Dueling is broken garbage

[DECOY]

I am doing a cheat run with a viking character that has 271 combat ability just for fun. It really annoys me when my character loses a duel and dies to some twig with -12 combat ability. It happens really often too. (maybe there is some bug where combat score glitches at really high values, but I doubt that because other threads are reporting similar things at more reasonable levels [even though they should still clearly be winning]). There should be absolutely no decent possibility of my character losing to someone with -12. I can understand a 1% chance just to keep things interesting, but it seems like my character dies every 3rd or 4th duel encounter and then I have to save scum just to keep playing the way I want. The amount of chance factored into dueling is absurd and I think it should be toned down significantly.
Edit: The duels I lost were 1 on 1 against rivals. And it is worth mentioning that my character has not once been killed as a commander while in combat. Also intrigue and other skills/traits had no role in my defeat because all stats are +100 on the character and every trait that gives a bonus to personal combat skill was on the character too.

[★Jaw★]

Agreed. A lot of people would take this post as "Lol, you aren't invincible, grow up", but in truth, if my character dies, I would like him to die against someone who actually knows how to fight, not saying they have to be equal in skill, but at least 30-80 and not a damn -12 frail one handed hunchback.

[New Caesar]

Honestly I have never had this problem, although I’ve heard about it. I always win by duels whenever I have a 20 combat skill advantage. The only exception is when I dueled someone thirty points less than me and in the end we both killed each other “in an epic duel.” Tbh I think it’s just bad RNG for you guys.

[Ritter Ayla]

I have the same problem, duels honestly feel as random as they did before the patch as my 100+ pcs character gets regularly defeated by people that in the game's own words dont even know how to hold a sword. That and more often than not when my character leads an army they just get killed outright, no duel or anything, just a message of them being killed in battle.

[★Jaw★]

Originally posted by The New Caesar:

Honestly I have never had this problem, although I’ve heard about it. I always win by duels whenever I have a 20 combat skill advantage. The only exception is when I dueled someone thirty points less than me and in the end we both killed each other “in an epic duel.” Tbh I think it’s just bad RNG for you guys.

Possibly :/ and yea I've had a few of those epic duels, too.

[broartwar]

are these duels as a commander or legit duels?

As a commander it seems to be more likely that you will die even though you're much better. It doesn't seem to say exactly who killed you in these situations. You run forward for the duel and then you die. I think maybe its a situation where someone else steps up to take over for the commander...

I know this happens sometimes where one of my commanders pushes passed me and duels him instead.

If this is happening during 1 on 1 duals that seems crazy.(not that i don't believe you) For me if im 20+ better dueling skill, I dont think i've ever lost.

I think you are probably talking about as a commander. Generally in duels they let you live and you are just wounded.

[SKull]

At least my pagan rulers have been reliably unbeatable. Lost once to an AI intrigue cheat and once because I fought the last legendary dule while injured and with an infected wound. Other than those two I've mostly been fine.
Seems very risky as anything other than pagan though.

[ArchAngelOsis]

the AGOT mod has a game rule to decrease/basically remove duel flukes (ie your 271 would guy would smite everyone except maybe 260 with deceitful/dishonourable or a 280 patient yada yada) if someone could ask their premission and mod that for vanilla would solve this problem..

[Atalvyr]

My Slavic warrior-king crushed all before him, even if the advantage was no more than 20-30 points. I won something like 70-80 duels in his lifetime. The only time I lost was when the lodge put me up against someone with an even higher score, but that seemed to be kinda the point of those storylines.

[DECOY]

Originally posted by broartwar:

are these duels as a commander or legit duels?

As a commander it seems to be more likely that you will die even though you're much better. It doesn't seem to say exactly who killed you in these situations. You run forward for the duel and then you die. I think maybe its a situation where someone else steps up to take over for the commander...

I know this happens sometimes where one of my commanders pushes passed me and duels him instead.

