Control of Allied Forces?

[ColorsFade]

This is part question, part complaint.

Question: I never played CK1 or CK2, so I would like to know: in those games, does the player ever get to control the allied armies during a war?

I bought this game and was pleasantly surprised at how much I initially enjoyed it. But not having control of allied forces during wars is killing every last bit of joy I get from playing it. I'm done. I can't abide this poor design.

I'm sure there's an argument to be made that the player should only be able to control their own empire and it's forces.

But it's a video game. And we play these things for fun. And watching the horrible allied AI continue to lose me wars is beyond frustrating.

At this point, I'm just mad. I'm the player. I paid the money for the game. Give me the control of the armies. All of them. Let me decide which armies to merge, where to put them, how to use them.

I'm so utterly frustrated and disappointed right now. And I'm mad that I'm hours beyond the Steam refund. Because if I could get a refund right now, I would.

This one aspect of the game is completely ruining an otherwise stellar title.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Messaggio originale di ColorsFade:

Messaggio originale di Burnhardt:

So when the AI is the main attacker/defender why shouldn't they be able to control your army, and coordinate the effort?

You can't have it one way for yourself, and another for everyone else.

Of course I can! OMG. Dude. I'm the player! I paid for the game. I'm the one playing it!

I'm really puzzled why people don't understand this. It's like there's a willful stubbornness at work here.

The AI are just a bunch of 1's and 0's.

The point of the game is for the PLAYER to have fun. That should be the primary goal of any game, always. And watching the AI make one bad maneuver after another is awful. It's not fun. It ruins the entire experience.

Here's the thing: Tell me, exactly, what harm there would be in giving the player control of allied forces? Come up with a legitimate argument that shows this would be damaging to the game in some tangible way. Something real. Something more than just "that's the way the game should be" or "that's the way it's always been." Show me how it would break anything (it doesn't). Show me how it would create a real, legitimate problem within the game engine (it wouldn't).

At the root of this problem is AI making (bad) decisions, when it should be the player making those decisions.

The AI isn't doing any of the things that people in this thread are using as an excuse to defend this horrible design. The AI isn't engaging in a Trojan Horse maneuver. They're not holding troops back because they don't want their sons to die. The AI is not doing anything of the sort. It's simply operating at the most basic level - attack here, seek terrain advantage there, siege this county, etc.

But it does those basic things very poorly.

There is zero problem with giving the player this level of control. The AI, if it has the capacity, can still do all the important things it needs to, like withdraw from a war, or not honor an alliance, or scheme for assassination, or whatever. But once the fighting starts, it's just moving troops around.

And doing it badly.

There is absolutely no good, sound, solid argument for denying the player control of allied forces during a war. None.

And it's a sad commentary on this game, and it's community, that the people here can't see that. It literally would hurt no players anywhere for users to have control of allied forces. There's absolutely no reason not to do this.

But you all are acting like it's a war crime to even consider it.

It's weird. Really disappointing, and weird. This game could be so much better. It could be so much more fun.

Instead, it's an exercise in aggravation.

And you all seem to want to keep it that way.

Actually they're not.


CK3's ai personality system is actually quite deep. It was very simplisitic in CK2 because there were fewer factors to add granularity to their decision making, but now they're much more player-like in their decision making, albeit having widely diverse levels of skill and playstyle depending on where their factors fall.

However it 100% is determined by their personality type and factors that are harder to judge because they're long term factors affecting ai behavior.

CK3 is a RPG, just like CK2 and CK1 was. It has strategy elements but they are not the main focus. You are not god. You are not a nation.

You are a single person in a game of single people that all have their own wants and needs and desires, just like you do, and unlike you WILL act according to their character's personalities.

The player is discouraged playing against type due to the stress mechanic, but they're never fully bound to their personality, since at that point you'd have no agency at all would just be watching another ai play your nation.



If you want good allies, then actually pay attention to the people you're allying with. It doesn't matter if you've got the HRE Emperor on your side, if his personality is bad for an ally, then he's worthless outside of fending off Possible attacks, that see your potential alliance might and get scared off.

