CKII is released.

[Malakal]

After playing some more time I have to say that this patch is kind of easier than previous ones. I effortlessly manage to get a king title starting from count in two generations, something is wrong here.

Crusades especially are easy to exploit. They provide a lot of prestige and piety that is hard to come by otherwise and give whole king titles, while being easy to "win". Good idea but AI needs to learn how to crusade.

 

[Tigranes]

They might be, yeah. My Duke of Flanders just took a catapult up the power rankings when he was chief contributor to two crusades on Andalusia and Leon. Although, they were ~40 years apart and I had to use my entire levy, two holy orders and some mercenaries.

I actually think, like elections in V2 but more elaborately, and in fact much more like the Romance of the Three Kingdom games, they should have some kind of 'roundtable' events. E.g. after a crusade, the game stops and you get a unique menu with every major contributor and the Pope sitting round a table or something, then you vote on possible partitions and the like. You are then relying on existing diplomatic options and relationship settings, but also unique options like offering to give gold or a province to France if they support your partition proposal. After this 'frozen in time' series of diplomatic proposals and public votes, the gains from the Crusade are divvied up with a 10-year truce. This would also allow things like Crusader Kingdoms - e.g. as the second contributor, you might lobby hard for that instead of number 1 taking things.

Not possible for CK2, but I think that kind of important event 'minigame' would work really well for certain things that the current event system is just too simple to handle - e.g. it would help with the HRE situation, as well, or major coalition wars in V2 era. I'm hoping some solution makes it to Paradox' next iteration of games.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Got some moar stuff done:

- Norway has more historically accurate borders now, with Nordland as and independent Lappish county inbetween Norway and Kvens who now control Finnmark.
- Added the Duchy of Lappi, consisting of Kemi, Kantalahti and Kola.
- Moved Savo from Duchy of Finland to Duchy of Karelia.
- Moved Saaremaa from Duchy of Livonia to Duchy of Estonia.
- Finnish culture is now Baltic Finnic culture.
- Ugric Baltic removed.
- Baltic Finns in Liivinmaa and Dorpat now.
- Patronym compatible male names in the culture file for Finns.
- Perkele is now replaced by Väinämöinen.
- Old values for Warrior Cult put back in.
- New holding slot in Saaremaa and Häme.
- Häme now has the City of Vanaja.
- Kingdom of Finland can now only be created by Finno-Ugric culture AND Finnish pagan religion. It is now called Kingdom of Tshudes.


Houses on the map, mostly chosen for loose plausibility and fun:
- Fornjótr is now the ruling house of Kvens.
- Kaleva is now the ruling house of Estonia.
- Kirmukarmu is now the ruling house of Satakuntans.
- Kalervo is now the ruling house of Karelia.
- Untamo is now the ruling house of Käkisalmians.


Shit to do: Events mostly. Patch compatiblity test.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Brainstorming:

Should a highly talented Pagan tribal leader with Ambitious trait have a Unification invasion casus belli on his cultural and religious kin?

 

[Malakal]

No idea, you have to decide if its for gameplay reasons or historical ones.

How were relations between pagans at the time? Were they warring with each other for no reason or for small reasons? Were wars of unification common, empires rising and crumbling? If yes then do add, if no then it doesnt make historical sense.

From gameplay point of view its a good idea for AI pagans. Could help them survive longer. But there should be clauses to make sure that they dont wage wars on each other while having a common external threat.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, historically the biggest issue is that if written records existed, they were destroyed by the Swedes (possibly Novgorod too), and for the same reason archaeological evidence is also scarce. However, there is little doubt that the Baltic Finnic peoples were divided into tribes, with Oesalians/Estonians, Karelians, Kvens and Tavastians being the most prominent.

The idea is primarily there for gameplay reasons, it would make it possible for a skilled and ambitious pagan to become a major threat for the Catholics in the area. That is, without endless fabrication of claims, and in a manner that is preferable to Holy War. I'm also thinking about snatching the Tribal Raid CB from the Pagans! mod, eventually.

Some changes:

- Patch 1.05c compatibility done.
- File directories cleaned up.
- Moved Latgale from de jure of Livonia to de jure of Courland.
- Saaremaa is back in Livonia de jure.

