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CK3 Dev Diary #81 - A tour of your Royal Court (Interface)

Hello there, and welcome to the eighty-first CK3 Dev Diary!

Today we are going to look at the experience of admiring your Royal Court, one of the paid features of the Expansion with the same name.

Most of the actual mechanics of the expansion should already be familiar to you if you have read previous Dev Diaries. I will refer back to these Dev Diaries where appropriate, so you can see this as a bit of a summary of what it means to preside over your own Royal Court.

That being said, we are going to talk a bit about Court Types, a minor feature for your Royal Court

Visiting your Royal Court​

When you reach the rank of King or Emperor as a Feudal or Clan Ruler, you have laid the foundation for your Royal Court. You can now go to it via a button in the main interface.

This button highlights if there is something interesting to do in your Royal Court at this moment, such as if you have new Court Artifacts.

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You can also view anyone else’s Royal Court via a button next to their Character.

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The Throne Room​

Your Royal Court is split into three segments: Throne Room, Court Grandeur, and Court Artifacts

When you enter your Royal Court, you end up in your Throne Room.

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Here you can see various petitioners or other goings-on in your Court, and you can choose to interact with them. These types of events are described in Dev Diary 75. If any Inspired Characters are present or have projects in progress, they are also shown here, on the left side of the screen.

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If there is not enough going on here, you can also choose to Hold Court, inviting Courtiers and Vassals across the Realm to grovel before you (which was shown in Dev Diary 72).

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If this is your Liege’s Court, you can even approach them to hear your reasonable requests, as seen in Dev Diary 74.

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Grandeur and Amenities​

Moving on to the second part of your Royal Court, which is an overview of your Court Grandeur. How much you have, various factors affecting it, and so on.

Grandeur was explained a while ago, in Dev Diary 61. Basically, it is a measure of how well known your Court is, and each Level gives you further benefits.

Your current Grandeur, Grandeur Baseline, and unlocked Grandeur Levels are shown on the large bar in the center.

In the image below, we can see we are gaining Grandeur every month due to being below our Baseline.

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Our current Level is 4: while we do not have enough Grandeur to maintain this Level, we had unlocked it before, and it will thus stay unlocked for 6 months, regardless how much Grandeur we have.

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We can also see that our expected Grandeur Level is 7, which we are nowhere near fulfilling.

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Grandeur is also reflected in other ways. If you have high Grandeur, the UI looks more luxurious, and new (non-Artifact) furniture appears in your court.

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A large source of Grandeur is which Amenities are available to your Courtiers and visitors to your court. Providing excellent Amenities is sure to make your name well known across the world.

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There are two other factors affecting Grandeur, Court Language and Court Types. Court Language was already explained in Dev Diary 78, so let’s talk about Court Types.

Court Types​

With Court Types, you can choose which kind of Royal Court you want to foster. Perhaps one where martial prowess is admired, or where there is a whisper around every corner and a lover behind every curtain.

You always have the choice between two Court Types, based on the Ethos of your Culture, and changing it costs Prestige. If your Culture changes, you can still keep your old Court Type.

The type of Royal Court affects two things: what you get from your Grandeur Level, and what your Courtiers get from being part of the Court.

While some Grandeur Levels you reach are always the same regardless of your Court Type, some change somewhat. So, in a Diplomatic Court, Grandeur Level 4 may see you gaining less Tyranny, while in a Warlike Court, you may gain more Levies.

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As for Courtiers, each Courtier who stays at an especially Grand Royal Court for a certain period of time (5 years) will gain a special Courtier Trait based on the Court Type

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Each Trait of this type has two different levels. If your Court is at Grandeur Level 5, Courtiers get the first level, while the second level will appear at Grandeur Level 8. The second level comes with extra bonuses and can be especially useful for those you plan to be your Vassals.

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Court Artifacts​

Last but certainly not least, are the Court Artifacts. We showed a few of them off in Dev Diary 69.

