churning out genius grey eminences one after another. Now you have to actually plan for talentless morons taking over the throne (and a lot more serviceable middle of the road guys), although I noticed the council and the inheriting some opinion from the predecessor gives you some breathing room.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
I don't know, I just don't find the results of the new system interesting in the least. Having several kids turn out as ambitious master intriguers with multiple traits, that's interesting. Having them repeatedly come up as worthless blank slates with one or two traits - not so much. And having no control whatsoever over the education of anyone that is not my direct courtier even less so. Going to try it one more time, maybe I'm missing something here.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,503
Rulers can no longer send legates to themselves to complain.
Eunuchs can no longer use seduction focus.
Release highlights.

In other news, conquest of Saxony would piss off Kaliph, raj of India, and several other factions in EU. It gives the coalition of willing a whole new meaning.

Also let's not forget to
  • Fix that should stop the humans giving birth to horses.

That's Paradox for you. It's VERY strong deterrent against piracy. Every pirate is seriously thinking about waste of bandwidth.
 

Ellef

Deplorable
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
3,506
Location
Shitposter's Island
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I like the idea of a meddling council and maybe the childhood stuff. The rest can go to hell. Already disabled retreat and coalition but i'm sure there's more broken things.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
The childhood stuff is pretty lame. From 6-12 it seems like you have effectively no control and from 12-16 your control boils down to getting a mediocre outcome that you want or choose to go along with what the game rolled in the 6-12 years to get a slightly less mediocre outcome.

Wouldn't be a problem if characters were actively learning and increasing their stats/acquiring traits after they are an adult like people do in reality, but in CK2 the new system is just a huge nerf to curating a good heir.
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,622
What, a new DLC already? I was just finally getting around to trying the nomad mechanics. With Khazars, of course: stealing Palestine and taking over the global media, i.e. a historically accurate game. Easy stuff until you settle down.

The new Conclave "features" are pretty hilarious by the sounds of it. So far, I think most people have accepted some of the derp (not counting Sunset Derp, obviously), even though every DLC of the past two years has added crap along with the good. But I don't see how they can fix this coalition and retreat stuff, short of disabling it. But of course people have a great capacity for fooling themselves. In the official forums, there is a thread where the staff are "clarifying" the "assumptions and outright lies" that are "circulating".

And a developer of the Game of Thrones mod said that they were planning to use "quite a lot" of the new features, although that still leaves room to disable the worst ones. Maybe they should spend more time fixing all the problems they added to their ridiculously named "1.0" release before moving on to new stuff.

I do understand the Status of Women stuff, though. Paradox are from Sweden Yes, after all. Given the state they're in, the ability to LARP strong women can become pretty important. Because the way things are going, the only thing Swedish women will have to say soon is, "Yassine, you're hurting me, try the other hole".
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/clarifying-coalitions.906098/

No mechanic can work without good presentation eh.

I think what they've missed, is coalitions should happen from more advanced countries. Tribes that don't even know about threats or early Europe that only began doing something when Mongols where basically storming their castles should be less eager to join coalitions than countries with advanced techs and ruling laws to simulate stuff like Lombard League or Holy League (would have to add ability to transform coalition into alliance for that).
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
I do understand the Status of Women stuff, though.
I still don't. I mean, I actually like playing absolute cognatic as it's great for my eugenics projects, and using those genius 20+ stat female councillors is great. What I don't get is why was it necessary to create a whole bloody law for it. Why not just tie that stuff to gender laws: agnatics can only use wifes or female relatives as spymasters, ag-cog can use wives, relatives and female vassals as spymasters and stewards, and ab-cog can use any female as spymasters, stewards and chancellors.

Court chaplain should be available depending on if religion supports female temple holders. And leave female marshals and commanders for cathar and the like. Ab-cog could also cut female ruler/heir penalties in half, with tolerance tech reducing it to zero eventually. That's it, that's all the damn law does, so why a separate law for this?

Instead of, oh I don't know, realm peace law. Right now if you empower the council you can order peace for 5 years, with a 10 year cooldown. But if you hold all the power yourself you can't even do that, let alone actually enforce permanent peace. If the problem was that realm peace was too rigid, well why not let vassals use that favour system to get permission from the liege to declare war, or declare war anyway, but risk getting branded traitors if the liege can afford to take them on. But no.
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,622
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/clarifying-coalitions.906098/

No mechanic can work without good presentation eh.

I think what they've missed, is coalitions should happen from more advanced countries. Tribes that don't even know about threats or early Europe that only began doing something when Mongols where basically storming their castles should be less eager to join coalitions than countries with advanced techs and ruling laws to simulate stuff like Lombard League or Holy League (would have to add ability to transform coalition into alliance for that).

In the crusader era, everyone was in constant communication with each other. Medieval kings were like video gamers pushing buttons on a digital map of Europe. Muh realism. Actually, didn't they have distance limiting interaction between characters for this purpose? That was one annoyance of recent updates: adventurers were nerfed so badly that they no longer pose a threat to anyone, but they still pop up with their <5,000-man stacks anyway, and I often can't assassinate them because they're too far away. So I have to fight a war that is impossible for me to lose anyway. Do coalitions ignore this mechanic?

By the way, why change the education mechanic? To be honest, I personally never found it that easy to breed geniuses, but maybe that's just because I don't try very hard. I'll happily take the bad heirs along with the good. Most "bad" rulers still manage to keep their positions anyway, and if you're already in a strong position, you can keep expanding. The system was pretty good, maybe they should have just heavily reduced the chance of inheriting Genius/Strong/Quick/Attractive.
 

Turrul

Augur
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
211
Paradox forum is on fire :lol:.

My favorite part is the user who owned one of the admins with his in-game screenshot, by proving his claims about how Pope won't join a war against fellow Christians in coalitions as false.

Also, new dlc makes it possible for almost day 1 Primogeniture HRE thanks to the inflated tech levels because of those early startdates.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom