House Rules for Harder Play

[Irish]

If you are Catholic, you must also follow the Papacy into any war. Even if it means breaking an alliance. If a country is excommunicated, break all ties as well.

I am also thinking about using the BSSWITCH Cheat at certain points in the game to make sure that the traditionally larger kingdoms are creating the best possible units. I am sick of seeing major countries attacking with only 3 units of spearmen and peasants 3 hours into the game.

[Largefry07]

7. Kill always spies, marshalls from kingdoms at war(by Payne) + never kill spies of countries you have some agreement with(trade, non-agression, alliance) (by Elvain).

How about keeping all of the captured marshalls and then releaseing them when you have made peace with the kingdom. I think this is "play with honor" also. But don't asked for ransom or accecpt it.

[Anguille2]

How about keeping all of the captured marshalls and then releaseing them when you have made peace with the kingdom. I think this is "play with honor" also. But don't asked for ransom or accecpt it.

I like that.

[Elvain]

How about keeping all of the captured marshalls and then releaseing them when you have made peace with the kingdom. I think this is "play with honor" also. But don't asked for ransom or accecpt it.
I like it, but I can't imagine it in real play without separate dungeon.
I was just playing Burgundy in the late period and fought very cruel war with Navarre(they always keep invading my lands and I captured most of their marshalls (final number was over 10!). I ask them for peace, but I'm at war with them without any break for 3rd kings reign. They always lose battles, but don't want to sign any peace(even white)
how could I keep 10 captured marshalls at my court when I have only 9 slots? :smile:

honestly, those rules are making the game really hard. I only do not follow "each knight at court" and my allies conquered few provinces while I was plundering rural areas...
sometimes I forgot that war has to be justified (for this case-and "crusades" I would limit this one only to kingdoms with same religion)

As I tried it in reality, I would edit those rules a little:
1. Never ask for peace unless you have lost a province or fought at least 3 battles (by Irish)+Elvain: in this case, pludering can be understood as a battle
2. Never Demand gold or provinces from allies (by Irish).
3. never attack a town before you plundered at least one village in the province (by Elvain)
4. Don't invade one enemy province with more than 2 marshalls (by Elvain)
5. Start your own Crusades: send an army far East, very far from the home province (do this at least once in kings life)
muslims: attack Spain or Rome(following the same key as catholics)
orthodox: keep being at war with at least one muslim country, keep attacking muslim Egypt(to "restore old Byzantia) or make your own crusades against Rome or Egypt to unify christians and restore Roman empire
pagans: make pagan crusades to the Baltics (todays baltic republics+Scandinavia) while following the same key as all others (at least once in kings life) (By Anguille2 and Elvain)
this rule is not necessery to be followed untill your second king's death
6. Play with Honor: don't declare war if it's not justified (spy or else). Stick to your allies during all the game (always have at least 2 of them) and help them as much as you can and protect your vassals as much as you can
7. don't kill enemy spies without asking for ransom and waiting few minutes(how to define time limit?). Keep one enemy spy at your court untill you sign a peace + never kill spies of countries you have some agreement with(trade, non-agression, alliance) if you know he's from allied country, of course(by Elvain)
8. don't raise your Kingdom power over +x when you have more than y provinces

x | y
1 | 15
2 | 12
3 | 9
4 | 6
5 | 3
note:if you have KP stable on 5 since you had 3 provinces, you can't drop it. This is advantage for smaller kingdoms :smile:

[Irish]

How about you can only have 2 elite units and 2 kingdom specific units per army:
So if you own Phalz for example,

Your army could have:
2 Templars
1 Heavy Archer
1 Heavy Swordsman
5 other units like light calvary, bowmen, men at arms

If you are a Muslim country, must always be at war with the Papcy and any countries that own a prtion of Spain.

[Kakita Matesu]

Hello!
This is my first post on this forum, so I want to greet with you.

I have bought the game just before the Christmas and havn't finished it yet. I know I could conquer all the Europe in one day from position I have gained in my game (because AI isn't very good) but I like to see how my kingdom is prospering, just for pleasure, because playing is pleasure. I'm also very sad that benefits from KoH weren't as high as it was expected. I'm glad to watch everyone on this forum fighting for our fabulous game. I wish you luck, because I'm going to help you :)

Rules, you are creating, make KoH harder and it's good peace of work but maybe first we should change some things in game directly. Angryminer have idea to raise taxes during the war (of course I mean lower income), I don't check possibility of that but I think it could be done. My suggestion is: "Did someone try to change settings in 'defs/difficulty.in2' file?". Maybe this will help a little with poor AI?

