Crusader Kings 2

[Ailedhoo]

A tribal holding will be interesting. The new elective is alas not.

I have to wait and see to observe how the vassal limit will pay off.

 

[Quintillus]

I think it is premature to form any conclusions. So much of what has been announced is vague, and it's certainly possible there's more that has not been announced. It could be that it's simply not worth $20, or it could wind up being a really great expansion worth the price. Paradox may have done themselves a disservice by hyping it up and announcing the price so early while the features are not entirely known to the general public, but it's too early to make a judgement on the value.

And indeed, it certainly isn't necessary to buy the DLC. I haven't bought any of the EU4 expansions, and it's still lots of fun with quite a few updates.

In terms of marketing strategy, rather than announce a price (particularly one above what precedent has set) and then announce features, Paradox might do well to take a tip from Steve Ballmer on how to make things seem like a great bargain:


Link to video.

 

[Double A]

woah dang a clock that plays reversi

Can your expansion play Reversi, Paradox? Can it even tell time? You make me sick. 0/10 would not expand.

 

[scheva007]

I think scheva is missing the part where the DLC isn't a requirement to play the game, and that everybody is free not to buy something they don't like.

Feel free to play the other Crusader Kings-esque offerings.

so ironic... Cause Paradox games are the games where you need dlc the most of all.... You might not be interested in playing the byzantine empire, but if you want actual gameplay of for example retinues, you need it. It wont be any different here

"yeah you dont need the dlc, but if you want the full experience like we intended it, best buy it". Do you seriously only recommend the base game to people should they ask?

 

[Ailedhoo]

So the issue is with elements of the DLC not being free? Please tell me how the content of the DLC is requirement? I managed to play EU4 without the trade DLC for instance. True it adds to the game but it is not required. Paradox are not forcing you at gunpoint to get these features; you could choose at your leisure if you want them or not.

Though scepticism is healthy (as Impire warned me of when Paradox does make mistakes) outright pessimism is as disastrous as a zealot. No one forced you to buy Sunset Invasion after all, though I enjoy it greatly if not for the extra challenge and the fun of the sweet ironies bought forth. As Sone says you did not require the DLC to play the game; vanila CK2 was quite fun in itself, as I remember the great fun I had in my game as Poland... which ended with my "wise" decision to name a heir Abel (when I got to him I got assassinated) and my last ruler (a old king of Croatia) getting conquered.

 

[scheva007]

And thats also why i didnt buy sunset invasion. Because it didnt add substantial gameplay. I mentioned legacy of Rome as a dlc that did that (res publica for the dutch is another example, american dream for USA is another), only you chose to ignore that.....


If one of the main features of the dlc is just more people you have the -15 foreigner penalty with, yes, that is quite underwhelming

 

[Ailedhoo]

And thats also why i didnt buy sunset invasion. Because it didnt add substantial gameplay. I mentioned legacy of Rome as a dlc that did that (res publica for the dutch is another example, american dream for USA is another), only you chose to ignore that.....

Wait... additional elements are a force requirement for you? Playing colonial in EU4 was unable before Conquest of Paradise? Legacy of Rome does add lot more content for Rome, just as the Sons of Abraham did for religions and the Old Gods for relative with pagan powers but in the end you can choose even with the DLCs bought whether you want to activate them for your CK2 sessions. What happens if one has no interest in having the Legacy of Rome activated? They could either not buy it or if they had it turn it off in the start off screen. Really these options are options; it was a project from upwards. These are akin expansions, adding to the game but players can choose not to adopt them.

If one of the main features of the dlc is just more people you have the -15 foreigner penalty with, yes, that is quite underwhelming

Big CK2 DLCs or expansions tend to go beyond that. Any rate for the upcoming expansion we are still going to need more information before evaluation can be more fuller.

 

[SouthernKing]

Guys, just ignore him. It's clear that trying to reason with him isn't going to work.

Now, back on topic, if said post is true (which I have doubts about), then this expansion just became 200% cooler. Especially nomadic realms. This might actually have elements of the steppe DLC that everyone's wanted in it.

 

[cybrxkhan]

The fellow who posted about the tribal holdings or whatever seems to have started a new thread for everyone's convenience where he summarizes what he got out of developers. Part of it is educated guessing, but I think we can get an idea of what's possible and likely.

Tribal Holdings

Tribal holdings (though I don't know if that will be their actual in game names) sound like they will be much like castles, bishoprics and cities, although Doomdark also put trade posts in that list, which leads me to believe they might be an over-holding of some sort (to prevent the awkwardness of having one holding change to another later in the game). Essentially tribal holdings will represent lands that aren't properly fortified yet, more owned by virtue of people living there than by people actually building towns etc.