In short, Court Artifacts are a special type of Artifacts. These are large furniture and other decorative items you display inside your Royal Court. This makes them distinct from your Inventory Artifacts described in last week's Dev Diary as you are not hauling them around everywhere.

When entering this part of the Royal Court, you can see all spots where you can place Court Artifacts

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Just like Inventory Artifacts, they give you a bonus if they are actively on display in your Royal Court. The primary purpose of Court Artifacts is to increase your Court Grandeur, but some have additional effects.

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For most Court Artifacts, there is more than one slot to place them. Perhaps that tapestry would look better on that other wall?

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End of the Tour​


That is all for this week, thank you for reading!
 

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All the bonuses are going to be pointless if the rest of the game isn't fixed. Most every attribute in the game is already super easy to stack, and most of them don't even matter anyway. I'm definitely not going to care about 0.16 prestige a month if my character has like 20,000 prestige that doesn't do anything.
 
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Idle America said:
I'm pretty sure it's meant to be bad. She's clearly a bit... unhinged... to make such an absurd demand.
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If it's just a random crazy person, why is she being allowed to directly petition the king? It'd be one thing if she were actually a great and eloquent poet, and we had to put up with her eccentricity. But if court events are just insane people wandering in off the street, what's the point? Besides, the "I met a crazy person" event might be novel the first time you see it, but once you've seen your 50th insane woman, it'll get real grating.
 
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In the closeup of the Pomeranian court, the Queen’s shoes appear to be enormous—possibly large enough to fit over her spouse’s boots, while the outline of her thighs and legs seem almost misshapen/flattened out of existence. I found it a trifle disconcerting. (The King’s body looked comparatively normal.)

Others have already pointed out the missing shadows, lack of textures, etc. I really hope these images are still a WIP. If not, I’m definitely going to avoid viewing them closely.
 
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Flockingbird said:
In the closeup of the Pomeranian court, the Queen’s shoes appear to be enormous—possibly large enough to fit over her spouse’s boots, while the outline of her thighs and legs seem almost misshapen/flattened out of existence. I found it a trifle disconcerting. (The King’s body looked comparatively normal.)

Others have already pointed out the missing shadows, lack of textures, etc. I really hope these images are still a WIP. If not, I’m definitely going to avoid viewing them closely.
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Based on the tiny arms and clipping fig leafs from Northern Lords, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Paradox's standards are obviously not very high.

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The concepts are great but still not digging the graphics. Worryingly the 3d court appears to be hard baked into the DLC. If it remains so I hope there are game rules to disable unless the visuals drastically change for the better.

Also the poet petition event is completely farcical and unrealistic. Hopefully more realistic and politically motivated events are included.
 
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Tiax said:
If it's just a random crazy person, why is she being allowed to directly petition the king? It'd be one thing if she were actually a great and eloquent poet, and we had to put up with her eccentricity. But if court events are just insane people wandering in off the street, what's the point? Besides, the "I met a crazy person" event might be novel the first time you see it, but once you've seen your 50th insane woman, it'll get real grating.
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Funny thing about crazy people: you usually can't tell they're crazy just by looking at them. She was probably at least moderately well-known as a poet before, and only then made her bizarre thought process known. As for seeing it multiple times, I doubt it will occur that often over the course of a single game. After all, I've only encountered Shrek while hunting in one of around a dozen games so far.
 
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Serenity84 said:
This game isn't designed to be realistic or historical. Unfortunately it's very much intended to be a full on parody
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I'm sure the premise of CK3 was to move away from this and be more realistic. Hence why supernatural events etc were not included.

I dont mind some comedy as long as its witty and funny, which this example wasnt
 
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sk065 said:
I'm sure the premise of CK3 was to move away from this and be more realistic. Hence why supernatural events etc were not included.
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Unfortunately they didn't extend this further. Most of the events are written in this weird, light-hearted tone and the circumstances they depict often aren't believable even without that.

