Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[Mortmal]

What needs to be urgently patched in? Game seems pretty stable, for Paradox.

There's quite a lot of glaring balance issues with the game atm. From the top of my head:

• Norse rulers need to be nerfed, either in their aggressiveness, or in the event troops they get. Otherwise you'll see Sweden basically everywhere on the map.
• Converting from tribal to feudal is absolutely crippling, as it trashes all your holdings and tanks your income.
• Handing out titles when ambitious or greedy gives you stress, even when above demense limit. A nightmare after holy wars.
• Decisions that form new cultures like Portugese or Roman are retarded, as the newly formed cultures don't get your researched innovations.
  
• AI does not use matrilinear marriages (at all?), even when religious rules are set to female dominance. This leads to a lot of dynasties dying out and extra inheritance border gore.
• Catholicism is fucked, as sinful bishop events tank fervor too much. Thus heresies become the norm, rather than the exception and converting takes forever.
  
• Probably tied to that, crusader states regularly convert to Islam, making the whole endeavor pointless.
• Dread as a mechanic is obscenely OP. Keeping it at 100 is trivial, as prisoners are abundant, and then vassal opinion is completely irrelevant. You should not get dread for executing infidels or lowborns and there should be diminishing returns for dread gain.
• Populist uprisings are way too common. You get only a small popular opinion boost for crushing rebellions, which does not offset the huge wrong culture and religion penalty. So have fun playing whack-a-mole with your peasants every 2 years.

While I agree that the launch was relatively bug-free compared to other Paradox releases (lol), these issues I listed are not that hard to spot and basically happen every game. So their QA team, if they even have something like that, should definitely have spotted them. The least they could have done is release a hotfix to fix the most glaring stuff. But instead we get radio silence for 4 weeks and have to rely on modders yet again to fix Paradox shit.

At least i had a laugh when looking at the kingdom of jerusalem and everyone converted to islam, the clever bastards .

 

[Eastwood]

they also need to Nerf siege equipment man-at-arms and stop the abduction 100% exploit because you can snowball the entire game way too fast.

Yeah I didn't mention OP perk interactions, as they are too many to list.
That sieges go too fast in the mid-late game is probably because the AI simply does not know how to upgrade their holdings, another big issue atm.

 

[Eastwood]

At least i had a laugh when looking at the kingdom of jerusalem and everyone converted to islam, the clever bastards .

Actually not that bad of an idea for a player. When my catholic heresy was targeted by the pope's crusade, I simply switched back to Catholicism, joined the crusade as an attacker with the crusade target defaulting to Jerusalem.
Needless to say I conquered Jerusalem and then switched back to my heresy right afterwards.

 

[Mortmal]

At least i had a laugh when looking at the kingdom of jerusalem and everyone converted to islam, the clever bastards .

Actually not that bad of an idea for a player. When my catholic heresy was targeted by the pope's crusade, I simply switched back to Catholicism, joined the crusade as an attacker with the crusade target defaulting to Jerusalem.
Needless to say I conquered Jerusalem and then switched back to my heresy right afterwards.

Thats a good one indeed , you can flip flop easily and the vassals even follow you . One day christian and remember to ask the pope for money , the other muslim. Want to marry your relatives ? you go zoroastrian . The costs of switching is much lower than creating a faith

 

[Zero Credibility]

More weirdness. I'm playing along at full speed (because there's so little to do right now if you are not actively blobbing), content after creating my own modest empire and my own isolationist heresy that gives everyone +20 relations with everyone of the same religion (and for laughs, sacred orgies as well).

When suddenly, I get a message my high intrigue powerful vassal duke spymaster was replaced with some lowly count from nowhere with worse intrigue, and I can't fire him for 25 years. A hook, I thought, but I don't remember anyone having any hooks on my ruler, let alone this asshole. So I loaded a game just before, and sure enough, there are no hooks or secrets of me. I let the game run and the same happens. I load again, and switch to him to see if he's fabricating something on me to create a hook and then using it immediately. Nope, he's not plotting anything, and is not even on the intrigue skill tree.

