Some Ways to Get Around Defensive Pacts

Overview

A few tips I’ve discovered through regular gameplay to help prevent triggering World War -1. Not too in depth, but hopefully helpful.

Introduction

This is a quick guide I made sharing some of the things I’ve learned about defensive pacts, formerly coalitions, and how to work around them. I hope it can help a few people.

In my experience, and that is all this guide is based on, there are a few specific ways to avoid triggering a world war 900 years early. Some are more “legitimate” than others, but all are possible in ironman mode.

If you need to know, a defensive pact is a pact formed by other countries in the game that are afraid of your power. They stem from threat level, which is gained whenever you get any significant gain of land, usually through a successful war. Any threat level above 5% can get a defensive pact formed against you. As you amass more threat level, more countries from farther way will join defensive pacts against you. Once you get to a very high threat level, other countries will start ignoring religion in defense of you. It can take a long time for threat level to go down.

When you attack a member of a defensive pact against you, all other members of that pact will be called into that war against you. This makes it very hard to win a war while defensive pacts against you exist. Luckily, there are a few ways to deal with this.

Method One: Wait it Out

This is perhaps the most obvious method for defeating defensive pacts: wait until they go away. Defensive pacts are caused by your threat level, whether it be from conquering a nation or inheriting it. Threat levels often get quite high, depending on the size of the land you gained. No matter how large it is, though, it will eventually go away.

In my experience, threat level deteriorates at a rate of about 0.40% per month (apparently that can change based on the size of your realm). So, for a 50% threat level (the amount generally gained from conquering a large kingdom), it would take about 125 months, or about 10 years for it to go completely down. In the grand scheme of the game, this isn’t that long, just one decade out of at least 40, or 60 or 70 at one of the earlier start dates.

Of course, after the threat level goes away (or gets under 5%), all defensive pacts against you will be disbanded and you can declare that long awaited war for your claim on your brother’s kingdom. However, some players may not be content with sitting around and dealing with angry vassals for 10 years. There is a way to speed up this process, as I have outlined in the next section.

Method Two: Grant Independence

For the more impatient players out there, you may want to speed up the long process of waiting for threat level to go down. There is a way to do this, though it may not be the smartest.

Granting independence to vassals (possibly only non de-jure vassals, but I don’t know since I have never used this technique myself) will decrease your threat level and eventually disband defensive pacts. However, there is a serious flaw here, of course. When threat level comes from gaining land, losing land to get rid of it is kind of counter-intuitive and short sighted, as you will likely try to get that land back as soon as the defensive pact is disbanded. This will only give you back that exact same threat level you lost (and possibly more) by letting that land go in the first place, just spread out over a longer period of time. With that in mind, I would not reccomend this method.

What, then, is the impatient player supposed to do when he wants to invade another kingdom before the aforementioned 10 years without turning every other country against him? That’s why I made this guide.

Method Three: Take Opportunities

So, just what do I mean by taking opportunities? Well, believe it or not, not every ruler always joins every defensive pact against you. Sure, they usually do, but sometimes they don’t. If you see that a ruler has not joined a defensive pact against you, don’t hesitate to attack them. Even if they join the pact mid-war, the rest of the pact will not be called into the current war you are in.

There are other times when rulers may momentarily leave defensive pacts. For example, defensive pacts are based on the ruler, not the kingdom. So, when a ruler dies (on his own or by more *cough* suspicious circumstances), he obviously leaves the defensive pact. The next ruler of that kingdom will not immediately join the defensive pact, either. This creates a short time when that country is not in a defensive pact against you and you can freely attack them. If you see this opportunity and you are able to attack a smaller country, take it, as it will not be long before that nation rejoins the defensive pact. Remember, Crusader Kings II can be paused.

There are other circumstances where a ruler might leave a defensive pact. I’m not entirely sure what they are, but they exist. The game tells you when a ruler leaves a defensive pact for any reason. If you see this, take advantage. Pause the game, click on that ruler’s portrait, and declare war if you think you can beat them. Sure, this will add to your threat level, but what’s a few extra years of waiting?

There is another strategy similar to these that I have given its own section. Scroll down to see it.

