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[Catastrophic lolcats]

The casus belli system makes a lot of sense in the time period. For a start almost all armies were comprised of levies supplied by vassals. Levies heavily affected the economic output of the vassal lands since it took farmers and craftsmen away from their jobs for months or even years to fight and die. Very few vassals would willingly sign up to an "unjust" war.
The feudal system is heavily supported by concepts of honour, duty, mutual trust and heavy religious association. Nobility is meant to be appointed by god and the rulers' actions being governed by god. This is meant to apply to rulers actions on other rulers.
Religious association was the main force driving feudalism in Europe. The pope had an extreme amount of control and influence over kingdoms due to the power of excommunication. The pope could easily excommunicate someone who he deemed was breaking the feudal code which would be breaking the agreement with god. The pope also mandated claims which governed a lot of expansion. An example would be the pope giving the Normans a claim on the Kingdom of Ireland in 1155.

Islam and orthodoxy feudalism all have the same basic premises but with a few key differences which the expansions generally handle well enough. Pagans are a bit of a mixed bag but generally their lack of expansion was due to christian alliances, low manpower, conversions, decentralised societies and infighting. I don't think The Old Gods expansion touched on what made their kingdoms so unstable. Forcing them to only use gavelkind was extremely lazy and more mechanics to simulate tribal decentralisation is needed.

There are a few mods that basically gives everyone free "tribal invasion" casus bellis against each other. There's also Shattered Balance which starts everyone in the map as an independent county.
Why you would want to do that is beyond me. CKII isn't exactly a war game and while I do find the combat an improvement over EU3 it's still primarily based around intrigue, diplomacy and claim building.

"So, basically Gengis Kahn didn't exist in this universe?"

Genghis Khan will invade Persia in around 1218. You can even play as him if you have the Old Gods expansion. He has pretty god-like stats but I still don't think they're quite enough. The tribal invasion cb will allow the Mongols to take a large portion of the map before it's stripped from them when they convert.

[Neonivek]

The casus belli system makes a lot of sense in the time period

To an extent, but you sort of realize after playing enough how absolutely much the game's balance relies on it.

To the extent that even using nations that simply... didn't have such a thing... still have the Casus Belli.

Though it gets hilarious when you look at world history even as the game presents it and kind of notice how a lot of these changes in history would be.

CKII isn't exactly a war game

Well... specifically CK2 is a score game where the goal is just to earn enough prestige to be the "greatest family who ever existed".

Yet most Crusader Kings fans completely and utterly ignore that aspect and outright tell people who ignore it as well.

Then again because I also hear that you can EASILY just break the game and get enough score to "win" in a single generation... I guess that is why.

[Sheb]

The score thing is pretty irrelevant. In my current game, my greatest ruler was my second one, who arranged marriage so that two generations later I'd be in charge of everything east of Poland while destroying the Seljuk and sitting a kin on the Byzantine throne. Yet, his score is less than his lazy grandson who spent his time sitting with all his titles.

CK2 is more about expansion than anything else, but you can do it by fucking your way across Europe as well as by fighting or murdering.

[Grakelin]

Shattered World is less Total War. It starts out highly aggressive, with different groups tearing into eachother, but settles into regular play about 50 years in. This means you still need to develop those Cassus Bellis, but the world looks different than usual. It also takes the HRE and the Byzantine Empire and France right out of the running, which makes things interesting, if not entirely historical.

I don't entirely follow the score game idea. CKII is open-ended. It's almost (but not quite) a sandbox. The score system it's using is no more a measure of "winning" than the score system in Sid Meier's Pirates. In fact, it's less so. The Ireland game my girlfriend and I play has me piling up a slightly higher score, but not actually being a clear "victor" based on the goals we've set out for ourselves (which is to become, and remain, the ruling family of Ireland). The victory conditions, if they are those, are more well-hidden than ever. This is actually an improvement on previous Paradox titles, I think, where they'd constantly keep track of the "Top 5", who were really just the historical superpowers of the era, and tell you how much better they were doing than you.

I don't understand the point you're getting at, though Neonivek. Is your reference to the score system a criticism? If so, why?

Any exploits you're using to top the high score chart are probably not universally possible, either. I've smashed half the continent in a single generation and not made more than about 15000 points.

[Neonivek]

The score thing is pretty irrelevant

And yet not only is it the main focus of the game, it is also the underlying goal.

This is actually an improvement on previous Paradox titles, I think, where they'd constantly keep track of the "Top 5", who were really just the historical superpowers of the era, and tell you how much better they were doing than you

Mostly because they kept track of their real accomplishments and they didn't have to go through the game's rules and methodologies to get things done.

Is your reference to the score system a criticism?

No it is just really REALLY interesting.

It is like this dungeon game I played a while back where the goal was to collect as much treasure as possible to win. Yet most players completely ignored treasure even though it was the purpose and focus of the game (mostly because ignoring treasure was more fun)

Still wish there was a way to get a Mummy on your team (the only way to get undead on your team was to get a more powerful enemy on your team since all the weaker people will join at the same time. The Mummy though was the most powerful creature in the game and as an undead he has a 0% chance to join you)

The second and third most powerful characters (the Witch and Wizard) also had a trade off in that they were very powerful but couldn't carry as much. In the end the most balanced between power and carrying capacity was the Troll, but he had a very low chance of being friendly.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Casus belli system serves itself well in my opinion. It's still a game rather than a historical simulator and still needs rules and barriers to make sure the experience is interesting, it makes sense to have the same mechanics across the merely board for accessibility.
I will not deny that the balance in CKII is all over the place. At this point I pretty much solely play mods such as Project Balance that fixes up some of the wonkiness and arcadey-ness that is vanilla.