I'm guessing some king of a bug is happening here. This guy was previously a vassal of another duke I had to cut down to size, so maybe I've somehow inherited a hidden hook when I retracted the vassal? I guess? Who knows.

 

[Zero Credibility]

There's quite a lot of glaring balance issues with the game atm. From the top of my head:

Good list. I'd add insane seduction again happening all over like Paradox learned nothing from CK2, and crazy plots that can retroactively change biological parent of a character. The AI is also too aggressive, and never builds anything because all its cash goes to fund eternal wars. The tribal CBs are insane as they can be used on anyone in diplo range, causing much of the border gore shown. The lack of navy also leads to stupid wack-a-mole game of chasing an army across half the country, only for it to turn into boats and circle around to siege your capital, repeatedly, even they are completely broke or a peasant revolt.

Btw, ambitious only gives stress when giving away titles if you are at most 1 holding over limit. If you are more than 1 holding over limit, it does not. You can game that by lowering your limit for a moment by switching your spouse bonus, giving away the title, then raising the limit again. Now shy, that's way worse.

 

[vonAchdorf]

For me the game starts to become boring. I'm not a map painter and there are not many things you can do besides map painting at the moment.

 

[Andnjord]

More weirdness. I'm playing along at full speed (because there's so little to do right now if you are not actively blobbing), content after creating my own modest empire and my own isolationist heresy that gives everyone +20 relations with everyone of the same religion (and for laughs, sacred orgies as well).

When suddenly, I get a message my high intrigue powerful vassal duke spymaster was replaced with some lowly count from nowhere with worse intrigue, and I can't fire him for 25 years. A hook, I thought, but I don't remember anyone having any hooks on my ruler, let alone this asshole. So I loaded a game just before, and sure enough, there are no hooks or secrets of me. I let the game run and the same happens. I load again, and switch to him to see if he's fabricating something on me to create a hook and then using it immediately. Nope, he's not plotting anything, and is not even on the intrigue skill tree.

I'm guessing some king of a bug is happening here. This guy was previously a vassal of another duke I had to cut down to size, so maybe I've somehow inherited a hidden hook when I retracted the vassal? I guess? Who knows.

Check his vassal contract, he probably had a guaranteed council position.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Checked it and you are right. But should this really be working this way? He had a guaranteed council position given to him by his duke, so now he has a guaranteed council position in a whole empire? This looks like another half-baked idea.

 

[Ibn Sina]

It is honestly best to put this one in the backburner for now, I will check on it back in a year or so.

 

[cw8]

They need to fix obesity. Once your character gets it, it's impossible to remove.

 

[cw8]

When suddenly, I get a message my high intrigue powerful vassal duke spymaster was replaced with some lowly count from nowhere with worse intrigue, and I can't fire him for 25 years. A hook, I thought, but I don't remember anyone having any hooks on my ruler, let alone this asshole. So I loaded a game just before, and sure enough, there are no hooks or secrets of me. I let the game run and the same happens. I load again, and switch to him to see if he's fabricating something on me to create a hook and then using it immediately. Nope, he's not plotting anything, and is not even on the intrigue skill tree.

I'm guessing some king of a bug is happening here. This guy was previously a vassal of another duke I had to cut down to size, so maybe I've somehow inherited a hidden hook when I retracted the vassal? I guess? Who knows.

Get rid of him. Give the low stat council arsehole with a piece of land to make him a Count then transfer the joker to one of your unhappy Dukes. Problem solved. He got fired instantly and you duke is much happier.

 

[Andnjord]

Get rid of him. Give the low stat council arsehole with a piece of land to make him a Count then transfer the joker to one of your unhappy Dukes. Problem solved. He got fired instantly and you duke is much happier.

This. Alternatively, if he's just a lowly count it won't cost you much to lower his obligations (levies or taxes) in exchange for taking away his guaranteed council position.