However he's generally not going to be useful in wars that actually happen, since he has his own things to deal with and doesn't give a crap about what you want. And generally only accepts the call to arms to avoid the prestige penalty, unless the potential for them getting attacked too would be too high or too troublesome for what your alliance is worth. And when he does absolutely nothing you'll get an opinion penalty with him for him not helping at all and might push your character towards developing a rivalry with their character for being such a bad ally.


That is the entire point of the game. What you're asking for isn't even Crusader Kings anymore.

Hell, the only game in paradox stable that gave you control of allied troops was Victoria 2, and only applied to Puppets and Satelites. But that was a VERY different time period from where we are now.

---------------------------------------

And here's the thing....they're already giving you WAY more power than you should have even over your personal realm.

The levies you get from your vassals, should be under their control, not yours. They're simply loaning the allottment during times of war as per their contract (and even that's pretty simplified as normally they're only required to provide troops for X amount of months per year).

And are supposed to be leading their unit themselves unless they've been given leave to send a Commander to represent them instead (usually due to ill health or an ill timed war that requires them to stay home and manage something really important like the yearly harvest or planting).

And even then, they aren't supposed to be a cohesive unit. Since the commanders can and will do their own thing, perhaps getting distracted on the march to battle and deciding to sack a jewish enclave in some city along the way for cash, and deciding that they've contributed enough and simply abandoning the war and heading home with their spoils.

CK3 has events that represents that sort of behavior, but they have abstracted it a lot. And at least in that case, you do have some measure expectation of control (even if it is completely unrealistic and ahistoric levels of control for a Feudal realm).


But allies don't owe you ♥♥♥♥ (and vice-versa). Alliances are literal marriages of convinence and nothing more. And if they cease to be convienent, well, then they end or are largely ignored.

---------------------------------------------------


If you don't how to read an ai's personality, don't trust them with anything important until you fought in a few wars together, both offensively and defensively, and know what to expect from them. But keep in mind that every ruler will be different and even if you'd had decent results with a particular ruler, his heir may not be a good ally at all.

Eventually (assuming you pay attention to it) you can read a ruler's personality and make reasonably accurate judgements on the quality of an ally upfront. Those are the alliances you make when you want to press advantages or are worried other threats that might befall you.

If you just want a Paper Tiger to scare off enemies then by all means get a big giant ally regardless of personality, just that know if push comes to shove and someone DOES attack you anyway, you're probably screwed unless you got lucky and your big ally is also a GOOD ally.

A good ally is generally always going to be a good ally to the best of their ability barring extreme circumstances like being on the verge of a faction revolt and trying to keep their troop amount intact to dissuade it or already fighting wars.

[Harris]

Messaggio originale di kaiyl_kariashi:

If you don't how to read an ai's personality

After reading all that I feel I could really use a guide or a video on how personality affects the behavior of your allies, your vassals, your spymaster and the like. Anywhere you could point me to?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Messaggio originale di Harris:

Messaggio originale di kaiyl_kariashi:

If you don't how to read an ai's personality

After reading all that I feel I could really use a guide or a video on how personality affects the behavior of your allies, your vassals, your spymaster and the like. Anywhere you could point me to?

Just turn on Debug mode and play with it for awhile mostly sitting back and observing how the ai plays.

Debug Mode shows you all of the ai weights for each ruler.

the original 5 in CK2 were just:

Rationality (ability to size up threats/determine consequences)
Zeal (actions related to religion)
Greed (interest in wealth)
Ambition (interest in status)
Honor (loyalty)

Now there's a bunch more, like vengefulness (which is just a ruler's pure hatred or apathy towards another character that isn't directly tied to increasing wealth, status, or further religion, i.e. their ability to hold grudges and how intense those grudges are in swaying how they play), boldness (which is seperate from rationality this time (this time around, rationality is more based around planning vs spontinaity (the higher the rationality the further ahead the ai plans and is more likely to stick to the plan, while the lower it is, the more random and haphazard in decision making they become), while Boldness handles estimating strength of threats and dangerous actions (though with too much, and with low to average rationality can make them borderline suicidal)). Previously they were lumped together as one factor).

Honor was split into like three substats, instead of it just being a broad catch-all.


