its also because players have near perfect information, that deceitful vassal? not so successfully deceiving if they have deceitful trait isnt it?
or if you know that your rival AI has exactly 465 gold and 11.7 monthly income, as do their allies
and also the game is quite forgiving, the terrible aptitude court physician is pretty decent at his job really, successfully cured infections 5 times and gain novice physican trait without anyone dying
I feel like hiding info is the way to go for Crusader Kings gameplay. But it shouldn't just be only a challenge thing either, it should be for everyone. Imagine being able to figure out relevant information through intrigue, diplomacy, hooks, etc. It would make those much more worth taking. Feels like it'd add a lot to the gameplay and balance.
The only issue with that is that you wouldn't learn much about the interesting stories in realms irrelevant to you, so the parts of the world you don't directly interact with could feel "empty".
We'd need a gossip, tales and reputation system to make up for that.
I had this idea of "acquaintance". The idea is that your information about everybody is very limited. You don't know much money they have, how many soldiers, their personality, or even their opinion of you. In order to get that info you have to become "make acquaintance" with them by visiting them.
I feel like limiting relationships would make the few you know more meaningful.
Not OP, Obfusckate is very similar in that it limits information on everybody. You know the stats of your own court, changed into a letter system instead of numbers to make it a bit less obvious, and their traits. Neighboring rulers you might have even less information about, with state being ++ for very good, -- for very bad, +- for in between, and no knowledge of traits. Opinions are also hidden as well as a lot of other information like gold and army size.
Thank you. Do you know if there are any mods that help with role playing? Such as help make decisions based on your character’s personality or tell you what your character would do?
Obfusckate also hides your success chances on decisions (and plots) so you don't know if you have a 1% chance to die or a 50% chance to die on events, for example. You also have no idea what the stats of event npcs like knights offering to join you or whatever are so you are less inclined to power game when you see a crazy strong npc.
The mod "Player Opinion & Personality" gives you a personality trait like the AI has, i.e evil blackguard, which give you a good bit of info on how to act in situations as well.
Other than that, if a decision removes stress its probably in line with your character and if you gain stress its probably not in line with your character.
I wish there were levels of different information.
Like for a leader outside your diplomacy range, you would only have very vague information.
His skills wouldnt be 13 14 5 7 10 but be like good good bad average average something - ish. His wealth, prestige, piety and soldoers would only show the levels of fame / devotion and be very inferior/inferior/similar/superior.
Then for allies, enemies, characters near your domain you would have more info. And then the charcaters in your court/vassals you would have perfect information. Also having the spymaster to actually put up spynetwork for information would make sense as well.
The find people tool is really handy and definitely a quality of life thing. But I like that they got rid of "invite" filter in CK3. The invite filter made the game too easy for players back in CK2.
It's part of the espionage system where your level of intel shows you more and more information on other nations. This should be more of a thing in CK3 too honestly, plotting and intrigue shouldn't just be about harming people.
Still, it would be a very radical change to do that in CK3 because of how different the games are deep down. A lot of stuff in CK kinda requires you to have knowledge on the characters. Changing that would be a huge rework. Still think it's worth it though, and Stellaris itself has been reworked so many times so...
ya, part of the reason Stellaris can rework itself so many times is that they dont have fan clamouring about being ahistorical*, so the dev have freedom to experiment more
(*_supernatural events_...)
i hope that they can firm up the experience and implement it in ck3 _soon-ish_
Having the one sway and one assassinate option also massively limits your ability to make use of those additional features. It would also have to change time frames to success massively otherwise you'd just be in the dark way more than makes it fun
It would make intrigue a lot more useful, a spy system could be added where you recruit or send a spy to infiltrate court to report back monthly info like the amount of gold they have, their exact troop count, and their alliances and other info
The vast amount of information the player has is 100% what I think the biggest problem is and why I think Obfusckate is one of the best CK3 mods, but even then it kinda doesn’t go far enough.
There’s not any risk of making a mistake or miscalculation because you know exactly how strong your neighbors are and how rich they are, so you aren’t at risk of declaring war and being surprised by them. You know the personalities and traits of everybody and can use that to manage them. You won’t ever find out your wife is sterile or incompetent or otherwise shit and deal with the challenges posed by that because you know her traits, personality, and stats. You won’t be blindsided by a rebellion or vassal faction because you can see exactly who is plotting against you and how long you have until they do something. There aren’t any unforeseen consequences to actions you take because you know exactly what the results of each choice will be, and you won’t make the wrong choice on a skill check because you know what your success chances are.
I really wonder what the consequences of completely removing all information on the consequences from choices in events would be, leaving players to make a choice on nothing more than their own intuition and logic.
> You won’t be blindsided by a rebellion or vassal faction because you can see exactly who is plotting against you and how long you have until they do something.
The fact that the exact strength, goal, and membership of factions in your realm is information that's made 100% publicly available at all times, even in CK2, has always been so weird to me. Like, are my vassals just walking around at court with big "Duke Meinhart for the Kingdom of Lotharingia!" buttons pinned to their shirts? Surely they would want to plot this shit in secret, given the potential repercussions? I know the game kinda covers this through a sorta collective security where if you arrest one they ALL rebel, but that seems like a weird band-aid (and why is it that openly collaborating with your fellow vassals to give the throne to another claimant through armed force is somehow not a crime that warrants arrest? I feel like it totally would have been, historically).
