Wehre are the merchant republics?

[Mr. Wiggles]

Well? Is this an RPG or a historical strategy game?

[Bordric]

Both.

[Dizzy Ioeuy]

both, but kind poorly. Wish they had more systems and less "events,"

[Hao Zhao]

Merchant republics were awful in CK2 and I don't think we'll be seeing them again for some time in CK3

[Mr. Wiggles]

Originally posted by Bordric:

Both.

Where is the strategy and history?

Originally posted by Hao Zhao:

Merchant republics were awful in CK2 and I don't think we'll be seeing them again for some time in CK3

They were great fun, maybe a bit buggy in mods.

[Hao Zhao]

Originally posted by Mr. Wiggles:

Originally posted by Bordric:

Both.

Where is the strategy and history?

Originally posted by Hao Zhao:

Merchant republics were awful in CK2 and I don't think we'll be seeing them again for some time in CK3

They were great fun, maybe a bit buggy in mods.

They were not fun. The actions you could take were significantly more limited than feudal government and building up a country just so the next AI doge could knock it down made the entire venture feel like a waste of time. The gameplay was supposed to revolve around making money but they didn't really add anything to spend that money on in the long term. Your palace gets maxed out and then there's nothing left to do for the rest of the game other than build more cities.

[Mr. Wiggles]

Originally posted by Hao Zhao:

Originally posted by Mr. Wiggles:

Where is the strategy and history?


They were great fun, maybe a bit buggy in mods.

They were not fun. The actions you could take were significantly more limited than feudal government and building up a country just so the next AI doge could knock it down made the entire venture feel like a waste of time. The gameplay was supposed to revolve around making money but they didn't really add anything to spend that money on in the long term. Your palace gets maxed out and then there's nothing left to do for the rest of the game other than build more cities.

I never lost an election after the early game, maybe yours is a severe case of git gud. Saying you were (are, the game is still there and free) more limited than a feudal government is a blatant lie. Anyway, if republics sucked in CK2 (they did not) it is not a good excuse for not having them expanded and upgraded in CK3.

[Hao Zhao]

Originally posted by Mr. Wiggles:

Originally posted by Hao Zhao:

They were not fun. The actions you could take were significantly more limited than feudal government and building up a country just so the next AI doge could knock it down made the entire venture feel like a waste of time. The gameplay was supposed to revolve around making money but they didn't really add anything to spend that money on in the long term. Your palace gets maxed out and then there's nothing left to do for the rest of the game other than build more cities.

I never lost an election after the early game, maybe yours is a severe case of git gud. Saying you were (are, the game is still there and free) more limited than a feudal government is a blatant lie. Anyway, if republics sucked in CK2 (they did not) it is not a good excuse for not having them expanded and upgraded in CK3.

You're arguing that they sucked, really. If you don't ever lose elections, then those are bad elections. What's the point of the mechanic, even? And yeah, it was worse than feudal government in every way that mattered. Significantly restricted CB pools coupled with limited potential for inheritance. Like I said before, it's very easy to run out of ways to spend money in CK2 so what's the point of merchant republics? Also, merchant republics are comically trash and if you think otherwise, you've never tried playing one in multiplayer. Republics have zero chance of defending against a feudal kingdom of equal size. Being Venice or Genoa is just an invitation to get stepped on by other players. After the first couple of months, people pretty much just stopped playing them in MP

[CrUsHeR]

The actual problems with CK2 Merchant Republics:

1) No penalty for going "wide" - an MR can simply be played as a much wealthier alternative to other governments for empire-scale expansion, especially since tribals can choose to become an MR instead of feudal

2) Fake elections - The AI really sucks at ruling a republic. It is so bad that you can never let them win an election under any circumstances.
However, AI houses get huge amounts of free gold to invest into elections, and a guaranteed "old guy" candidate (age being the most important factor).
If you want to play by the rules, you can only invest all your money into the elections, and/or use old candidates which you probably don't want or have. This really stagnates your funding of armies and holdings, which is required to expand and defend your realm.

3) Murderization - because of the elections, you basically just want to nonstop murderplot the candidates of the other patrician houses. And since you also get the lion's share on their trade posts if their house goes extinct, there is a huge incentive to eradicate all their families down to the last member.
The game will simply create new houses, going back to point 2 -> 3




Everything else about the DLC was really great though, combined with the trade routes from Jade Dragon it had a major impact on the various world regions. Even if you weren't playing an MR yourself.

The current implementation of republics isn't even a placebo, they just sit around doing nothing for the entire game with zero impact on anything. Though the historical republics were major players in medieval politics.

Shouldn't be that hard to go back to the drawing board, and come up with something better?



Give them severe limits on territorial expansion, so you can't simply run an MR kingdom/empire larger than one duchy. Some minor maritime outposts could be possible though, like Venice temporarily owned Crete.
Focus expansion gameplay on the trade posts instead, and the conflicts with other republics.

Besides the economical impact of MR trade zones, the MRs should have unique advantages in diplomacy, information and trade. So first off they need their own culture, then we can go back to spying on other realms for technological advancement (rather than snowballing hybrid cultures which is the current meta).
Trading and "Intel" as a feature, like Venice sold maps of europe to the Mongol Empire while selling weapons to the other side.

What's also weird about the trade zones in CK2, you can simply establish trade posts anywhere you want. Instead you should be required to negotiate a contract with the host, with options similar to how feudal vassal contracts work. And then of course a CB in case a local ruler doesn't want you to establish trade posts.
The CB for a hostile takeover already existed, in this case you'd also take over the contract of the previous owner.

[Androzin]

Yeah, they sucked in ck2 but they were an important part of the game for many. Little things together make the game feel more alive, its why I wonder why they don't improve upon merchant republics in ck3.

I also wonder why players still cannot be knights for their liege or just for themselves, its very annoying.

[duelchaos]

Lol, lmao even at all the people that said Republics sucked. They were comically overpowered to the point that within 100ish years you could slap that Abbasids and the Byzantines around with Merc spam. The whole point of the other families in the republic was for you to steal their stuff. 10/10 gameplay, have almost 300 hours on Venice.

[Wanderer]

No merchant republics, no nomads. But people still saying ck3 got more features than ck2.

[Mr. Wiggles]

Originally posted by duelchaos:

Lol, lmao even at all the people that said Republics sucked. They were comically overpowered to the point that within 100ish years you could slap that Abbasids and the Byzantines around with Merc spam. The whole point of the other families in the republic was for you to steal their stuff. 10/10 gameplay, have almost 300 hours on Venice.

Yeah, they were even more fun in Geheimnisnacht although very bugged

Originally posted by Wanderer:

No merchant republics, no nomads. But people still saying ck3 got more features than ck2.

It's a mistery, there is nothing to do in this game except trying to shag your family

[Hao Zhao]

Originally posted by duelchaos:

Lol, lmao even at all the people that said Republics sucked. They were comically overpowered to the point that within 100ish years you could slap that Abbasids and the Byzantines around with Merc spam. The whole point of the other families in the republic was for you to steal their stuff. 10/10 gameplay, have almost 300 hours on Venice.

100 years, eh? Byzantium is ready to crush anything in the game after around 20 years. lol

Republics are not OP.

"But muh moneyz"

Every player run country in CK2 eventually gets to the point where you have more money than you can spend. Merchant republic's gimmick of being the money government is completely pointless. The best Venice player in the world will get crushed by a medium Byzantium player, every time, because in MP you don't get 100 years to prepare. You get 10.