CKII is released.

ck3 will be a dlc for ck2

 

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Vassal Limit. There goes the Empires of Countydom.

 

Wouldn't concern those of us who refuse to deal with 9000+ crybaby c(o)unts and build a neat and proper de jure pyramid all the way to kings.

I am more concerned about having a proper demesne. That alone means whooping 50-60 baron-level direct vassals. If barons aren't involved, no vassal limit will stop my world conquests.

 

I started playing CK2 again a couple of weeks ago, and boy the Byzantine Empire is annoying as fuck. I don't know if I had bad luck or something changed in the last patches, but the Byzzies are blobbing again at insane rates. In my previous two games, I lost because the Byzantine Emperor pressed a claim on my empire from an obscure member of his court of from a vassal. As the Hispania Emperor I was, theoretically able to wage war and maybe win; however, they somehow became catholic, so even if I beated their armies, the Byzzies would call to arms to five or more catholic allies, and that turned the tables quickly against me.

In my last game, they became even more aggressive, taking over Italy, almost destroying the Abbasyds and then pressing a de jure claim on the Pope and ousting him from Rome. Shit got real really quickly. So what I did is to conquer the Egypt Sultanate, and then give it to the Pope, and asking him for money. With the 600+ opinion that he had on me, this was not a problem, and repeating this several times I managed to get some 6,000 gold pesetas. Then I fabricated a claim on Rome, but ended getting a claim on the whole duchy. With this I declared to war with all my retinues + vassal armies + allies + four of the most expensive mercs.

The fighting was insane, the BE combined his whole army into a 60K+ doomstack, so I had to do the same. This battle actually slowed my laptop, and I don't know if it was a bug but it was slow enough that I had the chance to bring more mercs from Spain a couple of times and for my English allies to arrive and throw their armies into the chaos. This was the final result.

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Check the number of dead nobles. I actually lost my two sons (one of them my heir with Genius trait) in the war.

As expected, they tried to retake the lost duchy some years later, but lost again and then, for teh lulz, I fabricated a claim on Constantinople and took it from them. Cue to the eternal de jure war on Constantinople every ten years. I won every time, btw.

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Obviously, I took advantage of a Byzantine revolt.

 

The part of the proposed vassal limit that makes no sense to me is that is actually decreases with crown authority. So a realm with high or max crown authority where the monarch has "curbed the rights of higher nobility" and is instead relying on his own administration is going to need more powerful nobles? At least the opposite would make some sense - lower crown authority means you have to share some of your power with powerful vassals. And did the player really need another reason to never move beyond medium crown authority? I mean, sure the AI will do it, but the AI is a retard anyway. Story time (again):

Emperor is holly warring some muslim duchy and winning easily (he's been blobbing for 40 years now with no problems). The war score gets to 99% and then the AI bugs out and gets stuck in a loop where his troops just sort of dance in and out of a target duchy without actually sieging it. For a better part of a decade, with all vassal levies raised. All of his vassals now have about 80+ raised levies relation penalty with the emperor. The moment the war somehow ends 2/3 of ERE break out in rebellion. The emperor still crushes them easily because they are retards. He imprisons them all and castrates most of the rebels. I check his relationships with his vassals and apparently all is ok again. A few people are in the red but for the most part the realm is stable and ready to blob again.

All rebels have completely forgotten why they were rebelling in the first place and have lost the raised levies malus. Granted, those that lost their balls now have a new one instead, but every single vassal also has a crushed a major revolt bonus that combined with long reign and prestige bonus keeps things stable. So yeah, to keep blobs from growing out of control what is needed is not some artificial limit that will make strong empires hand out kingdoms (somehow I doubt the model of feudalism Paradox envisioned actually existed in all but a small part of the game map at one period of game timeline) but to make it much more difficult for the realm to recover from things like this. From the perspective of ERE vassals the emperor went nuts, raised their levies for 10 years doing nothing and then castrated most of his dukes. And they are ok with that because he's been around a long time?

Really, vassals should have memory better than that of an average goldfish, they should not just forgive and forget even if they lost a rebelion. And rebels really shouldn't be getting crushed revolt relationship bonus, at least not if they lost their balls or titles in said rebellion. Also, reduce the rate of levy reinforcement if large realms blob too much and increase the opinon malus for raising levies on offensive, make each victory take longer to recover from. And for fucks sake, rework the damn "defending against infidels / foreigners" bonus, that shit is just stupid. Sure, vassals whose titles are on the line and their allies and zealous vassals for holly wars should have a large bonus, but the rest - maybe a small bonus or none at all? The fact that you can keep vassal levies raised without penalties is already powerful enough. And vassals that are already plotting against the liege should not just forget about it, they should take advantage of when his back is turned and his levies expended to strike.