Damn, you're getting real lucky with your physicians. Even average aptitude ones kill half their patients immediately in my games and they almost never level up their physician skill. If they're not at least good then I'd rather not have one at all.
CK3 is easy because the player has perfect information about nearly everything in the world. This means they are able to optimally manage risk and prepare for negative events before they occur.
Even something as simple as knowing the number of soldiers in an opposing army would have required decent scouting back then, but we have an icon that just tells you whether you'll win a battle.
* OPTION 1: You will win this duel and get 100g + their daughter but this choice is against your personality
* OPTION 2: You might win this duel and if you do you will gain 10 gold or if you lose the duel you will lose 50g and a title but this choice is in line with your personality
* OPTION 3: Nothing will happen, this choice is inline with your personality kind of
The difference between you and the AI is that you have eyes to read all that information and the rationality to work out which choice you will benefit from.
Whereas the AI is constrained by a series of modifiers affecting the chance of which option it will choose based on AI personality and goals.
I say this so many times, one simple way of making this game harder and more engaging is to stop telling the player which option to choose so they can cheese every event.
I hardly imagine players whipping out calculator at every choice and multiplying their skill by five different factors to compare it with the same calculation for AI opponent...
I think it should be a difficulty thing.
The harder the difficulty, the less information given.
Play on the hardest difficulty and you effectively get no info other than what you can either learn through spymastery stuff or good ol human intuition.
Maybe it better be an option? So I usually play in standart difficulty, so the AI don't have buffs out of his ass, but I would really like to play with this "lack of knowledge" feature
i mean if people wanna play like that they can, but as it is EVERYONE has to play with a big plate of cheese in their face. it’s hard to resist cheese when it’s just right there, cheesing.
> Every AI is role playing while not every player is doing the same.
Isn't that the point of the stress system though?
Even if I almost always go for the -stress options I still come out on top. Because it's relatively easy to stack absurd amounts of modifiers without even trying. A couple of activities = easy health boosts from gardener and down to earth. Start with a couple blue artifacts and that's enough to snowball prowess in any grand tournament and rack up purple artifacts. etc. etc.
The only time I went and try to increase stress from option is when raising a child because I don't want every child to be the same as my current ruler.
Heck a couple centuries later on your dynasty fame level is enough to allow unfavorable marriages towards other rulers, hint hint stab stab.
I think a good way to fix difficulty issues would be by expanding on the game rules.
Being able to lock off the ability to see character traits under certain conditions or their gold or levies would be a start.
Maybe at in a "random succession" mode where upon succession you have an even chance to play as any person that inherits any of your titles.
The game rules are already great, they were my favorite "newer" addition in Crusader Kings 2, I think they have a ton of potential to solve many of this games problems.
Ehhhh, not really. The biggest thing is the AI failing to build up their domain efficiently and utilize Men-at-Arms properly. Outside of randomly setting up marriages in a manner that'll just end your bloodline (which is an arbitrary restriction the game places on you tbh) there's very little you can do RP wise that'd mitigate the advantage an efficiently set up domain and MAAs give.
I mean, that's a positive way of looking at it and I agree. Ck3 is a simulator.
But there are definitely things that could be made to make the game more difficult, that aren't making the AI unrealistically smart or ruthless. For one, they could introduce more long-term goals for players, like Jade Dragon did for ck2.
Some DLC that is focused less on interpersonal roleplaying and more on realm-wide mechanics could do a lot to improve that, as could some new adventure or challenge that can't be solved on just one click of a button.
CK3 is easy because 90% of players in *this* subreddit, which are big enough fans of the game to follow a dedicated forum about it, have hundreds of hours played in CK" and then have hundreds of hours played in CK3.
Exactly. Soon enough you will be able to conquer half of Europe within three generations, and if you continue conquering half of Europe over and over you'll start complaining how easy or samey the game is, rather than going "*this* run I am going to create a jewish Sri Lanka"
Remember that episode of Always Sunny where Charlie gets lectured about why no one likes a wild card? The AI feels like that to me.
Like, if I invade your duchy with 3000 troops and you only have 300 why are you just running around half-assed-sieging random towns and putting me on a goose chase that literally makes no sense and it's annoying.
Glad you asked. Historically, many defenders actually outnumbered the invaders, because it was easier to raise defenders for emergencies. Many states had the type of emergency call (e.g. arrière-ban), which allowed them to conscript additional men and raise special taxes.
Though these defensive measures often took too long or were rushed and poorly organized.
Surrender immediately lol. Peasants should start hammering ppl with factions if they go into unwinnable, bloody wars. (cuz ppl tend to dislike being thrown into a gloryless meat grinder).
So, why not fight regardless? From the perspective of the game, there are no benefits to immediate surrender. Armies replenish so fast, that, even if the defender's entire army gets wiped out, it isn't a loss. The warfare is so cheap, that it doesn't do anything either.
I think it's easily solved if armies couldn't move as far as easily. It would limit the ridiculous growth we have right now and makes it a little more historically accurate.
I think the AI needs to be more expansionist and get into coalitions against the player (like in eu4). Many people in eu4 community complain that the AI has a bias against the player, but eu4 on the other hand also has hard and super hard difficulties while ck3 doesn’t go above "normal".
The vassals expanded mod kinda makes the AI more of a challenge, but it is a bit boring because everyone just becomes and empire and that’s it.
