Alliances makes this game way too easy

[Martyparty]

I enjoy CK3 but you can just totally ignore almost all of the internal mechanics and ignore country control and your own army when you just have a few children you can marriage for an alliance.

When attacked just ask your alliances to fight for you for free. You can just wait or direct the alliances with your own small force to the enemy and let the allies do the biggest part of the fighting. Oh is an alliance not so strong anymore? just divorce when you a norse leader for example or get rid of the marriage through other means and just remariage with a new strong ally that can do all the fighting.

When you attack it does cost some prestige, but normally you float in prestige anyway so asking at least one or two of you strongest alliances can make a war against a foe of 4x your armysize a easy challenge.

I just want to say alliances through marriage needs to be nerfed in someway. Its too easy to expand, feel secured or stabilize because of marriages.

Ideas:
- decrease the amount of alliances through marriage. Just put a max on it (2/3?) and let the player decide if he wants to marriage for an alliance or a regular marriage.
- introduce marriage costs, especially when you want to marriage a son to a strong duchy or kingdom.
- bigger penalties for divorce: a penalty to the marriage acceptance. - '15' (for example) reason: 'divorced'
- prestige cost for asking ally to help in defensive war, cuz why not? Its embarrising that you need help of your allies to defend your own territoriy right?
- Make marriage acceptence more tough, make it that you have to do more actions before someome wants to accept: sway, more money or that a lifestyle choice would be neccesary to increase certain marriage acceptances or something
- disable the creation of marriage alliances by marriage the sibling of a ruler or father/mother of a ruler. I believe this can create alliances in situations, i dont see the reason.
-

[AC Denton]

until you lose the alliance upon death and your realm falls apart

[Martyparty]

- marriage acceptances negatively impacted by distance.
- Marriage alliances disabled because of distance. The fact that i can invite the Byzantine empire to defend against some viking guy who attacks me as Wessex or Alba is one thing. That they actually show up with 9-12k troops to help some random anglo-saxon guy because he married the second daughter to the third sun is just too stupid.

[Martyparty]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

until you lose the alliance upon death and your realm falls apart

You would think but you can just counter it by not marriaging your heir until you become him and have him betrotheled or betrothel him when you become him with some 3 year old kid that have a daddy with an army. Break bethrothel when you stabilize and marriage someone you actually want to marriage. or already have the strongest alliance through the marriage of your heir.

[DinoMight]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

until you lose the alliance upon death and your realm falls apart

in 90% of cases you can renegotiate alliances with your new ruler... its his sisters (previous kings daughters) that are married to foreign rulers, there is no reason for you to not continue the alliance all the way till your sister/aunts deaths

[Martyparty]

Besides what also just could help in general against expanding is that being very agressive results in a warmongerer status for you in the region or within a realm (if you are a vassal) resulting in the relevant AI leaders being able to join defensive wars against this warmongering lord. This would increase the risk and uncertainity of war and make a lord think twice before attacking and gobbling the entire region through force.


For example i conquered South Italy and before that sicily as the viking of Mointaignu in - some wars with the help of marriage alliances - in only a few years by just attacking every independent lord in that region after each other until everything was controlled by this Vikingking.
The Byzantines (counties in south italy and sicily), The Italians, a cathlolic Duchy in south italy and muslim duchy in sicily and a few italian counts just accepted their faith to be eaten by a random viking dude within a few years after his arrival. They made zero attempts to block these actions, they didnt try to stop this viking invader by combining forces or something. A viking leader who did not have any relation or contact with these leaders. Only thing he did was raid, attack, kill, conquer and claim the title of king of Siciliy after only a few years of war. A few months/years later Italian Sardinia and Independent Corsica were also eaten, just like independent Crete. Totally destabilizing the region, destroying families and realms without any real challenge.

Before he went on this quest he became the king of Burgundy within a few years by attacking Italy for Provence, after that Lotharinge for the duchy north of Provence and then again Italy for the duchy east of Provence. In the first 1/2 wars he did not have strong marriages down so actually did it by himself with some mercaneries. But the fact that the french king was very mad at me for some reason and stilll did absolutely nothing against the creation of a hostile kingdom at its southern border lead by a agressive viking of a pagan faith felt odd. Especially because the French king should be totally aware of the dangers of having Vikings establishing a foothold in Burgundy, because he is constantly fighting them anyway. Oh, the only thing the madlad French king did was demand an artifact. The viking king LMFAO'ed and gave it to him and ignored the French king for the rest of his life.

[VoiD]

You are right, it's one of many aspects that trivialize the difficulty of this game, nothing is a threat, ever, for any reason.

[sfbistimg]

lol at needing to rely on allies to make the game to easy. Game is to easy without allies, there is literally no reason to have any allies after 20 years into the game. Unless you enjoy being called into useless wars all the time.
My relatives marriages are better used to bring in Great Knights, Traits or Councillors/Courtier Jobs. Or to get your family on foreign thrones (tho I find it is easier to just conquer land and give it to them, then go this route)

[Vinz Clortho]

It would be nice if they expanded the roleplaying aspect of the game a little more. The rulers don't seem to act according to any kind of personality, they just follow the script of the game as you mentioned with alliances. Or maybe they do and I am just not seeing it? Every character in the game is supposed to act according to their personality traits but it rarely seems to amount to anything of consequence from a player's pov.
As for historical accuracy, aside from names and dates I don't think there's much of that either in terms of how the game plays out. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a sandbox after all but they could definitely work on some of the more ridiculous things that happen.
It would be interesting if the game had some kind of historical template so that, aside from player instigated actions, things in the game world pan out roughly according to what we know from history.

[Wenzel]

Originally posted by Martyparty:

- marriage acceptances negatively impacted by distance.
- Marriage alliances disabled because of distance. The fact that i can invite the Byzantine empire to defend against some viking guy who attacks me as Wessex or Alba is one thing. That they actually show up with 9-12k troops to help some random anglo-saxon guy because he married the second daughter to the third sun is just too stupid.

This so much.

However, I don't think that it's an issue with marriages. Rather it has to do with CK's negligence of logistical issues.

The long distance troop movements that are commly seen in CK3 would have been logistical nightmares. Levies should go home for harvest time. The campaign season (and thus also the "range" of armies) should be limited. "Standing armies" and "knights" might stay in the field over winter. But then winter attrition should be much, much harsher. Also, supply in neutral and enemy territories seems overly generous to me.

But I understand that any change here would result in chaos for the AI.

[Jackochainsaw]

Alliances can be a double edged sword. I've been doing Fate of Iberia recently (got the common status quo completion with Kingdom of Castille) and now that I've allied with the King of France I am just yeeting people out of existence but in order to get there, I had to help him in 3 wars (1 liberty, 1 tyranny, 1 claimant). They do make life easier, however, they don't always show up. I've been left hanging before by mega allies. They are useful for preventing you being attacked though. Excellent simply for a barrier for you to consolidate your power, just watch out when they suddenly decide to leave you half way through a war because the war started at home is more pressing for them. I've had it happen a few times.

[Boscogn]

I agree, alliances through marriage need a serious nerf because it makes the game too easy (I play on highest difficulty).

[Medicles]

Not having any kind of Aggressive Expansion makes this game way too easy.

[Rex is back, baby!]

Have some agency in your life. If it's too easy for you, Make it harder. Making things harder for yourself is not that it's difficult.