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CK2 Dev Diary #31: Back to work

Hello all! As some of you may know, Paradox spent the last 4 days in Malta and now we are back in Stockholm exhausted refreshed and re-energised, and ready to get back to work! Speaking of work, the topic of this Diary is the new Council jobs we are adding in the upcoming <Mystery> expansion. These are not quite like earlier jobs the Council could do though, because (with one exception) these are “off-map” jobs - you do not need to place the Councilor in a specific province to perform them.
council 1.jpg

please excuse the lack of unique art for the new jobs, it will be there

Chancellor - Perform Statecraft. This job increases the speed at which your Threat decays, and can fire events which improve relations with random vassals, neighbours, or your liege if you have one. If you have a specific character you want better relations with, the Improve Diplomatic Relations job will be more useful, but for general improvements Statecraft should be your choice.

Marshal - Organize the Army. This job lowers the upkeep cost of your Retinue (Or Horde), and can fire events to train existing or find new commanders.

Steward - Administer Realm. This job increases the speed of Cultural conversion in your realm’s provinces, and can fire events adding economic bonuses to any province. If you own Reaper’s Due, Prosperity throughout the Realm will also increase faster.

Spymaster - Sabotage. This is the exception I mentioned earlier. For owners of the <Mystery> expansion, the existing Scheme job will become “off-map” (if you don’t own it, Scheme will remain unchanged) and a new Sabotage job will be available for use on specific provinces. These provinces will suffer damage, gain unrest, and may even be made easier to siege due to sabotage and bribery.

Court Chaplain - Hunt Heretics. This job enables the Court Chaplain to hunt for members of shadowy cabals who plot against God and man alike.

And while I’m here and talking about the Council, let me mention something we’ve added for the 2.7 patch. When trying to have my Council agree to a vote with Conclave, it always bugged me that I would need to check in the tooltip of the law who was for and against it, then switch to the Council screen to bribe and cajole people, then check the law screen again to see who I had forgotten about. Instead, now you can ask that the Council considers a vote before you actually vote on it, which allows it to be shown on the Council screen along with icons on each Councilor showing how they will vote.
council2.jpg
council3.jpg

While it’s not in yet, we hope to add a button right there to start the voting process so that you don’t need to switch back to the laws tab once you have your votes arranged.


Don't forget to tune in to our Medieval Monday stream with Emil and Steven, starting at 16:00CET on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive.

The stream will, as always, be available to watch later through either the Twitch VOD archive. Or through our Paradox Extra Youtube channel where you can find (pretty much) all our previous streams!
 
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Oh also move sow dissent to the spymaster, move research technology to the court chaplain and move improve religious relations to the chancellor.
Change research technology so that instead of being spying it's simply sending a scholar to study at the province which allows you to get the usual effect but also generates tech points for the province's owner. Kind of how Baghdad and later Cairo became centres of learning where people travelled from all around to visit taking their ideas and knowledge with them there.
Sow dissent wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a chancellor job (though it could still use some buffing) competing with fabricate claim.
And improve religious relations works reasonably well with the chancellor (it's kind of a targeted improve relations).


Would you consider reviewing the existing jobs at the same time, and adding some helpful hints to their descriptions?

Chancellor - I often use "Improve Diplomatic Relations" and "Fabricate Claims" but haven't used "Sow Dissent". It would be helpful if you could use it on a rival king's capital, and have it trigger events against their random vassals (a good chancellor should increase the chances of relationship-damaging events on powerful vassals as opposed to some nobody).

Marshal - Does anyone use "Suppress Revolts"? It feels underpowered compared to the other two. Perhaps it should be off-map as well, to suppress revolts in all provinces? It still won't be as powerful as training own troops (since, well, an increase in personal levy helps not just against revolts, but also rebel vassals and external threats), so perhaps make it so it is more useful if your Marshal is relatively un-skilled (i.e. higher floor, but lower cap for effect)?

Steward - I often use "Collect Taxes" and "Spread Economy Tech", but "Oversee Construction" seems largely useless by comparison. The new "Administer Realm" option does feel like a good replacement for it, but that means that stewards still only have three useful jobs, rather than four.

Spymaster - a good selection of jobs, and "Sabotage" should make a nice addition.

Court Chaplain - another good selection of jobs.
Oversee construction is actually rather good. Unlike spread economy tech it can actually fire events. Instead I would change collect taxes. Instead of that it increases the prosperity in the province (That makes no sense how does harsher taxes make the province more prosperous) it should fire an event where you can remove one level of prosperity from the province in exchange for a one time sum of money. Making oversee construction the go to steward job if you want to pump prosperity in a single province.
 
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Would you consider reviewing the existing jobs at the same time, and adding some helpful hints to their descriptions?

It's on my "Things to do if there's time" list. I do sometimes use Oversee Construction when I have plenty of money and want to get some long build-time buildings up, or Suppress revolts for tricky arrests. I also can't balance existing jobs with the expansion-locked 4th job in mind unless we make different versions. But we'll see.
 
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This job increases the speed of Cultural conversion in your realm’s provinces
Doesn't this already happen way too fast? I mean, one king of a foreign culture inherits and BAM suddenly entire branches of culture are wiped permanently off the map. I really hope there is an overhaul to the whole cultural and religious conversion process at a province-level.
 
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Speaking of council jobs and so on, could you please please please make it possible to go back to the old system for military commanders as a game rule when starting a new game? I'd love to be able to skip the part of hiring and replacing them and just going straight to picking the leaders for each army instead.
 
