Patch 2.5x and Conclave

**DaVinci** · March 08, 2016, 05:03 PM

Well, was hyped by all of the updates (running all dlc's), excluding the Shattered Retreat "feature", but that can be modified successfully, without zero'ing it to a better mechanic.

In the meantime, my hype with the game is gone as for its, in my experience at least, limited modability in grand scale strategic items and AI decision behaviours in certain files (while simple txt files work issuefree, and also the .lua).

I just don't play a game complete unmodded.
My CK2 tweaks all are complete crashfree thus functionable technically, but don't fire as i want, gave recently up on it ... .

But will check out Pdox final 2.5x patch once more, probably, and the "pre-announced" next DLC. The game produces a kind of addiction bug to me as well, hm.

However, although the game is many years old now, it has still a lot of potential for tons of improvements - any coder/modder can see it when looking under the hood.

But the noise in Paradox forums about the 2.5x patches and Conclave is imo. not justified, Pdox clearly improved the game, or are clearly on the way to that.

Edit: And really, just many things which are moaned about post-Patch 2.5 and Conclave can be changed quite easy with little modding.

**Yayattasa** · March 08, 2016, 05:53 PM

If you mod, you are left out of achievements. Many people want to play for achievements. Therefore modding is not a valid answer to Paradox FUBARing the game with a patch that clearly wasn't tested enough. They tried to make it better with 2.5.1 and only made more idiotic choices.

**DaVinci** · March 08, 2016, 09:47 PM

Originally Posted by Yayattasa

If you mod, you are left out of achievements. Many people want to play for achievements. Therefore modding is not a valid answer to Paradox FUBARing the game with a patch that clearly wasn't tested enough. They tried to make it better with 2.5.1 and only made more idiotic choices.

Yes, and Iron-mode. Lol. My opinion:
Steam achievements (pfft) and that mode are the arguments of the mass consumer, merely talentless and at least too lazy to put an own hand (and brain) on games with open moddable files.
But talented and motivated enough to moan endless in the respective forums about items (which they often don't understand, ie. misinterprete), which are solved in a minute or two in one file: defines.lua.
Feedback on a vanilla game design is fully okay, but requires a certain manner.
And no, not idiotic choices, just a realisation along the developers design plan (with future preparations), and within an ongoing development, plus we speak of many free patches.

Don't like it, roll back to 2.45, quick and easy (all explained in Paradox forum).

**Yayattasa** · March 12, 2016, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by DaVinci

Yes, and Iron-mode. Lol. My opinion:
Steam achievements (pfft) and that mode are the arguments of the mass consumer, merely talentless and at least too lazy to put an own hand (and brain) on games with open moddable files.

WOW MUCH TALENT. I PLAY A GAME HARHAR. Dude, seriously? You feel somewhat fulfilled now?

Originally Posted by DaVinci

But talented and motivated enough to moan endless in the respective forums about items (which they often don't understand, ie. misinterprete), which are solved in a minute or two in one file: defines.lua.
And no, not idiotic choices, just a realisation along the developers design plan (with future preparations), and within an ongoing development, plus we speak of many free patches.

Oh yeah, the Pope helping the Abbasids against the Byzantines, that was a misinterpretation, of course.

Originally Posted by DaVinci

Feedback on a vanilla game design is fully okay, but requires a certain manner.
Don't like it, roll back to 2.45, quick and easy (all explained in Paradox forum).

What's your point then? People are being left out of DLC, and that's bad for Paradox.

**eXistenZ** · March 13, 2016, 06:38 PM

wow, apparently there is no rank on laming....

That we need mods to fix a 4y old game that has a total cost of over €250, is something only Paradox can get away with.

Imagine CA briging out dlc and updates for rome 2 every 4 months, breaking more things in the process. And that their reply would be "fix it with mods". The CA HQ would be burned down. But every expansion from Rajas of India onwards has been just shamefully bad designed.

Themost schocking thing is how Paradox cant see it hurts their own bussines. Ys, a lot of people have the base game, but only a minority has big expansions

**Candy_Licker** · April 05, 2016, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by eXistenZ

wow, apparently there is no rank on laming....

That we need mods to fix a 4y old game that has a total cost of over €250, is something only Paradox can get away with.