Stuff to do: Events (jeesatkaa kaiffarit), new CBs, religious authority

Possibilities to consider: New Holy Orders, new Mercenaries?

 

[curry]

I think you're too interested in making Finnish pagans too powerful. The counties in Finland have too many holding slots - 4 slots is way too much. It's ridiculous that there's more than in the counties in Northern Africa.

You might also want to consider removing the northernmost counties making Lappland terra incognita to prevent Sweden and Norway from quickly killing off the Pagans. It's better and realistic that they have to attack from the sea.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Terra Incognita is not possible to put in easily. I'm also not certain about the need to do that. Currently the Swedes will always invade "by sea" through Åland. I put a little stopper in the North anyway, with Kvens now having Finnmark as well so it's preferable to take the Åland detour.

The county slots are very much in line with the neighbouring areas.

Anyway, some changes:

- Häme now has 3 slots as before.
- Added the Tribal Raid CB from Pagans! mod.
- Added the unification Invasion CB, which functions as follows:

1) Ruler must have Martial 20 and Ambitious trait. Must be in pagan religion group.
2) Target must share culture group and the exact same (pagan) religion. May change the need to be the exact same culture as well.
3) All occupied provinces are taken yadda yadda yadda.
4) Cannot be used by or on Kings (or emperors).
5) Cannot be used within the same Realm.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In case people want to test the mod and chip in, here's the present version:

http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav1

 

[Trash]

So, now that the game has been out for a bit it might be nice to talk about what you guys feels is missing, should be in a patch or would be awesome to see in an expansion. Here's some of the stuff that springs to my mind.

Wargoals worked great in EU3. I'm sure an expansion on the current system in CK2 would improve the game.
Rebellions with goals. Stacks that spawn and just sit around are lame. Have peasant rebellions spread. Have burghers declare independent republics. Have new noble houses appear. Have angry peasants burn down your castle.
More options in (peace) negotiations.
Hostages. Like this.
Wards. Bring these back. They were a mayor diplomatic tool. Don't see why it should work in CK1 and not in CK2.
More ambitions, plots and decisions.
A fuckload of events.
More diverse province modifiers. Like for instance province specific bonuses and penalties like ruins, ancient roman roads, etc.
Province buildings. I miss my thieves guild.
Holdings that can degrade due to for instance war or plague. Everything is always growing. In reality fortunes often grew and diminished.
Naval Combat. Not a biggie but why not?
Expanded and playable muslims and pagans.
Expanded and perhaps even playable republics.
Relics and cathedrals as told in the post release dev diary.
Birth events. I modded them in myself but I still would love to see them in an official patch.
More diversity in character portraits. Everything for this is in place. Mods already fix it but again, would like to see it made official.


So, what do you want to see?

 

[hoverdog]

The thieves guilds is in fact in the game. Try to maintain a demesne bigger than your limit for a month or two.

 

[scratchmonkey]

And you can get buildings within holdings, including parts of your castle, burned down if you let peasants hang around long enough. You have to let them completely occupy a province and then wait and then get lucky and then they usually only do it once before disbanding, so they could definitely make it a whole lot worse.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If you want, I can modify the rebel events for my mod to make burning and such happen much more often.

 

[Malakal]

That wont help since rebels extremely rarely conquer anything.

I suggest instead that you tried modding in siege events destroying buildings. Perhaps even some looting events tied to successful sieges. If its possible that would go a long way towards stimulating decline of realms like mongol invasion on Russia.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Certainly doable, I think. I'll just have to look up the siege condition and put in a decent likelihood of happening, with a modifier that makes Mongol sieges in Russia much more devastating (something like 10X likelier). Though the problem there would be that Mongols have too much money and thus just repair it immediately afterwards (I probably should check what their tech levels and progress speed are, should probably severely limit any but military tech from progressing so they won't really rebuild).

While at it, I probably should get around to making that early negative modifier for BE (along with knocking it down to a titular title) along with more aggressive Turks. And make it so HRE has a very hard time to establish a centralized authority, much less getting rid of Elective (actually I should probably split the unwillingness for stronger Imperial authority through laws between Elective giving a penalty to approval of tighter Laws along with just being HRE).