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It's on my "Things to do if there's time" list. I do sometimes use Oversee Construction when I have plenty of money and want to get some long build-time buildings up, or Suppress revolts for tricky arrests. I also can't balance existing jobs with the expansion-locked 4th job in mind unless we make different versions. But we'll see.
It also cuts the cost of the buildings unless I am mistaken? Or is that only if the master builder event fires, anyway it applies to building holdings so you can potentially save a lot of cash there. Though granted not as much as collecting taxes earn you.
 
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It also cut's the cost of the buildings unless I am mistaken? Or is that only if the master builder event fires, anyway it applies to building holdings so you can potentially save a lot of cash there.

Only when master builder fires.

Speaking of commanders, could you please please please make it possible to go back to the old system for military commanders as a game rule when starting a new game? I'd love to be able to skip the part of hiring and replacing them and just going straight to picking the leaders for each army instead.

Not quite what you suggested, but I hope to add a auto-assign commander title toggle for that reason. Will confirm in a future DD if it gets done.

What was the purpose of the trip to Malta? Was it related to development or was it just a break?

It was partly for fun, partly to have some big conferences and team-build.
 
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Nice to have this new type of jobs! More things to do with the council will come in handy, especially towards the end of the game.
 
Nice!

Councilors can always benefit from more stuff. Even if it's just more events.
Anyway, any plans to give more fluff for the honorary titles? As of now, I see most of those titles as means to raise opinion with my vassals.
Maybe an event or few for those?
 
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Chancellor - Perform Statecraft. This job increases the speed at which your Threat decays, and can fire events which improve relations with random vassals, neighbours, or your liege if you have one. If you have a specific character you want better relations with, the Improve Diplomatic Relations job will be more useful, but for general improvements Statecraft should be your choice.
Interesting, especially if you live nearby dangerous folks.

Marshal - Organize the Army. This job lowers the upkeep cost of your Retinue (Or Horde), and can fire events to train existing or find new commanders.
Eh, I know you guys can be more creative regarding this one. Also, why only retinue upkeep discount - levies could get some love too!

Steward - Administer Realm. This job increases the speed of Cultural conversion in your realm’s provinces, and can fire events adding economic bonuses to any province. If you own Reaper’s Due, Prosperity throughout the Realm will also increase faster.
Now THIS is good! If the new job is exclusive towards the other 3, it'll be a toss-up between this one and more taxes

Spymaster - Sabotage. This is the exception I mentioned earlier. For owners of the <Mystery> expansion, the existing Scheme job will become “off-map” (if you don’t own it, Scheme will remain unchanged) and a new Sabotage job will be available for use on specific provinces. These provinces will suffer damage, gain unrest, and may even be made easier to siege due to sabotage and bribery.
We'll be able to use this against enemies, right? I don't see much point in using this on my on lands or vassals (unless I really despise that vassal and want a rebellion against him, not me)

Court Chaplain - Hunt Heretics. This job enables the Court Chaplain to hunt for members of shadowy cabals who plot against God and man alike.
Will this reduce heresy spawning? Especially playing in the British Isles, they seem to be pretty common and helluva powerful!

And good thinking on the council vote!
 
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I also can't balance existing jobs with the expansion-locked 4th job in mind unless we make different versions. But we'll see.
Reminds me of the reasons given for why balancing retinues is so difficult. Please, be certain that that mistake is not being repeated.

Speaking of retinues, what will the marshal job do if one does not own the DLC that enables retinues? Just allow a few events to fire?

Edit:
Perhaps you'll take the EU4 approach, and allow this dlc to unlock retinues as well?
 
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Not quite what you suggested, but I hope to add a auto-assign commander title toggle for that reason. Will confirm in a future DD if it gets done.

If this is going to be an option, would you consider adding the ability to set characters as not eligible for being a commander for this auto-assignment? There's quite a few times when I don't want to risk my heir in battle, but the game ranks them at the top of the priority for the commander pool. I wouldn't want to have to turn off auto-assign just to stop my heir dying in battle.
 
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Nice!

Councilors can always benefit from more stuff. Even if it's just more events.
Anyway, any plans to give more fluff for the honorary titles? As of now, I see most of those titles as means to raise opinion with my vassals.
Maybe an event or few for those?

I agree that more minor title flavour would be good, I don't think we'll have time for this DLC/patch though.

Speaking of retinues, what will the marshal job do if one does not own the DLC that enables retinues? Just allow a few events to fire?

Edit:
Perhaps you'll take the EU4 approach, and allow this dlc to unlock retinues as well?

We have a few thoughts in that regard, but I won't comment before it's decided. I'm aware of the issue though :)
 
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I'm sorry to tell you that this game is failed.( a death shadow is upon it and you can't do anything more. if you don't believe it check users score on metacritic.com). you can't expand it to china, africa and new world because if you add one of them it will be hard to run the game for usual computer.so you just can focus only on margins of the game (this is what you are already doing now). in my opinion instead of making these new features if you try to make a new version of crusader kings ( I mean CK 3) without so many details and adding china and etc, users will be more attracted.(this new product can sale better)
best regards
 
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I'm sorry to tell you that this game is failed.( a death shadow is upon it and you can't do anything more. if you don't believe it check users score on metacritic.com).
276a4558ddb54605ac91e9605cb461d5.png

Where do I look?
 
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I still want the Open Council Position notification to take you to the Positions tab like it used to, instead of the My Council tab.

I am not the only one to make this complaint, it was what we were used to for a very long time.

I know the political situation when appointing the councilor, now the most logical thing is to give him a job.
 
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