CK2 Dev Diary #46: Surveying the Survey

[LudskyL]

I don't agree with sondage. "Sunset Invasion" is a very good DLC !

"Reapers"Due", "Way of Life" & "Conclave" is a very bad DLC for me. The game becomes complicated with additions of unnecessary features !

I wait More on North Africa : Kanem.......

 

[JP5243]

I don't agree with sondage. "Sunset Invasion" is a very good DLC !

"Reapers"Due", "Way of Life" & "Conclave" is a very bad DLC for me. The game becomes complicated with additions of unnecessary features !

I wait More on North Africa : Kanem.......

I won't disagree with you about Conclave, and I can at least understand what you mean about Reaper's Due (despite it being one of my personal favourites), but Way of Life isn't complicated. It adds only one feature, one that is extraordinarily useful.

 

[ChaosOnline]

They could just troll us even further by giving us another Sunset Invasion, but instead of the Aztecs invading Europe, the Chinese will invade India. How about that?

I've actually always thought it would be interesting to have an update to Sunset Invasion where the Inca invade India. I always liked Sunset Invasion, so seeing it get expanded to include India would be interesting to me.

To all of this, we can add a scenario portraying the rise of Seljuk and his clan from the Oghuz Turks in Turkmenistan and the fall of the Samanids to the Buyids in center Iran and Ghaznavids in Khorasan/Afghanistan.
So much could be done with just a few flavor events, event troops (Magyar-like) and the mechanics of the game such as claims (conflict between Ghaznavids, Buyids and later, Seljuks; seeing Seljuk settle; The Ghaznavids' and Seljuks' expansion)...

Late 10th century would be so interesting

I love playing in the middle east, so I would love this!

 

[Sigebryht]

In conclusion your average user is
1) Eurocentric
2) depth oriented
3) anti-fantasy

may the very vocal minority dislike to their utmost pleasure, showing how many of them have their feels dominated, subdued, conquered and hegemonized by facts #chinaexpansionneverevergonnahappen

 

[JP5243]

In conclusion your average user is
1) Eurocentric
2) depth oriented
3) anti-fantasy

may the very vocal minority dislike to their utmost pleasure, showing how many of them have their feels dominated, subdued, conquered and hegemonized by facts #chinaexpansionneverevergonnahappen

^THIS^

 

[ChaosOnline]

In conclusion your average user is
1) Eurocentric
2) depth oriented
3) anti-fantasy

Or, at least those kinds of users are better at responding to surveys.

Surveys that are open to the general public are prone to self-selection bias, which usually leads to biased data. People who are more passionate about getting their opinion heard are more likely to notice and take the survey, while more moderate voices are more likely to ignore it. Also, players who don't come to the forums are completely excluded. And, since the survey was completely open, that means that some people could have taken it multiple times to try and skew the data.

So, in reality, the data gotten from this survey couldn't be accepted as reliable, or necessarily reflecting the views of the average user.

 

[ChaosOnline]

I honestly thought SI was one of the more thematically innovative moments of Paradox history. I mean there are other games where you can play as crusaders or colonizers, but in no other game that I know of can you fight off an Aztec invasion.

You can in Civilization. It's pretty common in that game, really.

 

[Woifee]

In conclusion your average user is
1) Eurocentric
2) depth oriented
3) anti-fantasy

may the very vocal minority dislike to their utmost pleasure, showing how many of them have their feels dominated, subdued, conquered and hegemonized by facts #chinaexpansionneverevergonnahappen

I would love all of Eurasia and most of Africa, but not if performance suffers to hard and societies are represented way to wrong.

I would love more famtasy if it's possible to turn it off.

 

[Sigebryht]

Or, at least those kinds of users are better at responding to surveys.

Surveys that are open to the general public are prone to self-selection bias, which usually leads to biased data. People who are more passionate about getting their opinion heard are more likely to notice and take the survey, while more moderate voices are more likely to ignore it. Also, players who don't come to the forums are completely excluded. And, since the survey was completely open, that means that some people could have taken it multiple times to try and skew the data.

So, in reality, the data gotten from this survey couldn't be accepted as reliable, or necessarily reflecting the views of the average user.

yeah sure, the every day 2 new threads about how awesome a china expansion would be is kinda being moderate, reasonable and unbiased
I hated this forum during rajas of india expansion, nothing but fanboys begging for china and complains about bugs, seeing the FACTS is orgasmic, knowing you guys will never get china feels like a villain was vanquished and peace now reigns on Earth, so triumphant, so awesome!

 

[divefr]

I heard that the Devs made a bet while they were drunk and that caused them to create the SI DLC (no offense devs)

 

[Maphibo]

I'm a little surprised The Republic was not one of the three least-used DLCs. Republics are fun, but I reckoned the paucity of starts compared to say, the Sword of Islam, would have seen it drop. Maybe we're all still hunting those elusive 80 trade posts?