At the very least, the game should tell why your 20+ intrigue spymaster just got replaced by a random duke with 5 intrigue. When I inherited the HRE in my Habsburg game (what do you mean, the emperor had an accident just after he nominated the designated successor to the throne from a different dynasty as his spymaster? Surely a coincidence!) it took me a while to understand just why half of my council was being filled with incompetend morons. Turns out, the previous emperors had been handing out privileges left and right like candy, and I only noticed that by accident when trying to raise the taxes of one of those dukes. Took me a couple of decades to roll back all those privileges.

Incidentally, there is VERY little pressure to give privileges to your vassals. The only way you can be forced to do so currently, seems to be when your vassals gain hooks on you (which seemed to be an exceedengly rare thing in my game). Otherwise, there are no benefits to handing out privileges to them, beyond a small and inconsequential opinion boost, it is entirely a net loss for you to do so. It would have been interesting if, say, you could call your vassals into your own wars in exchange for giving them hooks on you (which they could then use to renegotiate vassal contracts in their favour). Or if you could make them vote for your chosen successor in exchange for hooks, or give you a one off-payment, or to convince them not join a rebelious faction, or to make them stop a war against another of your vassals....

The hook system and vassal contracts have the potential for some fanstastic interactions for realm management, but it is currently limited to random secrets being occasionaly uncovered by your spymaster (or the AI's propensity to Not Keeping It In Their Pants. Try a religion that makes adultery criminal for both men and women and watch your vassals slowly give all their power away due to them sleeping with everyone) due to the desperatly barren vassal interaction options.
Kudos to Paradox for thinking of those systems, but as usual, they are half-baked like the stress system, and what could have provided some actually fun checks on your power and interesting interactions ends up being limited to an occasional thing you can use to your advantage but ends up being ultimately inconsequential. But at least, unlike EUIV and CKII, there are systems in place that could be used to limit your powers, so hopefully, Mods Will Fix It.

Heir on the throne of Leon

Do you have a plan for when your son will also convert to Muwallad?

Spoiler

Joking, as your son you have a hook on him, so you can always make him convert back to your religion whenever you want

 

[Norfleet]

[*]Dread as a mechanic is obscenely OP. Keeping it at 100 is trivial, as prisoners are abundant, and then vassal opinion is completely irrelevant. You should not get dread for executing infidels or lowborns and there should be diminishing returns for dread gain.

Sounds like the hella-buffed dread. In CK2, the equivalent Dread mechanic required you to execute direct vassals (and required a bloodline to unlock). You didn't get nearly as much of anything just killing randos.

[The hook system and vassal contracts have the potential for some fanstastic interactions for realm management, but it is currently limited to random secrets being occasionaly uncovered by your spymaster (or the AI's propensity to Not Keeping It In Their Pants. Try a religion that makes adultery criminal for both men and women and watch your vassals slowly give all their power away due to them sleeping with everyone) due to the desperatly barren vassal interaction options.

I can't imagine hooks being a big deal against the player simply because players, are, in general, pretty defensive, and go about their crimes either at a scale that involves wiping out all witnesses, or not at all. Unlike the AI, which tends to commit random, purposeless, petty indiscretions. It's like the difference between a guy who methodically plans a bank heist at a level of detail that puts the typical bank heist movie to shame, and the guy who compulsively shoplifts without regards for the CCTV, 3 police officers waiting nearby, and a few dozen witnesses. Not only does what the AI will commit wrongdoing have a return that rarely, if ever, justifies the risk, he doesn't even consider the risks to begin with.

 

[Preben]

I can't imagine hooks being a big deal against the player simply because players, are, in general, pretty defensive, and go about their crimes either at a scale that involves wiping out all witnesses, or not at all. Unlike the AI, which tends to commit random, purposeless, petty indiscretions. It's like the difference between a guy who methodically plans a bank heist at a level of detail that puts the typical bank heist movie to shame, and the guy who compulsively shoplifts without regards for the CCTV, 3 police officers waiting nearby, and a few dozen witnesses. Not only does what the AI will commit wrongdoing have a return that rarely, if ever, justifies the risk, he doesn't even consider the risks to begin with.

In other words, the AI behaves far more like a real human than the player.

