CK3 Winter Teaser #2 - Dynasty Legacy

[Tiax]

The point is that cultural acceptance would tank before you're able to make all of your vassals your own culture. Unless you take every county one at a time, but that's its own punishment.

I don't follow. Culture conversion is about the culture of the counties, not the culture of your vassals. Wouldn't you just appoint vassals of your own culture in the first place? I guess sometimes you acquire land with pre-installed vassals, but there are plenty of ways to revoke their titles and install your own. It still seems like you should just get vassals of your own culture installed and then (or concurrently) set to work converting counties.

I think the core issue is that there are not really any concessions you can make to wrong-culture provinces, like levels of autonomy or whatever. The result is that the system is all-or-nothing. Wrong culture territory and wrong culture vassals push for total independence, because that's their only option, and will continue to do so until they're converted. The game can't be about a balancing act of autonomy and control, because there is no middle ground, only the two extremes.

Cultural acceptance is certainly a step towards fixing that, but is not enough on its own. It lets you soften the opinion penalty from wrong-culture vassals, but that just buys you more time to convert/replace them. If converting/replacing were sometimes (but not always) more trouble than it's worth, then the player would be presented with some interesting strategic decisions.

 

[Testeria]

I don't follow. Culture conversion is about the culture of the counties, not the culture of your vassals. Wouldn't you just appoint vassals of your own culture in the first place? I guess sometimes you acquire land with pre-installed vassals, but there are plenty of ways to revoke their titles and install your own. It still seems like you should just get vassals of your own culture installed and then (or concurrently) set to work converting counties.

Not if they change how AI vassals play.

 

[Tiax]

Not if they change how AI vassals play.

In other words, make AI vassals not bother converting their land even if it's the right thing to do? I mean I guess that's an option, but it feels like a poor bandaid. Shouldn't the AI make use of the tools available?

 

[MatthewP]

In other words, make AI vassals not bother converting their land even if it's the right thing to do? I mean I guess that's an option, but it feels like a poor bandaid. Shouldn't the AI make use of the tools available?

It’s not a bandaid but a design philosophy. The ship of “AIs should try to play as optimally as possible” sailed long, long ago. In the game as designed, it is completely intuitive and reasonable that AIs would decide how to handle culture based on character personalities. Which means no, they shouldn’t consistently convert culture even if it is optimal.

Edit: removed accidental post.

 

[Testeria]

In other words, make AI vassals not bother converting their land even if it's the right thing to do? I mean I guess that's an option, but it feels like a poor bandaid. Shouldn't the AI make use of the tools available?

I suspect vassals would change to the culture of their land more often.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

In other words, make AI vassals not bother converting their land even if it's the right thing to do? I mean I guess that's an option, but it feels like a poor bandaid. Shouldn't the AI make use of the tools available?

Perhaps "greedy" vassals become more likely to use the tax boosting steward job.
Since culture conversion takes longer, perhaps the AI is coded to be less likely to do that rather than something they get "instant" effects from, which the non-culture conversion Steward jobs have?

And perhaps "cowardly" AI types don't want to risk the revolt from the drop in popular opinion if culture conversion fails?

 

[Tiax]

It’s not a bandaid but a design philosophy. The ship of “AIs should try to play as optimally as possible” sailed long, long ago. In the game as designed, it is completely intuitive and reasonable that AIs would decide how to handle culture based on character personalities. Which means no, they shouldn’t consistently convert culture even if it is optimal.

Edit: removed accidental post.

I don't mind the general idea that the AI should play as a personality, rather than an optimizer, but that has limits. The AI already struggles to handle different cultures, and further gimping it simply to plaster over poor game balance is a bad idea. If the AI's personality is going to cause it to take certain actions, those actions should be among the viable choices, not just clearly wrong. Just having the AI not convert even though it's clearly the right choice is putting the cart before the horse.

The AI's personality should lead it to make reasonable choices, not incompetent ones. And in order to do that, you have to make multiple reasonable options.

I don't disagree with the overall point that having the AI convert your provinces for you is too strong and subverts the difficulty of converting a lot of territory. It does need to be rebalanced. But just having the AI start making bad choices is not the way to do it.

