Intrigue feels useless

[JinxHeartnet]

So far I've made min-max characters for every stat except learning, the one I've enjoyed the most by far is a 27 martial 29 prowess viking, but I've never had a less fun time than playing as a high intrigue character. Some aspects were fun, like combining the sadist perk with the fact that I was Catholic which gave me huge bonuses to torture and execute Muslim POWs during the crusade. However things like kidnapping and murder seem incredible weak, and/or broken. For kidnapping, it doesn't have nearly the utility I was expecting. I was expecting something like kidnapping a lord and forcing them to give you one of your claims, or forcing them to marry their heir to marry your daughter matrilineally. The only use I found for it was gold, I kidnapped the Byzantine Emperor and Holy Roman Emperor at one point and got 1,000 gold ransoming them. As for murder schemes, something is definitely broken. I experienced no less than 3 instances in one playthrough of a scheme having a 95% success rate and 95% secrecy only for it to either be exposed or fail (several times in a row). Then again this is a Paradox game, where 50% chance of success means 100% chance of failure and 95% chance of success means 50% chance of failure. I did have a high intrigue playthrough where I managed to go from Count of Schleswig to King of Denmark, but that's only because I killed like 6 Danish kings until it was unstable and weak enough to conquer in a war. Are there any other uses for intrigue that can make it actually fun? Every time I select seduct or romance it has a 0% chance.

[PostalGibbon]

Well seduction and romance success chance is tied to your intrigue (seduction) and diplomacy for Romancing.

Then there is traits like just, honest, etc that affect success chance as also subject opinion of you and if they have spouse then also opinion of spouse.

That Roads of power major patch also reduced secrecy percentages on seduction and romance schemes so they are much harder to keep in hidden.

Success changes are calculated months early before event pops up so if you are save scumming, you reload the same failed attempt all over again and again.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by PostalGibbon:

Well seduction and romance success chance is tied to your intrigue (seduction) and diplomacy for Romancing.

Then there is traits like just, honest, etc that affect success chance as also subject opinion of you and if they have spouse then also opinion of spouse.

That Roads of power major patch also reduced secrecy percentages on seduction and romance schemes so they are much harder to keep in hidden.

Success changes are calculated months early before event pops up so if you are save scumming, you reload the same failed attempt all over again and again.

Yeah i knew that last part, HOI4 is the same way which makes countries like Hungary and Bulgaria incredibly un-fun to play as a playthrough can be ruined after having already sunk hours into it solely due to RNG.

[brownacs]

Not sure 27/29 martial/prowess counts as min-maxing if I'm being honest. 60+ prowess and 50+ martial... now you're min-maxing. Although to get those scores you'd probably have to play for several generations and by then the martial lifestyle's really not that good in my opinion.

They kinda broke the intrigue lifestyle a bit with the last major update (redid how schemes work if you're fairly new to the game) and even before then, it was a bit niche in terms of pure utility. Some starts could use it to great effect (the Jimenez heirs could murder their way to controlling half of Spain) but not very useful otherwise, more of an rp thing, and that was with the ability to have potentially 100s of agents helping out with schemes. The kidnapping scheme got nerfed aaaaaaaaages ago. When the game came out, you could use it to auto-win wars and the devs thought that was a bit much.

Learning's great by the by. My default build's a stewardship education with 50/50 stewardship (avaricious and architect trees) and learning perks (scholar and whole of body trees) plus a smattering of diplomacy for the kid stat boost and better opinion from gifts.

[Tragopan]

It does feel like they hamstrung Intrigue and schemes in general too much. It's the only Lifestyle I can never find a use for and never play. Its uses are so niche and weak and all it takes is (in most cultures and religions) one slip up to be revealed and then you're screwed.

[Mo0on]

On top of that all the AI that get the intrigue lifestyle just act like childish ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by Tragopan:

It does feel like they hamstrung Intrigue and schemes in general too much. It's the only Lifestyle I can never find a use for and never play. Its uses are so niche and weak and all it takes is (in most cultures and religions) one slip up to be revealed and then you're screwed.

I did just unite Portugal heavily using intrigue though so I suppose, when you get good RNG, it's useful. One thing I did was assassinate the King of Castille while simultaneously kidnapping his heir, so when I successfully kidnapped them I'd have the King of Castille as my prisoner and could sell them for 200 gold (you need 1,300 gold to form Portugal). I also would assassinate all family members of a Muslim emirate that granted them military allies, so i could fight them 1v1 where i had a military advantage.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by Mo0on:

On top of that all the AI that get the intrigue lifestyle just act like childish ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

For real X) Just randomly trying to assassinate you all the time for no reason, or spamming you with blackmail popups.

[Exor]

Intrigue lifestyle is a debuff you get after taking the learning health boost focused lifestyle just to find out your grandchild heir took the intrigue focus and became a kinslayer and most of your vassals are pissed that you tried to kill them.

[dwarfpcfan]

Intrigue is the one focus tree I never have any incentive to invest in. All the others I've found uses even the new wandering life style just introduced. But intrigue just exists, I never use it, never let my heir get educated in that. There never seems to be a point, murder schemes can be run without having intrigue as a focus and you call still pull them off (albeit now harder with the recent changes in schemes) same for blackmail and stuff since you can send your spymaster to look for secrets and stuff.

Really the 2 best trees are stewardship and learning, no other tree comes close to these 2 in effectiveness. Martial has some nice perks you can get really fast, and diplo has the various vassalization perks that are also good.

But intrigue, I just never find any reason to pick that because other trees are so much more useful to build a strong successful realm.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

Intrigue is the one focus tree I never have any incentive to invest in. All the others I've found uses even the new wandering life style just introduced. But intrigue just exists, I never use it, never let my heir get educated in that. There never seems to be a point, murder schemes can be run without having intrigue as a focus and you call still pull them off (albeit now harder with the recent changes in schemes) same for blackmail and stuff since you can send your spymaster to look for secrets and stuff.

Really the 2 best trees are stewardship and learning, no other tree comes close to these 2 in effectiveness. Martial has some nice perks you can get really fast, and diplo has the various vassalization perks that are also good.

But intrigue, I just never find any reason to pick that because other trees are so much more useful to build a strong successful realm.

Here's a good use for intrigue: assassinate someone with an emperor title and kidnap his heir, you can then sell the new emperor back for 500 gold. I did this to both the Byzantines and HRE, 1,000 gold in just a couple years.

[Kayeka]

I find intrigue gets pretty good if you're a vassal in the Byzantine Empire. Lots of ways to scheme and gain influence and appointments for your family.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

I did one lifestyle for each ruler and all of them are pretty useful. My current one is specialized in intrigue and it's pretty great, you can scheme more with more success, which allows me to put my dynasty where I please a lot faster as well as destroying the line of succession of annoying vassals.
So far, so good.

[kalanyr]

They've changed how intrigue works a fair bit with the last update but the discovery chance used to be monthly , which means a 95% chance of secrecy was still actually pretty bad (almost a 50% chance of discovery over the life of the scheme ).

[TiberiusGaben]

for a 0% seduce chance to occur they are most likely gay . anyone elses chance will always be above 0% . unless your a hideous pus infected abomination

[TiberiusGaben]

do u have gout scaly skin lovers pox greater lovers pox . are u a leper with all the above do u also have the giant and toadfaced perks . if u stack alll the negative attr traits u can get to 1% i think .