CKII is released.

[Ulminati]

This had better be the viking version of Sword of Andhaira

 

[Smashing Axe]

I tried playing Norse in the Prince and the Thane, they had most options themed appropriately. But the game is just so damn unstable that I can't get through a couple of years without another series of crashes. Here's hoping this DLC opens up some decent pagan options. That or a worthwhile mod comes out for pagans that's not hideously unstable.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

For the time period it's pretty bizarre that they'd focus on Norse first and foremost, considering Finnic pagans around the Baltic were around for several hundred years longer and relevant to the powerplays between Scandinavians and Novgorod. Hopefully DLC covers pagans in general and is named solely because most people wouldn't understand what a DLC named Perkele Perkele Perkele Perkele Perkele would be about.

 

[Smashing Axe]

They could set the start year back two hundred years, then it'd make more sense. The Danish invasion of England and the establishment of the Danelaw would be a good premise. You could then have the Christianisation of Scandinavia and options to fight against it.

 

[Konjad]

They could set the start year back two hundred years, then it'd make more sense. The Danish invasion of England and the establishment of the Danelaw would be a good premise. You could then have the Christianisation of Scandinavia and options to fight against it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Unlikely that they'd expand the default timespan though.

 

[eric__s]

What is the worst shit in the game? The Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantines and the Fatimids. They're too powerful and I have not had a single game out of dozens where at least one did not completely dominate. A game that starts ~200 years before 1066 would fix those problems - the Fatimids and Holy Roman Empire didn't exist until later, the Byzantine Empire didn't control Bulgaria and the overall political landscape was much more varied and interesting. I would definitely put down money on an expansion that extends the timeline backwards, especially because it would make this new pagan DLC far more useful, assuming it doesn't push back the timeline to begin with.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, playing as Byzantines now and it's getting too easy. I'm roflstomping everyone.

So now I decided to focus on genetic experiments with my bloodline. Surprisingly, there hasn't been a single inbred freak yet despite me often marrying sons/daughters to sisters/brother or nieces/nephews.
Also, my heir is a nigger cause I married some black woman after I divorced my first wife when she got too old for childbirth. For many years, nothing happened, but after my emperor became 60 he started siring children like a rabbit. Well, since the son he sired was the first one who was born in the purple, he had a stronger claim than his older brothers from my Emperor's fist wife. And he looks like a pure nigger, not even a half-breed.

Gonna be hilarious.

 

[IDtenT]

To fix all that, they just have to fix empires. Make laws more difficult to enforce; give kingdoms more autonomy; etcetera.

 

[IDtenT]

Lol. The screenshot is fake.

 

[Monocause]

To fix all that, they just have to fix empires. Make laws more difficult to enforce; give kingdoms more autonomy; etcetera.

This; generally the liege lord is too powerful in this game. I played this numerous times and I've yet to have a situation in which I'm actually threatened by my own vassals, unless I started as a kingdom from get go. Whenever someone seems to be an issue it's just a formality to stir up shit with him, make him an isolated rebel then imprison/revoke him because he's a traitor, then give the title to someone trustworthy.

As to Byz, the empire's strength should be directly tied to the emperor's characteristic. It seems like it doesn't matter if there's a genius on the throne or a complete fool, as they both manage the empire flawlessly. Poor AI kings should make poor decisions, mad or stupid ones should make terrible decisions. I'm playing Athens at the moment and have an 18yo retard as the emperor and everyone else seems perfectly content; I don't see a chance to lower crown authority.

What do you guys think about tying the crown authority to the king's/emperor's diplo skill? Say, if your base diplomacy is lower than 10 then you can't get any higher than low authority.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yeah, playing as Byzantines now and it's getting too easy. I'm roflstomping everyone.

So now I decided to focus on genetic experiments with my bloodline. Surprisingly, there hasn't been a single inbred freak yet despite me often marrying sons/daughters to sisters/brother or nieces/nephews.
Also, my heir is a nigger cause I married some black woman after I divorced my first wife when she got too old for childbirth. For many years, nothing happened, but after my emperor became 60 he started siring children like a rabbit. Well, since the son he sired was the first one who was born in the purple, he had a stronger claim than his older brothers from my Emperor's fist wife. And he looks like a pure nigger, not even a half-breed.

Gonna be hilarious.