 

[vonAchdorf]

They need to fix obesity. Once your character gets it, it's impossible to remove.

It also comes with a heavy health penalty. Healthy at any size, anyone?

 

[Commissar Draco]

I can't imagine hooks being a big deal against the player simply because players, are, in general, pretty defensive, and go about their crimes either at a scale that involves wiping out all witnesses, or not at all. Unlike the AI, which tends to commit random, purposeless, petty indiscretions. It's like the difference between a guy who methodically plans a bank heist at a level of detail that puts the typical bank heist movie to shame, and the guy who compulsively shoplifts without regards for the CCTV, 3 police officers waiting nearby, and a few dozen witnesses. Not only does what the AI will commit wrongdoing have a return that rarely, if ever, justifies the risk, he doesn't even consider the risks to begin with.

In other words, the AI behaves far more like a real nigger than the player.

Fixed this for you Comrade, Is the game already at least patched btw? I am not expecting CK2 debt just Catholicism not being a joke for a start.

 

[Eastwood]

Fixed this for you Comrade, Is the game already at least patched btw? I am not expecting CK2 debt just Catholicism not being a joke for a start.

Nope, not yet.
Though they apparently said during a livestream that patch 1.1 will come some time next week.

 

[Fedora Master]

Sadistic + Norse religion makes executions of random prisoners from raids not only give free dread but also reduced stress AND piety.

 

[Eastwood]

Sounds like the hella-buffed dread. In CK2, the equivalent Dread mechanic required you to execute direct vassals (and required a bloodline to unlock). You didn't get nearly as much of anything just killing randos.

There is a dread mechanic in ck2? I actually did not know that.
Seems kind of backwards that they now have a system that is much easier to abuse.

 

[Norfleet]

There is a dread mechanic in ck2? I actually did not know that.
Seems kind of backwards that they now have a system that is much easier to abuse.

There were Intimidating Executions, which were unlocked by several different bloodline options. When you executed a direct vassal in this manner ("You have failed me for the last time!"), you received a stacking +20 "Intimidated" vassal opinion bonus from everyone (who wasn't Brave, and thus was likely to become the next example) in the realm, that lasted for a few years. So if you executed 10 such people in this way, you'd get +200 "Intimidated". Stacking Intimidation was generally enough to overcome all but the most egregious vassal opinon penalties, but unlike the apparently 10-and-done Dread, it wasn't quite as absolute or predictable, as newcomers who did not witness the previous executions wouldn't be immediately affected by it, and thus you had to keep up the killings to keep the bonus refreshed. And, of course, only DIRECT vassals counted, so just killing some random nobody only netted you the lesser, non-stacking intimidation bonus that slightly lowered revolt risk and other unimportant stuffies. And, of course, you required a special bloodline to unlock it, although admittedly, this bloodline was achieved through the trivial feat of taking the Bloodline ambition and either killing, or having already killed, for any reason, including entirely legitimate ones like honorable combat on the battlefield, at least 30 people. And who the hell DOESN'T kill 30 people? What are you, Gandhi? Even Gandhi nukes people.

It sounds to me like this new Dread will just let you kill any random useless person, which you would probably have done anyway just to clean out your inbox, and receive Dread for it.

 

[Eastwood]

For those of you, who don't want to wait for the patch to (hopefully) fix Catholicism always losing, here's a mod that inverts how the fervor mechanic works:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2229532952
You now get fervor when winning holy wars and the defeated faith loses it. With it, large religions should have a much better standing and it also makes more sense thematically in my opinion. After all, why would the winning side become disillusioned with their faith and then convert to a losing religion?
The same guy also wrote mods to reduce the chance of the sinful bishop event and one to make peasant/populist uprisings less frequent.

 

[Theodora]

It's weird they still havent' got the patch out yet, and Paradox has been having issues with in EU4 since before summer.

Are their technical managers just totally unable to manage the whole working from home thing?

 

[IDtenT]

They're Swedish, so they're probably on Holiday.

 

[Theodora]

They're Swedish, so they're probably on Holiday.

I thought they already did all that around July and August.