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

[Tech Noir Synth]

Are there any changes planned for options during mental breaks, depending on character traits? For example a lustful character could have the option to visit a brothel...as 3 out of 3 options! Or maybe you can come up with some new and interesting options to get over mental breaks depending on character traits. Maybe some character traits are better suited for accumulating stress? Maybe some character traits cause characters to become better at certain stress levels? I think something like this has potential to be tested out.

I can recall only a single trait from the intrigue lifestyle which adds bonuses depending on stress level, however overall the penalties for high stress levels are far too severe for it to be worth it to stay at any stress level above zero. It would be very interesting if some character traits would offer big bonuses depending on stress level and reward the player if you manage to stay within a certain stress threshhold.

 

[rklrj]

I am once again asking you to give us the ability to give basic commands to allies like in CK2.

 

[NexusSix]

Solid DD, actual news and the right direction. (Finally?)
Thanks Newguy.

 

[Testeria]

@Pdx_Meedoc

Personally I love chasing peasants with my mangonels.

 

[CassCD]

We will not cover all the traits in the upcoming patch. If you have fun ideas, please post them on the forum! We are hoping to add more trait-specific content in the future

I decided to upon this challenge while in the shower and I feel like these are my best ideas:

Calm:
The ability to mediate and dissolve rivalries between two NPCs. Would cost a decent bit of prestige, but not only would the rivalry between two people be gone, the two people who you deal with gain a small bit of opinion towards you.

Lazy:
Had the same idea as @fodazd in concept but I feel like it should do more. Like actually increase the benefits you gain from councilors' jobs. At the cost of, at the very least, councilor opinion if not general vassal opinion.

 

[Wu of Wei]

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.

Yeah I personally want easier abdication, it could be a helpful tool in practice. It could help with short reign penalty too if the previous lord is still alive.

 

[Herennius]

I can recall only a single trait from the intrigue lifestyle which adds bonuses depending on stress level, however overall the penalties for high stress levels are far too severe for it to be worth it to stay at any stress level above zero.

There are two AFAIK (Avaricius - Golden Aplomb and Torturer - Thriving in Chaos)

 

[Lord Martoc]

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.

Even if you can't split a MaA group it should split like groups up automatically. Have two heavy inf? One in each group! Maybe knights the same way.
Also - put knights above levies, and when I move units from one army to the other don't move the unit list back to the top! Often I want to just remove a bunch of levies but if there's too many MaA I have to scroll, click, scroll again, click, etc... Knights are even worse since they are at the bottom!
Alternately a button to split out levies, but really just don't make me scroll each time and it's all good.

 

[Ekcrbe]

Maybe some character traits are better suited for accumulating stress? Maybe some character traits cause characters to become better at certain stress levels?

I think this difference is already pretty adequately modeled in the modifiers that different traits give, so for example Diligent gets +20% stress gain and Calm and Content get +10% stress loss, etc. And as @Herennius noted, there are two perks that add stress level-dependent bonuses. Stress is primarily a bad thing—both in the game and in real life, despite what some may tell you—so I don't think the game should go overboard on stress-induced bonuses.

 

[JBolt]

Hello everyone!

Nice to meet you all! I recently joined the Crusader Kings III game design team and am honored to inaugurate my PDX account with this Dev Diary. Today we will cover two improvements planned for the upcoming patch: additional content and AI warfare improvements.


Trait changes

One of the many pleasures of Crusader Kings is to personify a plethora of characters. Every one of them offers a good opportunity to roleplay, thanks to the various combinations of traits they offer. The Azure patch will expand upon existing content by updating and adding some trait-specific interactions and consequences. With this update, we want to connect the stress system even closer to personality traits.

One of the notable changes is for Shy: it will no longer generate Stress when launching a Personal Scheme. Shy characters can still receive Stress via some of the scheme event options however, and they will be less efficient at performing personal schemes (it will take them longer), but they will be able to do it without ending up having a mental breakdown.

We also added a few new interactions and decisions. For instance, Forgiving characters can abandon one of their hooks to lose Stress. You can either decide to be a truly forgiving character, abandoning a hook you obtained unwittingly, or you can actively look for hooks and then choose to be merciful. We have also added new options for Diligent characters; they can dedicate themselves to improving the Development of their Capital, but doing so will generate a lot of Stress. Finally, if Impatient characters are Stressed, they can speed up the progress of their current Personal Scheme, without affecting their current Stress levels.

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


Some traits have also gained access to interactions that are not related to the stress system but still improve upon the expression of their personality. For instance, Arbitrary characters can now dismiss a Hook a vassal holds on them by spending a lot of Prestige and gaining Tyranny.

[Image of the Dismiss Hook interaction available for Arbitrary characters]

We would love to hear your feedback, and also suggestions for improving other traits!


