CK2 - Dev Diary #121 - Court Improvements

[MonzUn]

So this will be its own game rule, separate from the other court size game rule?

No, as it works now, there will be no way to have the old health malus back unless we add it back in a patch.

 

[Bookwyrm1357]

Please add some option to notify us when a courtier dies… we get a notice when they leave court, but if they die they just simply disappear and you never know why...

You can already do this by changing message settings:
Open the main menu, click "message settings". "Character has died" is an option located almost exactly halfway down the full list. For random courtiers, you'll need to select the third tab at the top ("other characters of message interest"). set it to high, low, or pop-up priority, whichever you prefer. You can also change this for the other 2 tabs ("yourself + close and unlanded relatives", and "characters marked as special interest" ) setting different priorities for each tab/category, if you want.
You can also change the priority of specific message types by right clicking on similar messages you receive. For example, right-clicking on a (high priority, low priority, or pop-up) message about ANY character dying will allow you to change the priority of any future message about characters dying, in three different categories, as mentioned above.
Hope that helps!

 

[Bookwyrm1357]

I for one would appreciate a message setting where I'm informed of anyone joining my court for whatever reason; mostly because the only time I find out a young maiden has been randomly generated for my court is when I get the message that she's died.

(If there is a message setting for that already and I'm just missing it, just having someone tell me would be very helpful.)

There IS a message setting for characters joining your court, however, I'm not sure if it includes characters who are generated AT your court, rather than ones who join your court from somewhere else for whatever reason. Probably worth a try, at least.
Open "Message Settings" from the main menu. "A character has arrived at your court" is the third option from the top.
Again, I'm not really sure if it includes characters generated AT your court, as opposed to arriving there, but I'm pretty sure that random maidens are only generated for unmarried rulers. While it wouldn't be as good as a notification, getting your ruler married would at least keep them from being spawned only to be pruned.
Hope that helps!

 

[Bookwyrm1357]

Right! Sorry for not getting back to you, it's been a busy week!
If I remember correctly, the health malus should have been removed for the players court but we are keeping the fertility one since it was a bit trickier to handle.

YES! YIPPEE! WOO-HOO! YEEHAW! FINALLY! Thank you thank you thank you thank you! (I could go on, but I think you get the idea )
Having "excess" courtiers drop dead in record time (a few years at most), even in their TEENS was my single biggest annoyance in this game. I couldn't even tell you how many times some courtier I really valued, yet who the game considered "useless" dropped dead before I could prevent it. As just one particularly memorable example, just a few days ago, I had an really excellent tutor in the making (diligent, gregarious, kind, my culture and religion, excellent stats and education). die "of poor health" at the ripe old age of 16 (!!!) less than 2 weeks after she arrived at my court, on the EXACT same day her intended husband arrived. I for one am SO happy to hear that things like that won't be a problem any more! Thank you again!

Also, for the record (and to help soothe my PTSD from all those deaths ), when you say "removed" (for player courts) you mean COMPLETELY, yes? Not just had the parameters redefined, or something? I can now expect absolute nobodies at my court (like random lowborns with no family, position, et cetera) to die no sooner than anyone else (on average)?
(Even if it's only been redefined, that'd still be great. Just not quite SO great!)

Lastly, you said you are keeping the fertility penalty "since it was a bit trickier to handle". Does that mean it won't make the deadline for the current patch, but you're still working on it? Or that you decided not to implement it because it would have too many negative effects? Or what?

And just in case I didn't mention it: thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU! I am SO glad that that blasted health penalty is being "removed"! (even if it turns out not to be as complete a "removal" as I might wish). I can totally understand (and appreciate, on my ancient PC) optimization in general, and so I'm actually pretty happy to hear it will still be applied to AI courts. But MY court... THANK YOU!!!

 

[Castios]

YES! YIPPEE! WOO-HOO! YEEHAW! FINALLY! Thank you thank you thank you thank you! (I could go on, but I think you get the idea )
Having "excess" courtiers drop dead in record time (a few years at most), even in their TEENS was my single biggest annoyance in this game.

I know this tip won't be useful for much longer but you can prevent this by giving them honorary title. It's still not the best solution but it's better than nothing.

 

[Bookwyrm1357]

I know this tip won't be useful for much longer but you can prevent this by giving them honorary title. It's still not the best solution but it's better than nothing.

I know. Since, as I mentioned, this is my single biggest pet peeve, I've made a point to learn as much as I can about how to stop it. As I recall, one can stop the untimely deaths of courtiers by: 1: marrying them to someone, 2: giving them an honorary title 3: giving them a council position or 4: landing them (though they won't be a courtier anymore in that case, of course).

