CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

[paulatreides0]

To the people finder:

A filter option for people willing to go to your court (otherwise it's just painful).

A filter option to block out people beyond diplomatic range (because that information can be useful, but when I'm looking for someone to marry or make a courtier it's just useless information).

Also a claimant filter that lets you see who has claims and on what, because this is also another major game feature ad it would be nice to have it available, especially when searching for courtiers (because claims on courtiers are always a nice bonus). Also very useful would be the option to filter not just between claimants and non-claimants, but strong and weak claims. It could be like the culture/religion option where it has multiple options. Something along the lines of:

Claimant: Any, Strong, Weak, None

Where "Any" is the default and will show strong claim, weak claim, and no claim characters.

A set of predefined, commonly used templates to help you find what you need. These could be located on the lower left hand side, well below the search scope (i.e. the realm, everywhere, court, etc. options). These would be things like a "default" template to automatically reset the entire thing in one click instead of having to go through everything individually (which is tedious since you have to do so countless dozen times); "husband" or "wife" (man/female, my religious group, not married); commander, chancellor, spymaster, etc. (male, willing to come to court, automatically sorted by appropriate stat, not a ruler); claimants (willing to come to court, has a claim, within diplomatic range, not a foreign ruler). This will help cut back on the tedium of using the character finder greatly.

These could also be consolidated under subgroups like mentioned above, so that you have something like:

Marriage: Bachelor, Bachelorette, Either
Advisor: Marshal, Spymaster, Chancellor, Steward, Court Chaplain
Claimants: Emperor, King, Duke, Count, Baron/Mayor/Bishop

To other things:

The ability to switch councilors on the councilor screen. Switching back and forth is really, really annoying. Especially when you're playing for a while.

A tooltip that tells you what you stance the character will take, because currently it's either guesswork or the tedium of adding up and comparing bonuses to guess which will get picked. A simple icon with the stance image somewhere around the edge the bubble will suffice.

A better tooltip explanation on why you can't revoke counties/duchies. The current one is virtually useless.

 

[marceror]

Just to ensure there is no doubt about what I'm asking for, here's a screenshot. See all those armies that I just raised? And the navies? Let me select them like I have in the photo, AND click the merge button so that the armies grouped together in a county can all be merged with a single click. Same goes for the navies.

As it is now, I will have to click on each county to merge the army there. Then I will have to do the same for the navies. Then I will have to embark each army into their boats individually.

What should happen is I select all armies and merge with a single click. Then I select all navies (using the Alt key) and merge them with a single click. Finally, for extra credit, I select all the armies again and have a button to mass embark those armies onto their respective boats?

Is this making sense yet? The difference is getting my army mobilized in a handful of seconds vs. a couple of minutes.

I would love a button when I select several armies to "load all loadable armies to local ships"
As a Mediterranean ruler I have to select each army separately and load them on the ship and it gets tedious if you have 20-30 armies.

This is one of my requests as well.

 

[aylo1]

Following on the theme of plots, how about more options as the Regent?

In my current game, I became Regent after my King was imprisoned (kidnapped?) by a fellow vassal. Besides ending plots to replace me, embezzling from the treasury, the prestige bonus & forming matrimonial alliances with other houses there's not much else to do. Some ideas on making it more interesting;

- negotiate a ransom for the release of my liege (besides continually gifting them with money)
- negotiate with captors to keep liege imprisoned
- depose liege in favour of their heir or yourself
- regent forcibly marry themselves or family member into the royal family
- conspiracies & unrest the regency

 

[marceror]

"Favourite" characters need their own window. For now the only way to keep an eye on suitable grooms/brides while they are growing is to copy their names to notepad and paste every one of them to "Search" periodically.

You can add characters of interest to the list on the right of the screen (the one that displays information on your holdings). Just add characters of interest and the names of any such characters will be visible in that list. You can just click on the name to see their character information.

Merry early Christmas.

 

[greentunnel]

I'd really like to adjust the font size! Its hard on the eyes to read the tiny tiny text some of the windows

 

[Kyberia]

1) The "heritage" education for children is rather confusing to me. For example, if I am ruling an originally Pictish realm but the heir is Occitanian and I get a decision offering to change his education to Heritage, it will offer to teach him Pictish culture, but if I click on the child and select Heritage, it talks about teaching him about Occitan culture, and if I then set him to be educated by a Greek Orthodox educator, he will pop out Greek. Or something.