If it were meant to be a historical game we also wouldn't have things like witch covens, which are silly even without an obvious supernatural aspect.
 
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One issue I think is that the visual difference is not noticeable enough between the grandeaur levels. The pictures with 0 and 10, i did not see any difference at first. Then when cycling the pics back and forth, I noticed the 10 had a carpet and some minor changes
 
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Idle America said:
Funny thing about crazy people: you usually can't tell they're crazy just by looking at them. She was probably at least moderately well-known as a poet before, and only then made her bizarre thought process known. As for seeing it multiple times, I doubt it will occur that often over the course of a single game. After all, I've only encountered Shrek while hunting in one of around a dozen games so far.
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You'd think a well-known poet could come up with better prose than "I am a poet. I must become your lover straight away!"
 
Previously, I thought that I dislike the overall concept of the 3D throne room and the related aesthetics. But, similarly to the 3D character portraits, they seem to slowly get better with each subsequent dev diary. This time the overall lighting was enhanced and there are finally some shadows showing here and there - so, at least the light from the windows are nicely implemented. I would love to have the whole scene rendered with good ambient occlusion and ray-traced lights, but it will probably kill the engine (and most of the player PCs). So, I am happy with what it is (even if I would probably prefer a 2D-3D mix for the throne room - something that looks like an enlarged event background).

BUT! Because the basic visuals improved I was able to determine what causes that "hey, it is not pleasant to look at it' feeling. It was not caused by the low visual quality. There are two other reasons for it, one minor and one major.
  • The minor one: the camera is too zoomed out and uses a strange perspective. A large part of the royal court image portrays...the floor. Yeah, the empty floor. Not guests, not artefacts, but the floor. Fortunately, it is something that could be easily fixed even at late development stages.
  • The major one: the buttons! Oh, Almighty, the floating buttons! The whole CK3 UI is really nicely ordered and the layouts are very well done (they improved in that area when compared with previous Paradox games - even if the UX is not perfect, the visual style of the UI is superb - there is just so much of harmony and pleasing arrangements). Here comes the RC DLC...and the buttons are suddenly floating in various places! They are not in line. They are not symmetrically scattered. They look like a mess and give me a strong "this is the debug mode" feeling. I know, that they were meant to follow the 3D models, but for me, it does not work. They are 2D elements that belong to an entirely different layer and feel completely AWKWARD floating like that. It is probably a common problem in 3D game art - as most of the other games tend to embed the model-related UI elements in the scene itself (The Sims have the iconic 3D floating crystal instead of an icon above the head; World of Warcraft have the NPC names, health bars and other stuff rendered in 3D, so they feel like parts of the scene). Hell, even the CK3 utilises 3D rendered arrows for map movements. Because they would look awful if they were a 2D overlay!
TL;DR - everything looks awesome and exciting...but please, please, please - no floating 2D UI elements. Embed them properly in the 3D scene - just like you embed the army movement arrows, the castle selection circle and the vassal relationship lines. Please! ;<
 
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Mrop said:
When you reach the rank of King or Emperor as a Feudal or Clan Ruler, you have laid the foundation for your Royal Court. You can now go to it via a button in the main interface.

This button highlights if there is something interesting to do in your Royal Court at this moment, such as if you have new Court Artifacts.
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Just curious as to what the logic is behind putting the notification for 'court events being available' on an area that is a dedicated toolbar for controls when there is already a notification area where alerts and pending events are shown.
 
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x4077 said:
Just curious as to what the logic is behind putting a notification for 'court events being available' on an area that is a dedicated toolbar for controls when there is already a notification area where alerts and pending events are shown.
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At least for me, I never look at the existing alerts box, because it's constantly polluted with "did you know you could be fabricating a claim" and "your heir is 4th in line for a title!" and other useless information. So I'm happy they've put this notification in its own place.
 
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