CK3 Dev Diary #58 - Stre(ss)tching the traits

[johnty5]

Conceptually I agree! That being said, I cannot give any further comments on it because I'm not working on the Azure patch.

@PDXOxycoon working on Vicky 3 confirmed

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

Great way to catapult arbitrary from an undesirable trait to a very powerful one

Arbitrary has been a top tier trait all along. Some vassal opinion is small price to pay to do anything I like without suffering stress.

 

[thebadmiral]

What a great Dev Diary! Very cool changes to the traits system. As a shy person myself, I'm very fond of the rebalancing of the shy trait.

As far as further suggestions go: My last Norse run I ended up playing for a while as a compassionate raider, which (admittedly after a moment of frustration after realizing I couldn't completely sack counties without taking on stress) I had a lot of fun with. What a fun character to imagine, just sighing at his compatriots rampaging, "come on guys, get back in the boat, we've done enough"! I did wonder, though, if as a compassionate raider it might not also make sense to lose a bit of stress if I released captives from raiding without asking for ransom, or a hook or anything. I feel like there's other examples of this kind of thing too that are escaping me presently...

Looking forward to 1.4!

 

[Jetosbaldo]

[Image of the Develop Capital decision available for Diligent characters]

dilligent dude gets stressed for doing dilligent things?

 

[lykchen]

It's nice to see all the confusion I have personally caused by asking to change the version number for Azure to 1.4 and shifting all future version numbers ^^'

As was mentioned by others before, all we're doing is "renaming" the versions, there are no changes to the original schedules, or what we plan to include in them.

To add some context: We had already been working on something else for a while when we decided that we'd make the Azure patch, but at that point we had already assigned 1.4 to that future thing and avoided re-assinging the versions numbers. Which is why we kept calling Azure "1.3.X". We didn't even know what X was going to be...
And then I had qualms about it and asked to change it after the fact. I wanted us to be clearer about mod compatibility, first and foremost.

Our producers probably hate me a little for it, but are too busy updating version numbers everywhere to complain

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

dilligent dude gets stressed for doing dilligent things?

He is pulling an all-nighter, or likely more than one, to do so.

 

[Weyird]

I like it! More interactions with traits, and having to play rulers differently (and not just do the same thing but gain a bit of stress, etc) will really flesh out the game over time.

 

[Eyelslash]

New patch looks great, I love that stress system is still getting new improvements and more fluff. And I'm happy that you work on improving the AI - is not that bad but better AI is always nice to see. New events seem interesting too, they always great.

Still - I have one question. It is possible that you would add some new difficulty levels? Like hard/very hard? The game is too easy now, even harder starts are harder only in the first 50 years. The too easy difficulty (even when roleplaying) is probably my biggest problem with CK3.

Btw, I love your work, and thanks to the CK3 team, I slowly regaining my faith in Paradox - especially after the last unfortunate DLC to EU4. Keep doing good work!

 

[Skyfus]

Bless everyone in the CK3 team for communicating with testers and addressing well documented issues

 

[Negru Voda]

My understanding of stress is that it occurs when playing against character. So a diligent char should either lose stress when diligently developing the capital, or should be able to accrue less stress than non-diligent chars.

A diligent char could accrue stress when not taking diligent actions. Although I don’t think this particular design would be a great user experience.

 

[b333]

Regarding suggestions for additional trait effects:
-> Lazy: You can decide to let other people handle more of your responsibilities than usual. Pay Prestige to lose Stress.
-> Greedy: You can use demand payment for hooks without the stewardship perk. If you do have the perk, you gain more from it money.
-> Zealous: You can challenge people of different faiths to a duel even if they are not your rival.
-> Generous: You can donate some of your money to the poor people of one of your counties, increasing popular opinion and maybe giving you piety if generous is a virtue in your faith.
-> Content: You can voluntarily abdicate if you are over 60 years old. This one might be a bit too strong, but there could be additional restrictions on it.
-> Cynical: You can make a great effort to convice infidels that you are not as bad as others of your faith. You spend a lot of piety, but a religion that would normally consider you evil only considers you hostile instead. Kind of a new version of the CK2 "sympathy for X"-Traits.
-> Stubborn: If one of your seduce, romance or befriend schemes fails, you can take a lot of stress in order to try again without having to wait for the cooldown to expire.

Ambitious could have a mini-CK2 choose ambition decision. Would work basically the same as the already existing Patron Gods decision - select from a couple of modifiers (in this case, what ambition you wish to pursue). Would run the risk of making the trait even more powerful and desirable, so maybe these modifiers could come with even more stress gain on top of that of the trait itself.

Vengeful should be able to duel rivals without the Stalwart Leader perk.

 

[SanguiniusStyle]

welcome to ck3 team, meedoc.

I am really enjoying this game, and new features look very cool

 

[Dayvit78]

Going more on the traits is absolutely the right direction.
More events and more actions. Yes, please!

 

[pengoyo]

Like all the changes you mentioned.