An interesting aspect of tribal holdings, is that vassals who are 'tribal' (presumably a new title equivalent to count, based on your holding type) don't provide levies in the way that a feudal vassal does. Instead, a tribal vassal must be called to arms, like an ally. In this way, your vassal management becomes much more important, and vassal ties are much looser. A king can only gain power if he is respected enough by his vassals, even more so than currently, and a vassal maintains full control of his own armies, making war much more scattered.

Elective Gavelkind

Another interesting new feature, designed for the breaking up of blobs: elective gavelkind. Empires being too blobby has always been a big concern, and even more so with the introduction of a start date that may very well include the entirety of Francia as one huge empire. At least one response to this, which also adds to the susceptibility of tribal civilisations falling apart without a leader, is elective gavelkind.

From what I can tell, elective gavelkind is much like what it sounds: it's a cross between tanistry and gavelkind. The new ruler must be selected from your dynasty, but I believe that other dynasty members will also get titles, as gavelkind suggests. In addition, upon succession, some vassals may be given the option to become independent, no war involved, much like the decadence mechanics are supposed to work.

The exact nature of this hasn't been settled on yet, since they're still testing it out, but it may be based on the power of the vassal relative to liege, the opinion of the vassal, or perhaps even a choice that everyone is given regardless, and then acted on appropriately. In any case, this serves to make early empires more likely to break apart, and perhaps constantly try and put themselves back together, in a way that current succession laws don't.
My only hesitation with this is that it will probably still be too easy to get a big mid-late game empire going. Once elective gavelkind is gone, I'm not sure what will be used to try and break apart large empires that have formed under primogeniture, or even normal elective. So, while this should solve the early Karling problem, I don't think it will do anything for the HRE, or for later game blobs. We shall see however: blobbing is clearly something in the forefront of the minds at Paradox, so hopefully this will also be settled. One possible solution is:

Vassal Limit

A new limit, much like the current demesne limit, will be imposed upon rulers with the introduction of the Charlemagne DLC. This limit does exactly what it suggests: it imposes a soft-cap on the number of independent vassals you can have in your realm before you start taking penalties. To offset this, you will be encouraged to hand out more duchy titles, and perhaps even kingdoms, as your empire becomes too large for you to manage each vassal yourself.

This is a great idea, and as unfortunate as it may be to have to impose rules like this, rather than providing encouragement for playing the game in a certain way, I think it fits in very well with the current demesne limit. It makes sense that if you can only manage so many holdings yourself, you can logically only manage so many vassals as well before you become stretched thin. This is why vassals exist in the first place.

In addition, this adds a new balancing factor to crown law. As crown law gets higher, and the monarch begins to exercise more direct control over his vassals, the vassal limit will decrease, so that more titles need to be handed out. This means that going up to absolute crown law will not only make your vassals like you less, but also encourage you to give those vassals more power as well, to help maintain the laws you impose.

As said before, I very much hope this will be the way to make empires crumble. With low crown laws, empires can be sprawling, but somewhat weak, with fewer levies to help defend against outside threats and even factions, and less control over their vassals. As crown law increases, larger vassals will come into play, curbing the power of monarchs who they don't like, making factions more likely to spawn. Ultimately, this may see more independence factions firing and being successful. Fingers crossed.

Seasons

Finally, seasonal changes, similar to EU4. I think everyone has been expecting something like this for a while, and I guess that Paradox decided to just throw it in there now. Seasons should have an effect upon attrition in provinces, making war in winter a more dangerous affair, and there was a hint that weather might effect combat, perhaps by changing terrain. Whether this will just affect military educations (fights better in snowy conditions) or whether there will be a weather effect on combat I'm not sure, but in either case this is a change I don't have much to say on other than it's there.

Overall, I think that might be all the information I got out of developers. I didn't have my journalism hat on at the time, so I didn't chase up nearly as many questions as I should have done, but hopefully that puts some fears to rest that people may have had. I know that I started off very disappointed in the idea of a further timeline extension, but having discussed with the devs, this sounds much more thought out than I gave them credit for. Here's hoping that everything goes as well as it does in my imagination.

 

[madviking]

yes for more anarchy

 

[Antilogic]

Tribal holdings sound interesting, it sounds like those will be useful for modders extending the timeline further back, for less settled parts of Scandinavia and the northeastern part of the map in early starts, and for the Mongols.

I like the idea of elective gavelkind although I will never use it.