Sorry for offtopic but I have to start somehow
PS. Is there any topic where players can write "things to do" for modders?

[Irish]

Hello!
This is my first post on this forum, so I want to greet with you.

I have bought the game just before the Christmas and havn't finished it yet. I know I could conquer all the Europe in one day from position I have gained in my game (because AI isn't very good) but I like to see how my kingdom is prospering, just for pleasure, because playing is pleasure. I'm also very sad that benefits from KoH weren't as high as it was expected. I'm glad to watch everyone on this forum fighting for our fabulous game. I wish you luck, because I'm going to help you :)

Rules, you are creating, make KoH harder and it's good peace of work but maybe first we should change some things in game directly. Angryminer have idea to raise taxes during the war (of course I mean lower income), I don't check possibility of that but I think it could be done. My suggestion is: "Did someone try to change settings in 'defs/difficulty.in2' file?". Maybe this will help a little with poor AI?

Sorry for offtopic but I have to start somehow
PS. Is there any topic where players can write "things to do" for modders?

Certainly if anyone could mod the game to make it harder for the players that would be ideal. I had the impression that not much modding was going to be done by the community and I don't personally know how to do it, so we started coming up with house rules. Thanks for your input, if you know how to make things more difficult by modding, please do so, and I will be happy to test it out.

[Angryminer]

In my current game I use two rules to make the game harder:
1. The only person that is entitled to lead an army is the king.
2. There is no such thing as "Adopt the population"

I started out as Normandy, united England and conquered 15 provinces in just two generations.
I think I will write an AfterActionReport for that game. :go:

For other players I suggest that they should only let the members of the royal family lead armies, so it doesn't become too hard.

Angryminer

[maladominus]

Play with Honor:

1) Do not do any UN-HISTORICAL royal marriages. For example, if you are Catholic nation, then your court will almost never marry any Muslim princess. In the Middle Ages, Christians and Muslims hated each other. They would never think of wedding their children to each other.

2) Captured enemy Marshals are very common. Most players wait until they are ransomed, and then get TONS of money. Make it more varied..... once in a while, release your prisoners for goodwill. Or sometimes KILL them because they deserved to be killed (even tho it will cost you some KP). Waiting for them to be ransomed all the time is a very cheap way of getting too much money.

3) AI nations almost always agree to be vassalized even if they are just slightly losing a war. DO NOT vassalize them all the time, unless you are truly beating them and they deserve to be your vassal.

4) If you are Catholic, then try to remain faithful to the Papacy.

5) If you are playing Orthodox nation, then do your best to help Byzantium survive, especially when Constantinople is constantly invaded by many many enemies.

[redfox62]

Sadly it runs deeper than this. You would also have to seriously reduce your cities defence. I don't even need marshals to defend mine just the garrison.

To be honest, modding is the only way to go. Just try sticking to a number of rules for an entire game. This is why we should come up with a mini-mod that changes a few things that most of us agree on, assuming we want to play the basic game without changing it too much. A mod just designed to make the game a little harder. I have a few ideas:

1 ... Lower trade income so that we are forced to increase tax (something i have never needed to do).

2 ... Decrease or remove some siege bonus from some buildings (my cities can protect themselves all by themselves). For example the cathedral.

3 ... Modders will understand my next item. use override to ensure that the siege building can be built by the AI

I'm sure you guys can come up with a few more. There's nothing wrong with the mods already out there, it's just that not everyone is comfortable with huge changes, especially with map changes and such. I was thinking of a simple mod that stays true to the core gameplay. Something we could all agree on and simple to pass around and install.

One thing that does need attention is crusades. I chose Sicily, my first play as a muslim faction. A crusade was called against me. The crusading army itself couldn't defeat my marshal. Turn after turn it attacked one of my villages. I couldn't destroy the crusade because every time i fought with it, it would surrender and back away for a bit. All it was doing was building up my marshal skills far too quickly. My modding skills are limited but i'm sure some of you out there could look into this.