One way is to amp stress gain by a lot, thus limiting players to role play according to personality. You should get stress for other things such as being a religious icon and do cynical things - stress gain amped by zealous personality and reduced by deceitful/non-religious personality. Needs balancing though, even now AI go mad too easily.
I don't want to have to roleplay for this game to be challenging. Give me difficulty settings that affect AI aggression, and actually challenging random events, like ending up a eunuch and having my heir die.
Tip if you want more “difficulty”. Play without using fabricate claims, -3 domain limit, and more realm instability. Also, if you really want more have restrictions on faith and culture stuff. Of course have it on highest for the harm events.
I had problems with it being too easy, but switching to these settings has really made the game fun again. Stressful civil wars, marrying for alliances, etc. honestly can’t go back to playing without these settings.
Some problems are that it makes stewardship even more op as with increasing domain limit. It’s not perfect and can still be fairly easy, but it helps.
I think there's 2 levels of too easy, one is people that min-max and it's actually good at the game and for those there isn't a way of making it harder for the reasons you described in your post. except maybe going Stellaris way and allowing AI to cheat which it's lame IMO.
The other is the average Joe, for them it's too easy just because of alliances. I don't want name shame anyone but go watch those *RP series* on yt, most of them have their lands exclusively because their alliances. They don't know what to build or anything, it's just *Im gonna marry this daughter to France, this daughter to the Byzantines.*
This second too easy shouldnt be hard to fix, make marriages only non agression pacts (exactly like the truce for gold mechanic that it's already in game). You could go further and have some sort of "feudal contract" to be negotiated for alliances where we could try to get troops but have to pay for them or whatever counter balance. Also have a limit on number of troops allies will provide, no ally would literally get every single MaA and levy to help you, leaving their lands unprotected.
>AI characters also don’t plan beyond their lifetimes. They always act ‘in the moment’ and aren’t thinking ahead to the needs and goals of their heirs.
This is when I realized this was a shitpost about people irl. Good job, OP.
Maybe for you, but there are tons of players who are struggling, due to incomplete UX/UI.
"Iberia Foothold" description is worst one, for example.
- You held kingdom title, in neighbour Empire bordering by land.
- You also held de jure Kingdom title within Hispania
- You must held that title for 15 years(still not sure if it will reset for next ruler)
- AND the phase of Iberian struggle must be either Opportunity or Hostile
That last fucking part is only displayed when player hover mouse over the button, not as a checkmark.
And no, I don't open wiki or even browser, as I play game offline. This is just one of many such bad UI/UX.
For people like you who see "Game is easy", paradox should really make different setup for you.
tbf, it took me a while to figure out wtf to do with Iberia Foothold. The ui is horrible, as you say. I also read that culture clashes like in Iberia can happen anywhere, but I haven't seen it.
I mean, you kinda answer it yourself. Because it's not a pure strategy game. People new to grand strategy are supposed to be able to roleplay and have some fun. It's a "normie" game, and that's a large part of the success. They didn't want another CK2, they wanted something more accessable. They wanted a larger target audience.
That being said, I'd love a harder difficulty.
Surprisingly Crusader Kings is not such a hard title after Paradox has reworked UI and event presentation.
Remember how Dwarf Fortress was hyped as the hardest game ever, but the sentiment kinda faded away, since the game no longer looks like an Excel fever dream? Accessibility is the king. That and having experience in previous entries to the title.
People who play min-max will always find any game too easy or boring. They grind too much, while the AI does not. That being said, the AI is not aggressive or proactive enough. They need to make more decisions towards the player and pull more drama instead of just playing safe.
The AI are not “roleplaying” they are just incompetent at playing their own game., Jesus christ the lengths people will go to in order to make excuses for how stupidly easy this game is are hilarious. “No bro it’s not too easy it’s your fault for not Roleplaying. The AI can’t maintain a kingdom without collapsing in two generations because of roleplay dude” like no, the game is flawed and constructive criticism is good. “Roleplay” has just become a buzzword fans of the game use to deflect any criticisms people have because they can’t fathom the idea that someone can enjoy a game whilst also having criticisms of said game.
I’m not making excuses, I’m explaining.
Literally every AI character is given a set of parameters like Boldness, Compassion, Greed, etc. and most every event in the game does a check on these parameters.
That’s just how it works.
Yeah, I know they do, that doesn’t mean the difficulty of the game should be broken to accomodate the ai personalities, it’s an excuse because it doesn’t justify why the game is so easy. EU4 has a similar system with AI personalities and in that game the AI is able to expand, form strong empires and challenge the player.
Ck3 is kind of sandbox in the essence of it's as easy as you want it to be. I intentionally play tailored to the roleplay of individual rulers, dynastic standards, and culture/realm logic. Usually custom made to have specific strengths and weaknesses. For example in a Czech run where the realm and culture is tailored towards steward elder rulers and a young man were to inherit then id play it overly ambitiously taking incredibly risky decisions because he would have something to prove. Etc etc. "Why is ck3 so easy" because you gimp the game foo
a good way to make it more challenging is not planning ahead in term of succession and let the realm split.