If this is happening during 1 on 1 duals that seems crazy.(not that i don't believe you) For me if im 20+ better dueling skill, I dont think i've ever lost.

I think you are probably talking about as a commander. Generally in duels they let you live and you are just wounded.

These are in 1 on 1 duels and the special pagan dueling thing.
I've not once had my character die in combat while acting as a commander

[Hopeless Knight]

Your chances are capped you can't have 100% and beyond chance for winning. It's most likely capped to 95% or 99%. It just bad luck and also dont forget about the use of intrigue in duels they can be very op...

[galadon3]

I kinda like sentences like

but it seems like my character dies every 3rd or 4th duel encounter

Really, if you want to get any relevant data, stop to build your argument on "I feel it is like that"... Most cases especially when something is annoying we tend to overestimate it A LOT.
Take a sheet of paper and note it down, also play more then one game. Claiming something is broken in a RNG based game after one partial playthrough based on numbers you just feel is nonsense.

I had 3 rulers who took every duel they could and two of them died with 70+, other I often let run some duels in their lifetime, but don't focus on it, those might have 10 at the end of their life. Others (for example a genius ruler with all 20+ stats... HELL, NO WAY I would risk that guy in a duel) I forbid leading armies and never send into duels.

Of those that run some duels I never had any die in a duel (usually when they start to get old age modifiers I retire them from that and leading armies), the pure warrior guys, a lot of duels, yea lost some and got injuries but the dead one was from illness.

Only freak "accident" so far was exactly the other way round, I tried to get rid of my old, frail, lunatic monarch with -24 PC and sent him against his only rival, who was in his prime and had 20 something PC.
Should have looked up that he was of my Dynasty before doing that. The frail old guy slew him and got the kinslayer-trait.


Besides I find it kinda funny how people claim that they are 100% sure it wasnt an intrigue-maneuver or something. How exactly do you know that?
Did the devs say anywhere that you will be told everytime if the enemy cheated?
Afaik the devs claimed there can be a lot of other factors and stats playing a role and just gave intrigue as one of them.

[DECOY]

Originally posted by 33rd Hopeless Knight:

Your chances are capped you can't have 100% and beyond chance for winning. It's most likely capped to 95% or 99%. It just bad luck and also dont forget about the use of intrigue in duels they can be very op...

I can understand a cap at 95% but I died way more often then 5% of the time
Also intrigue and other skills had no role in my defeat because all stats were +100 where the opposition had <20

[DECOY]

Originally posted by galadon3:

I kinda like sentences like

but it seems like my character dies every 3rd or 4th duel encounter

Really, if you want to get any relevant data, stop to build your argument on "I feel it is like that"... Most cases especially when something is annoying we tend to overestimate it A LOT.
Take a sheet of paper and note it down, also play more then one game. Claiming something is broken in a RNG based game after one partial playthrough based on numbers you just feel is nonsense.

That's fair, but the point of this thread was mainly to gauge whether or not this is a legitimate issue, and based on a lot of the responses, many players do feel like it is an issue, so therefore the next step would be to gather data, which I've started playing around to see how this works

Originally posted by galadon3:

Besides I find it kinda funny how people claim that they are 100% sure it wasnt an intrigue-maneuver or something. How exactly do you know that?
Did the devs say anywhere that you will be told everytime if the enemy cheated?
Afaik the devs claimed there can be a lot of other factors and stats playing a role and just gave intrigue as one of them.

Originally posted by DECOY:

Also intrigue and other skills/traits had no role in my defeat because all stats are +100 on the character and every trait that gives a bonus to personal combat skill was on the character too.

[Solvem Probler]

The combat system is currently indeed broken.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/a1v9yc/do_you_feel_like_you_die_more_in_battles_thats/

[DECOY]

Originally posted by NihilVerum:

The combat system is currently indeed broken.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/a1v9yc/do_you_feel_like_you_die_more_in_battles_thats/

That is fascinating, thank you, hopefully there will be a patch of some sort.