Anyway, it was just a thought, a simple mod designed by us all to make the game harder.

[the knightly sword]

be honorable

1.never use spies to spread gossips among the enemies army to spread venom creating disorder and rebellion among the enemy armies

it will become too easy to invade your enemies , you shouldint do this unless youve already won the war but still is in a hostile situation

[CarolusPelegrinus]

The game is great when you are small: perfect balance.

So what's really a problem is not how many marshals, or what actions to take/not take: your goal should be to get the 10 kingdom advantges AS FAST AS POSSIBLE... (with some sort of time-based victory point system)... And then it could be as if "Your Kingdom triggered the renaissance!" -- or something like that...

That means, you won't grow to 1/2 the world, you'll probably try to pinpoint EXACTLY which provinces you need to conquer (convert and assimilate... they might be 1/2 way accross Europe if you are looking for just the right mix of resources for clothes/ilustrated books etc..)

[maladominus]

Sadly it runs deeper than this. You would also have to seriously reduce your cities defence. I don't even need marshals to defend mine just the garrison.

To be honest, modding is the only way to go. Just try sticking to a number of rules for an entire game. This is why we should come up with a mini-mod that changes a few things that most of us agree on, assuming we want to play the basic game without changing it too much. A mod just designed to make the game a little harder. I have a few ideas:

I'm sure you guys can come up with a few more. There's nothing wrong with the mods already out there, it's just that not everyone is comfortable with huge changes, especially with map changes and such. I was thinking of a simple mod that stays true to the core gameplay. Something we could all agree on and simple to pass around and install.


I TOTALLY AGREE with redfox!! I would love a mod that only makes these minor and sensible changes to help out the AI, rather than make all these fancy changes to the Map and the game.

[Angryminer]

The AI can't compete in the original KoH and we can't do anything about that. Part of the modding is to direct the core of the gameplay to an area where the AI can compete. That's one of the reasons for the changes.
For example the Ai doesn't know how to build structures economically senseful. So I came up with the idea to partly remove the buildings-bonuses and move the main income to tax, because taxes rise with the amount of buildings. Now the AI earns about as many money as the player does and is able to compete more.

I'm sorry, but the mods can't do much better. Unfortunately.

Angryminer

[Elvain]

I agree with Angryminer. Those "drasitcal" changes that are madein mods are made just to make Ai be abe to compete as much as possible with the player.

And to the map changes. What is wrong on them? they just move the game to historical correctness...nothing less, nothing more

Also nobody forces anybody to use actual mods. If you don't like them, you can make your own. We are just making those changes we like. Those who like them use our mods. Those who don't play vanilla game, follow these rules or make own mods...

1.never use spies to spread gossips among the enemies army to spread venom creating disorder and rebellion among the enemy armies=reduce the gameplay.
I think those rules should not restrict possibilities that are in the game, but make some moral rules for gameplay.
I would re-formulate this option to "never invade your enemy after marshall rebellion was initiated by your spy"

[Henry the Great]

Here's my 2 tips (these are aimed at adding some realism to the lifespan of non-kings):

-After your marshal has maxed out all his skills, dissmiss him.
-Dissmiss anyone in your court who have served under 3 kings.

[Da Bomb]

I am a bit confused because you all keep referring to all nations "calling your own crusades" and "once per king". Is this a saying for just attacking, because what are pagan crusades and orthodox crusades, and "if you're catholic, start your own crusade." Don't you need the pope for that? Thank you for the clearup. :go:

[Da Bomb]

Also, why didn't anyone say for a ground rule also to never use any cheats? That is probably the most important.

[Lord_Apophis]

Play as a pagan nation. The penalities are rough.

[Elvain]

Da Bomb. Those "own crusades" differ from real crusades that are in the game. They mean:
take a marshall and send him to Palestine or Baltic area or any non-christian area and try to conquer a province there, but if you are succesfull, give it to papacy or some othr christian state.
Of course this works only for catholics, but you can do it also with non-catholic kingdom and just give the province to your religious leader (if orthodox, so to Byzantia, if Muslim, so to Fatimids or Cordoba or Abbasids or Mameluks etc.) if pagan you don't need to do it. As it is said, their penalties themselves make the game harder