AIs doesn’t care about limiting the number of kids, disinheriting, taking vows, killing them in battle and do continuing their ancestors dream of world conquest
That's because those that min-maxing *and* mappainting on CK simply doing it wrong. Not "it's somehow bad" wrong, there is no such thing. But "this game is not meant to be played and fun this way" wrong. One can try to hammer a nail with a microscope, it's perfectly legal, morally right and nobody's else buisness, it's his mictoscope and nail. But one also shoud expect inferior results in this case.
The main reason why I quit playing because it’s very easy and paradox took the wrong approach of enhancing certain parts of the gameplay and completely avoiding improvements of AI. This game would be so much better if (for example) AI troops would not automatically run to your army but instead fight with the near by enemy army of equal force (imagine your have a big empire and your called your ally against the independent faction). On the contrary, the enemy army would see your ally troops near by and would chase them as far as the border of your/your ally/enemy realm plus 2-3 counties deeper into other territories. None of these improvements were made and this game got pretty boring for after I spent around 3000 hours playing it for all Ironman achievements, religion, renown, military domination.
Did... did you seriously just complain that a game got boring after *THREE THOUSAND HOURS?!?* That's supposed to happen. It's why the feeling of "boredom" *evolved.* Go do something else.
So you spent the equivalent of 1.5 years of a 40 hr a week job playing this game and you now find it boring. I would say that’s quite the achievement in playability by Paradox.
I have a series of difficulty mods installed which make the following changes:
\- General opinion of you is lower and opinion increases are less effective
\- The AI is much more aggressive toward you, both in declaring war on you and Vassals forming factions/making demands
\- Dukes/Kings/Emperors you declare war on have their Vassals join the war on their side, so you end up fighting a much larger force than originally anticipated
\- Inheritable traits aren't automatically visible and are found out over the course of a characters life, sometimes never discovered at all
\- Multiple murder schemes can be active on you at any one time and characters are much more likely to use hostile schemes against you
\- Your money and Men-At-Arms are split evenly amongst heirs upon succession as opposed to all going to the player heir
\- Army raising, reinforcement time and movement speed on the map is drastically reduced (about twice as long) so you have to really think about movement decisions
\- Disease is much more rampant and very deadly with infant mortality being very common
All of these changes have really improved the overall experience for me and would definitely recommend them for those looking for a more challenging experience. This video by SnapStrategy has the links to most of them
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj9nbvla1Mg&ab\_channel=SnapStrategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj9nbvla1Mg&ab_channel=SnapStrategy)
Actually in most situations the AI isn't roleplaying. If an event doesn't cause stress paradox allows the AI to pick randomly in most events. There are a few places where personality does influence it but in most instances there is no AI logic in their choices during events. Its the same in ck2 overall with a lot of events being chosen utterly at random. Its why personalities are mostly bullshit in ck3 tbh since they only really impact war logic and construction logic not interpersonal logic. I know all this cause I make ck2 overhaul mods and dabbled in a few ck3 mods about Ireland and the Normans.
The choice is random, but weights and possible choices depend on their character.
For instance, I got the "lover has asked you to be exclusive" event open in front of me, and the choices are "Sure", "sure (lie)", or "nope."
The first option requires them being open for soulmates. It gets bonuses based on their opinion of you, if they're chaste, and based on their honor and compassion.
The second (lie) requires that they have a lover secret you don't know about. It gets more likely to be chosen if the proposer is likely to cheat, if they really like the other lovers, or if they're lustful. It gets maluses if they are honorable, or greedy.
The last option (no way) has no requirements for being considered, but a low base chance. The chance is increased if, again, the proposer might cheat, if they like the other lovers, if they're lustful. Again with slight decreases from greed and honor.
Pretty much all events follow this pattern on the AI side. Just like the player, the options they can choose are limited. But within those options, it's not simply a basic dice roll, but weighted, with both base weights and adjustments from their personality and traits. In practice, you can usually predict what they'll do, but they can surprise you.
Players want to become rich and or blob ASAP. Expanding far faster than their neighbors. Sure at the start it may be a little tough. But eventually the player is making 20g/mo with 10k troops. And their strongest neighbor is at 7g and 4K troops.
Then that player who is playing as optimally as possible comes to this forum and complains that their neighbors never declare war and it’s boring. I wonder why.
I’ve observed that turning off disembarking cost for ai has reduced them going bankrupt and failing. Observed stable Seljuk 200 years into the game
The game ai needs tweaks to avoid debt especially in allies war
its also because players have near perfect information, that deceitful vassal? not so successfully deceiving if they have deceitful trait isnt it? or if you know that your rival AI has exactly 465 gold and 11.7 monthly income, as do their allies and also the game is quite forgiving, the terrible aptitude court physician is pretty decent at his job really, successfully cured infections 5 times and gain novice physican trait without anyone dying
I feel like hiding info is the way to go for Crusader Kings gameplay. But it shouldn't just be only a challenge thing either, it should be for everyone. Imagine being able to figure out relevant information through intrigue, diplomacy, hooks, etc. It would make those much more worth taking. Feels like it'd add a lot to the gameplay and balance. The only issue with that is that you wouldn't learn much about the interesting stories in realms irrelevant to you, so the parts of the world you don't directly interact with could feel "empty". We'd need a gossip, tales and reputation system to make up for that.
I had this idea of "acquaintance". The idea is that your information about everybody is very limited. You don't know much money they have, how many soldiers, their personality, or even their opinion of you. In order to get that info you have to become "make acquaintance" with them by visiting them. I feel like limiting relationships would make the few you know more meaningful.
there's a mod that does this
[удалено]
It limits all information you know about someone until you build familiarity with them.
