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[EnigmaticHat]

Then yeah, you should be dead several times over.

Assuming an average of, pessimistically, 5% per courtier, a popular character who wanted you dead could get up to 435% plot pour.

You know what?  I bet barons use the same ploting code as landless where they just go after random people instead of those they have an actual political reason to kill.  Try awarding a few counties or duchies and seeing if someone kills you (as a savescum thing obviously)

[umiman]

Can't savescum on ironman.

By the way, here's an example of how angry they are with me. I actually found some guys angrier than him. I think this guy is -3573 angry at me.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[pisskop]

That is potentially awesome.

[Rolan7]

Thanks for that!  I theorized NK mode could still work via raiding and retinues, but kept getting distracted from testing it.  I didn't think of getting the money through banishment, that's cool.

[Wiles]

Paradox is going to be livestreaming the expansion "Charlemagne" tomorrow at 19:00cest over at http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Not a lot of official info yet, but there was a pretty good write up from a fan who got to speak with the devs:

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.

Source

[Rakonas]

Vassal limit decreasing with increased crown law doesn't make any sense, but the idea otherwise sounds good.

[Descan]

I dunno, makes some sense to me. The more control you're taking over your vassals, the less resources and time you have to spend on controlling your own personal territories.

Edit: Wait, nevermind, I misunderstood. hold on.

Yeah I can't think of a great rationale for it. :V

Best guess is that the more direct control you have over your vassals, the more you need to interact with each of them directly, so the less you have the better your control over them.

[pisskop]

Vassal limit decreasing with increased crown law doesn't make any sense, but the idea otherwise sounds good.

theyre trying to force you to have to balance CA and direct realm size.  Its about weakening empires, I think, placing importance on delegation.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Because it's a gamey way of making there be a 'trade off' to crown authority. When in reality more should just be better. They pretend it's a centralized management slider when it's more of a 'solidifying the rule of law from the crown' upgrade over long, long periods of time. I've always viewed it as an 'organization of government' representation, not a central management decision.


They can just.. put in a centralization slider.. 4 levels. Maybe move a couple inter-realm vassal warring limitations to the centralized parts. Stop adding functionality to crown authority that really isn't represented at all by the mechanic itself besides 'fuck it we're adding more variables to this slider'

[Rakonas]

My understanding of high or absolute crown authority in CK2 is more like the Ottomans with regional beylers. Absolute crown authority should really mean that the state is formalized, and I don't think having to have kings as vassals is in any way historical when the state is formalized. Like if later France had to have the Kings of Brittany, Aquitaine, and Burgundy as vassals... It would be complete nonsense. If anything an absolute crown authority empire should have no kings.

[umiman]

It's quite obviously a balance decision that isn't based in reality.

It's a bit dumb honestly, and makes no sense historically.

[Rolan7]

I'm surprised, I thought high and absolute crown authority weren't nearly worth the downsides in vassal opinion and revolt risk.  Even medium authority is a bit iffy.  Stops vassals from depleting their levies against each other, but... it also stops vassals from depleting their levies against each other, you know?  Forcing partial levies from unhappy vassals seems unnecessary with strong retinues, but maybe it's better late-game.

[Vactor]

I disagree, I think this brings the gameplay more in line with historical reality.

While it is true that the French "Empire" did not have vassal kings, it did have Dukes ruling duchies that are the size of some of the CK2 "Kingdoms" (Duke of Brittany, Duke of Tolouse)

I'd see it more as being having too many direct vassals limits the authority you can have, rather than authority limiting the number of direct vassals you can have.  Having a duke rule part of your Kingdom meant that the vassals in that area had a local executor of the King's will (and authority).   A king was physically distant from parts of a massive kingdom, and would have trouble keeping tabs on subjects, and would not develop the personal relationships with local nobility that are necessary to develop the interpersonal loyalty feudalism relied on.  Imagine if you had someone working for you who lived 600 miles away, and the only way to check up on their work was to ride a horse.

I Imagine you'll still be able to play Empire level rulers without having vassal kings, but you'll end up with some dukes who have equivalent power to a small kingdom.

[Culise]

I'm surprised, I thought high and absolute crown authority weren't nearly worth the downsides in vassal opinion and revolt risk.  Even medium authority is a bit iffy.  Stops vassals from depleting their levies against each other, but... it also stops vassals from depleting their levies against each other, you know?  Forcing partial levies from unhappy vassals seems unnecessary with strong retinues, but maybe it's better late-game.

Indeed; I'm not sure how much this actually helps for Crown Laws.  As far as I knew in vanilla, one of the few reasons to increase your Crown Authority was to push up to High briefly to pass Primogeniture if you aren't going for Elective shenanigans, then let it drop back to Medium or Limited as quickly as you can to stop your vassals from passing Primogeniture as well, since forced Gavelkind would help break up their titles.  Back before the new plots let you cut your vassals down to size, Medium was a good baseline because it let you stop them from blobbing internally into a single mega-Vassal; it still does, though aforementioned plots give you other ways to deal with that now.  High was only otherwise useful if you had to worry about one of your vassals being inherited by a foreign power, and I'm not sure how many people went Absolute unless they were roleplaying.

[kaian-a-coel]

Since I'm content with Elective I never get crown law above Medium.
I keep it at Medium because I like my realm to be tidy and clean, and inter-vassal warring is something I really dislike.
I also have the habit to make king vassals for convenience and I don't have trouble keeping them in line usually, so I'm not sure if this is going to affect me.

It WILL make WC harder though, since you will have to manage things carefully and you can't have 4-5 humongous king-vassals like Arumba did for his Abassid WC.

Overall I think it's good because I like taking it slow and at my level of skill (which isn't particularly high either), NOT blobbing to multiple-empire size is almost harder than doing it.