Paradox games with the exception of March of the Eagles and the Heart of Iron games lack a win condition. They're all a sandbox experience. The score system is a rough guide for players to know how well they're doing and to show how well a dynasty went despite whatever condition it finds itself at the end of the game. EUIV will apparently have this feature as well. It could be argued that this is the "end game goal" but it's pretty shallow compared to the rest of the game offers and score can be easily gamed.

[Neonivek]

The score system is a rough guide for players to know how well they're doing and to show how well a dynasty went despite whatever condition it finds itself at the end of the game.

I'd totally agree with you, if there weren't specific upgrades and mechanics that do nothing but generate score.

That is why it isn't a game that "just gives you a score", because your score is not tied into how well you are doing but how much you stacked the point generators. As well many of the best ways to earn score are non-compatible with just being an amazing leader.

While in Pirates the score you get is tied into how awesome a pirate you really are and you get more score by being an even more awesome pirate.

[Digital Hellhound]

There... aren't specific upgrades and mechanics that do nothing but generate score. Score is made up of piety and prestige, which have various effects on their own (such as character relations modifiers, title creation requirements). They're much more important than the score itself (who even pays attention to that?).

[Catastrophic lolcats]

This is Paradox's current view on the scoring system. It seems to imply that score is more of a tool than an actual winning state or end game goal. The scoring system still does need an overhaul in CKII though.

Over the last decade, we’ve often been asked about how our games have “winners”. We firmly believe that most of our players are happy to just enjoy the sandbox, but if we want to push them to excel and to take on new challenges, it sometimes helps to give them a metric to use. What is the incentive to attack another strong nation if you can decide for yourself that you are “winning” without that?

And some of our games do have pretty defined goals that establish why opposing other players is a good idea, like Hearts of Iron, where the object is winning a great war, or Sengoku, where you need to become the Shogun. Others, like Crusader Kings and Victoria, have ways to compare your performance in one game with how you did in another.

Europa Universalis has always been rather more open ended, and this poses a different challenge to us as designers since it means looking at a game we know well in new ways.

The way we have solved this is a scoring system. The higher the score you have, the better you have performed, and in a multiplayer game, the top scorer is the clear winner (though we expect debates about who was the most duplicitous ally to continue).

EDIT: Managed to edited this over my older post by accident and had to do some edit juggling to fix it. How silly.

[Neonivek]

Well if you want what Crusader Kings 2 ITSELF says about the scoring system:

For those of you who want validation of your success from the game engine:
you have not been forgotten. As each ruler of your dynasty passes, his
Prestige score at the moment of his demise is added to your total score, which
is a running tally and a great way to judge how you are doing within the game.
When the game draws to a close in 1453, the final scores of all the dynasties
are compared, and the more Prestige your rulers have garnered, the higher
your score

But it also says

Your goals are your own, and
your conditions for victory are what you make of them

So there you go! Crusader Kings 2 even says its scoring system is ONLY there for Losers!

Which I guess makes me the loser Thanks Crusader Kings 2, you are the gift that keeps on giving.

[scriver]

The casus belli system makes a lot of sense in the time period

To an extent, but you sort of realize after playing enough how absolutely much the game's balance relies on it.

To the extent that even using nations that simply... didn't have such a thing... still have the Casus Belli.

Like what, for example?

[Neonivek]

Like what, for example?

Any sort of totalitarian or empire-forming government. Where "because I said so" would be a justified excuse.

Mind you the way the game stages "Casus Belli" it is much more formalized. Giving it more of a feel of beaurocratic maneuvering.

Especially since as I found out Casus Belli is a more modern term then one that would be used at the time.

Mind you they needed SOME way to make sure the map would destabilize.

Also why you asking me? I am a loser

[a1s]

Like what, for example?

Any sort of totalitarian or empire-forming government. Where "because I said so" would be a justified excuse.

Never happened. There are dubious reasons for war like "it's our birthright to own the world", but these are always known in advance (first you say "it's our birthright", then you say "you're in our world, please move" and then "if you're not going to do this the easy way, we can do it the hard way"). Probably the closest to this kind of excuse is: "god's will has been revealed, and it's that we get this land".

[mainiac]

Especially since as I found out Casus Belli is a more modern term then one that would be used at the time.

It's a term that dates to renaissance but the concept was formalized by the 4th century AD and it was extremely important long before that.

[Neonivek]

Especially since as I found out Casus Belli is a more modern term then one that would be used at the time.

It's a term that dates to renaissance but the concept was formalized by the 4th century AD and it was extremely important long before that.

Well if you want to be specific it has always existed for as long as man was able to formulate concepts.

Since Casus Belli is pretty much: "The reason"

So anytime the game says you need a Casus Belli it is basically asking you if you have a reason to do this.

"Never happened."

It has happened many times before. Many nations are formed under the understanding that there will be continuous war without real reason. Without a "Casus Belli" as far as the game defines.

If you are saying that no nation ever done anything for no reason, that is true, but that isn't Casus Belli. Though I guess there are some nations that war for "no reason" but that is because after a while they stopped needing a reason as it was just understood.