Add more difficultys

[rain linden]

Hello, did you plan to add more than the normal difficulty? At the moment the game feals way to easy. They is no need to do some roleplay stuff. I can just raise my armees and steamroll everything.

In one of my mods, i create a mod that makes the ai more stronger. I just give them Levys, maa and Knights more damage and defense

The modifier, games rules and my localizations:

This makes the game much more interesting, now you need to trait with your neighbours and make strategic alliances

[neon horizon]

i think in one of the dev-diaries they explained, that they know that the game is too easy for some, but they don't just want to buff the AI, as that is not interesting. They showcased a system where every once in a while a great conqueror emerges, that builds up a great empire (greater stability, and more agressive AI) so the player always has strong rivals.
I like that approach more tbh, i hope they add more of those dynamic things, as just generally giving some buffs to the AI, without affecting behaviour, will either be endlessly frustrating or just move the point where you're more powerful than all of your neighbours ahead a few years.

[rain linden]

i mean, higher difficultys wouldnt hurt🤔

The upcomming system btw. sounds also good. Have also read about it.

but at the moment, i think i can also wish with a great conquer the floor.^^

In one of my playthroughs, i have stackwipe the complete Almohad Uprising armee with only 8000 maa in one fight. 150K Troops against 8000

[neon horizon]

in that case, they should probably just fix the army system and make it less exploitable in general.

[rain linden]

The solution could be for the AI to start constructing military buildings and stationing maa logically.

Another problem is that the AI often cannot estimate how strong or weak it is compared to another nation.

If I play with Republican Vassals, everyone keeps declaring war on me because the AI thinks I'm weak because of my low troop numbers. Everyone else is much weaker than me and I wipe the floor with them...

[neon horizon]

yeah, imo this needs to be fixed. Just a hard mode with a few AI buffs, wouldn't solve any of the underlying issues, and just make the early game a bit more frustrating

[rain linden]

the early game that only takes 5 years?

i mean, it takes a little bit more time if i start with a single count, but if i play with a duke, i growth pretty fast

In normal i have already an stabil empire in round about 50 Years with max military buffs for my maa and nearly infinite money

[stark veldt]

That is not a good solution and it does exactly what they said they don't want to do
There's a good discussion on the forum on that topic
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/conquerors-wont-raise-the-difficulty.1673989/

[rain linden]

🤔 Is there really now way to teach the ai to build and stationed maa more smart? And also build up more maa?

because what I did works very well, at least for me. if the AI were to build smarter on new levels of difficulty or more aggressively, I think that would solve the problem in a similar way

[stark veldt]

There have been a number of topics on the forum regarding this. It feels like a new one pops up every other day
Long story short the team is aware that this is an issue but they're not looking to resolve it in any meaningful way as it's time consuming. Instead they will provide us with a bandaid solution with implementing a conqueror fame trait that will be applied to a number of AI characters to buff their strength in order to minimise penalties for making bad decisions

[rain linden]

a easy solution can be, to let the ai preffer build military Buildings on higher difficultys and make maa cheaper. Or just buff the entire army like in my modifier code in the startpost

Although you may have to be careful with the modifiers, I can imagine that the Levy modifier can be extremely busted in the late game after round about 400 years. xD

[rain linden]

In my opinion, the normal difficulty level is fine. The only problem is that there are no harder difficulties. When I started with CK3, the difficulty level was perfectly fine. The replay value only suffers a bit because there are very few ways to make the game more difficult other than random things like getting sick or randomly falling out of windows lol.

That's why I suggest some optional game rules that make the AI stronger. Nobody has to follow these rules, especially a beginner. Maybe add a warning for new players to this game rule. But for experienced players, I'm pretty sure it will add replay value

[stark veldt]

Not at all 😅 that's exactly what we've been told the team will not do 😥

[neon horizon]

As I see it, the problem can't be fixed, by giving the AI buffs. The AI has to engage with the systems of the game more effectively, i. e. either the AI starts stacking maa/knight-modifiers like the player does, or maa/knight-modifier-stacking is heavily nerved.
I tend towards the latter one simply because it's probably easier to implement from a developer point of view. Judging by how the AI acts in Paradox games, it's probably insanely hard to get it to do any useful thing.

Perhaps part of the solution could be to make army composition more important. Right now it feels like it doesn't matter if you have little horses or little bowmen, as long as you stack the modifiers, you will win most battles. Maybe the counter efficiency could be tuned up a lot, while the bonuses are tuned down.
You could also borrow a little from Imperator Rome, where the difference between levies and Legions is mainly that you can't choose the composition of your levies, rather the game just gives you a composition based on the culture. This could be implemented into ck3, so most of your levies would always be footmen, with there being some cultural traditions, which offer bonuses like "+10% Levy Horse Archer Share".

[zealous fiber]

Not everyone rushes empire status bro

[rain linden]

yeah thats correct, sometimes i also play only for a single kingdom. But also with a kingdom, surviving is not that difficult. unless you play Jerusalem Jewish and are surrounded by Muslims and also threatened by crusades ;D

You can work pretty well with the bonuses there, but at least you don't have an infinite amount of money there if you limit yourself to this kingdom and therefore can't maintain a strong army permanently.

[zealous fiber]

Imo the game’s difficulty is pretty well balanced, but I would like a dedicated hardcore mode, where the goal is to last as long as possible without being wiped.
I think more difficulties would be fun

[rain linden]

in theory, you can use my mod, i can setup a mod for vanilla also. At the moment, my difficulty mod is only for my The Fallen Eagle Submod for vanilla Startdates

[rain linden]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243683054

Done lol. ;D

[zealous fiber]

Not a big deal please don’t double ping