Yea, my test campaign for my pagan stuff had the same thing. My dynastic founder ended up as being somehow distantly related to just about everyone in European courts, and I exported blue eyes and pale skin to various places (though sadly my "black power under white rule" project in Mali failed due to Muslim harem bollocks). I was pretty proud of causing three generations of Khans in Golden Horde and Ilkhanate to look very, very un-Mongolian, and my masterstroke, the hijacking of Byzantine Empire (well, that's the part where I ended, once I got one of my grandkid cadres as guaranteed Emperor through matrilinear marriage of my daughter to the Empress' first son, at that point I had converted to Catholicism and I also force converted the future Emperor).

To fix all that, they just have to fix empires. Make laws more difficult to enforce; give kingdoms more autonomy; etcetera.

Well, this certainly does give me ideas... Generally the best method is to hardcap the Emperor's ability to raise taxes and troops, especially in case of the Holy Roman Empire where only defensive wars should be possible on a large scale for the most part due to the fact it was THE decentralized feudal clusterfuck of Europe and remained so for hundreds of years afterwards.

Generally the idea would be to issue certain triggered penalties that either counteract relations bonuses, taxes or levies that are gained, essentially forcing an emperor to decentralize or get everyone really, really pissed off (thus the main benefit of an emperor would be large personal demesne)

 

[Monocause]

Generally the idea would be to issue certain triggered penalties that either counteract relations bonuses, taxes or levies that are gained, essentially forcing an emperor to decentralize or get everyone really, really pissed off (thus the main benefit of an emperor would be large personal demesne)

Toying around with limiting crown authority seems much more elegant and transparent than triggered penalties; also more realistic. Lower crown authority means less levies, less taxes and more in-fighting between the vassals. At the same time, a brilliant politician should be able to centralise the power (only to leave it to his hapless progeny, of course). This would nicely reflect the ups and downs of large states in history.

It would also create a nice gameplay dynamic. When your ruler is strong you can think about expansion and your vassals sit nice and still under your heels; when he's weak best you can do is dramatically fight to keep your demesne from splintering and attempt to placate the surrounding nations with every means available so that they don't DOW you. I believe this is how it was meant to work from the start, just that Pdox botched it somehow, or thought that it's too penalising.

Funny that this is basically how rulers work in Magna Mundi, and that even in vanilla EU3 the ruler stats seem to be more important than in CK2 where they should theoretically be the most important factor in everything.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Generally the idea would be to issue certain triggered penalties that either counteract relations bonuses, taxes or levies that are gained, essentially forcing an emperor to decentralize or get everyone really, really pissed off (thus the main benefit of an emperor would be large personal demesne)

Toying around with limiting crown authority seems much more elegant and transparent than triggered penalties; also more realistic. Lower crown authority means less levies, less taxes and more in-fighting between the vassals. At the same time, a brilliant politician should be able to centralise the power (only to leave it to his hapless progeny, of course). This would nicely reflect the ups and downs of large states in history.

It would also create a nice gameplay dynamic. When your ruler is strong you can think about expansion and your vassals sit nice and still under your heels; when he's weak best you can do is dramatically fight to keep your demesne from splintering and attempt to placate the surrounding nations with every means available so that they don't DOW you. I believe this is how it was meant to work from the start, just that Pdox botched it somehow, or thought that it's too penalising.

There's a problem: Lowering crown authority by ruler would be a very inefficient and haphazard thing, hard limits are easier and ultimately better for gameplay. Being the leader of a huge state should *never* be easy or something you achieve centralization in, though the hardest hard limits would obviously be for the Holy Roman Empire.

And the reason for triggered penalties is counter-act normal bonuses for things like low crown authority and similar laws, making them instead the status quo rather than something you end up in due to bad decisions. Obviously the most important one for emperors is Vassal levies slamming the fuck out of imperial unity if raised above minimum.

 

[Monocause]

There's a problem: Lowering crown authority by ruler would be a very inefficient and haphazard thing, hard limits are easier and ultimately better for gameplay. Being the leader of a huge state should *never* be easy or something you achieve centralization in, though the hardest hard limits would obviously be for the Holy Roman Empire.

And the reason for triggered penalties is counter-act normal bonuses for things like low crown authority and similar laws, making them instead the status quo rather than something you end up in due to bad decisions. Obviously the most important one for emperors is Vassal levies slamming the fuck out of imperial unity if raised above minimum.

Perhaps. I imagine the best system would be along the lines of: whenever a new ruler takes the throne the game checks his average rapport with the vassals. A simple arithmetic mean checking how much do they like him when he's on the throne, coupled with a limit imposed by his diplo skill. To start your rule with medium authority you'd have to have the mean relation with the vassals above 50 points and a diplo skill higher than 10, which are both pretty strict requirements but which would enable interesting events/decisions where you, as a father, try to make your vassals respect your successor. Above 25 mean relation would be low, and anything less - limited. The same check would be made for regents but the effectiveness would be halved and a regent could never achieve anything higher than low authority. While I pulled the numbers out of my ass and they'd obviously need much testing, the basic idea seems sound to me; at the same time I realise how difficult or outright impossible it would be to mod this in.

