CK3 Dev Diary #78: Taking Language to Court

[Mindel]

What influences will there be between the court languages of vassals vs their suzerain? Will vassals be pressured to convert to their realm's language?

 

[Khrome]

I'm hoping that there will be a religion rework in the future which will include liturgical languages (like Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Pali, etc).

Seems funny that language has a more complex system than religion for now (which is painfully oversimplified at the moment).

 

[Em Ay Ef]

In the example given they gain almost 7 grandeur from having counties that speak High German and only 2 from there being a grander high german court.

they actually get the 2 from being the grandest High German court, not from there being a grander one.

we haven't been shown the amount that a lesser court receives, but if that number is too high, it will make it worthwhile to blindly follow languages from across the map, whereas if the number is too low, it won't entice players to use the feature. that's why i worry.

 

[Fofotron]

Interesting. I hope that Ecclesiastical Languages such as Latin also have an impact, even if not in this expansion. It was the language of the Chruch, the literate class and the scholars. Works would be written in Latin.

But there is one feature that existed on CK2 and is missing on CK3 that would fit right in with the "theme" of Royal Court: Coronations.

I am worried it won't be included, even though it was important in real life, was good flavor on CK2 and offered a variety of events and effects for your character if he was coronated or not, and by whom he was crowned.

 

[Sushurashi]

Will Children raised in the court automatically learn the Court Language, or will they have to learn it as an adult?

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

To maximize your grandeur you want every county in your realm and every court in the world to have the same language as you. There's no reason to allow cultures that aren't yours to exist, and any time you conquer new land you're encouraged to immediately convert it.

Well, you were *already* encouraged to immediately culture convert land you conquered for various reasons.

But no. You might want to keep existing cultures around if they've got access to different innovations to you, and have buildings that depend on those - or that have building options you don't have yourself.

And you might not want every court in the world to have the same court language as you if it hurts your grandeur because you're now the 50th most prestigious court with that language, rather than 1st with your own court language, and influencing a small number of other realms to follow you.

Certainly though you want all your counties to match your court language unless there are other concerns, but then why *wouldn't* you want the country to speak your language - or at least to have the administrative layer of your country speak the court language?

 

[Tiax]

Certainly though you want all your counties to match your court language unless there are other concerns, but then why *wouldn't* you want the country to speak your language - or at least to have the administrative layer of your country speak the court language?

Presumably because culture-converting entire populations is a long and arduous process that greatly upsets them. The trouble is that the game models it the other way around - converting is cheap and easy, and makes them happier. So as we get more and more mechanics that reward homogeneity, the already minimal downsides become even more insignificant, and the game just becomes about taking the big list of unique cultures and religion and erasing them.

 

[Strigoi Tyrannus]

On the other hand, if you are not the grandest Court of the language, you gain Court Grandeur based on the difference of your Grandeur, and the Grandeur of the leading Court. Speaking the Language is not required for this bonus, so even if your neighbors have a language you cannot speak you can attempt to impress them by following their lead.

So the bigger the difference, the more grandeur you get?

 

[Idle America]

Is there a possibility of hybrid languages emerging, to go with our hybrid cultures?

 

[Tiax]

All in all, this means that weaker and less grand Royal Courts will tend to choose the Court Language of a local, more grand Royal Court. The AI is also more restricted than players, such as taking the Faith of the speakers of the Court Language into account.

This makes it sound like the correct answer is often to take the language of hostile religions, but you added a bandaid to the AI so that it will make suboptimal choices to appear more historically plausible.

As a player, will I be tempted to adopt Arabic as my court language as a European Catholic?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Interesting. I hope that Ecclesiastical Languages such as Latin also have an impact, even if not in this expansion. It was the language of the Chruch, the literate class and the scholars. Works would be written in Latin.

But there is one feature that existed on CK2 and is missing on CK3 that would fit right in with the "theme" of Royal Court: Coronations.

I am worried it won't be included, even though it was important in real life, was good flavor on CK2 and offered a variety of events and effects for your character if he was coronated or not, and by whom he was coronated.

i'm usually not That Guy but the word is crowned.