Imagine CA briging out dlc and updates for rome 2 every 4 months, breaking more things in the process. And that their reply would be "fix it with mods". The CA HQ would be burned down. But every expansion from Rajas of India onwards has been just shamefully bad designed.

Themost schocking thing is how Paradox cant see it hurts their own bussines. Ys, a lot of people have the base game, but only a minority has big expansions

Yeah, this was exactly the breaking point. Horse Lords was ok tho imo, just not worth 15€. Rest has been boring/pointless, poor or outright broken since then.

I haven't played vanilla in a long time, but I can't believe all the crap they've been adding over the last years, yet they haven't done a LOR style HRR overhaul. I think it's mainly because they shifted most of the initial team to other projects like Stellaris. There's def. been a decline in quality since the project lead changed.

That being said, a 4 year old game is always a case forbig overhaul mods anyway, like Lux Invicta or GoT (real good stuff)

**Mike Louis** · April 18, 2016, 06:57 AM

It always been my unofficial policy that when a new major DLC along with its accompanying patch is released to wait a month or so before I update my mods to give Paradox time to fix the inevitable bugs to creep up with the new patch. The fact that majority of a Paradox game consists of moddable text files is a major saving grace in that players like myself can code in temporary hotfixes for minor and overlooked bugs (for example my defines.lua hotfix for the cataphract unit showing up as horse archers instead of heavy cavalry and my custom event addressing the issue of the AI matrilineal marriage mechanic not working in patches 2.4 to 2.4.5) and share them on the Paradox forums. As long as any major patch changes are moddable and the vanilla game itself is stable, I can tolerate the few hard coded issues and fix the moddable issues myself. As for the recent post expansion release complaints, it's one of the side effects of the game becoming more mainstream as more casual players are starting to play Paradox games.

**Yayattasa** · April 30, 2016, 10:21 AM

Paradox felt the hit and flinched. Here's the result /thread.

CK2 Dev Diary - The Rules of the Game

Well people, what do you know? I needed a break from the Stellaris crunch, so here’s an unscheduled dev diary! All the hubbub about Defensive Pacts and Shattered Retreats got me thinking about an old ambition I’ve had to improve the game set-up screens in order to allow players to customize their experience without having to resort to modding. The idea is inspired by games like Civilization and the Second Wave DLC for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which allow players to change various advanced options and settings for a different experience in the game. I really like such options and typically make good use of them myself.

Now, of course there is such a thing as “the way the game was meant to be played”. That is, how the designers made the game and like to play it themselves. However, variety is the spice of life, and after 11 Crusader Kings II expansions things are not as clear-cut anymore. It’s actually pretty funny that I’ve been using a small personal mod for CK2 for awhile myself. There are some downsides to modding and using mods though:

It requires awareness that it’s possible, and where to find existing mods. The modding scene is a jungle.
It takes a modicum of extra effort and skill.
It might not feel quite legitimate (it can feel a bit like cheating) and you might not get any Achievements.
Mods typically do not have the same level of support as the base game. Many become fossilized or are otherwise problematic.

For these reasons especially, I think that adding a bunch of Paradox-approved, fully supported in-game rule variations is a good idea. Thus, when you start a new game, you are now presented with several interesting options. Most of them are simple flavor variations, but some are more fundamental and will disable Achievements in Ironman mode.

**Stario** · May 06, 2016, 01:24 AM

I personally like conclave and the whole council and shattered retreat mechanics. I somewhat dislike the randomness in the new heir breeding mechanics but overall the feel of it seems more realistic/more immersive.
Most bugs being whinged about on the Paradox forums can be easily fixed with little more that one sentence of code or less or a matter of reducing the % AI selecting certain focuses etc...
I also personally play with mods...just couldn't go back to vanilla CKII; so honestly don't know what vanilla is like these days- but it is a given that vanilla will never be as good as modded CKII.

**IlluminatiRex** · May 06, 2016, 08:41 AM

I hadn't really played for a long time, before conclave's release. I felt that CKII itch so i started trying to play, and the performance was so bad. I actually had to quit, it never ran this badly before - in fact it ran extremely well.

**Stario** · May 07, 2016, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by IlluminatiRex

I hadn't really played for a long time, before conclave's release. I felt that CKII itch so i started trying to play, and the performance was so bad. I actually had to quit, it never ran this badly before - in fact it ran extremely well.

Odd you say that, for me it runs extremely well on a budget gaming rig now almost 6 moths old.