Unrelated: I'm also quitting my Egypt game, I can't handle decadence as a game mechanic.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Someone I know who's involved with the beta (to what extent, I don't know) has confirmed that the above stuff about the tribal holdings and what not are more or less correct. He couldn't tell me specifics, of course, but eh. He did mention that there are probably some tribal holdings at even the 1066 start date, so there's that.

Unrelated: I'm also quitting my Egypt game, I can't handle decadence as a game mechanic.

RIP Antilogic's Egypt game.

 

[Antilogic]

RIP Antilogic's Egypt game.

The third 100k+ decadence stack was the final straw.

 

[_random_]

Is there any chance of somehow simulating the Great Schism? The current setup doesn't really reflect the way the united Chalcedonian Church functioned at all, but I also get that something more historical would be difficult to implement in terms of game mechanics, and we should have gotten it with Old Gods if we got it at all. I'm still gonna hold onto hope though, because the politics behind it all are pretty interesting and I want to create a world where the idea of Universal Jurisdiction never developed.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I wouldn't want Chalcedonian shenanigans not necessarily because I don't want it per se, but rather because I don't have confidence that PI would be able to do it justice, and in a way that is reasonably complex while still fun and making sense. I'm reminded of their attempt to portray the Hungarian invasion being a rather clumsy, bland, inaccurate, and, dare I say, not very fun, horde invasion at the 867 start.

If they want to do it properly then they'd have to develop some sort of mechanics that will allow it to proceed without being clunky or clumsy (I.e. don't just rely on a couple of big events that basically just say "lol u Catholics and Orthodox hate each other now"). Unfortunately, given that such mechanics might only be relevant to the 769 or the 867 start date, I don't think they'd bother developing such mechanics whether they do end up portraying a united Chalcedonian church or not.

 

[cybrxkhan]

So we got the live stream today for Charlemagne, I missed half of it but some folks I know filled me in on the other details, as well as some of the PI forum posts. Here's one of the summaries of the new features:

*Release date TBA.
*Nothing new about custom kingdoms and empires.
*New UI for starting a game, in order to remind people that things exist outside 769/867/1066.
*Zunbils
*No Crimean Goths (just as I predicted, more or less for the reasons I predicted), no Hellenic or Germanic pagans (which is more or less for the best IMO), no Schism or Celtic Christianity (again, for the best, although they're considering the latter, which wouldn't make sense as a separate religion or even a heresy), no Karantanci either.
*Centralization laws.
*The long overdue dichotomy between Frankish and French. Also new cultures; Somali, Pictish, Saxon, Visigoth and Lombard.
*A look into the prototypical chronicle, and pretty bad prototypical snow.
*Legalism "nerfed".
*Turns out the regency overhaul we've heard about is mainly just more regency-related events.
*Tribal holdings that can only be upgraded with prestige - and when they're upgraded far enough, they can become either a city or a castle.
*Elective gavelkind, which I don't think works quite how anyone expected it to (i.e. it's literally elective + gavelkind, rather than the three-way-tanistry type of thing I think everyone was expecting), and is only available to tribes.
*A few events for Charlemagne - events for other people conspicuously absent.
*No more assassination button
*No cadet branches this time around.
*Frisian and Proto-Russian cultures may be included.
*Various other tidbits revealed in-between the devs' inane prattling (which is why I would've preferred a dev diary, because there's more focus, less time wasted and less filler when they make those).

To be honest the most interesting thing was the addition of th Zunbils and the religion of ZZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN (even though it's something they probably coded in less than an hour, given the religion is featureless, but hey) given PIs depiction of Central Asia is kinda atrocious.


EDIT: here's a reddit thread with some screenshots from the stream: http://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaz...ew_charlemagne_stream_highlights_i_made_with/

 

[Ailedhoo]

The tribal holdings will be interesting to try out...

*No more assassination button

My quick dice removal plans!

Still: I can always keep to organised removal plans!

 

[SouthernKing]

I say this as someone who has generally supported Paradox's decisions in the past; I'm becoming increasingly dubious as to the direction this expansion is going. I'll withhold final judgement until later, especially since there are quite a few good things there, but still.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I say this as someone who has generally supported Paradox's decisions in the past; I'm becoming increasingly dubious as to the direction this expansion is going. I'll withhold final judgement until later, especially since there are quite a few good things there, but still.

I'm getting the feeling after the more ambitious projects like TOG and ROI, the devs are, in a way, finally biting more than they can chew with Charlemagne. Originally there was mention that this expansion would be worth $20, the biggest ever, but in the stream they mentioned Charlemagne is somewhat equal to TOG in size and scope, and they haven't decided the price yet.

At best, I think they decided to announce this too early.

 

[Civ'ed]

Oh god this is prime wait for deep sale material isn't it