 

[Heraklito]

I hope that all future DLC of this game will have the same investment level or higher than this one. I can't wait for it to come out. What a thrill

 

[Splorghley]

I wish this DD came out earlier, because it's making me a lot more excited for RC than anything else I've seen to date.

Having Czech-Slovak 'language' in 867 is a bit anachronistic. Great Moravia was using the language we know today as the Old Church Slavonic. The languages separated and started their development only after the collapse of Great Moravia.

Per my understanding, OCS was a South Slavic language, which was only (briefly) used for liturgical purposes / official writing in Great Moravia (much like Latin was in western realms). I would expect the actual royal court itself to be speaking West Slavic (or, in game terms, Czech-Slovak). OCS was not spoken in GM as a day to day language, as far as I know.

I love the languages system, though I think the absence of liturgical languages like Latin, OCS, Sanksrit, &c will be a dash awkward. Hopefully it will eventually be tackled in a Papacy / theocracy DLC, and I'm sure some good mods will fill the gap in the meantime.

 

[Sushurashi]

I think that with the Court Language, it is important that when you create a Hybrid Culture, a Creole language is created for that culture. Let's take Brittany for example. I am the Duke of Brittany; Heistein turns his attention elseware like Wessex or Iberia, and the French left me alone or I successfully fended them off and have now created the Kingdom of Brittany. My Kingdom speaks Bretton or Brythonic but French is a better Court Language because there are so many counties that speak French and the King of France should have a very high Grandeur compared to what I could have speaking Bretton or Brythonic(?).

So I create a Hybrid French-Brythonic culture and choose French as it's language, with in a few years my whole kingdom is the new Culture and speaks French which would take much less time then culture converting my heir to French and then waiting for him to inherit and then waiting a few decades more to convert all of Brittany to French Culture. This is beneficial on many levels because I can keep my Brythonic heritage, Speak French in my Kingdom and at Court and benefit from a High Grandeur Court Language and get the bonus from my Court Language and county language being the same.

Having Hybrid Cultures speak a new Creole language changes peoples decision making process from a Min-Maxing one to a Roleplay one, as well as being more historically accurate.

 

[Atrithau]

I'm not sure I understand this mechanic. What is the downside of choosing the language of the most erudite group at the time? Where does the opinion of your court (or even your commoners) come into play?

I feel like there should at least be some risk associated to choosing languages from cultures that are different from yours. So that if you, say, learned Arabic but weren't Muslim, that puts you at a high-risk of your nobles converting or switching to cultural pillars that fall in line the official court of said language.

Again, I just don't know. I like the idea of court languages and I love the cultural pillars/traditions, but I don't understand why it's us doing this as players rather than the world changing organically. You should be a warlike culture if you actually go to war in practice - the pillars should be an active reflection of what you're doing, not skills out of a tree that you pick however you please. Likewise, the desired court language should be a reflection of what your culture is like, and also of the influential people in your realm. If you have a gorgeous queen that's out there getting every noble to worship her, then that should highly increase the likelihood that they want to dabble in her native language just to please her. Similarly, if you are importing a lot of luminaries via marriage to serve on your council, they should be affecting things. If it's the 900s and I'm playing Rurik and kidnapping French nonstop and recruiting them or marrying them, surely that should have some impact on the culture.

Now, it's possible that there could be some god-king out there with such amazing beauty and skills, a genius madman so beloved by his nobles and commoners that he himself can set the tone of the culture and set any language he wants as the official one because everyone's used to his whims. But if your ruler is some lispy hunchback that can barely lift his sword, in what world would he ever have enough authority to set the cultural traditions or keep the nobles from drifting away from them?

I don't think cultures and languages are like religions. It makes sense why a religion has laws that are set in stone, but whether or not a culture has a warlike attitude or great esteem for poets should be an organic reflection of what's actually happening.

