CKII is released.

Can you always trust your spymaster when he says that he found someone plotting against someone?

What determines whether a mayor or bishop invests his money into upgrading his town/church?

 

Unfortunately, yes. And the answer to your second question is a shitty rng.

 

So, playing Byzantium as hellenic roman (ruler designer!), got bored around the point where I reform the empire, and remembered people here talking about how empires just keep blobbing forever. So I switched to a tiny kingdom and just let time pass to see what happened. Wasn't expecting much. The condition of the empire at this point: every territory required to reform empire under imperial control, along with the entire Kingdom of Hungary, and some holdings in the northeast steppes. Most duchies and best provinces are in the hands of the ruling empress (20+ diplomacy), and her son--the lion's share for her son, so the empress should have zero popularity concerns. The empire is #1 on realmsize worldwide.

Click unpause, watch from tiny kingdom in corner of world...

Within 3 years the empire has fragmented into a dozen different fiefdoms, and changed its flag. Why, you ask? The hellenic emperor of Rome and all its holdings has converted to the Sunni faith.

So, yeah, if the AI can botch that situation up that bad, no wonder it never presents a problem for the player. Still, I suppose that at least punctures the myth of eternal blobbing? (Although I imagine someone will say Hellenic faith is even worse than Islam for this sort of thing.)

 

Who says the AI botched up? The emperor just saw the light.

 

Well, when the "light" involves losing half your territory, I kind of tend to see it as a monumental failure, but who am I to say. Maybe the harem he gets in return is just that amazing.

 

Personally I find, that it is better to updrage 1-2 money buildings in your vassal baronies after you build up your holdings. Then they start upgrade it themselves rather frequently. But it also may be worth to purchase technology buildings, than waiting until baron decided to spend money on them.
Also it depends on how much you using their levies, since they pay for it from their own pocket.

 

Also, if you build a new city or temple, hand it over to the existing mayor/bishop in the province, and he can use the income from his old holding to upgrade the new one.

 

Charlemagne ruled the biggest empire in the west in centuries. Then when he died he divided it across his three sons who quickly turned on each other and let the whole thing come crashing down. History isn't a simple exponential growth according to clear mathematical and rational principles. It's generally a mess. I love how CK 1 and in lesser form CK 2 do justice to this by making it about individual rulers and their families instead of ever expanding nations.

When an AI kingdom goes to the shitter and it happens because of a completely valid in game reason then it's not a failure of the AI. It's a regular and for me even integral part of gameplay. This game isn't about blobs as much as it is about dynasties. With the way the user base drools over map painting and gets upset about everything that gets in the way of that I'm however pretty sure that any CK3 will be almost indistinguisable from all the other Pdox map painters.

 

If you are literally the #1 faction in the world by realmsize, you have zero incentive to switch religions to that of a far weaker enemy, let alone to a religion that will piss off all your vassals. While CK2's systems can have cool emergent moments, this case strikes me as the AI having some terrible weighting in its decision making somewhere. Considering it vassalized the biggest Sunni faction after converting, I think that's why it converted, but the better route would have just been to annex them entirely.

(This problem occurs in most Paradox games, actually: the AI is just really unlikely to press its advantage if it is #1.)

 

The problem is mostly in the quirks and practicalities of gavelkind succession. It doesn't really cause the kind of destruction and mayhem you'd expect.

 

Yeah, and this is why neither the Roman Emperors nor the Germanic barbarians who conquered Rome converted to the Christian reli.... oh wait.

 

That's because the system in CK is not about nations or factions but about dynasties and their individual members with all of their quircks. It's not about what's best for the realm but about king Henry deciding that he really needed to get a divorce and fuck that pope if he wasn't going to give him it. Real history is filled with fun shit like that with far reaching consequences and CK is one of the few games that really pays attention to the human factor in history.

 

This isn't reflected in game mechanics, though. From such a great distance, I'm not comfortable commenting on the why's and how's of historical events like Constantine's conversion, but from a pure gamist perspective (and does the AI care about anything else?), it's a pretty dumb decision.

