CKII is released.

[Malakal]

I thought that there is no title of kingdom of Spain in the game? There are four catholic kingdoms in the peninsula IIRC but Spain is out of the games time frame. Maybe he meant that.

 

[oscar]

It should probably be a bit like EUIII, where you need high centralisation and a skilled monarch to create a new kingdom. But this is more interesting here, as whether or not high centralisation is worth it is a lot harder a question than in EU, where it was usually a no-brainer.

 

[curry]

Am I really the only one who was so disappointed that I don't even play this game anymore

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Am I really the only one who was so disappointed that I don't even play this game anymore

Honestly, I'm not playing it much right now. I'm confident expansions and patches will balance and add more options, and mods will probably allow it to realize its potential, but right now there just isn't enough to do.

Plus, I'm just waiting for Magna Mundi.

 

[Phelot]

Am I really the only one who was so disappointed that I don't even play this game anymore

What's wrong with it? How does it compare to CK1?

I keep teetering on getting this and waiting.

 

[curry]

Am I really the only one who was so disappointed that I don't even play this game anymore

What's wrong with it? How does it compare to CK1?

I keep teetering on getting this and waiting.

It's just tedious and boring. The AI is crazy and very predictable, plotting is broken, the relationship system is broken, traits are unbalanced, laws and crown authority need a complete overhaul, there's not much to do etc.

 

[Trash]

I thought that there is no title of kingdom of Spain in the game? There are four catholic kingdoms in the peninsula IIRC but Spain is out of the games time frame. Maybe he meant that.

Mods already added a shitload of new kingdoms. Not just in already existing provinces. Someone even added the entire horn of Africa. There are also portrait and heraldry (much better than the dlc as well) mods. Two big gameplay overhaul mods are also out there. Wiz is doing one that's already improved on a lot and just keeps growing. The guy is however balancing a lot so every version is pretty much radically different from the last. I like the added mortality, ambitions and plots and the changes he recently made to the crown authority stuff.

 

[oscar]

As I understand, CK1 improved radically after the DVIP patch/mod/expansion.

 

[Malakal]

Yes, CK1 got better but it wasnt ever as good as CK2 is right now. I dont think any of the preceding complaints are valid.

First of all there is always something to do. True, there isnt enough ambitions and plotting isnt that expanded yet but keeping a larger realm intact is a challenge in itself while in CK1 at certain point you couldnt really lose. Some more events would be cool, as always, but ultimately there is quite enough meat on the bones of the game.

Then there are new features that werent in the first game that expand on the idea. Not all are polished enough (like mercenaries) but its not like "old" features fro CK1 suddenly got worse. CK2 is simply better in any way compared to CK1.

 

[GarfunkeL]

It's curry, 'nuff said.

 

[curry]

If it always takes a load of mods to fix a game, I'd say the developer is crappy and their games are broken. I love EU3 and I think some of their other games are decent but I'm not going to pretend that CK2 is good. But of course you Paradoxdrones would defend them even if they sold you a box of dogshit.

 

[Trash]

Biggest negative for me is that CK2 removed a lot of the chance and randomness of CK1. Thus losing a lot of the charm for me. Reduced mortality and fertility level the field regarding dynasties and greatly enhanced the predictabillity of inheritance and have moved the game from Shakespearian drama generator towards mappainter. The AI losing a lot of the aggressive attitude that the preview version had also lessened the difficulty. I honestly feel that Paradox has tried to tone down the more harsher elements and with that, unfortunately, also removed some of what made the original so fresh.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Totally agree with you Trash. Rulers seem too long lived, your children always live to maturity and there has yet to be a concern over whether or not I would have a son to inherit. Increased mortality (but at the same time toned down assassinations and more plotting), lowering fertility, etc. There is a great base to build from, but the game isn't there yet.

 

[Kayerts]

The game definitely gets less interesting once you've got a crown or two. The inability to get involved in your kingdom's politics or plot against foreign kingdoms is a pretty big oversight, and you spend most of your time whittling away at infidel lands, putting down peasant revolts, or sniping off temporarily independent dukes during insurrections against their own kingdoms. (Which involves spending most of your time moving your troops on and off boats.) Crusading has great benefits, but you usually end up either gangbanging some poor Spanish emir alongside half of Europe, or carefully gathering up every able-bodied man in your kingdom into a glorious 8000-strong army, so that the Caliphate will have to send two of its ten doom-stacks instead of just one to obliterate you.