AI and Warfare

There is also a number of AI improvements, mostly about how the AI moves its units while at war. Pathfinding has been revised, and AI armies should now take more optimal routes to reach their targets, whether they be close but surrounded by treacherous terrain, or far away across the sea (which was most visible during Crusades; there will be no more island hopping for Christian armies, and Vikings should also be more swift and direct in their raids). The new pathfinding logic now factors in time, attrition and threat when selecting and routing to a destination.

Getting close to the enemy is only the first step in warfare though, and the AI should behave more sensibly in other areas too. After winning crucial battles, AI armies should use their full might to more efficiently besiege enemy fortresses - you should see less mangonels and bombards chasing peasants while there is a perfectly good castle waiting to be ruined. We also adjusted the AI behaviors depending on their Casus Bellis, making sure that they not only prioritize territorial conquest but also capturing hostages when relevant. While there’s likely to be some odd behaviors in the military AI still, we believe this will be a noticeable change in the right direction.


Lastly, an important organizational change: the version number of the patch will be 1.4 instead of 1.3.X as announced previously. This is to make the scope of the patch a bit clearer. While it is still a relatively small patch, it is also larger than a hotfix or a pure bugfix patch we've released in the past. Some mods will need to be updated. And while we always strive to keep save games compatible, with the nature of the game you might still run into edge cases with your old saves that we did not catch.

And that’s it for today! Thanks again for your precious feedback, and please keep providing more! I hope you enjoyed it, and see you next week for more information about the Azure patch!

This is all great stuff, but when are we going to get more gritty and real medieval mechanics? This feels like the characters are going to be very fleshed out, but the world they live in, a medieval world of Popes and kings, is not. Where are the College of Cardinals for example, or societies, or even regencies? This feels less like Crusader Kings and more like a slightly grand strategy Sims in a generally medieval world, and a bland one at that. It's not just characters that are important, you have to have the setting behind them to put them in and to view them from. Great work, but I look forward to more tangible additions to the world.

 

[WarwolfOmega]

Great News! I think the stress <-> traits mechanic is the best new feature of CK3, anything that adds to it is pure gravy

Onto my pet peeve, any chance of a Save option for Game Rules? Or at least saving your last setup.

There's a Reset button, how can there NOT be a Save one???

I know I keep harping on this but it's quite annoying.

 

[Cruci]

I think this is definitely a move in the right direction! So far, traits have been mostly about what you can't do (or risk getting a lot of stress). Having additional things you can do with specific traits balances them out, and makes every new character a unique and fun challenge to play. I hope this trend continues, and more trait-specific interactions are added in the future.

 

[PeteCrighton]

@Pdx_Meedoc Welcome! I recognise the name … aren’t you an Amplitude Studios alumnus? Hopping from my one favourite game series to my other favourite; I can only approve. I’d love to work on an Auriga/Endless CK3 mod, maybe I can find the time someday.

 

[Calvarok]

Shy being tied to an infinitely accessible command was actually a balance problem because it let you manipulate your stress levels at will if you wanted to kill off a character without the penalties that suicide gives or attempt to get traits that can be triggered by stress, such as Athletic.

I had a really fun time playing around with it but I'm glad it's being reworked!

 

[wanoO]

Excited to see the pathing improvements @Pdx_Meedoc. It was pretty funny albeit a little frustrating watching the Pope take the scenic route when crusading:

Keep up the good work and thanks for the update!

 

[kgptzac]

Forgiving characters can abandon one of their hooks to lose Stress. You can either decide to be a truly forgiving character, abandoning a hook you obtained unwittingly, or you can actively look for hooks and then choose to be merciful.

Please don't do this. The very premise of the link between personality traits and stress is to reward roleplaying, allowing to "truly forgive" a fabricated hook makes no logical sense because the person who's doing the act of forgiveness already knew there's nothing actually to forgive.

 

[Ostermex]

I hope stress become at least a slightly harder thing to manage, as I've never gotten anything above the first level of stress, unless I specifically wanted to.

Also, please, I am begging you, implement some sort of system where traits can be changed/gained/lost.

Because I (and I bet a lot of other people) am getting *a little* tired of seeing my 66 year old ruler have the same traits he did when he was 16.

 

[Finear]

Hi @Pdx_Meedoc ! Good to have you here Really nice DD and really nice features I'm looking forward for 1.4! Little question: If not all personality traits will have new trait-specific interactions (as far as for this 1.4 patch), it's not be little bit unbalanced that way? For example being a litlle OP being Arbitrary if Just would not get any new toys?

 

[Sledjer]

For instance, Arbitrary characters can now dismiss a Hook a vassal holds on them by spending a lot of Prestige and gaining Tyranny.

If it is a blackmail hook, will the vassal then be able to reveal the secret? Because if not, then they should.

 

[Sledjer]

Please don't do this. The very premise of the link between personality traits and stress is to reward roleplaying, allowing to "truly forgive" a fabricated hook makes no logical sense because the person who's doing the act of forgiveness already knew there's nothing actually to forgive.

I guess that it doesn't count as actually being forgiving, but you better believe there are narcissists out there who get off on "forgiving" fake favors.