I suspect vassals would change to the culture of their land more often.

Vassals already do that (only depending on their capital culture), but it raises its own problems. If vassals just arbitrarily convert, then there is no decision to be made - it doesn't matter whether you appoint someone of your own culture or of the local culture or of a random third culture, they'll just convert to the local culture anyway. And if their behavior depends on their personality, you'll just pick a random courtier who has the relevant personality to make them stick with your cutlure.

 

[MatthewP]

I don't mind the general idea that the AI should play as a personality, rather than an optimizer, but that has limits. The AI already struggles to handle different cultures, and further gimping it simply to plaster over poor game balance is a bad idea. If the AI's personality is going to cause it to take certain actions, those actions should be among the viable choices, not just clearly wrong. Just having the AI not convert even though it's clearly the right choice is putting the cart before the horse.

The AI's personality should lead it to make reasonable choices, not incompetent ones. And in order to do that, you have to make multiple reasonable options.

I don’t think the ai always needs to be reasonable. That would make the game a pretty poor simulator of human history (or human relationships, which is probably closer to the goal). But I agree with your broader point that the AI shouldn’t be making frequent, obviously bad choices.

Vassals already do that (only depending on their capital culture), but it raises its own problems. If vassals just arbitrarily convert, then there is no decision to be made - it doesn't matter whether you appoint someone of your own culture or of the local culture or of a random third culture, they'll just convert to the local culture anyway. And if their behavior depends on their personality, you'll just pick a random courtier who has the relevant personality to make them stick with your cutlure.

And here we have a reasonable alternative: converting to local culture. This expansion is trying to add another: making friends with the local culture, potentially with the right setup (by the player) being no worse than conversion (for the vassal ai) without the work. Or maybe better if certain perks or dynasty trees give bonuses to it.

Btw, there is a cost to appointing a same-culture vassal with the idea that sure, they might convert. The devs have added a bonus to acceptance for appointing a local culture vassal instead.

It really seems like they are thinking along the same lines as what you’re saying. Maybe (probably) some balancing will be needed, but the broader idea of multiple reasonable choices for culture management seems to be the goal, and it looks like they’ve taken reasonable steps to achieve it.

 

[Tiax]

I don’t think the ai always needs to be reasonable. That would make the game a pretty poor simulator of human history (or human relationships, which is probably closer to the goal). But I agree with your broader point that the AI shouldn’t be making frequent, obviously bad choices.

When I say reasonable, I mean that the AI should make choices that help them pursue the goals defined by their personality. As an extreme example, imagine if the Wrathful trait caused single-province counts to declare war against a neighboring kingdom whose king offended them. Sure, the wrathfulness might be irrational, but that's fine. The problem is that, in pursuit of that wrathfulness, the character is taking an absurd and unreasonable action.

And here we have a reasonable alternative: converting to local culture. This expansion is trying to add another: making friends with the local culture, potentially with the right setup (by the player) being no worse than conversion (for the vassal ai) without the work. Or maybe better if certain perks or dynasty trees give bonuses to it.

Btw, there is a cost to appointing a same-culture vassal with the idea that sure, they might convert. The devs have added a bonus to acceptance for appointing a local culture vassal instead.

It really seems like they are thinking along the same lines as what you’re saying. Maybe (probably) some balancing will be needed, but the broader idea of multiple reasonable choices for culture management seems to be the goal, and it looks like they’ve taken reasonable steps to achieve it.

I'm not seeing it. The costs and risks of wrong-culture vassals and territory are numerous, and the benefits of maintaining heterogeneity are virtually non-existent. Gaining cultural acceptance for appointing a local culture vassal is only valuable if there's actually some significant benefit to that path which can potentially balance the risks.

If the issue were that building a culturally diverse empire was a valuable goal but was just too difficult to achieve, these bonuses would make sense. Instead we have a situation where building a culturally diverse empire is a foolish goal which brings no benefit, and so giving the player more tools to achieve it is a waste.