It did become interesting again for me when I could think about trying to steal one of the major jerks' throne. Launching a sanctioned invasion is actually a lot of fun. I liked the scheming involved in pushing the Pope to the point where he'd sign off on me wrecking another Catholic monarch's shit. The invasion itself was also entertaining, because I finally had a target big enough that the doom stack strategy wasn't optimal anymore. My 83-year-old Irish queen bringing down the Holy Roman Empire with medieval guerilla warfare was hilarious.

Once you're an emperor with more than 50K in levies, though, I don't see much point in continuing playing. You can gobble up every single kingdom in the game more or less at will. Ambitious vassals can't do much more than annoy you briefly before you grind them beneath your boot. I didn't play long enough for the Golden Horde to show up; maybe they'd have been able to put up a fight, but I couldn't bring myself to deal with smacking down three peasant revolts per year for the next forty years.

 

[hoverdog]

Totally agree with you Trash. Rulers seem too long lived, your children always live to maturity and there has yet to be a concern over whether or not I would have a son to inherit. Increased mortality (but at the same time toned down assassinations and more plotting), lowering fertility, etc. There is a great base to build from, but the game isn't there yet.

Thankfully the mods fix it. I'm playing with Bella Gerant Alii, as Pruthenians, and none of my rulers (three so far) reached the grorious age of 40. Children death rate, among other things, has also been increased, and plague spread and effects too.

 

[Silva]

Is have the impression the traits are not only numerical bonuses/maluses but also dictate the behavior of the characters. (Eg: I have a "lunatic" vassal that tries to kill everybody for no reason; on the other hand my deceased father second wife dont tries to kill me to put her son in the sucession line (she only has goody-goody traits - charitable, chaste, just, etc).

Can someone confirm this ?

 

[Malakal]

Traits do influence the behaviour but I am not sure if it is directly related or merely changes relations/enables more plots etc. Hard to tell without analysing the code of the game, but content vassals for sure are way more loyal than ambitious ones.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, just due to the relations modifiers they do have some effect. But almost all plots and ambitions have modifier effects based on character traits, and some have outright disqualifying traits (most commonly Incapable and Imbecile). In example, Become Heir ambition has a modifier of 0.01 happening for Content characters, making it take a hundred times less like to happen to them.

 

[Trash]

Yeah, Paradox did a lot of interesting stuff with modifiers like that. The system needs a little balancing and some additions (more ambitions and plots would be nice) but is very solid overall. Not to mention that tweaking the values in the txt files is very easy. My annoyance with the fertility and mortality I solved easily by myself by tweaking a few values. The two gameplay mods have done this as well since and make for a much more interesting game. And with the changes they make that I don't like it's easy to mod them out. The mods messing around with holy wars for instance I really disliked and replaced with the vanilla values. All it takes is finding the right txt and copy paste.

I'm actually thinking of making a very small mod that takes some of the easy core changes that massively improve the game already imo without adding all the changes the bigger mods are also making (which often feel tacked on to me) and putting that on. Increasing fertility, mortality and child mortality, disease dealiness and contagiousness, increased chance of battle events and more difficult to improve crown authority laws are quite basic changes that make the game a lot more random and exciting.

As I understand, CK1 improved radically after the DVIP patch/mod/expansion.

CK1 was utterly broken when released and only became enjoyable after patching and the Deus Vult expansion. The fanmade DVIP really made the game however but that took quite awhile to appear.

 

[20 Eyes]

The game definitely needs some fleshing out. Right now it feels like not enough strategy, not enough RPG. It's way better than Sengoku, and I'm actually happy with my purchase this time. But I don't think it's as good as EU3, though that's taking the post-release support into consideration. I think after a few patches/expansions, CKII will likely be the best Paradox game. I know Paradox has always had this reputation, but I'm struggling to understand why it's worth buying these games as soon as they come out. I mostly bought this one just to support Paradox and Crusader Kings II, but at this point I'd have a hard to recommending it to anyone that was on the fence.

I haven't even finished one game yet, but two things stick out that need work:

1. More ways to interact with the characters around you. I feel like there is a colorful cast of randomly built characters around me, but the vast majority of my interaction is either trading spouses or defending/assaulting false claims. I only have two vassals with counties right now, maybe this will change. But I'd like to see more interaction with nearby characters that I don't control as well.
2. More significant and interesting events. Right now 90% of the events I'm getting are either "Gruntilda wants to get married. Wat do? *Fuck off, I'm busy *Sure, why not? *Get thee to a nunnery" or "You Brofist Mayor McCheese! (+15 relations)". Yawn. Maybe this would be better if character mortality was higher.