Regents are another thing that needs fixing, btw. Regencies were pretty much always bad, and often were a period of severe weakness of the state exploited by its neighbours and often the risk of civil war was present. As it is now, again - almost no difference if it's a genius king, mad king or a two-year old with some bishop appointed regent. Medieval states in this game sometimes seem more stable than modern democracies in that respect which is obvious bullshit.

All in all there's two ways to approach fixing the game, I think. Either work on limiting crown authority and crown laws or make the game more punishing for poor ruler stats; a mix of both would be perfect.

I oppose hard limits due to the fact that super rulers should be possible, and happened throughout history. Brilliant minds and personalities have coerced, murdered and persuaded others to incredible success sometimes and imposing hard limits could rule this out - unless I misunderstood your idea, of course.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I oppose making such things possible from a gameplay perspective. I'm not seeking to create a more accurate simulation, I'm trying to make aspects of the game work better, and without compromising the simplicity of the design.

 

[mondblut]

What is the worst shit in the game?

The worst shit in the game is all the larpers who go on and on with "bawwwww remove the blobs! delete ducal and above titles and set demesne limit to 1 with -9000 penalty! world conquest shall not stand! thou shalt roleplay a baron of nowheristan!"

everytime I paint another part of the map with my high crown authority primogeniture HRE grey, I think of a crying larper and smile.

 

[eric__s]

Good lord, it has nothing to do with larping, it has to do with game balance. I don't want the same game every single time I play. The game is balanced so heavily in favor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantines and the Fatimids that it gets really boring your millionth time playing. This has nothing to do with world conquest or whatever way you choose to play. I don't care how you play. It has to do with how the AI plays.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Byzantines and the Fatimids aren't as badly overpowered as Holy Roman Empire though. The main problem is that Holy Roman Empire has absolutely no weaknesses AND no real threats, it's in the middle of religious allies and has absolutely no credible neighbouring threat. At least Byzantines and Fatimids get holy wars chucked on each other and get general instability, and they have each other to fight (and Byzantium has added threat of having a quickly dwindling number of allies).

Generally the HRE should be a largely irrelevant clusterfuck of internal politics with miniscule influence on the game beyond their own borders (which should diminish as time goes by).

Anyway, current ideas:

- As mentioned before, HRE gets only 40% vassal troops AT MAXIMUM, meaning max Levies and Absolute Crown Authority laws. This means that most Kings under HRE will have equal troops with the Emperor in case a revolt happens.
- Being under attack by Jihad/Invasion removes the vassal levy penalty. If possible. Will investigate further.
- Make HRE a titular title? Makes secessions a lot more likely and permanent (since they won't come back voluntarily, ever).
- Elective no longer has a vassal relations bonus, so now it's actually NOT desirable as a form of government because you aren't guaranteed easy electoral win 99% of the time.
- HRE gets bonus gold, prestige and piety though. Lots of bonus prestige and gold. And of course, imperial status means easier marriages and so forth.
- HRE is hard-locked to Elective Monarchy.


Btw, making Warrior Cult stronger and removing Mongol access to it SEEMS to have worked. Purpose of this was to prevent Orthodox Golden Horde due to Russian states conquering all the pagans to the East without any effort, and to check Mongorian Madness a little.

 

[Smashing Axe]

In the game I'm playing as Brittany, the Fatimids took over the Byzantine Empire, Hungary, and parts of Poland and are slowly encroaching upon the HRE's territory. They're one territory away from Rome. This forced me to take a bigger role on the world stage in the hopes of driving back the unstoppable Muslim horde, so I received permission from the Pope for an invasion of France. Since I was producing progeny like crazy, I had a number of well placed alliances with the Scandinavian states and HRE that allowed me to successfully conquer all of France, taking every single piece of land and dividing the ducal areas up amongst my family. There are no dukes in France who are not of my family. I'm hoping with elective succession this will keep the infighting to a minimum to allow me to concentrate on where the fighting's really needed. The plan is from here to keep the kingdoms of Aragon and Leon alive to sufficiently hold back the Muslim invasion of Spain while I try to drive off the Fatimids with my king's newly acquired power with the HRE by my side.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In my test campaign with my mod, there haven't been such problems. It seems stronger Cumans are very good at keeping Byzantium and sand monkeys on their toes for the early game. Currently in the year 1337, the Byzantines are still around, but fighting an endless battle in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, with their powerbase in the East weak. On the other hand, they've still got a strong foothold in the Balkans and Southern Italy. They also have civil wars all the time over Crown Authority or succession. Among Muslims, the political landscape is a total mess with outside of Egypt being fractured into tiny itty bits with the exception of the Ilkhanate, which converted around Baghdad and has been content to stay there afterwards. I'm not actually sure if the Fatimids are even there.

