Faction balance?

[Konjad]

I'd like to know - will you make a balanced factions? Or historical accurate? We know from history not every faction could stand against other. I am asking because I hate faction balance. It's not just killing historical accuracy but game as well. I love to play weaker countries. I remember playing in Europa Barbarorum for RTW as Baktria. It was great, I had to be a good diplomat, merchant etc - bigger countries could destroy me in no time. It was far more interesting than starting as a balanced faction and become powerful destroying other AI countries and finally become best country that it's just a matter of time when I'll counquer whole world.

[Resurrection]

Historically accurate power of factions - small christian factions will have protection from Pope not to get squashed and from other features while muslim and eastern factions are big enough not to need such protection. As Italian city state you won't be able to raise 3 stack army to conquer the world (maybe not even 1 stack since you are merchant city state and you cannot force entire population into army. But if you have money, mercenaries would be available )...

[Konjad]

Thank you for response. That's a great news to me

[Alkidas]

Northern Italian factions won't get crushed easily, as the emperor will have other problems at least early in the game. And there have been plans to give the Northern Italians papal protection, since this was historically accurate as well as good for balancing (this may be exactly what Resurrection was referring to). I don't think we have many weak factions, and conquering wasn't as easy in the Middle Ages as it was in the EB period. So I doubt historical accuracy will become a great problem for balancing - could be the opposite actually: France and HRE won't become bulldozers early in the game.

[Basil 11]

Northern Italian factions won't get crushed easily, as the emperor will have other problems at least early in the game. And there have been plans to give the Northern Italians papal protection, since this was historically accurate as well as good for balancing (this may be exactly what Resurrection was referring to). I don't think we have many weak factions, and conquering wasn't as easy in the Middle Ages as it was in the EB period. So I doubt historical accuracy will become a great problem for balancing - could be the opposite actually: France and HRE won't become bulldozers early in the game.

Sounds great - I definitely think Pisa should have Papal protection...
btw could some Italian factions be protected by the HRE instead of the Pope?
Like the Guelph and Ghillebine situation for example...

[Alkidas]

Sounds great - I definitely think Pisa should have Papal protection...
btw could some Italian factions be protected by the HRE instead of the Pope?
Like the Guelph and Ghillebine situation for example...

If it's technically possible, sure. It would be nice to allow them to choose their side.

To return to the balancing issue, the bigger factions are balanced by their internal problems. More centralized states shouldn't - and won't be - easy to handle. E.g. England had its share of rebellions, civil wars and intrigue in this period.

[Marcos182]

i also dislike faction balancing

[sumskilz]

I generally think of balancing in a historical mod as trying to achieve a balance of power so that factions will behave in a relatively historical manner. If for example the player doesn’t do something to drastically alter history, then things should play out rather like they did in real life. In that sense I like balance, but of course I agree with everyone else that since not all factions were equal historically, they should not be equal just for gameplay's sake. Though I never doubted that the DotS team would avoid such a foolish aproach.

[Mr.Marmot]

England must be a powerful country by now because even do they have rebellions, they get crushed easily and the English-Norman Conquest is expanding into Ireland, Wales, and Scotland with thousands of thousands of Englishmen mutilating their neighbors. Do not give much papal protection to northern countries since its historically inaccurate. It shall be fair for one to fight against the french as England without the pope telling ya you will be excommunicated.

[Marcos182]

Yeah i'm all for the papal states in the game but the whole excommunication part slows down territory gains waayyy too much. for my taste

[sumskilz]

It shall be fair for one to fight against the french as England without the pope telling ya you will be excommunicated.

Um, what are you talking about? I think this really depends on the time period. From 1309-1378 all the popes and the majority of cardinals were French speaking. Most of those popes were practically puppets of the French kings. The papacy even relocated to Avignon.

Yeah i'm all for the papal states in the game but the whole excommunication part slows down territory gains waayyy too much. for my taste

Does it really matter if it slows down territory gain? The question is whether the papacy is accurately represented or not, and what can be done to insure that it is. Historically, expansion was slow in this period. Look at how long it took for the French to take control of France, or how long it took the Spanish to take over Spain.

[Copperknickers II]

Yeah i'm all for the papal states in the game but the whole excommunication part slows down territory gains waayyy too much. for my taste

If you don't like the slow buildup approach, you will hate DotS.

[Alkidas]

Um, what are you talking about? I think this really depends on the time period. From 1309-1378 all the popes and the majority of cardinals were French speaking. Most of those popes were practically puppets of the French kings. The papacy even relocated to Avignon.