 

you, as a person, as a living being, don't actually *choose" if you want to adopt a religion or not. you just take it.

 

Constantine didn't switch religion completely out of blue, because he suddenly been inspired by Jesus teaching. Christianity by that time already had a strong position within the Roman Empire and all attempts extirpate it failed. Not the last reason to it was the Roman Empire, which pass a whole century in the civil wars and decadence, and it could be destroyed in that time. Christian philosophy was a very appealing in that time not only to poor people, but also to other social classes, including elite.
Of course, it is unclear how much for Constantine it was a political move and how much he share their teaching. It is very interesting subject, but there isn't much thing to do except creating various speculations. But I don't think it correct to compare that situation to AI stupidity.
And there also is a difference from converting pagan to one of abrahamic religions and converting from one abrahamic religion to another.

 

UPD. For some reason, I forgot, that conversation was about pagan Roman Empire, not christian one, while I wrote my post. In that case, it only means, that religion mechanic in TOG was created for different pagans, and didn't designed to work for that particular player created situation. I don't see any reason to blame AI for that, nor seek in that situation some sence or deep meaning.

 

Yeah, my only response to it really was surprise, since I thought blobbing was going to be the result of giving up control to the AI, not total and instantaneous self-destruction.

It is funny you have to edit the decision files to let a Hellenic Roman Empire have its imperial reconquest casus belli. Because only Christians could possibly revive the legacy of Rome. I guess it's the Holy part of Holy Roman Empire that matters. (Actually, AFAIR, you can't even reform the Empire in the first place without being Christian.)

Will be interesting to see if the converter gives it the same treatment, sounds like it will from what Johan was saying (unreformed pagan -> generic Shamanist/Animist). What I don't get is why they didn't just make Hellenic behave as a reformed pagan religion from the beginning, it would be zero extra work and the tooltip says it IS reformed, even though the game engine says it isn't.

 

So, uh... I decided to get my council married so they'd shit out some kids and keep the world populated and all, so I got them all wives, and now I hear babies grunting at me every 5 fucking minutes when another one shits out a new baby. Any idea how to stop "Council members you don't give a shit about have babies!" popups from showing up in high priority?

The council members and their wives all aren't marked as people of interest. I don't know if my council never got married naturally before (Never paid attention to them, really) so I'm not sure if this has always been the case or what. Kind of annoying though.

 

But Paradox wasn't create that religion to be playable. Although the first thing, that some people did right after TOG was realizes, wasn't raiding Europe as one of Paradox staff's ancestor, as it was intended. No, they started explore their benevolent empire, found that they can create ruler as roman pagan in editor and, not surprisingly, did that.
All that uninterrupted chain of ER/Roman emperors up until Caesar Augustus was only a flavour thing, that Paradox did in order to please roman's fans.
But I am pretty sure, that there are some mods, that improve that situation, but I am not a fan of alternative history, so I can't help with it.

 

I see a reason to have my clergy like me so they send their tax collection to me, instead of the pope.

But what about the fat mayors? Do I need to have them like me for any reason? They don't give me more/less money based on my popularity right? I guess the only benefit to having them like me is that they will be less likely to plot against me?

 

There's really no reason to give a shit what mayors think unless you have given them landed titles (county+). Well, and of course for certain law votes.

 

Mayors give you less money if they are below 0 opinion. Less levies below 100 opinion. Same rule as for clergy and nobles.

Of course, since they primarily for the money and less keen to backstab you, you'll care less about their opinion than nobles and to a lesser extent clergy.

 

Yeah, fuck those fat burghers. As long as these fat, money-grubbing, decadent city-dwelling, gold-licking, sodomite, usurer, limp-wristed, mohammedan-admirer, jew-loving burghers cough up these shekels and worship The One True Religion, they can just STFU and do whatever they want without bothering me.

 

Yeah, fuck those fat burghers. As long as these fat, money-grubbing, decadent city-dwelling, gold-licking, sodomite, usurer, limp-wristed, mohammedan-admirer, jew-loving burghers cough up these shekels and worship The One True Religion, they can just STFU and do whatever they want without bothering me.

 

Tell us how you really feel.