What I usually want to do when interacting with the Heritage education option is to either teach a child the predominant religion and culture of the lands they have a claim on or teach them the religion and culture of their tutor. And ideally, I'd like to know which of those I'm doing. I've no issue with the risk of them learning crude blasphemies while being educated in other specs, that's just the hazard of interacting with foreign johnnies, wot?

2) When using the "Find Characters" interface, I'd like two checkboxes: "Hide all that are too distant" and "Hide all that will not accept".

That would let me just inspect characters within range that will join my fief or that I can start bribing into changing their minds, or just see the ones that will come over right now without me spending a penny.

3) When using the "Invite Plotters" interface, it would again be nice to have the option to view all with access to the target character, just the ones who are willing to join AND the ones that can be bribed, or just the ones who are happy to murder their husbands for free.

Also on a side note, isn't it usually quite hard to catch Syphillis if you don't have sex with someone who's got it? I've noticed a number of characters catching Great Pox who have no lovers and whose husbands or wives are completely disease-free.

 

[DisorderlyFashion]

Change up Elective Monarchy please,

The AI always guns for it, making almost every kingdom elective and making alliance forming a mess. Plus elective monarchy makes kingdoms too stable: the whole point of this game is to play as great characters and bad ones too, but with Elective Monarchy in its current incarnation you and the AI can cherry pick the best people to rule.

I'd suggest removing the +10 opinion modifier rulers get from EM law, and expanding on the favor system to makes bribes pay a greater role, like what historically happened in the Holy Roman Empire. That way there's an actual cost to being voted into power and maintaining it rather than everything depending on the random whims of the AI. Also, make the AI push for Primogeniture come mid- to late-game.

 

[DisorderlyFashion]

Expand the role of Christian religious heads,

The Pope is just sorta there. His only real purpose is to be a vehicle for crusading and to vassalize to excommunicate/claim the titles of whomever you want. He should be a more important figure in the game: threatening players & AI with excommunication, founding dynasties and having papal bastards, getting into conflicts with the heads of other Christian sects, and allowing wars to help vassalized Popes become independent.

Stuff like that.

 

[DisorderlyFashion]

Little improvement: count vassalized mercenary groups as part of a ruler's overall strength.

Too often do I see civil wars break out in Egypt and Byzantium where the rebels have a numerical advantage, only for the Mamluks or the Varangian Guard to pop out of nowhere to tip the balance back in the ruler's favor. It's not an issue for players, but the AI can't account for these groups.

Also make such mercenary groups more of a political force, demanding land and such.

 

[Keizer Harm]

This thread is UI changes. I would advise making suggestion threads for those.

 

[Duuk]

In the outliner: When someone is in seclusion, please don't list them as "Idle". Same goes for leading troops.

 

[Ric Thunder]

Personally, I would LOVE to see a "Demand Tribute" diplomatic option. Since the whole tribute idea showed up with the Horse Lords DLC, I think it was kind of silly to leave out one of the things Genghis Khan was well-known for. It was pretty often that he would sack one major city then give others the option to surrender and pay tribute to him rather than face total annihilation. Could possibly base the AI's decision to accept on things like relative power, the the demanding party's threat level, distance, etc.

 

[Jorlem]

Just to ensure there is no doubt about what I'm asking for, here's a screenshot. See all those armies that I just raised? And the navies? Let me select them like I have in the photo, AND click the merge button so that the armies grouped together in a county can all be merged with a single click. Same goes for the navies.

As it is now, I will have to click on each county to merge the army there. Then I will have to do the same for the navies. Then I will have to embark each army into their boats individually.

What should happen is I select all armies and merge with a single click. Then I select all navies (using the Alt key) and merge them with a single click. Finally, for extra credit, I select all the armies again and have a button to mass embark those armies onto their respective boats?

Is this making sense yet? The difference is getting my army mobilized in a handful of seconds vs. a couple of minutes.

So, box-select, order them to the same province, and then click merge? Then do the same for ships. That only takes three clicks for each.

 

[marceror]

So, box-select, order them to the same province, and then click merge? Then do the same for ships. That only takes three clicks for each.

No. At no point did I say anything about moving them to the same province. Merge the armies IN PLACE. Merge the boats IN PLACE. Issue a command to mass embark soldiers on the boats while they are still, you guessed it, IN PLACE. Then order your boats filled with soldiers to wherever you want them to go, and do it around 10x faster than you can currently.

 

[marceror]

Also, with your approach you would waste a ton of game time, as you would have to wait for all of your soldiers and boats to congregate. It's much more efficient to set them off from their county of origin. I mean, why walk half way across a country when you can just get on boats in your local port?