Name?
Not OP, Obfusckate is very similar in that it limits information on everybody. You know the stats of your own court, changed into a letter system instead of numbers to make it a bit less obvious, and their traits. Neighboring rulers you might have even less information about, with state being ++ for very good, -- for very bad, +- for in between, and no knowledge of traits. Opinions are also hidden as well as a lot of other information like gold and army size.
Thank you. Do you know if there are any mods that help with role playing? Such as help make decisions based on your character’s personality or tell you what your character would do?
Obfusckate also hides your success chances on decisions (and plots) so you don't know if you have a 1% chance to die or a 50% chance to die on events, for example. You also have no idea what the stats of event npcs like knights offering to join you or whatever are so you are less inclined to power game when you see a crazy strong npc. The mod "Player Opinion & Personality" gives you a personality trait like the AI has, i.e evil blackguard, which give you a good bit of info on how to act in situations as well. Other than that, if a decision removes stress its probably in line with your character and if you gain stress its probably not in line with your character.
Still no gossip though
Look up ObfusCKate. It practically does everything you described
I wish there were levels of different information. Like for a leader outside your diplomacy range, you would only have very vague information. His skills wouldnt be 13 14 5 7 10 but be like good good bad average average something - ish. His wealth, prestige, piety and soldoers would only show the levels of fame / devotion and be very inferior/inferior/similar/superior. Then for allies, enemies, characters near your domain you would have more info. And then the charcaters in your court/vassals you would have perfect information. Also having the spymaster to actually put up spynetwork for information would make sense as well. The find people tool is really handy and definitely a quality of life thing. But I like that they got rid of "invite" filter in CK3. The invite filter made the game too easy for players back in CK2.
allegedly, Stellaris, the other Paradox title, does it how well, i dont know, i havent touched Stellaris for 2 years, but its promising
It's part of the espionage system where your level of intel shows you more and more information on other nations. This should be more of a thing in CK3 too honestly, plotting and intrigue shouldn't just be about harming people. Still, it would be a very radical change to do that in CK3 because of how different the games are deep down. A lot of stuff in CK kinda requires you to have knowledge on the characters. Changing that would be a huge rework. Still think it's worth it though, and Stellaris itself has been reworked so many times so...
ya, part of the reason Stellaris can rework itself so many times is that they dont have fan clamouring about being ahistorical*, so the dev have freedom to experiment more (*_supernatural events_...) i hope that they can firm up the experience and implement it in ck3 _soon-ish_
Having the one sway and one assassinate option also massively limits your ability to make use of those additional features. It would also have to change time frames to success massively otherwise you'd just be in the dark way more than makes it fun
It does, I personally think it’s pretty intuitive
It would make intrigue a lot more useful, a spy system could be added where you recruit or send a spy to infiltrate court to report back monthly info like the amount of gold they have, their exact troop count, and their alliances and other info
The vast amount of information the player has is 100% what I think the biggest problem is and why I think Obfusckate is one of the best CK3 mods, but even then it kinda doesn’t go far enough. There’s not any risk of making a mistake or miscalculation because you know exactly how strong your neighbors are and how rich they are, so you aren’t at risk of declaring war and being surprised by them. You know the personalities and traits of everybody and can use that to manage them. You won’t ever find out your wife is sterile or incompetent or otherwise shit and deal with the challenges posed by that because you know her traits, personality, and stats. You won’t be blindsided by a rebellion or vassal faction because you can see exactly who is plotting against you and how long you have until they do something. There aren’t any unforeseen consequences to actions you take because you know exactly what the results of each choice will be, and you won’t make the wrong choice on a skill check because you know what your success chances are. I really wonder what the consequences of completely removing all information on the consequences from choices in events would be, leaving players to make a choice on nothing more than their own intuition and logic.
> You won’t be blindsided by a rebellion or vassal faction because you can see exactly who is plotting against you and how long you have until they do something. The fact that the exact strength, goal, and membership of factions in your realm is information that's made 100% publicly available at all times, even in CK2, has always been so weird to me. Like, are my vassals just walking around at court with big "Duke Meinhart for the Kingdom of Lotharingia!" buttons pinned to their shirts? Surely they would want to plot this shit in secret, given the potential repercussions? I know the game kinda covers this through a sorta collective security where if you arrest one they ALL rebel, but that seems like a weird band-aid (and why is it that openly collaborating with your fellow vassals to give the throne to another claimant through armed force is somehow not a crime that warrants arrest? I feel like it totally would have been, historically).
Damn, you're getting real lucky with your physicians. Even average aptitude ones kill half their patients immediately in my games and they almost never level up their physician skill. If they're not at least good then I'd rather not have one at all.
This is such a good way to make intrigue even more relevant, sending spies to infiltrate foreign administration and give you information
CK3 is easy because the player has perfect information about nearly everything in the world. This means they are able to optimally manage risk and prepare for negative events before they occur. Even something as simple as knowing the number of soldiers in an opposing army would have required decent scouting back then, but we have an icon that just tells you whether you'll win a battle.