I very much appreciate you telling me that anyway, though, as if I hadn't already known I would have been overjoyed to learn there was something I could do to keep useful people from just keeling over. The problem I run into, personally, is that I only have so many council positions and/or honorary titles (especially for women), and if I invited some young maiden because I think she'd make an excellent future wife (or just lover or baby mama), I by definition do NOT want to marry her off.

On which note, if you know anything else I can do to help keep people alive that I didn't mention, I'd be delighted to hear about it. (especially since I still have at least two v 2.9 saves I want to complete).

Thanks!

 

[Ruisuki]

FINALLY! QOL changes might take years to finally implement after requests but at least they are eventually added.

edit: glad to see its tied to rank, i suggested this before but sad that it looks like at king level its only a 24 cap? That is incredibly low. For count level I could see that but King?????

I also always hated that the landed councillors take up a spot, but I understand it. I despise that their wards are included in your court size though, and you have no say over whether they can bring them to your court or not, since even if you move them to a different court they can also educate another wards as soon as you do. Size of my court was always a factor in choosing councilors, i would often skimp out on choosing the best or most rebellious if they were landed because of this. If the limit is so low even with such a high rank as king (not counting majesty, but still) then it will only further discourage me from making use of this with conclave

sooooo....can we have control over whether landed councilors can bring their wards or not? If one is to truly use conclave to the fullest thats 7 councilors each with 2 wards equals 14 spots...and with such a weak base court limit(24) for even the rank of King thats more than half of the court limit taken up by their people alone. Either that or dont count wards as part of the court limit please. I'd settle for actual court control though.

 

[Darkhosis]

I know. Since, as I mentioned, this is my single biggest pet peeve, I've made a point to learn as much as I can about how to stop it. As I recall, one can stop the untimely deaths of courtiers by: 1: marrying them to someone, 2: giving them an honorary title 3: giving them a council position or 4: landing them (though they won't be a courtier anymore in that case, of course).

It's my favorite use of "Court Jester" title.

.... but start some new game, don't have autogenerate or whatever on (not sure if that makes a difference) ... choose seduction focus, invite 50-100 of the generated 16 year olds into your court and half of them or perhaps slightly more will be dead within a year.

You can see all the death by leaving the character search window open w/ same results. They'll all be opinion 0.

 

[Ruisuki]

its good, but the base values are way too low. King rank should at the least be 30 minimum before costs. 40 Actually. What we need is a way to organize our characters of important lists. Better courtier tracking should be a given with this patch

Can we get a sort of category to be able to split between the characters we are tracking? I want to organize under special characters im keeping tabs on for claims, for traits, and for inheritance among other things

 

[Ruisuki]

how are you supposed to manage with such a low court limit, specially as a nomad? if your courtiers keep having kids and you start off without vassals to send them off to be educated out of court theres no way to get rid of them, youll quickly reach the early 20 limit.

also just had 4 children of the same couple lose 3 of their children over the last 9 years due to disease. My court is 20/24 is this pruning or WAD?

 

[Evangeline]

I really dislike children counting to the court limit, it forces me to micromanage to an unfun degree.

 

[GUmby_Aaron]

Hello! In this dev diary we will present some changes we have made to the court system. Court Management is an important part of the CK2 experience, and currently there are several code pruning mechanisms that curtail court size, making characters die more frequently when the court grows too big. Now court management has been made more interesting by, for example, lowering the aggressive pruning for player courts, creating expenses/benefits associated with a Large Court, court flavored events using the characters of the court, etc. The intention of these changes is to make the system more interactive and interesting.


View attachment 477202
The court limit as shown in the interface.


Your court will now have a size limit depending on your tier, presented in the interface (see picture above). It’s possible to influence this limit by, for example, investing in majesty tech. We have also removed prisoners from the court-tab to make the shown courtiers more relevant.


View attachment 477203
Example of expenses for a big court (can be turned off through a game rule).


To bring life to the courts, we have added some maintenance events that will give your courtiers more of a life behind the scenes, making them more interesting and fun characters by giving them nicknames, modifiers, and skills.

View attachment 477201
Give a courtier a nickname.


We’ve also made sure that any courtier “randomly” picked for generic content is more likely to be someone with good (or at least interesting) skills, a cool minor title, an interesting relationship, etc. This is done by using a scripted score value that takes into account traits, opinions, and modifiers.


We hope that you’ll have fun with this small new feature, and thank you for reading!

Been a while since an official Dev Dairy Blog. I've an idea for one that I think would be cool. If you could release a blog update that goes into detail some of the records CKii has set and/or surpassed during it's continued development.

I'm sure it must at least hold the record for being the longest supported post development game outside the MMO genre (maybe call Genius World Records and get a plague for the office on that!!!!). Would be neat to see info about other records the game set for Paradox Interactive or PDS, or just records the game set for itself, like the dates and numbers of playerbase milestones, sales, mods etc. (P.S. Our liege doomdark probably holds a record for CKii as well, being with us from like forever ago <3 )