 

[mightnight]

I'm sure I'll be making this suggestion elsewhere in the Paradox universe, but for the sake of this thread I figure I should post it here, as well. I'd really love to see a "levies raised" mapmode, preferably one that also displays the available troop numbers in a given province, even if it's just numbers and not unit-specific.

I made a (mercifully) short video that'll help you understand what I'm talking about, available here for your viewing pleasure:

That is why retinues are there bro

 

[Niko92]

Here's one improvement for the interface;

Currently, when looking at the ruler's of tribal realms, when you hover over their troop count, it only shows their own retinues and levies (since they don't have vassal levies). This can be a bit misleading since they'll call their vassals to arms in case of a war. You have no idea how many wars I've lost because I've forgotten this and gotten my face kicked by an army three times as big as mine. It's pretty much impossible to tally up the total soldier count, especially for larger realms since you have to go through every individual vassal. It would be nice if the soldier count also showed possible levies of vassals that are called to war, even if they might not always join (for tribal realms only).

 

[GinjaNinja32]

Gavelkind
Please make playing with gavelkind-succsession more reasonable and enjoyable. I would suggest a interface or window like the EUIV negotiate peace window where you can slide/distribute titles between your eligible heirs and you can see the percentages of whatsoever value you may think it would make most sense (holdings/levisize/income/any combination of faktors/etc.). So if you have e.g. three eligible sons the "optimal" percentages would be ~33% for all. The more imbalanced the ratio is the more opinion malus (envy) you generate between your children but also between your vassals (and even courtiers). So 80%-10%-10% should end up in a heavy -70 opinion malus. Also make the AI capable to make good use of these interface to avoid these silly "dashed-to-shivers-realms".

Good historical examples of such an "interface" are the Devisio Regnorum of Charlemagne and the Ordinatio Imperii of Luis the Pious. If you miss to manage your heritage during lifetime "autogavelkind" could occure similar to the "old" system. But i favour that the gavelkind-mechanic would hand out titles by first focusing at sense/realmbalance (no fragmentation) and only therafter consider the "best balance" of title distribution between heirs. That could lead more often to a heavy opinion malus and immediate revoltes either of your allied brothers (e.g. Charles of Westfrancia and Luis of Eastfrancia against his elder Brother) or of your vassals but lead less often to the destruction of the integrity of your "homelands".

Going off this, Gavelkind is currently a bit... dumb... when it comes to splitting certain realms.

I'll use the example of holding 9 counties in demesne, split into three duchies we'll call A (2 counties), B (3 counties), and C (4 counties); for example, this might happen after Jorvik has invaded Northumbria and expanded south into Mercia a little; Jorvik has 2 counties, Northumberland 3, and Lancaster 4.

If your primary title is the Duchy of A, and your capital is within A, all land in B and C will be lost on gavelkind succession. All of it. Even if you only had two sons, the eldest will get A and its two counties, the younger will get the seven counties in B and C.

If your primary title is the Duchy of A, and your capital is within C, though, you'll only lose B on succession, even with up to four sons (one county each for the younger three, six counties and the duchy for the eldest)

If your primary and capital are the duchies of B and C, you'll only lose A's two counties with up to three sons; this is the most unbalanced succession, with the younger two sons getting a county each, and the eldest getting seven counties and a duchy.

This seems very backwards; if you hold a large demesne as a duke, you lose everything outside both your primary duchy and your capital's duchy; if these coincide and are a relatively small duchy, you just lost most of your land.

Once you're a higher rank than duke, this sorts itself out as far as I can tell; it's still a bit weird that a duchy can split so unevenly.

 

[Lamartine]

I would like to be able to cut the hair of my family who live at court, for a small reduction in opinion

And I plus one all of these suggestions

Can you split the minor titles tab into two tabs? I hate having to click that checkbox or scrolling to find my commanders. Maybe put commanders in the military tab?

A "reroll" button when naming your child would be great.

I'd also love an Electors screen like the Councillors ... one that would tell me why the AI is voting for their candidate AND what they don't like about mine. If the Favour system could be used to influence the choice that'd be swell.

A button to split my demesne troops from my vassal troops.

On the grant landed title interaction, it would be grand if we could hold down shift and choose more than one title at a time. It would be even grander if you could select a title from the map!

The removal of the pluses and minuses for diplo action modifiers. They are incredibly eye-straining to try to count, especially the minuses, which blur together. Replacing them with actual numbers would be far, far, far easier to read.

Overall technology level mapmode. Please!

 

[Pear]

If you type the name of the trait into the search box it can already do that!

I always thought that was just for people's names! Thanks!