Unfortunately, there's no videos I'm aware of that have gone indepth about it (even for CK2 which is ancient at this point and relativitively simple once you know what to look for). A lot of people don't even realize traits affect how the ai plays and just consider them stat-sticks and assume opinion is all that matters (though opinion only actually matters based on an ai's Honor rating. High Honor rates opinion more highly while deeply negative honor pretty much ignores it as a factor, of course a moderately honorable ai with high ambition and greed might still overthrow you despite liking you, just because their personal desire for power/wealth outweighed their sense of loyalty to your friendship). (which to be fair, in CK1, that's how they worked. CK2 is where they really started to make traits matter, albeit in a more simple system than we have now).

Though CK3 does give you hints, based on the character's traits and Personality title as to what their internal thought processes are. Though it's only guideline of what to expect since their personality matrix is a fair bit more complicated than that, especially when it comes to aspects related to gameplay reactions.

in CK2, you could estimate it based on their traits, but because traits were significantly more volatile in CK2, it was hit or miss in how useful it was since people's personalities could shift dramatically purely on the whims of RNG.


I've very much enjoyed it thus far though. I have a lot of experience with the CK2 personality system, so I noticed the extra the granularity to the decision making immediately, but didn't realize just how much much deeper the system was till I broke down and decided check debug mode.

[Hugemoron]

the pope just stands there with his doom stack a tile away from my doomstack getting double doomstacked

[Eltoron]

Messaggio originale di ronstermonster26:

the pope just stands there with his doom stack a tile away from my doomstack getting double doomstacked

In my opinion AI sticks to main participant. If I'm the leader, AI following my armies and run to join my battles. If I'm helping AI in war (Crusade is an example, where the Pope is the main attacker) AI just ignor my armies and act on there own. And in case of crusades it looks stupid. Tons of situations when I have a good stack, and the Pope have the same stack. Separately it's a bit not enough to beat the Sultan. But together we can erase him to zero. And I'm catching Sultan's army knowing my friends rushing to the same province and must to arrive in several days... Aaaaand. After battle starts the Pope just turning back, lets the Sultan crash my army, to be late crashed by Muslims too.

[Lera]

Messaggio originale di Ficelle:

But...
Why not have the option to start with 10000000 gold
Why not have player arrmies doing 10 times more damage
Why not have the option....

....add each and every option you can imagine....90% of them being all about making player the most OP possible because...ya know...fun

... but ... that's boring. You should feel like you achieved something once you finally get stuff done in this game. Last playthrough I went to war with my neighbour, got my arm cut off and died at the age of 34 leaving no heir.

What a great experience this game is.

[Ficelle]

Messaggio originale di Lera:

Messaggio originale di Ficelle:

But...
Why not have the option to start with 10000000 gold
Why not have player arrmies doing 10 times more damage
Why not have the option....

....add each and every option you can imagine....90% of them being all about making player the most OP possible because...ya know...fun

... but ... that's boring. You should feel like you achieved something once you finally get stuff done in this game. Last playthrough I went to war with my neighbour, got my arm cut off and died at the age of 34 leaving no heir.

What a great experience this game is.

You should re read what i wrote then ;D

The point i was trying to make is that adding options just to add options, especially if they make the player as OP as possible is terribad...and a watse of dev time

I think giving the player AI armies control is as OP and 'fun' than playing with 1000000000 gold at start or with armies doing 10 times more damage
Pure BS


I play only ironman ...3

[ColorsFade]

Messaggio originale di PIT_DEFENDER:

How soon can we expect a mod to control the AI in war ?

From what I can see, this won't be done with a mod. I took a look at the modding structure and files. I can't see how a modder would do this. It seems baked into the source code. But I would be happy to be wrong.

[ColorsFade]

Messaggio originale di World's Coolest Old Guy:

Messaggio originale di ColorsFade:

Why do you think that is, Colors?

Because none of those examples you gave are of people on my same team.

I'm not trying to rip you here. I'm not your adversary. I'm trying to get you to understand where we're coming from. You see us as sycophantic shills because we don't want this changed, so I'm trying to help you understand the actual reason we don't want it changed.

And I'm saying: provide a choice. A simple toggle. Play with the stupid AI if you want. But give people like me some way to manage allied armies.

Because what the AI does with it is stupid.

That's the bottom line. I don't understand how you enjoy watching the AI make stupid moves. I sure don't.

[ColorsFade]

Messaggio originale di Eltoron:

In case you control the kingdom. You just hold your troops as backup and throw allied vassals troops to the grind. Faction lose it's power. It's totally unfair game braking advantage.