On the other hand, HRE has half of France (Southern end), half of Spain and half of Italy, and hasn't had a single civil war before or after I removed relations bonus from Elective (though this has resulted in ruling houses changing at times).

My personal goal has largely been in the Remove Borscht front, and has been doing admirably. Due to my dynasty's high prestige, I've kept good relations with HRE, Golden Horde, and several European nations along with exporting whiteness to brownies. To my surprise my aforementioned successes in pimping to Mongolian rulers still shows effect, as they remain white and blue-eyed (and I still continue this, I reloaded a bit further back to before my conversion event test and continued staying pagan, still avoiding being a Crusade target through copious bribes). My finest moment was when I acquired a series of marital alliances with both the Cumans and later the Golden Horde, using this to push my own borders all the way to Moskva from Novgorod-Beloozero-Bjarmia ducal border I established with the Cumans I mentioned there. Ultimate goal was reached and the crown of Rus usurped, leaving the Grand Principalities once more a bunch of small bickering duchies all ruled by the same inbred ex-vikings (though Peryaslavl had enough territory and is now Volga Bulgaria). Currently my biggest ally is surprisingly Byzantium, as I've imported whiteness to the Doukas wogs for several generations now (in my Catholic test, I actually managed to ninja a Catholic Finn of my dynasty on the throne, which naturally caused the whole thing to explode).

My favourite thing to watch has been England though, which devolved into a giant clusterfuck from get-go when Harald won the war for the English throne at game start, and then his heirs have constant civil wars about crown authority with the Duke of Trondelag who owns 90% of Norway proper. Right now the English crown belongs to the Queen of Sweden, but she actually has just four provinces in England, which is split between Norway, Denmark, Sweden, France, and the locals in a never-ending tug of war. Similar thing happened in Hungary, which splintered into constant fighting between independent duchies and the kingdom proper around the time the Mongols arrived. Generally I just fish prestige from there through royal marriages. Currently trying to think of something to do.

 

[Malakal]

I think reworking elective to be more fluid should considerably weaken HRE: make dukes more ambitious when it comes to being elected, make "rivals" to the potential ruler. Like what SRI has done in EU3 - dividing electors into 2 camps fighting each other over who should be the emperor. Also limiting HRE de iure only to Kingdom of Germany could help. Making it succession locked to elective doesnt make much sense, instead I would focus on more vassal plotting to bring it back to elective should it be changed.

And of course my pet peeve: vassals should object increasing the crown authority violently. The process should be lengthy and difficult, attainable only for best rulers. Those weak ones that inherit realms with strong authority should see it lowering itself due to civil wars. And I think regency should decrease authority by one point always...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Generally my semi-objection is that under the current system there is absolutely no reason to raise Crown Authority over Medium because of the increasing penalties to Relations. Now, this works fine because Crown Authority is a loose and fluid concept at the time, but if you were to make it be hard and fluid, you would also have to make it extremely potent with less negative effects.

I think reworking elective to be more fluid should considerably weaken HRE: make dukes more ambitious when it comes to being elected, make "rivals" to the potential ruler. Like what SRI has done in EU3 - dividing electors into 2 camps fighting each other over who should be the emperor. Also limiting HRE de iure only to Kingdom of Germany could help. Making it succession locked to elective doesnt make much sense, instead I would focus on more vassal plotting to bring it back to elective should it be changed.

Way too much work and prone for failures due to oversights. I'm not going to start soloing this aspect, especially when I don't particularly enjoy playing as large countries from get-go (outside of HoI, rags-to-riches campaigns are always the most fun ones).

 

[TripJack]

republican dlc is comin, liberuls need not apply

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/08/crusader-kings-iis-next-expansion-announced-the-republic/

 

[mondblut]

FUUUUU.

Kinda cool (better than mudslims and greek fags, that's for sure), but I almost convinced myself that's going to be the timeline rollback pagan DLC

 

[Smashing Axe]

Mods will fix it. You know, eventually. Maybe in the next three years. Six at the outside. Definitely no more than seven.