For stress and personality, I think one problem I run into is you can get down to zero stress and then all the stress lose options have no effect. I think I could be interesting if there was some reward for having low stress (this probably would require tweaking the stress loss values handed out so maybe is more of a future suggestion than 1.4 suggestion). Two benefits I could see are having a relaxed level or converting stress loss into another currency.

So the first idea is there is a level of stress below the current lowest level. This is the relaxed level. While in this level characters get so bonus (maybe a small bonus to their stats or a small bonus to lifestyle experience gain). But also while in the relaxed stress level they gain stress each month (similar to how dread is loss each month). This mean that if they don't keep losing stress they'll eventually drift back up out of the relaxed level and back to the starting stress level (and then stop gaining stress each month). The idea is with this is that you should always have more stress you can lose due to the stress gain while relaxed (though I would cap the relaxed level at -100 stress, so people can't go too over board with stress loss).

The other option I can see is to convert any extra excess stress loss to another currency (the exchange rate should be such that it's a minor bonus, nothing game changing). Probably the best candidate is learning experience. And here I see three option, the stress loss converts to learning experience based on your current focus, based on the personality or coping trait (would need to be defined in the game files), or based on the theme of the current event. Obviously the first option would be the easiest to implement. But the other two I find interesting for allowing a bit of off focus learning.



Personally I like the first option (adding a relaxed level) as I think it makes the most sense, stress loss makes you relaxed and being relaxed gives you a clear state of mind to get more done (note the second option is just a level of abstraction above the first). But I'd be happy with either or some other mechanism to make me care about stress loss when at zero stress.

 

[Tiax]

My understanding of stress is that it occurs when playing against character. So a diligent char should either lose stress when diligently developing the capital, or should be able to accrue less stress than non-diligent chars.

A diligent char could accrue stress when not taking diligent actions. Although I don’t think this particular design would be a great user experience.

I think stress is a little muddled. Sometimes it represents acting against your character's nature, and other times it represents just doing activities that are generically stressful, like trying to get your kids to behave differently. Similarly, stress loss is sometimes acting in accordance with your nature, and other times just doing generic stress relief activities like going hunting or having a party. When the two meet and you have an activity that is generically stressful but is also in your character's nature, the system shows its seams and feels arbitrary.

 

[Herennius]

My understanding of stress is that it occurs when playing against character. So a diligent char should either lose stress when diligently developing the capital, or should be able to accrue less stress than non-diligent chars.

A diligent char could accrue stress when not taking diligent actions. Although I don’t think this particular design would be a great user experience.

Generally I would agree, but you could argue that Dilligent is an exception and the opposite here by representing a character being extremly focussed on getting done as much as possible and as soon as possible, regardless of exceeding his/her own limits. For me the +20% stress gain this trait has inherently hints in that direction. Gameplaywise, it might not be (only) a balancing factor, but also an opportunity to roleplay such a character with a higher-than-usual-stress level. Beside having more fun with coping mechanics, it also nicely pairs with some lifestayle perks giving boni for higher stress levels.

 

[WJS]

We thought about it but in the end, we think that keeping a trait which lowers fertility is important. How could you limit your offspring's offspring otherwise?!

Egad, yeah. I was just playing Duke Nuño of Portucale (completing the Form Portugal achievement), and he's hard coded to be Chaste... and he still fathered six children (in addition to the one he starts with). I mean, he and his (new) wife Urraka got along fabulously, but still.

 

[tuska]

This seems like a fantastic idea, having certain things you can do only if you have the specific trait. Looking forward to seeing more of these.
Glad to see shy is getting buffed too.

 

[Tiax]

We thought about it but in the end, we think that keeping a trait which lowers fertility is important. How could you limit your offspring's offspring otherwise?!

How much does chaste affect the expected value of the number of children a character will have? By my understanding, a couple with no modifiers both aged 16-25 will have a monthly 4.75% chance to conceive. To convert to a yearly probability, we figure the probability of not conceiving on any of the 12 months is (95.25%)^12 = 55.8%, so there is a 100%-55.8% = 44.2% chance of conceiving each year.

If one character is chaste, my understanding is that that 4.75% chance will drop to about 4.16% (we previously had 4.75% * (100 + 100)/2 and now we have 4.75% * (100 + 75)/2 ). This gives a yearly probability of conceiving of 40.2%. We've only changed the yearly chances by four percentage points.

It feels like the vast majority of birth rate limiting is done by the hard-coded limits on number of children, not by fertility modifiers.

 

[d12ddd]

Nice, but are there any army splitting logic improvements in the new patch? I hate it when I split the army in 2 and the game doesn't split the men-at-arms, just their squads, so you need to have 2 separate squads of mangonels in order to have 2 armies with mangonels, can't just split 50 into 25 for each army. And even then, the splitting logic usually makes it so the first army gets both squads of mangonels, so you have to adjust it yourself. Also the knight/MAA distribution in general is super strange, I hope you look into that.