EDIT: So, until someone helps me come up with ideas for events/decisions/whatnot for Finnish pagans/tests out the unification Invasion CB, I'm going to work on the following:

- Siege-caused building destruction events for all sieges.
- A *lot* more of those events for goddamn Mongorians in Russia.
- Mongorian has no time for love, only war (tech modifiers).
- BE taking it up the ass from the Turk.
- Titular BE instead of de jure.
- HRE shenanigans.

I'm not going to work on plagues and such to as large of an extent. I quite like the arcade-y touch of the vanilla gameplay, so I'm trying to conserve it as much as possible while improving historical aspects.

I should probably do something about France too if I'm going to do things to HRE and BE. Or should I? How's everyone else's experiences with France?

 

[Malakal]

Is it possible to remove technology advances from a province? Like reducing Mongol conquered provinces back to barbarism?

 

[oscar]

Any Russian history buffs actually know what the effect of the Mongol advance on the Russian economy? I thought after the initial punch-up, they'd just send a few riders every year demanding tribute and then leave them pretty much alone.

 

[curry]

You should do something to stop HRE and France from conquering Iberia all the time

 

[Calem Ravenna]

Indeed, CK2plus is THE mod to try. Out of curiosity, what parts of the mod do you not agree with?

Mostly that he's been attempting to balance it too much lately for his beloved mp. And with that been nerving and cutting out features and made some questionable design decisions regarding others. No prestige from wars and holy wars actually costing piety for instance? I get why for balance reasons but makes absolutely no sense in the setting. For me this is a Shakespearian Dynasty Simulator, not Starcraft II MP.

Still, the mod has way too much awesome to let stuff like this detract.

Yeah, agreed on this.

Still, paying piety for holy wars greatly reduces the spamming of this CB. With decisions asking for sanctioned holy wars, he's on the right track to make the system more interesting and less silly on the surface.

In case people want to test the mod and chip in, here's the present version:

http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav1

So, what's the story behind the chieftains of the uralic savages just east of Rus Komi provinces? Are they supposed to be ugricbaltic/baltic_pagan (in vanilla, finnish/finnish_pagan in your mod) or is it just laziness on part of Pdox? Come to think of it, are chieftains of the Bjarmia region, also Komi, supposed to be Lappish?

Is it possible to remove technology advances from a province? Like reducing Mongol conquered provinces back to barbarism?

You can decrease the progress by 0.1 increments (reverse of the standard technological progress) but attemts to actually decrease the technology (from level 2 to 1 for example) leads to messed up numbers and sometimes even results in technological leaps to another level.

 

[curry]

lol, I just became the Pope. I thought this wasn't supposed to be even possible?

I started as the Count who's the Pope's vassal, then got myself some extra counties and eventually Duchy titles (Got raped by HRE though and lost a lot of land). I then attacked my liege with Depose Liege CB and won and became the Pope...

It's impossible to change the Succession Law from Open Elective, which means when the Pope dies there's a random successor. It's not game over, however. I just get to play as the new pope from another dynasty.

 

[Calem Ravenna]

Yeah, it's a known issue with feudal vassals under non-feudal lieges. Something with the depose liege CB bypasses the succession limitations. You can become a Doge the same way for example.

Don't remember if you will lose the game, Papal State splits away or you continue as normal when your ruler dies.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Certainly doable, I think. I'll just have to look up the siege condition and put in a decent likelihood of happening, with a modifier that makes Mongol sieges in Russia much more devastating (something like 10X likelier). Though the problem there would be that Mongols have too much money and thus just repair it immediately afterwards (I probably should check what their tech levels and progress speed are, should probably severely limit any but military tech from progressing so they won't really rebuild).

While at it, I probably should get around to making that early negative modifier for BE (along with knocking it down to a titular title) along with more aggressive Turks. And make it so HRE has a very hard time to establish a centralized authority, much less getting rid of Elective (actually I should probably split the unwillingness for stronger Imperial authority through laws between Elective giving a penalty to approval of tighter Laws along with just being HRE).

