CKII is released.

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Patch notes foretell some nerfing to the BE. And Turks being a danger to the Europe would be a good addition.

Actually, I was thinking about removing rather silly element of an independence war ending with the death of the rebel leader... Or making that it can end with the death of the monarch as well.

And yes, the conditions apply to the player as well, which I think is a good thing: It forces you to carefully organize your feudal clusterfuck so it doesn't collapse like a house of cards. It discourages map-painting in favour of actual nation-building.

As for the battle weights and thresholds... Those are far more sensitive and harder for the AI behaviour to handle than the altered victory conditions. I'm also pretty sure you can't have the "rising" warscore that county claim wars have, which is a further complication. In short, there's only two options: Either drastically lower the AI warscore requirements for the liege to accept terms, or to modify the white peace (keep in mind, the liege only accepts white peace if he isn't winning and the war has gone on for several years).

Used to be beta feedback only, who tested the patches before they were released. Nowadays it's probably player feedback through their forums.

So...now that the post release excite has, hopefully, worn off...what kind of product is CKII? Any glaring faults? Areas where an expansion is really needed? Etc?

It seems to be quite playable. I guess a few realism issues with how long people live when no one is trying to assassinate them and the smaller amount of children. A lot more random events would be nice.

It's a solid game. I don't know if it will have legs over the long run like EU does. After all, the simplified combat / technology system means that there aren't a lot of different ways in which your empire actually operates; the only difference across playthroughs come from the history you organise of different characters. Which is plenty fun, and will get better with more events, but the actual running the country part I don't think is complex enough, so that may shorten the lifespan somewhat.

For now, though, good stuff. Worth the money.

Definitely solid. Certain issues need work and polishing, like ambitions and war goals of different war types and of course laws, but overall no glaring bugs.

Most events in any game from Pdox out of the box.

Battle system is way too much about numbers, that needs changing. Not enough differences in buildings and armies between cultures, some other mistakes. But its perfectly playable right now and quite fun too.

Definitively solid, but it still needs improvements and added features.
EU3 is still the best Paradox game of this generation, but that because it is the oldest title and the one with the most expansions so far. Hell, I didn't like vanilla DW much before Divine Wind, its much better after it, more builder elements, I would say.
What it lacks is CK's classic court intrigue. The whole intrigue of EU3 is very bland. That is bad because it means there's almost no map-painting deterrent, like the whole intrigue of CK2.

CK needs some patches, and maybe a expansion or two.

That's pretty much the shortcoming of all the Paradox combat systems other than HoI. Quantity will always win in vanilla Paradox games, other than HoI and Vic2 sometimes.

Quality will actually win in CK2, the Holy Order armies with their massed knights can steamroll much larger armies.
There's fuck all you can do to improve the quality of your personal armies though, all feudal holdings produce pretty much the same troops.

Not in EU3. In EU3, both quality and quantity have their merits, depends on which nation you're playing. I would say that, as a rule, quantity is better for large land nations (France, China, Austria, Hungary) and Steppe Nomads (Golden Horde, Timurids, etc) and quality is better for smaller naval nations (Portugal, England, Brittany, Denmark, Ireland, etc...). EU3 gives a lot of importance to generals, terrain, manpower, sliders and ideas.

Sure ideas and generals make a (small) difference, but when it comes down to it, the fucking dice will always screw you over and quantity will prevail. Always.

Only time I've ever seen quality make a difference is in mods where it's buffed.

Also, you're probably going to have good, if not better generals as a land nation than a naval one.

I'm also basing this on MP experiences, not SP, you can do good as pretty much anything in SP.

True.

In my last EU3 game, my very high-quality Dutch army would routinely wipe the floor with much larger doomstacks.

Quantity always prevails? Then why is it so easy to take a few thousand troops from Europe and conquer India/China/Americas?

Quality makes a huge difference in EU. Take Prussia and go quality and take their special decision. Any army that meets you will have to significantly outnumber you (even other European forces) or it will get ripped apart.

Quantity is the shittiest slider choice after Decentralization in EU3, Quality will only have only slightly smaller armies but will inflict disproportionately higher losses, meaning Quantity is only useful for countries that are hopelessly outnumbered otherwise. EU3's combat is by far the most lacking in all Paradox games, far inferior to HoI model where strategy can actually win the day instead of superior numbers/tech. Then again, EU3 is baby's first Paradox game, lackluster in comparison to all the other, more detailed games (even after five expansions the game still has less meat on its bones without mods).