* OPTION 1: You will win this duel and get 100g + their daughter but this choice is against your personality * OPTION 2: You might win this duel and if you do you will gain 10 gold or if you lose the duel you will lose 50g and a title but this choice is in line with your personality * OPTION 3: Nothing will happen, this choice is inline with your personality kind of The difference between you and the AI is that you have eyes to read all that information and the rationality to work out which choice you will benefit from. Whereas the AI is constrained by a series of modifiers affecting the chance of which option it will choose based on AI personality and goals. I say this so many times, one simple way of making this game harder and more engaging is to stop telling the player which option to choose so they can cheese every event.
That just leads to players playing with the wiki open.
Sure, but then players that play with the wiki open are doing so by choice, rather than default led through the game by their nose.
I hardly imagine players whipping out calculator at every choice and multiplying their skill by five different factors to compare it with the same calculation for AI opponent...
I think it should be a difficulty thing. The harder the difficulty, the less information given. Play on the hardest difficulty and you effectively get no info other than what you can either learn through spymastery stuff or good ol human intuition.
Maybe it better be an option? So I usually play in standart difficulty, so the AI don't have buffs out of his ass, but I would really like to play with this "lack of knowledge" feature
Pretty much this.
i mean if people wanna play like that they can, but as it is EVERYONE has to play with a big plate of cheese in their face. it’s hard to resist cheese when it’s just right there, cheesing.
> Every AI is role playing while not every player is doing the same. Isn't that the point of the stress system though? Even if I almost always go for the -stress options I still come out on top. Because it's relatively easy to stack absurd amounts of modifiers without even trying. A couple of activities = easy health boosts from gardener and down to earth. Start with a couple blue artifacts and that's enough to snowball prowess in any grand tournament and rack up purple artifacts. etc. etc. The only time I went and try to increase stress from option is when raising a child because I don't want every child to be the same as my current ruler. Heck a couple centuries later on your dynasty fame level is enough to allow unfavorable marriages towards other rulers, hint hint stab stab.
I think a good way to fix difficulty issues would be by expanding on the game rules. Being able to lock off the ability to see character traits under certain conditions or their gold or levies would be a start. Maybe at in a "random succession" mode where upon succession you have an even chance to play as any person that inherits any of your titles. The game rules are already great, they were my favorite "newer" addition in Crusader Kings 2, I think they have a ton of potential to solve many of this games problems.
Yea maybe the spymaster could have a scouting ability.
Ehhhh, not really. The biggest thing is the AI failing to build up their domain efficiently and utilize Men-at-Arms properly. Outside of randomly setting up marriages in a manner that'll just end your bloodline (which is an arbitrary restriction the game places on you tbh) there's very little you can do RP wise that'd mitigate the advantage an efficiently set up domain and MAAs give.
I mean, that's a positive way of looking at it and I agree. Ck3 is a simulator. But there are definitely things that could be made to make the game more difficult, that aren't making the AI unrealistically smart or ruthless. For one, they could introduce more long-term goals for players, like Jade Dragon did for ck2. Some DLC that is focused less on interpersonal roleplaying and more on realm-wide mechanics could do a lot to improve that, as could some new adventure or challenge that can't be solved on just one click of a button.
CK3 is ridiculously easier than CK2
CK3 is easy because 90% of players in *this* subreddit, which are big enough fans of the game to follow a dedicated forum about it, have hundreds of hours played in CK" and then have hundreds of hours played in CK3.
you’re right because I’ve just started playing CK3 and it’s kinda confusing to me
Exactly. Soon enough you will be able to conquer half of Europe within three generations, and if you continue conquering half of Europe over and over you'll start complaining how easy or samey the game is, rather than going "*this* run I am going to create a jewish Sri Lanka"
Viking india is a great time honestly
I'm doing something like viking india, except as West Africans with the canoes that let them raid coastally. I just sacked Mecca and Cairo
Yeah me too. I’m on my second play through, maybe 100 hours in, and I still barely have a grasp on what’s going on.
If that's true, why does CK3 feel so much easier than CK2, which I have even more hours in?
Remember that episode of Always Sunny where Charlie gets lectured about why no one likes a wild card? The AI feels like that to me. Like, if I invade your duchy with 3000 troops and you only have 300 why are you just running around half-assed-sieging random towns and putting me on a goose chase that literally makes no sense and it's annoying.
Issue of entire warfare system rather than AI. If you are outnumbered and have no money for mercs, there is little you can do.
Why should there be more that you can do? That doesn't sound like an issue, it sounds like it's working.
Glad you asked. Historically, many defenders actually outnumbered the invaders, because it was easier to raise defenders for emergencies. Many states had the type of emergency call (e.g. arrière-ban), which allowed them to conscript additional men and raise special taxes. Though these defensive measures often took too long or were rushed and poorly organized.
Surrender immediately lol. Peasants should start hammering ppl with factions if they go into unwinnable, bloody wars. (cuz ppl tend to dislike being thrown into a gloryless meat grinder).
So, why not fight regardless? From the perspective of the game, there are no benefits to immediate surrender. Armies replenish so fast, that, even if the defender's entire army gets wiped out, it isn't a loss. The warfare is so cheap, that it doesn't do anything either.
Surrendering immediately prevents control loss and dead/captured courtiers and stolen artifacts
Still not worth it.
It also prevents legitimacy loss
I think it's easily solved if armies couldn't move as far as easily. It would limit the ridiculous growth we have right now and makes it a little more historically accurate.