I wouldn't want to see the timeline going back any further, but filling in some of the gaps between the earlier start dates? Count me in! Would love the histories between 869 and 1066 to be populated so we could do battle with folk like Cnut the Great, ruler of Denmark, England and Norway.

A Knud the Great start would be awesome!

 

[Maphibo]

Did you know that 1100 is already available as a start date? You can pick any date between 15 Sep 1066 and 1 Jan 1337 to play using custom game setup. Forgive me if I've misunderstood and you simply meant you wanted 1100 included as an explicit bookmark.

Spoiler: Henry I, 1100

View attachment 248618

I'm going to speculate a little now. I'd love the timeline between 867-1066 to be filled out. From the OP it seems a lot of folk really like playing pagans and there's a lot of feisty stuff going on in Scandinavia and the British Isles during that time for sure. Where it all falls down though is that the timeline has to be filled in everywhere, for everyone, to a high standard and timeline expansion is probably one of the most labour intensive things Paradox could do for the game at this stage.

For a larger timeline you have to populate the history files for thousands of counties, duchies, kingdoms and empires with data for when people have held them. You have to create those people that hold them. You may want to sprinkle some of those people with unique stats or abilities. Then add in spouses, children, dynastic relations. Make sure they're all connected to the right people/families. Put them with the right cultures. Make sure the thousands of provinces are all owned by the right duchies/kingdoms etc. at the right time. Then make that work not just for a single start date, but for 365 possible dates in dozens, scores, hundreds of years. There's a lot of work involved, lots of things that need to go right and lots of things that can go wrong.

One of the biggest timeline expansions Paradox did was boldly adding in ~270 playable years for the Indian subcontinent all at once. It was ambitious and it held up well in the early bookmarks. But if you tried a later bookmark or chose a random later year, you'd find provinces without lords, provinces with lords that had been alive 500 years. Emperors with 200 personal holdings when you clicked start. It was a a real mess.

India revealed what a big job it is to try and widen the timeline at scale (albeit, there were more than just histories added for that expansion). They avoided a repeat with Charlemagne by making only 769 playable. Which still involves intensive, laborious work in the history files, but it's only for a single perfect date in 769.

None of this is to say Paradox couldn't attempt a timeline expansion, or add more one-off start dates. But in the case of the former, I think the dev team would have to get bigger/the DLC would have to get pricier. In the case of the latter, we already have the best pre-1066 dates we could get and anything post-1337 there's too little time before the 1452 cut-off.

This is all not to mention that we all play the 769/867/1066 starts near exclusively, near nothing afterwards and rarely ever reach 1452. Chances are most of us wouldn't even make use of any extra timeline we had to play with. As such, future expansions will probably be all about features and enriching the start dates we already have. (And no doubt now I've said this, next DLC will be Agincourt: Finish the Fight!)

You're right... adding start dates is A LOT of work, but given this is meant to be an historical game, I would love for the devs to put their efforts there instead of into fantasy stuff that undermine the seriousness of the game

There's so much meaningful/historical content and features that could still be added, but instead we have... demon summoning and immortality

 

[Maphibo]

If it's that important, don't let it most of those happen. Here's how I would do it:

1. Assuming a start date in the late 500s or early 600s before the Prophet Muhammad began his ministry. Preexisting playable religions in the area are Zoros (the Sassanids are in charge at this time), various Christian sects (mainly Nestorians and Miaphysites), and Arabic pagans. (I think but am not entirely sure that the Jewish diaspora had happened a long time before and therefore there would be no Jewish rulers. EDIT: I stand corrected, thank you, @Spear12.)
2. Depict Muhammad by scripted event only, using his existing non-portrait. He is not allowed to be an actual interactable character in the official release (modders are on their own).
3. The rise of Islam is a host outbreak in Arabia, a la Widukind or a Shi'a Caliphate rising, scaled to the nation it appears in. It's possible but not easy to defeat them militarily (if possible, make it big enough the AI can't beat him but a smart PC can), but Muhammad himself is not affected: his ministry simply fails if the host is entirely destroyed and he is written to have escaped and eventually died of natural causes.

See, the difference between what I'm doing here and the kind of shit Charlie Hebdo did, they were deliberately trying to piss people off. I dislike deliberate insults based on religious belief (insults based on actions unsupported by the actual scripture are an exception, and I reserve the right to insult Christians specifically and Protestants especially since I am one by inclination myself), but respectfully writing alternate history is something else entirely.

Charlie Hebdo made fun of everyone and everything, including every religions. They didn't want to make an exception for Islam (because... why?) and given that Muhammad was actually a man, they drawn him as such. It's called freedom of expression, and some of them they paid it with their lives.