 

Oh come on. Leaving a jihad against yourself open at 100% victory score for decades feels great. Next you'll start to cry retinues should be nerfed. Sheesh, people cannot into fun.

 

No I won't, I like retinues. Well ok, it's not so much that I like retinues it's that I hate levies. Fucking stupid mixed levies in an overcomplicated combat system that rewards having only one or two unit types per flank to ensure good tactics are randomly chosen. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

hey, gotta reward ppl who open their wallet for DLCs.

 

Is there a way to take the title of Caliph if you are a muslim from the guy currently holding it? Fucking Sunni moral authority keeps going from 50 to 90 every 10 years because the Caliph always has negative piety and shit traits.

Also how do I go about imprisoning my decadent family without getting tryanny? I tell them to cut that shit out and like a junkie they do it again 3 years later and I have to take a -10 and kill every one of my vassals to erase that shit so they don't rebel.

 

Try getting a decent Spymaster (20 intrigue or higher) and use the Scheme option with him to discover plots that will give you the righteous imprisonment option. Note I am playing vanilla atm but surely this should work...

 

I kind of like the "defending against foreigners" opinion boost since previously, ambitious dukes had a nasty habit of rebelling when my levies were busy fighting an invasion.

On on unrelated note, for some reason I can't create the Iconoclast Patriarchate after I conquered Constantinople. When I go to the Religion tab and click on the Iconoclast Patriarchate coat of arms, it simply says "Special Creation Condition: Never" in the tooltip for the Create button. Maybe it's because I'm still finishing up a game using version 2.0.4 before the Rajas expansion.

 

The problem is it is a flat +50 (or +75) opinion boost for everyone. Vassals refusing conversion? New ruler that everyone hates? Dangerous factions in your realm? Want to raise CA or change laws but nobody votes for you? When some idiot declares war on you everything is solved, and you can just keep the war going as long as necessary. A smaller boost would be fine, but this is too big, basicaly the entire realm unites against the attacker, no matter how messed up it was just a minute ago. An invasion (one that doesn't target him personally) would be a good opportunity for an ambitious vassal to push his agenda if the liege is losing. He might think that the liege is incompetent and that he would do better in his place defending the realm or he just wants to break away.

 

Wah you are right man so hard to solve.
Very hard. Need to think hard.
Steve sips on coffee.

Why not just... make the 50+ opinion bonus last for just a year?
If a liege sucks at fighting niggers for a year (Americans in Iraq) plenty of backers would back out.
Herpa derp.

 

Shrug. I think the biggest problem is everyone has the opinion boost. If the vassals' land is the target of the war, sure, he is going to to grovel before the liege as he defends him. And his allies and people that like the target vassal and/or liege, sure. Anyone relatively neutral could also band together with the liege because it may be them next time, but the liege can already take their levies without raised levies penalties anyway. But people that hate the liege and the real problem makers, ambitious and envious traitorous cunts that want something - they should not just forget about it and fall in line with the rest of them.

 

Look, just forget about this 'Deep what ifs' for a moment and adopt a somewhat 'general solutions' instead.
Cause at the moment the opinion flip is bullshit and is prone to penalize the player for winning a war (lol)
The only solution is to give no benefit after a long time at war and maybe start giving MORE penalty.
That's all there to it. Call it war fatigue. Whatever.

Liege is fighting infidels +50-70 - last 1 year tops.
Ambitious is still -50
Envious is still -30
Once you get no bonus - that's a penalty right there.
War Fatigue -25 as long war goes beyond 2 years.
That's all.
Victory = Liege wins vs heathens +10 for 1 year.

 

1 or 2 years sound too short then, a defensive war is very likely to drag on longer and the defender shouldn't gain more penalties then the attacker. Make it so that bonus starts at full but then after a year gradually starts decreasing to zero as war weariness starts kicking in? Give the guy a couple years to defend himself if he can. Crusades in particular can drag on and on with no fault of the defender if few people join them, there's nothing you can do but wait until the scattered armies arrive to you.

But I still think that unless the vassals' land is at the stake or the vassal is zealous (in case of religious wars) the starting bonus should be lower in the first place. Defending the realm is the lieges' job. I find it silly the way everyone just lines up to kiss his ass just for doing it.

 

Shit got real.

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I'll say. I wasn't aware of anybody using the Mediterranean portraits, much less for his own characters.

 

eh. give it 10-20 years. it'll de-blob itself.
love the Egyptian Papacy though.
thanks spain.

 

Well, at least isn't an Indian portrait. Those are way worse.

 

Indian portraits are bad, but the Mediterranean ones don't even look human. The Old forms of them look like Prosper added the wrinkles.