One other small issue is that assassination rarely seems like a decent option. Even with a Council Member with 20+ intrigue (I forget what they're called), my chance of assassinating anyone is rarely over 40 and usually is about 1/3 including a Spy Network or whatever. Unless you want to save scum, assassination doesn't seem to be worth the 50 ducats very often. I'll admit that this seems like a very difficult number to balance properly, maybe the trickiest in the entire game. Maybe it's just my conservative nature that doesn't see this as worthwhile. YMMV.

Is have the impression the traits are not only numerical bonuses/maluses but also dictate the behavior of the characters. (Eg: I have a "lunatic" vassal that tries to kill everybody for no reason; on the other hand my deceased father second wife dont tries to kill me to put her son in the sucession line (she only has goody-goody traits - charitable, chaste, just, etc).

Can someone confirm this ?

Lunatics do seem more irrationally aggressive. I was in a war with Norway and the Queen was a lunatic. Most of her family was either dead or imprisoned. On the other hand, I've also seen many goody-goody characters involved in malicious plots. I tend to look for highly moral brides, and by the time their husband is dead they're usually involved in some plot in murdering one family member or another.

 

[Monocause]

I'd say the opposite - assassination is too profitable. First of all, the price should vary depending on the rank of the target and his intrigue skill instead of a flat 50d rate (how come assassinating your 1-y.o kid costs the same as assassinating the Holy Roman Emperor?). Next - chances of being detected should be higher. Having a maximum 40-60% chance of a successful non-plot assassination sounds right but your chance of detection should also vary more depending on the rank of the target.

20eyes - from the number of vassals I guess you're playing a minor duchy, right? 50 ducats quickly stops being a problem once you develop your infrastructure (build these castle villages, build additional baronies and impose a feudal tax!) and broaden your holdings. With an intrigue boost from wife and a decent spymaster creating a spy network it's easy to get your detection chance around 10%.

 

[20 Eyes]

I'd say the opposite - assassination is too profitable. First of all, the price should vary depending on the rank of the target and his intrigue skill instead of a flat 50d rate (how come assassinating your 1-y.o kid costs the same as assassinating the Holy Roman Emperor?). Next - chances of being detected should be higher. Having a maximum 40-60% chance of a successful non-plot assassination sounds right but your chance of detection should also vary more depending on the rank of the target.

20eyes - from the number of vassals I guess you're playing a minor duchy, right? 50 ducats quickly stops being a problem once you develop your infrastructure (build these castle villages, build additional baronies and impose a feudal tax!) and broaden your holdings. With an intrigue boost from wife and a decent spymaster creating a spy network it's easy to get your detection chance around 10%.

Good point on the standardized price, it makes absolutely no sense. At the very least, price and detection rate should vary by the target's rank and maybe other factors such as distance.

You're right, I'm playing as the Duke of Ulster. Though I'm about to declare myself King of Ireland as soon as I take Dublin. I have been building my infrastructure, and 50 ducats is getting to be less and less of an issue. Right now it seems more attractive to either spend it on castle buildings or holding it for emergency mercenary money. It could just be my conservative playstyle.

 

[Trash]

Game needs an absolute shitload of extra events. Then again, I always want more events.

 

[Kayerts]

Assassination is definitely overpowered for large states. It's especially bad because rebellions automatically fail when the leader dies. In the unlikely event that some charismatic duke manages to unite the lords of the realm against your tyrannical rule, all your tyrannical rule has to do is spend ~100g on a knife set, and the rebellion's over. Conversely, making it hard to murder a powerhouse like the Byzantine emperor might make sense from a game balance perspective, but it would be ahistorical as fuck.

Maybe the way to fix it would be to lower the base chance of a successful assassination and force you to enlist confederates by actually building a spy network when you send out your spymaster, gradually boosting your odds of success with each recruit. The size of the boost could be determined by the recruit's rank and closeness to the target, and your odds of successfully recruiting them could be determined by how much they like the target. Botch the recruitment badly enough, and they'll tip off the target.

 

[Trash]

Wiz's mod added some really nasty global relationship modifiers for when you an assassination fails and you get blamed. It certainly made me wary to use it, though it loses its scariness if you don't iron man this.

But you should.