They were under a heavy French influence, but I still consider "puppet" too strong a word. Avignon was also a more complicated matter. This wasn't the first time the pope relocated.

[sumskilz]

They were under a heavy French influence, but I still consider "puppet" too strong a word. Avignon was also a more complicated matter. This wasn't the first time the pope relocated.

Yeah, I realize that I'm simplifying a complicated situation for the sake of my point. The influence of the French Kings on the popes varied somewhat depending on the specific individuals involved. Regardless of the subtleties, it is safe to say that the papacy was closely allied with France during this period which supports my argument that England should not be able to attack the French without any threat of sanction by the pope.

[Mr.Marmot]

Yeah, I realize that I'm simplifying a complicated situation for the sake of my point. The influence of the French Kings on the popes varied somewhat depending on the specific individuals involved. Regardless of the subtleties, it is safe to say that the papacy was closely allied with France during this period which supports my argument that England should not be able to attack the French without any threat of sanction by the pope.

I understand that, but what I really meant was that the pope should not interfere in wars with "purposes". What I mean is that when your prince marries another faction's princess and that faction refuses to give you their throne and you enter into a war such as in the 100 years war ( not the case, I know), the pope does not interfere since I assume he will know that a promise has been made. I don't think England got excommunicated in the 100 years war. I don't think they ever got excommunicated until Henry Tudor. If this mod will be realistic, give the pope reasons for excommunication. As far as I know, popes sometimes were afraid from powerful factions, and England being one of the most powerful, not to say the most powerful in many cases, I think something must be done.

[sumskilz]

Well I agree Marmot (if I may be so informal) that it would be optimal if the Pope could be modded to act more rational (or at least more human), but I don't know if this is possible. I wonder if this is hardcoded or not. Anyone know?

[Mr.Marmot]

Well then there is an even more realistic way to make the pope more human and that is to be able to request the pope permission to attack another catholic faction, just as a crusade, but in that case, only you join the invasion. William the conqueror did these to invade England, as well as Henry II to invade Ireland.

[Alkidas]

Well then there is an even more realistic way to make the pope more human and that is to be able to request the pope permission to attack another catholic faction, just as a crusade, but in that case, only you join the invasion. William the conqueror did these to invade England, as well as Henry II to invade Ireland.

This undoubtedly makes historical sense in a way at least, but only one of these two examples is from the mod's period and even that one doesn't refer to the relationship between two factions in the game (as Ireland isn't one). What also would require clarification for this idea to become a candidate for a DotS feature are the historical reasons behind the papal policy. In both cases the reason was the unhappiness of the pope regarding the state of the church in the targets of the invasion and consequently the hope that the more "pious" invader would reform it. Of course representing such things in a game is a problem in itself.

[Azim]

This undoubtedly makes historical sense in a way at least, but only one of these two examples is from the mod's period and even that one doesn't refer to the relationship between two factions in the game (as Ireland isn't one). What also would require clarification for this idea to become a candidate for a DotS feature are the historical reasons behind the papal policy. In both cases the reason was the unhappiness of the pope regarding the state of the church in the targets of the invasion and consequently the hope that the more "pious" invader would reform it. Of course representing such things in a game is a problem in itself.

In vanilla, the Pope is already inclined to ignore invasions of countries with which he has poor releations.

We are going to change the Pope significantly, but we are also going to preserve vanilla functionality in many places where it is already more effective than anything we could implement. For example, we had a discussion a while back about whther we should scrap cease hostilities missions and replace them with a more historically accurate alternative. In the end, we decided to stick with the vanilla functionality because we simply could not replace it fully with the limited recources the M2TW engine offers us.

That said, in any instance where we could replace vanilla mechanisms with better once, or extend vanilla mechanisms to have a wider scope, we have done so.

[Add1ct]

I understand the game slowdown, in vanilla, you could pretty much conquer the world in less than 50 years or so, which made no sense. Still I'm curious as to what kind of goals there would be in DotS, when playing a north italian city state for instance. Being unable to make full stacks makes total sense, but at what rate could territory be added? And once you've played long enough to conquer a failry decent chunk of land, would you then be able to take on the real behemoths of the game (france, england, HRE, Moors etc. etc.?)

I honestly can't wait for this game since right now I play Stainless Steel and I end up often just micromanaging fixed bits of territory because I always enjoy that more than non-stop warfare.