And I know I'm going to get stoned for this, but the languages of the court should be shown as a percentile, as really should the cultures in any region, one that you can work to alter or just accept. And here people's education should matter a lot. Your vassals that are trained in stewardship might favor a culture and language that's totally different from those trained in learning. If you want to have some insanely dedicated warrior culture but most of court favors learning, then you should have to do exactly what rulers did historically, which was purge the undesirables and educate their children in the way you see fit. And if you're not strong enough to do that, then it's time to admit defeat and go with the flow.

Rulers are so overpowered in this game that what I would've wanted to see was them getting taken down a peg with stuff like culture and language being in the hands of the court. Instead this just feels like picking passives out of a skill tree that will be fun for a few hundred hours of memeing, but will just be another ossified element afterward.

Surely there can be more for vassals to do in this game than just hate your heir for no reason only to get pacified by a feast? Like maybe just a little bit of autonomy, at least in the cultural realm, so that they're actual human beings and not just props like your family members?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I'm not sure I understand this mechanic. What is the downside of choosing the language of the most erudite group at the time? Where does the opinion of your court (or even your commoners) come into play?

I feel like there should at least be some risk associated to choosing languages from cultures that are different from yours. So that if you, say, learned Arabic but weren't Muslim, that puts you at a high-risk of your nobles converting or switching to cultural pillars that fall in line the official court of said language.

Again, I just don't know. I like the idea of court languages and I love the cultural pillars/traditions, but I don't understand why it's us doing this as players rather than the world changing organically. You should be a warlike culture if you actually go to war in practice - the pillars should be an active reflection of what you're doing, not skills out of a tree that you pick however you please. Likewise, the desired court language should be a reflection of what your culture is like, and also of the influential people in your realm. If you have a gorgeous queen that's out there getting every noble to worship her, then that should highly increase the likelihood that they want to dabble in her native language just to please her. Similarly, if you are importing a lot of luminaries via marriage to serve on your council, they should be affecting things. If it's the 900s and I'm playing Rurik and kidnapping French nonstop and recruiting them or marrying them, surely that should have some impact on the culture.

Now, it's possible that there could be some god-king out there with such amazing beauty and skills, a genius madman so beloved by his nobles and commoners that he himself can set the tone of the culture and set any language he wants as the official one because everyone's used to his whims. But if your ruler is some lispy hunchback that can barely lift his sword, in what world would he ever have enough authority to set the cultural traditions or keep the nobles from drifting away from them?

I don't think cultures and languages are like religions. It makes sense why a religion has laws that are set in stone, but whether or not a culture has a warlike attitude or great esteem for poets should be an organic reflection of what's actually happening.

And I know I'm going to get stoned for this, but the languages of the court should be shown as a percentile, as really should the cultures in any region, one that you can work to alter or just accept. And here people's education should matter a lot. Your vassals that are trained in stewardship might favor a culture and language that's totally different from those trained in learning. If you want to have some insanely dedicated warrior culture but most of court favors learning, then you should have to do exactly what rulers did historically, which was purge the undesirables and educate their children in the way you see fit. And if you're not strong enough to do that, then it's time to admit defeat and go with the flow.

Rulers are so overpowered in this game that what I would've wanted to see was them getting taken down a peg with stuff like culture and language being in the hands of the court. Instead this just feels like picking passives out of a skill tree that will be fun for a few hundred hours of memeing, but will just be another ossified element afterward.

Surely there can be more for vassals to do in this game than just hate your heir for no reason only to get pacified by a feast? Like maybe just a little bit of autonomy, at least in the cultural realm, so that they're actual human beings and not just props like your family members?

well, i think everyone's forgetting that at least a couple of people would have to actually speak the language before it becomes a sensible choice, and considering that learning a language is a scheme, who knows? it might take years, especially for more 'distant' languages.

considering that it's a subset of culture, maybe it's not going to be as huge of a Thing as people seem to think.

 

[Atrithau]

Presumably because culture-converting entire populations is a long and arduous process that greatly upsets them. The trouble is that the game models it the other way around - converting is cheap and easy, and makes them happier. So as we get more and more mechanics that reward homogeneity, the already minimal downsides become even more insignificant, and the game just becomes about taking the big list of unique cultures and religion and erasing them.

