When the Hell did RNG become so sadistic?

[gathomas88]

Good lord! I've been away from the game for a while, and I'm trying to do a modless Byzantine ironman campaign, starting as a Count.

This. Is. Hell.

I'v been trying for like three days now, and none of my campaigns on the 1066 start have even made it to 1100 yet.

One character just randomly dropped dead at 26 years old of "poor health" without having any illnesses.

One game ended because my last heir spontaneously developed rabies and died, and then my character got stabbed in the face fighting one of his liege's wars less than a year later.

One game ended because the literal grim reaper showed up five years in and killed me.

One ended because my liege randomly decided to revoke my title less than a decade in with no provocation.

My last game (the only one so far where I actually managed to make it to Duke) ended because my character simply

REFUSED.

TO.

BREED.

Neither he nor his spouse had the "chaste" trait, he and his wife liked one another, and I even let him stay on "family" focus for more than a decade. Regardless, he had one daughter, and that was it. He finally caught cancer in his 40s and keeled over dead. Game over. Almost 30 years married, and the guy simply refused to ever have sex, apparently.

What the fuck!?! Why is that a thing???

Its like the RNG here is just rigged against you from the start.

 

[AlexArgos]

In the last case you should have switched to agnatic-cognatic. But overall it sounds like bad luck. Things like that can always happen when your dynasty and power is still very small.

 

[Bulldog773]

RNG???

 

[gathomas88]

In the last case you should have switched to agnatic-cognatic. But overall it sounds like bad luck. Things like that can always happen when your dynasty and power is still very small.

Frankly, even so, I'd argue there are some things here which simply should not be *allowed* to happen.

If the game's going to leave me childless, someone needs to actually have a trait causing infertility, or something. It shouldn't just be "LOL, I DUNNO." Likewise, simply dropping dead without an ailment in your 20s shouldn't be a thing either.

Getting absolutely raped by things you have no control over completely at random doesn't exactly make for a "fun" game experience. It just feels like a really irritating waste of time.

 

[gathomas88]

RNG???

"Random Number Generator."

 

[junassa]

A lot of my games go pretty much as I want them to go, then they are those like the op. I've had about 4 generations of rulers randomly get great pox, even though I never had them have sex with someone with the disease or use the seduction focus.

 

[vandevere]

That's why I don't play on Ironman. If the Game decides it wants to cheese me, I cheese the Game right back...

 

[Ilion]

Paradox games have *always* been over-reliant on anti-player RNG events, and negative results in general.

- Your 5-year-old child dies of "stress"; or commits suicide from "depression".
- Your child (and everyone else's, for that matter) develops mostly negative, or positive-but-worse-than-useless, character traits. Seriously, take a *look* at the general collection of traits the average character has: it seems like everyone is a charitable cruel slothful glutton.
-- plus, the older a character gets, the more likely that any positive or useful traits will have been replaced by negative or useless traits.
- You loose 5 men in the final mop-up battle against a defeated 0-morale foe ... and one of them is you or your heir.
- You and your wife are geniuses, your only heir is an imbecile.

One could go on and on (and, doubtless, there are many threads devoted to listing such annoyances).

 

[Castimirr]

To answer the question in your title, based on my experience with various RPGs on and off the computer... sometime around when we started using dice to help tell stories.

 

[vandevere]

Paradox games have *always* been over-reliant on anti-player RNG events, and negative results in general.

- Your 5-year-old child dies of "stress"; or commits suicide from "depression".
- Your child (and everyone else's, for that matter) develops mostly negative, or positive-but-worse-than-useless, character traits. Seriously, take a *look* at the general collection of traits the average character has: it seems like everyone is a charitable cruel slothful glutton.
- You loose 5 men in the final mop-up battle against a defeated 0-morale foe ... and one of them is you or your heir.
- You and your wife are geniuses, your only heir is an imbecile.

One could go on and on (and, doubtless, there are many threads devoted to listing such annoyances).

In short, the RNG has always been sadistic. And it always will...

 

[MentziaIII]

That's why I don't play on Ironman. If the Game decides it wants to cheese me, I cheese the Game right back...

In that vein ;

Save the game often , and reload.

And / or go to the Crusader Kings II Wiki , go to the console commands page , and take some notes.

There is no particular reason why you have to define a console command as a cheat.

It is primarily or partially a role play game . Well , you can just as well write a story line one way , as write it another way.

A mechanic is clunky , or just plain stupid ? Who says you have to go along with that ?

In the old days of paper war games and paper RPG's , where all of this was written down on paper , it was not uncommon to re-write the paper a little in such cases.

One of the wonderful things about Paradox games is that you don't generally have to be some expert modder in order to re-write the rules , the mechanics , or the story line.

Commonly just a console command or two will suffice , and / or sufficient imagination to change the details slightly in a Jack and Jill story , or an Aesop's fable. Not a lot either way.

 

[Xenrek]

Bleh trying being me in my last game.

Tried to do a hellenic restoration; had burned down most of Italy and the byzantine empire.