LOL.. OMG. It's "game breaking advantage"

YES!

That's precisely the advantage of being a human being with a functional brain! I want to use my advantage to win! That's exactly my point!

So we're going to ask human beings to pay $60 for a game to play for enjoyment but we're not going to allow them to use their inherit advantage of being intelligent.

This. Makes. No. Sense.

Then just do away with armies and wars altogether. Make it a dice roll. No reason to move animated images around the board. Why waste time? Just roll it.

Yes. Absolutely. I want to be able to use my human brain to my advantage.

I can't believe anyone is against this idea. This is mind-boggling.

[Ficelle]

'Awesome super human' + AI VS AI
Team without human wins....

'Awesome super human' logic...i lose bacause AI sux ;D
The truth is that you are the weak link...not the AI

Ive yet to lose a war with AI allies...unless the enemies are way above our league
In this case, normal outcome, we will lose...and this is fine and expected
In fact, i find the AI pretty good and even helpful...which is rare


You have exactly the same reasonning as these terribad bronze league MOBA players
They are great and should be higher.... but they are stuck in Bronze because their team always sux...


Just in case it isnt clear
100% opposed to AI armies control given to the player
Now, of course, no problem with cheats, mods, console commands...allowing it

[Harris]

Messaggio originale di kaiyl_kariashi:

I've very much enjoyed it thus far though.

This is all very fascinating, but I struggle with the practical application.

Like I read before I'd be better off with craven content trusting vassals, but you can't filter personality (never found it anyway), only skills. Which means a tiring search for someone with a certain trait.

And even then, the game spans over centuries, the guy dies pretty soon and their heir might be a different kind of person entirely. Hence why bother in the first place.

Have there been situations for you where you told yourself "Damn, how good that I actually dig this aspect of the game?"

In my book, traits and even opinion don't hold that much of a practical value. You're better making sure you'll be staying in power, like amassing a large army and building up a beefy gold income. Everything else is much less significant in a grand scheme of things. or is it?

[Turian14]

Messaggio originale di ColorsFade:

Messaggio originale di Eltoron:

In case you control the kingdom. You just hold your troops as backup and throw allied vassals troops to the grind. Faction lose it's power. It's totally unfair game braking advantage.

LOL.. OMG. It's "game breaking advantage"

YES!

That's precisely the advantage of being a human being with a functional brain! I want to use my advantage to win! That's exactly my point!

So we're going to ask human beings to pay $60 for a game to play for enjoyment but we're not going to allow them to use their inherit advantage of being intelligent.

This. Makes. No. Sense.

Then just do away with armies and wars altogether. Make it a dice roll. No reason to move animated images around the board. Why waste time? Just roll it.

Yes. Absolutely. I want to be able to use my human brain to my advantage.

I can't believe anyone is against this idea. This is mind-boggling.

Just use cheats when I first started out playing CK2 I used the money cheat so I could always buy mercenaries and win wars. Over time though I stopped doing that since it got boring.

[Eltoron]

Messaggio originale di ColorsFade:

LOL.. OMG. It's "game breaking advantage"

YES!

That's precisely the advantage of being a human being with a functional brain! I want to use my advantage to win! That's exactly my point!

So we're going to ask human beings to pay $60 for a game to play for enjoyment but we're not going to allow them to use their inherit advantage of being intelligent.

This. Makes. No. Sense.

Then just do away with armies and wars altogether. Make it a dice roll. No reason to move animated images around the board. Why waste time? Just roll it.

Yes. Absolutely. I want to be able to use my human brain to my advantage.

I can't believe anyone is against this idea. This is mind-boggling.

It's not an advantage of functional brain it's advantage of specific game rule allowing player to FORCE AI making stupid things in your favor. The honest version should additionaly allow AI to control your troop and and waste them in his wars and allow you to lose your realm to another war just because "this stupid game with stupid mechanics gives control of my army to this stupid ally!!!!!" And this is really poor user experience and terrible design.

[Horemvore]

Alliance War Options

1. Allied AI Armies do their own thing (Default)
2. Allied AI Armies follow Player (Disables Ironman).

WTF is the problem with that. Solves all arguments tbh. :P