EDIT: So, until someone helps me come up with ideas for events/decisions/whatnot for Finnish pagans/tests out the unification Invasion CB, I'm going to work on the following:

- Siege-caused building destruction events for all sieges.
- A *lot* more of those events for goddamn Mongorians in Russia.
- Mongorian has no time for love, only war (tech modifiers).
- BE taking it up the ass from the Turk.
- Titular BE instead of de jure.
- HRE shenanigans.

I'm not going to work on plagues and such to as large of an extent. I quite like the arcade-y touch of the vanilla gameplay, so I'm trying to conserve it as much as possible while improving historical aspects.

I should probably do something about France too if I'm going to do things to HRE and BE. Or should I? How's everyone else's experiences with France?

My recent game has been making me think weakening the emperor's authority is clearly the way to go. A drooling retard became Basileus, and even with the empire continuing to be stable (since the Muslim world is a mess, noone is threatening the Byzantians), he was so weak that I crushed him in a Holy War for Cherson as Georgia, all the while watching with amusement as his vassals continued to fight their petty local wars. I literally had twice the army, with about a third of the holdings, and that's with me on medium crown authority. Then again, my ruler is a genius ubermensch with no stat below 15, so it only makes sense. I'd be ok if this was the default state of both empires, and they would only reach their current "untouchable killing machine" status under a very strong emperor.

About France, they seemed fine in most of my games. It's hard to say how much of that is an effect of the HRE stifling their growth, but I've also seen them lose ground to Iberian ragheads. I say, don't touch them until they've proven themselves to be problematic in testing.

By the way, it's so unfair that you can't declare a Holy War against Catholics as an Orthodox Heretic. Can you do it as a Catholic Heretic? I know I can do it against traditional Orthodox.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In case of HRE, it's pretty easy really. I just gotta make sure that the Emperor will *never* have levies from his vassals except when the HRE is under attack. This is done fairly simply by making it next to impossible for the Emperor to get any Crown Authority or Levy laws passed. France and Iberia is a lot more difficult to solve.

In case of Byzantium, titular title + penalty modifier + increased vassal rebellion chance + hungry hungry Turks for the first hundred years or so should do the trick.

In case people want to test the mod and chip in, here's the present version:

http://www.filedropper.com/kalevalav1

So, what's the story behind the chieftains of the uralic savages just east of Rus Komi provinces? Are they supposed to be ugricbaltic/baltic_pagan (in vanilla, finnish/finnish_pagan in your mod) or is it just laziness on part of Pdox? Come to think of it, are chieftains of the Bjarmia region, also Komi, supposed to be Lappish?

Oh, the Komi are a very real Uralic people that live in those areas to this day, and are closely related to Finns. Though in CK2 it's more of a blanket term for the Eastern Finno-Ugric peoples of the area, Komi themselves are native to in-game Bjarmia, as when you go further East you'd run into Mari, Udmurts, Muromians, Mordvins, etc. It's a fairly decent geographical blanket, as generally it's easiest to divide the ethnic lines of the time as Baltic Finns (division into Finnish and Ugric Baltic was nonsensical from accuracy perspective, and it also bears mention that the Ugric part means the peoples on the OTHER end of the geographical distribution of Finno-Ugrics, like Hungarians and Khanty), Lappish and a set for the Eastern peoples who've been pushed back by the Slav migration to Russia (there were no Slavs in Russia until the 8th-9th century, only Finno-Ugrics) during the few hundred years before game-start.

What I do have a problem with though is that the name file for Komi culture is something I must get around to, following more expertly opinion and advice on the subject.

Is it possible to remove technology advances from a province? Like reducing Mongol conquered provinces back to barbarism?

You can decrease the progress by 0.1 increments (reverse of the standard technological progress) but attemts to actually decrease the technology (from level 2 to 1 for example) leads to messed up numbers and sometimes even results in technological leaps to another level.

Well shiiit.

 

[Malakal]

Well then, it seems that the only way of representing devastation is a crude one - provincial modifiers of -% of levies and tax representing looting. But we enter MMU area once again where they did this in similar fashion.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, there is modifier provinces get after conquest that is based on culture and religion. Guess I could add a line about whether or not the conquerors are gorram mongorians too.