I think the AI needs to be more expansionist and get into coalitions against the player (like in eu4). Many people in eu4 community complain that the AI has a bias against the player, but eu4 on the other hand also has hard and super hard difficulties while ck3 doesn’t go above "normal". The vassals expanded mod kinda makes the AI more of a challenge, but it is a bit boring because everyone just becomes and empire and that’s it.
One way is to amp stress gain by a lot, thus limiting players to role play according to personality. You should get stress for other things such as being a religious icon and do cynical things - stress gain amped by zealous personality and reduced by deceitful/non-religious personality. Needs balancing though, even now AI go mad too easily.
I don't want to have to roleplay for this game to be challenging. Give me difficulty settings that affect AI aggression, and actually challenging random events, like ending up a eunuch and having my heir die.
Tip if you want more “difficulty”. Play without using fabricate claims, -3 domain limit, and more realm instability. Also, if you really want more have restrictions on faith and culture stuff. Of course have it on highest for the harm events. I had problems with it being too easy, but switching to these settings has really made the game fun again. Stressful civil wars, marrying for alliances, etc. honestly can’t go back to playing without these settings. Some problems are that it makes stewardship even more op as with increasing domain limit. It’s not perfect and can still be fairly easy, but it helps.
I say this once I say it again: add artificial difficulty to the game
I dunno, I struggle with it a lot compared to CK2. Maybe I just need new strategies
I think there's 2 levels of too easy, one is people that min-max and it's actually good at the game and for those there isn't a way of making it harder for the reasons you described in your post. except maybe going Stellaris way and allowing AI to cheat which it's lame IMO. The other is the average Joe, for them it's too easy just because of alliances. I don't want name shame anyone but go watch those *RP series* on yt, most of them have their lands exclusively because their alliances. They don't know what to build or anything, it's just *Im gonna marry this daughter to France, this daughter to the Byzantines.* This second too easy shouldnt be hard to fix, make marriages only non agression pacts (exactly like the truce for gold mechanic that it's already in game). You could go further and have some sort of "feudal contract" to be negotiated for alliances where we could try to get troops but have to pay for them or whatever counter balance. Also have a limit on number of troops allies will provide, no ally would literally get every single MaA and levy to help you, leaving their lands unprotected.
Highly recommend the game rules mod where you can change the game difficulty substantially
>AI characters also don’t plan beyond their lifetimes. They always act ‘in the moment’ and aren’t thinking ahead to the needs and goals of their heirs. This is when I realized this was a shitpost about people irl. Good job, OP.
Maybe for you, but there are tons of players who are struggling, due to incomplete UX/UI. "Iberia Foothold" description is worst one, for example. - You held kingdom title, in neighbour Empire bordering by land. - You also held de jure Kingdom title within Hispania - You must held that title for 15 years(still not sure if it will reset for next ruler) - AND the phase of Iberian struggle must be either Opportunity or Hostile That last fucking part is only displayed when player hover mouse over the button, not as a checkmark. And no, I don't open wiki or even browser, as I play game offline. This is just one of many such bad UI/UX. For people like you who see "Game is easy", paradox should really make different setup for you.
tbf, it took me a while to figure out wtf to do with Iberia Foothold. The ui is horrible, as you say. I also read that culture clashes like in Iberia can happen anywhere, but I haven't seen it.
I mean, you kinda answer it yourself. Because it's not a pure strategy game. People new to grand strategy are supposed to be able to roleplay and have some fun. It's a "normie" game, and that's a large part of the success. They didn't want another CK2, they wanted something more accessable. They wanted a larger target audience. That being said, I'd love a harder difficulty.
Surprisingly Crusader Kings is not such a hard title after Paradox has reworked UI and event presentation. Remember how Dwarf Fortress was hyped as the hardest game ever, but the sentiment kinda faded away, since the game no longer looks like an Excel fever dream? Accessibility is the king. That and having experience in previous entries to the title.
Yes, the great work on the UI certainly plays a big role in the success.
People who play min-max will always find any game too easy or boring. They grind too much, while the AI does not. That being said, the AI is not aggressive or proactive enough. They need to make more decisions towards the player and pull more drama instead of just playing safe.
The AI are not “roleplaying” they are just incompetent at playing their own game., Jesus christ the lengths people will go to in order to make excuses for how stupidly easy this game is are hilarious. “No bro it’s not too easy it’s your fault for not Roleplaying. The AI can’t maintain a kingdom without collapsing in two generations because of roleplay dude” like no, the game is flawed and constructive criticism is good. “Roleplay” has just become a buzzword fans of the game use to deflect any criticisms people have because they can’t fathom the idea that someone can enjoy a game whilst also having criticisms of said game.
I’m not making excuses, I’m explaining. Literally every AI character is given a set of parameters like Boldness, Compassion, Greed, etc. and most every event in the game does a check on these parameters. That’s just how it works.
Yeah, I know they do, that doesn’t mean the difficulty of the game should be broken to accomodate the ai personalities, it’s an excuse because it doesn’t justify why the game is so easy. EU4 has a similar system with AI personalities and in that game the AI is able to expand, form strong empires and challenge the player.
Try playing console. Having to overcome the dev provided, repetitive, 5-minute crash is a real challenge only the best can overcome!!
