• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Well I want better combat AI first and then character building. Life wasn't stressful enough because it was so easy to take over another province for my 15th son. lol Things to improve first are bad boy points increased and more realm duress moments, less loot from taking over provinces when playing on higher difficulties and more control of court members.
 
Agree with the OP. CK1 had the right amount of strategy though some enhancements might be in order (maybe a better recruitment system), but the great thing about the game was all the character and flavor it had. I want to see more events, and more chaos brought to my realm when I least expect it!

I agree with a new recruitment system. Having a greater variety of soldiers (and mercenaries) to choose from only increases roleplaying.

CK is obviously character driven, first and foremost, but Paradox is about grand strategy, so why not use some popular elements from more recent titles: More provinces, more economics, more units (land and sea), more events, and better diplomacy. Here's a chance to make a truely epic game.

Oh, and a better AI :p
 
Personal prestige (of the character you're currently playing) and dynasty currently combined and historically accumulated prestige.
Accumulated prestige perhaps just for score.
Dynasty currrent to increase the desirability for ai (and players) through prestige gains to marry the various daughters and having the various sons as vassals.
 
I completely agree with more RP less strategy idea. And there is also a contextual reason for that. A strategic depth like the ones in EU or Vicky that depends on micro managing statistical numeric data would be unfitting the time period IMO. Concepts like quantifying information with statistics, formulating optimizations and designing nation wide social engineering projects were all modern inventions. That's why all those grand strategy aspects feel so good especially in Victoria. But no king in the middle ages had an advisor who would say "My Lord, 28.08% of our peasants are unhappy with our tax rates but your popularity rises 0.0745% every day". Sure, the game will run with numbers inevitably, but the way it presents itself to me should be more abstract, more qualitative. That's how great PI's general decision on these games is: a "numbers game" for modern ages, a "persons game" for middle ages. This basic thing works and should be developed and polished in CK2, in my opinion.
 
I would also like to see more concentration on events and character interaction than on warfare and nation-building.

yeah, I'd like to see the ability for you to kick off an event chain that shoots itself around the court and it's members.. or your counts and dukes, or cousins and family... gathering their personal responses, (which would be statistically dependent on their traits and situation). And then see it come back around at you left field.

As for nation-building: this concept hardly has anything to do with the age. In Feudal times people rarely knew what laid over the next hill, let alone where their nation laid in the world.
 
Agree, concentrate on the characters, not the countries. :)

CK has remained as my favourite Paradox title (and I haven't still gotten bored of it unlike rest of their older games) precisely because it feels like the game has a soul, or that you're part of all the treachery in the court.

I would also like to see more concentration on events and character interaction than on warfare and nation-building.

Agree, my biggest fear is that CK loses what made it unique and attractive, to me, which was the dynasty/RP aspect. I spent far more time tending my dynasty than anything else and was really connected to my characters. I truly hope they expand on this instead more than anything else.
 
One of my priests in CK1 went schizo and killed all of my heirs in a single shot, and then quickly after committed suicide. I remember my expression after that, I was like.. "really?? man...." because my King was about to die of old age, and I had no heirs because of a mentally unstable priest who thought all my heirs were demons or something.
 
Setting aside the RPG aspects (the game's primary focus, all to the good), to the extent that CKII is a strategy game: Will it tend towards sandbox, anything goes game play, a la EUIII; or towards plausibility, more (but not totally) historically constricted game play, a la Magna Mundi?

FWIW, I prefer Magna Mundi plausibility, and very much dislike the EUIII sandbox.
 
Setting aside the RPG aspects (the game's primary focus, all to the good), to the extent that CKII is a strategy game: Will it tend towards sandbox, anything goes game play, a la EUIII; or towards plausibility, more (but not totally) historically constricted game play, a la Magna Mundi?

FWIW, I prefer Magna Mundi plausibility, and very much dislike the EUIII sandbox.

Well CK was probably the most sandbox out of any of the games, wasn't it?
 
Well CK was probably the most sandbox out of any of the games, wasn't it?
That was then; this is now.

With at least one poll suggesting that EU3 players prefer Magna Mundi plausibility over the default EUIII sandbox, I just wonder which approach PI will take with CKII.

(And I can't answer your question directly, because I never owned CK.)
 
If Vicky II is any indication, they'll probably go "full sandbox." But then, the game will also be very moddable, I'm sure.

I would categorize it as a strategy game with RPG elements.
Yep, exactly. I mean, let people call it what they want, but CK I is obviously a game of strategy first and foremost, and I'm sure that CK II will be as well.
 
Im not sure why people assume strategic and RPG elements are somehow opposed, or that if PI improve strategic elements then it will somehow weaken RPG elements.

Rome is much maligned for its lack of characterisation - a mystery to me, for many, many reasons, as one of the most memorable characters I have known is my Zosimid Archon of Massillia, who became a general, won glory on the frontier, and faced with the rivalry of his political opponents (scheming Philonids) back in Massilla returned as a conquering hero to establish a dictatorship - imprisoned his rivals for the good of the Republic, and later executed them, founding an empire that spread through Spain, Gaul and later Italy.

Characterisation doesnt suffer because strategic elements are available. Strategic elements shape the enviroment (Western medieval Europe) in which characters exist, providing the rule set within which "Yes thats doable, no thats not". No point having all these great characters and no stage.
 
How does one play CK strategically? A strategy needs goals which can be obtained through logical thinking and intelligence. What requires logical thinking or intelligence in Crusader Kings?* The only time your realm is seriously threatened is during the Mongol invasions or if you've somehow ran out of family members, the rest of the time is spent viewing what crazy things are happening to your family. :)

Every event I can think of in Crusader Kings is character based, there are events which give one choices between options that are clearly good for the realm and options that are clearly bad (I'm currently thinking of the "embrace heresy" event), there would be no point to these events if one was to play this game strategically.

I might accept Crusader Kings being called a role-playing game with hints of strategy, but I'd be quite uncomfortable in doing so. Just because a game is played upon a map does not make it a strategy game, you even play as a character with a role!

* I'm excluding marriage strategies because I don't think many players adopt them due to their fickle searches for attractive-nosed belles ;).
 
* I'm excluding marriage strategies because I don't think many players adopt them due to their fickle searches for attractive-nosed belles ;).

20+ Stewardship is sexy no matter what your nose looks like :rofl:

Almost all of PI's games lend themselves to role-playing it up a little bit, but definitely CK is the most RP-y of the lot.
 
Role-playing, obviously!

Austen
 
Yeah, we need an role-playing DLC