And EU3 having more builder elements than, in this case, CK2? Puh-leeze, in EU3 you mostly just wait, wait, wait and wait and then build a new tier when you reach the tech. You also can't build up provinces beyond the constraits of their original status and are constrained by the inflexible base tax mechanic, problems CK2 does by far the best job of avoiding among Pdox games: In CK2 it is possible to start nation-building almost anywhere on the map because of how the Holdings work. In my campaign Kalevan province is worth more than 90% of the provinces in Europe, and my realm would make for some very lucrative conquest if I wasn't a major power that can defend itself. This kind of dramatic rise in provincial value is not possible in EU3.

I disagree, quantity in EU3 is the obviously superior slider. At least in a competitive environment. The difference between maxed quality and quantity is 25% global manpower. And manpower is THE deciding factor in interhuman warfare as long as both sides can reach each other. One battle wont win you the war, running out of manpower WILL lose it for you. Reinforcing armies is also extremely important.

Consider this: with sliders aimed at morale, other than maxed quantity, morale difference between quantity based army and quality based ones is small. Therefore quantity based army has only to prolong battles and kill quality morale, then pursue and destroy. Numbers of troops lost in battles quickly become insignificant compared to losses due to attrition and pursuit. Watch your casualty ledger, even in SP.

Quantity will replenish its losses quicker, its also a deciding factor. 20% difference in discipline is a small price to pay.

I've always played for quality, as that discipline difference has seemed to mean that my army kills the other side quicker.

And if you have a large nation, manpower is only an issue if you fuck up. And because it does not significantly influence what really makes the big difference, Force Limit, Quality all the way.

Exactly my point, in MP it's the far superior option, in SP, who gives a fuck the AI is dumb.

This too, I got into EU3 after playing all the other Pdox games of it's day, and I really didn't see why everyone liked it more than those.

Such a waiting game as numbers tick down and you've nothing to do while they do.

Numbers do seem way too important in CK combat. Even if a defender has 50% of the attackers number, they'll be easily defeated while the attacker will take barely a scratch. The one exception to this is Holy Orders, who can smash even defending forces that outnumber them.

In CK unless the enemy is at least 2/3 the size of your army it turns into whack-a-mole. By contrast in EU3 unless factors were massively on your side (tech or numbers) you could never really be too sure how things were going to swing. It also seems impossible to voluntarily retreat in CK2. EU3 had a good system where you can't retreat before a certain period of time, but after that you can if the dice have been against you, the enemy has brought up unexpected reinforcements etc etc

So yeah combat needs work. More Total War-style cultural variation between armies would be nice as well. An army of wild Highlanders should play differently than a French one.

It'd be nice if you could automate some of your military for minor irrelevant rebellions like some count trying to break from your influence, and to deal with the 1000th peasant rebellion. It's a real pain with large kingdoms

Weird that you can't. You can do that in HoI3, where units under garrison commands automatically attack partisans/rebels in nearby provinces and I thought EU3 and Vicky2 now had something similar with cavalry.

The patch that's supposed to come out later today is promised to have your vassals smart enough to raise their armies and take out rebels on their own. Now there will be a good reason to divide up your empire into powerful duchies.

Its not weird at all since you have different kinds of levies in here. Its not the same if you squash rebels yourself or if you do this with levies from vassals. Automatic system would have to choose, taking into consideration vassal relations, your treasury, levy replenishment rate etc. Quite hard to automate.

last night my thunder-god king Erik the Conquerer died of syphilis (damn unclean whores) and the Northern Empire went to the old half-brother of his, Markus Duke of Uppland, which somehow had made himself universally hated by the whole realm during his years as a duke (i had to stop not a few plots of his..) and now when he took the throne of the unified Kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Lithuania he could only rule for about 2 weeks before the realm went to hell in rebellion, it went so bad i i had to abandon the outer parts of it and concentrate my defence on the core of it (Stockholm, Uppland and Åbo and nearby provinces) when in a middle of a large fight for Hälsingland Markus son Henrik rebelled (to dethrone his father Markus) in his back and simply steamrolling my char with part of his own home levy, forcing me to accept defeat which resulted in the Empire being split between Kingdom of Sweden (Henrik) and Lithuania (Markus).

like this:



then after a year of cleaning up the rebel provinces on both sides my king mysteriously dies and Lithuania is inherited by Henrik, so now suddenly the whole deal back together again and every one loves the new king.

shit like this never happened in the original CK or in EU III, nor was it this nerve-wracking either.