Measles, camp fever, and consumption had been sitting in outbreak in sicily for about 20 years, all 3 at once. My heir finally got sick and died, and as my ruler was getting old, decided to check what issues the new heir would give me (they were low in intrigue, turns out didnt matter)

Every single last landed and unlanded dynasty member had cancer WITH the severe/bedridden illness modifier

56 landed dynasty members, roughly 40 something unlanded, all with bedridden level cancer, at the same time.

 

[Rags17]

Realism (TM)

 

[Tuppie]

Well, what can I say, I have terrible luck in this game, and sure, losing eight hours of your life on an ironman game in which RNG just destroys you arbitrarily might suck, but it's still part of the game, and I tend to remind myself in my frustration that the middle ages wasn't exactly forgiving.

 

[gathomas88]

In that vein ;

Save the game often , and reload.

And / or go to the Crusader Kings II Wiki , go to the console commands page , and take some notes.

There is no particular reason why you have to define a console command as a cheat.

It is primarily or partially a role play game . Well , you can just as well write a story line one way , as write it another way.

A mechanic is clunky , or just plain stupid ? Who says you have to go along with that ?

In the old days of paper war games and paper RPG's , where all of this was written down on paper , it was not uncommon to re-write the paper a little in such cases.

One of the wonderful things about Paradox games is that you don't generally have to be some expert modder in order to re-write the rules , the mechanics , or the story line.

Commonly just a console command or two will suffice , and / or sufficient imagination to change the details slightly in a Jack and Jill story , or an Aesop's fable. Not a lot either way.

Doesn't using the console kill achievements, however?

 

[CeeBod]

Yeah sometimes the RNG just feels totally EVIL! After an unfortunate sequence of events (mostly also RNG related!) my king died leaving his 10 year old son as the new king. The older son had just died of a bad case of the flu, and I didn't have more than one 'spare' and bad luck had meant that my next heir was not of my bloodline - cue much biting of nails "will I survive to sire an heir?".

I got betrothed to a genius princess that was the same age, and on coming of age and getting married, I was hopeful of getting a good quality heir. Then my bride died of cancer aged 17 ..... so I married again, again to a genius, and this time had a child (yay!) a daughter (less yay!) and then my 2nd wife also died of cancer - this time aged 20. Wait seriously? Even when I did finally have a son (with my third wife) he died of smallpox. It did eventually work out fine, as that character I was playing ended up being one of my longest lived characters, but the first 10-15 years it totally felt like I was being trolled by RNGesus

 

[Tryvenyal]

Doesn't using the console kill achievements, however?

No but Ironman is required to get achievements and it also stops console. So yes - if you want achievements, console is not for you

 

[Castorem]

ctrl+alt+del

 

[gathomas88]

Bleh trying being me in my last game.

Tried to do a hellenic restoration; had burned down most of Italy and the byzantine empire.

Measles, camp fever, and consumption had been sitting in outbreak in sicily for about 20 years, all 3 at once. My heir finally got sick and died, and as my ruler was getting old, decided to check what issues the new heir would give me (they were low in intrigue, turns out didnt matter)

Every single last landed and unlanded dynasty member had cancer WITH the severe/bedridden illness modifier

56 landed dynasty members, roughly 40 something unlanded, all with bedridden level cancer, at the same time.

Yeah... I feel like something has definitely changed in this regard since the last time I played. Last time I really did ironman was back around the time "The Old Gods" came out. Back then, the worst you really had to worry about was a reckless war, bad policy decision, or overly ambitious family member causing your empire to implode. Your character and your heirs weren't just randomly dropping dead every five minutes for no reason.

I think the devs have simply added so many more negative events to the game in the updates since (Reapers Due, Way of Life, Monks and Mystics, Holy Fury, etca, etca), that the statistical probability of running afoul of one or several in the typical playthrough has basically become a *certainty*.

Which is cool, and all (the original game probably was a bit too 'clean'). However, I'd still argue that the RNG needs some "sanity checks" hardcoded in, so that you're not constantly getting ganked in ways that should be impossible, or blatantly defy common sense.

 

[nightgerbil]

Yeah... I feel like something has definitely changed in this regard since the last time I played. Last time I really did ironman was back around the time "The Old Gods" came out. Back then, the worst you really had to worry about was a reckless war, bad policy decision, or overly ambitious family member causing your empire to implode. Your character and your heirs weren't just randomly dropping dead every five minutes for no reason.

I think the devs have simply added so many more negative events to the game in the updates since (Reapers Due, Way of Life, Monks and Mystics, Holy Fury, etca, etca), that the statistical probability of running afoul of one or several in the typical playthrough has basically become a *certainty*.

Which is cool, and all (the original game probably was a bit too 'clean'). However, I'd still argue that the RNG needs some "sanity checks" hardcoded in, so that you're not constantly getting ganked in ways that should be impossible, or blatantly defy common sense.

I think you hit it on the head tbh. Too many negative events have been added to the game, Illnesses from reapers due need to be turned off at game start, if your not in a warrior lodge you cant lead troops into battle and live, dont be a guardian of a kid, etc etc. Its a fun game but very frustrating to play. The randomness and frequency of the ganking I could really use being turned down.

Is it not possible for a game rule to be put in for no more then one neg event a year per dynsaty or country or something?