Method Four: Multiple Wars in Succession

No, I don’t mean succession wars over a title. I mean two wars back-to-back, and when I say back-to-back, I mean BACK-TO-BACK.

Threat level is not added until you actually win a war. Therefore, defensive pacts are not created until you actually win a war. However, rulers don’t create defensive pacts the exact moment you gain 50% threat level. It takes a few seconds, a few precious seconds where no one is in a defensive pact against you despite your 50% threat level. You see where I’m going with this, right?

If you think you can manage winning two wars in a row, then pause the game immediately after winning a war (unless, of course, that war was over a single county and only gave you 4% threat level) and declare war on someone else before they’ve had a chance to join a defensive pact against you. As I said before, even if they join the pact mid-war it won’t call the other members of the pact into the war. This is a useful way of gaining a larger amount of land at one time, though it will give you more threat level and a longer waiting time before it goes down.

Method Five: Don’t Fight at All

This may be shocking to some players, but wars are not the only way to gain territory in this game. Try using intrigue and smart marraiges every once in a while instead of wars, as these methods don’t trigger defensive pacts. A huge inheritance from your brother will still give you quite a bit of threat level, but, again, it can’t trigger a pact.

Basically, murder family before they have children and marry your sons to the firstborn daughter (and only child) of the king of France. Trust me, doing things like this will get you far.

Method Six: Not Caring

Of course, none of this matters if you just don’t care about defensive pacts. If you are a 70 K troop Roman Empire monster, then, by all means, please feel free to completely disregard defensive pacts and do whatever you want, because not even the united forces of Europe can stop you. For anyone else, though, I would reccomend not subscribing to this tactic, as it will destroy your realm in the blink of an eye.

(That picture is definitely not mine. I cannot find the full source, but whoever did that is amazing.)

Blitzkrieg and Multiple War Glitch contibuted by C2H5SH

The blitz works on any smaller target such as a single county or maybe even a duchy. The concept is to have a standing army up and ready to attack the day that war is declared. The army also needs to be able to assault down the target’s holdings as fast as possible in order to get the war score to 100 or at least to the point where they will surrender before all of the defensive pact levies show up on your doorstep

Nomadic armies, retinues, mercenaries, or any other standing army where war can be declared while the armies are deployed. Armies that are capable of raiding can soften the targets prior to the official declaration of war. Thats’s the simple and straight forward part.

Declaring war pulls most of the defensive pact members into the war. There are certain circumstances that pact members don’t join the war. One of these circumstances is that they are already at war with the target of the first declaration of war. In the screenshot below, the Duchess Barbara is being attacked by Sultan Ifni in a Holy War. She has a total of 2 counties under her duchy and she is independant.

You can see that my threat level is 100% and if I declare war, most of the known world will oppose me. This is a little extreme and it still hasn’t been tested more than a couple of times. Your mileage may vary.

You can see that Sultan Ifni is in the Muslim Defensive Pact against me.

I declare war on Duchess Barbara and you can see in the screenshot below that Sultan Ifni didn’t end the war with her and join the rest of the Defensive Pact. I can also declare war on Sultan Ifni.

This needs some more testing. As I declared war on the same day, it might not have been long enough for all of the defense pact countries to declare war on me. Most of the defensive pact countries joined in the war with Duchess Barbara. There were several countries that didn’t join the Duchess Barbara war, but they did join when I declared war on Sulftan Ifni as shown below which is just prior to the surrender of Duchess Barbara.

I demand surrender from Duchess Barbara and for the most part none of the defensive pact join with Sultan Ifni.

I demand surrender from Sultan Ifni a year and half later and the only additional allies that he picked up is where he had an alliance outside of the defensive pact.

I know what you are thinking. You have like 60,000 cavalry, does the rest of the world have a chance even if they do gang up on you? Nope, no they don’t.

Tip: Don’t Get Too Carried Away

No matter how much you bend the limits of defensive pacts, you cannot escape the hole of growing threat level. If your threat level is high enough (think 80-100 %), it will be really hard to recover from, and you can’t use the methods in this guide to conquer all of Europe. Even when using some of these methods, try to keep it below 70% threat level or at least something you can eventually wait off.