Exactly. It's mind-boggling that you can just set your steward over a county and erase potentially thousands of years of culture in the span of three to four years. The only way that happened was through genocide and colonization and even that took decades. What's funny to me is that Paradox did make it harder to convert people to other religions, which is ridiculous in the face of historical evidence - it's way more common to see populations convert to religion while keeping their cultural heritage than the reverse. I'm not sure you should be able to convert populations at all, but if they're so adamant on having you be able to do it, then it should be an arduous process that takes centuries and tens of thousands of gold in investment. If you really want to erase a culture so much then you should have to put on your big boy pants and sacrifice growth, economy, and safety to do so.

Though I'll say that in their defense, they might not really view counties as populations as all. Perhaps all you're doing when you're setting the steward to the task is replacing public buildings, connecting roads, and bringing in trustworthy administrators from your culture. But if that's really the case, then there should be some representation of the fact that despite this superficial shift for administrative purposes, there's still an underclass of oppressed commoners that don't identify with your culture and will definitely betray you and target your people any chance they get. This would also make ruling empires made up of different pops way harder and far more interesting than just growing into a homogeneous blob that feels more like an oversized county than a massive empire spanning different civilizations and hundreds of unique cultures.

well, i think everyone's forgetting that at least a couple of people would have to actually speak the language before it becomes a sensible choice, and considering that learning a language is a scheme, who knows? it might take years, especially for more 'distant' languages.

considering that it's a subset of culture, maybe it's not going to be as huge of a Thing as people seem to think.

That's true, it could be that it's not that important, but all I meant to say (and maybe failed to convey) is that this could've been an opportunity to make the world feel more alive by having certain aspects of it evolve organically against the player's wishes. I personally would like to see more of that.

 

[Troyen]

By Royal Court I assume you mean Kingdom tier titles? Poor Bjorn Ironside and his descendants were unable to form Sweden by 1067!!! But it looks like a Viking Kingdom of Poland was formed a hundred years later!

You also can't have a court if you're Tribal. So that big blob of nothingness is Tribal governments that haven't yet converted to Feudal/Clan.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

If you really want to erase a culture so much then you should have to put on your big boy pants and sacrifice growth, economy, and safety to do so.

it's not about erasing culture. it's a process that happens naturally and the game doesn't have that many centuries in it, so the process is accelerated.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Exactly. It's mind-boggling that you can just set your steward over a county and erase potentially thousands of years of culture in the span of three to four years. The only way that happened was through genocide and colonization and even that took decades. What's funny to me is that Paradox did make it harder to convert people to other religions, which is ridiculous in the face of historical evidence - it's way more common to see populations convert to religion while keeping their cultural heritage than the reverse. I'm not sure you should be able to convert populations at all, but if they're so adamant on having you be able to do it, then it should be an arduous process that takes centuries and tens of thousands of gold in investment. If you really want to erase a culture so much then you should have to put on your big boy pants and sacrifice growth, economy, and safety to do so.

Though I'll say that in their defense, they might not really view counties as populations as all. Perhaps all you're doing when you're setting the steward to the task is replacing public buildings, connecting roads, and bringing in trustworthy administrators from your culture. But if that's really the case, then there should be some representation of the fact that despite this superficial shift for administrative purposes, there's still an underclass of oppressed commoners that don't identify with your culture and will definitely betray you and target your people any chance they get. This would also make ruling empires made up of different pops way harder and far more interesting than just growing into a homogeneous blob that feels more like an oversized county than a massive empire spanning different civilizations and hundreds of unique cultures.



That's true, it could be that it's not that important, but all I meant to say (and maybe failed to convey) is that this could've been an opportunity to make the world feel more alive by having certain aspects of it evolve organically against the player's wishes. I personally would like to see more of that.

well in my current game orthodoxy is chewing its way north to sweden. i don't know who ordered that one...