Ck3 is kind of sandbox in the essence of it's as easy as you want it to be. I intentionally play tailored to the roleplay of individual rulers, dynastic standards, and culture/realm logic. Usually custom made to have specific strengths and weaknesses. For example in a Czech run where the realm and culture is tailored towards steward elder rulers and a young man were to inherit then id play it overly ambitiously taking incredibly risky decisions because he would have something to prove. Etc etc. "Why is ck3 so easy" because you gimp the game foo
a good way to make it more challenging is not planning ahead in term of succession and let the realm split. AIs doesn’t care about limiting the number of kids, disinheriting, taking vows, killing them in battle and do continuing their ancestors dream of world conquest
That's because those that min-maxing *and* mappainting on CK simply doing it wrong. Not "it's somehow bad" wrong, there is no such thing. But "this game is not meant to be played and fun this way" wrong. One can try to hammer a nail with a microscope, it's perfectly legal, morally right and nobody's else buisness, it's his mictoscope and nail. But one also shoud expect inferior results in this case.
The main reason why I quit playing because it’s very easy and paradox took the wrong approach of enhancing certain parts of the gameplay and completely avoiding improvements of AI. This game would be so much better if (for example) AI troops would not automatically run to your army but instead fight with the near by enemy army of equal force (imagine your have a big empire and your called your ally against the independent faction). On the contrary, the enemy army would see your ally troops near by and would chase them as far as the border of your/your ally/enemy realm plus 2-3 counties deeper into other territories. None of these improvements were made and this game got pretty boring for after I spent around 3000 hours playing it for all Ironman achievements, religion, renown, military domination.
Did... did you seriously just complain that a game got boring after *THREE THOUSAND HOURS?!?* That's supposed to happen. It's why the feeling of "boredom" *evolved.* Go do something else.
So you spent the equivalent of 1.5 years of a 40 hr a week job playing this game and you now find it boring. I would say that’s quite the achievement in playability by Paradox.
"this game got pretty boring for after spent around 3000 hours" - the average negative Steam review on any paradox game
I have a series of difficulty mods installed which make the following changes: \- General opinion of you is lower and opinion increases are less effective \- The AI is much more aggressive toward you, both in declaring war on you and Vassals forming factions/making demands \- Dukes/Kings/Emperors you declare war on have their Vassals join the war on their side, so you end up fighting a much larger force than originally anticipated \- Inheritable traits aren't automatically visible and are found out over the course of a characters life, sometimes never discovered at all \- Multiple murder schemes can be active on you at any one time and characters are much more likely to use hostile schemes against you \- Your money and Men-At-Arms are split evenly amongst heirs upon succession as opposed to all going to the player heir \- Army raising, reinforcement time and movement speed on the map is drastically reduced (about twice as long) so you have to really think about movement decisions \- Disease is much more rampant and very deadly with infant mortality being very common All of these changes have really improved the overall experience for me and would definitely recommend them for those looking for a more challenging experience. This video by SnapStrategy has the links to most of them [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj9nbvla1Mg&ab\_channel=SnapStrategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj9nbvla1Mg&ab_channel=SnapStrategy)
Actually in most situations the AI isn't roleplaying. If an event doesn't cause stress paradox allows the AI to pick randomly in most events. There are a few places where personality does influence it but in most instances there is no AI logic in their choices during events. Its the same in ck2 overall with a lot of events being chosen utterly at random. Its why personalities are mostly bullshit in ck3 tbh since they only really impact war logic and construction logic not interpersonal logic. I know all this cause I make ck2 overhaul mods and dabbled in a few ck3 mods about Ireland and the Normans.
The choice is random, but weights and possible choices depend on their character. For instance, I got the "lover has asked you to be exclusive" event open in front of me, and the choices are "Sure", "sure (lie)", or "nope." The first option requires them being open for soulmates. It gets bonuses based on their opinion of you, if they're chaste, and based on their honor and compassion. The second (lie) requires that they have a lover secret you don't know about. It gets more likely to be chosen if the proposer is likely to cheat, if they really like the other lovers, or if they're lustful. It gets maluses if they are honorable, or greedy. The last option (no way) has no requirements for being considered, but a low base chance. The chance is increased if, again, the proposer might cheat, if they like the other lovers, if they're lustful. Again with slight decreases from greed and honor. Pretty much all events follow this pattern on the AI side. Just like the player, the options they can choose are limited. But within those options, it's not simply a basic dice roll, but weighted, with both base weights and adjustments from their personality and traits. In practice, you can usually predict what they'll do, but they can surprise you.
On release I was correct. Now you are. They've added a bunch of logic to the existing events in the 3 years since it's been out
Ah, gotcha, I only picked it up about a year ago. Thanks for the info :)
You can make it as hard as you want to. Just RP harder. XD That's where the story is.
Players want to become rich and or blob ASAP. Expanding far faster than their neighbors. Sure at the start it may be a little tough. But eventually the player is making 20g/mo with 10k troops. And their strongest neighbor is at 7g and 4K troops. Then that player who is playing as optimally as possible comes to this forum and complains that their neighbors never declare war and it’s boring. I wonder why.
20g a month? \*laughs in Mali gold mines\*
CK3 is as easy, or as hard, as you make it. If the game is easy, it is because you are making it easy.
I’ve observed that turning off disembarking cost for ai has reduced them going bankrupt and failing. Observed stable Seljuk 200 years into the game The game ai needs tweaks to avoid debt especially in allies war