That's the core of my objection to what's in the preview - there are all of these perks for helping you get cultural acceptance, but for no payoff. You're always just worse than if you homogenized, and the cost of homogenization is minimal. If trying to convert your territory were a truly risky endeavor, or if keeping different cultures around had some significant benefits, I'd feel differently. In that world, these would be cool, useful perks. But that's not what we seem to be getting.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

When I say reasonable, I mean that the AI should make choices that help them pursue the goals defined by their personality. As an extreme example, imagine if the Wrathful trait caused single-province counts to declare war against a neighboring kingdom whose king offended them. Sure, the wrathfulness might be irrational, but that's fine. The problem is that, in pursuit of that wrathfulness, the character is taking an absurd and unreasonable action.

But people *do* take "absurd and unreasonable" action when inflamed by a passion. People have been driven to ruin themselves and their land in pursuit of private revenge.
It's a thing that happens, and *should* happen sometimes. The AI doesn't need to be unnecessarily rational about its behaviour.

Should it happen all the time? No. But should it be able to happen? Certainly.

 

[InsidiousMage]

I'm not seeing it. The costs and risks of wrong-culture vassals and territory are numerous, and the benefits of maintaining heterogeneity are virtually non-existent. Gaining cultural acceptance for appointing a local culture vassal is only valuable if there's actually some significant benefit to that path which can potentially balance the risks.

If the issue were that building a culturally diverse empire was a valuable goal but was just too difficult to achieve, these bonuses would make sense. Instead we have a situation where building a culturally diverse empire is a foolish goal which brings no benefit, and so giving the player more tools to achieve it is a waste.

That's the core of my objection to what's in the preview - there are all of these perks for helping you get cultural acceptance, but for no payoff. You're always just worse than if you homogenized, and the cost of homogenization is minimal. If trying to convert your territory were a truly risky endeavor, or if keeping different cultures around had some significant benefits, I'd feel differently. In that world, these would be cool, useful perks. But that's not what we seem to be getting.

You are making a assumption that culture acceptance doesn't translate into tangible benefits though. As far as I know, the devs haven't said either way what the pros and cons of cultural acceptance are. Maybe culture acceptance does translate into vassals of another culture joining few factions. As is, yeah, monocultured realms are better but it would be weird to put in a bunch of mechanics to increase cultural acceptance with the only benefit being the ability to hybridize cultures. Even then, given the changes to the county conversions, it might actually just be better to create a massive hybridized culture of every single culture group in your realm, so cultural acceptance still has tangible benefits in that regard. There is still kind of a lot of unknowns about how these mechanics are going to play out in game.

 

[Tiax]

But people *do* take "absurd and unreasonable" action when inflamed by a passion. People have been driven to ruin themselves and their land in pursuit of private revenge.
It's a thing that happens, and *should* happen sometimes. The AI doesn't need to be unnecessarily rational about its behaviour.

Should it happen all the time? No. But should it be able to happen? Certainly.

I agree that it's a thing that happens in real life, but I don't think it makes for good gameplay. The AI is already very irrational just by virtue of the fact that it's intractable to play the game optimally. The weird behavior of the imperfect AI often makes it difficult to interpret its motivations and personality, and makes characters feel chaotic and arbitrary, even ones whose personality is supposedly rational. Intentionally making the AI take even more irrational actions is just pouring fuel on a fire.

There's certainly a line where the AI would be too rational, but we're so far removed from that line that I don't think it's worth considering.

 

[Tiax]

You are making a assumption that culture acceptance doesn't translate into tangible benefits though. As far as I know, the devs haven't said either way what the pros and cons of cultural acceptance are. Maybe culture acceptance does translate into vassals of another culture joining few factions. As is, yeah, monocultured realms are better but it would be weird to put in a bunch of mechanics to increase cultural acceptance with the only benefit being the ability to hybridize cultures. Even then, given the changes to the county conversions, it might actually just be better to create a massive hybridized culture of every single culture group in your realm, so cultural acceptance still has tangible benefits in that regard. There is still kind of a lot of unknowns about how these mechanics are going to play out in game.

That is true, I am assuming that the effects that were explained in the cultural acceptance dev diary are the bulk of the effects. If there is a large amount of unannounced mechanics for cultural acceptance, then my assessment may be completely moot. It feels like it would be weird to keep that stuff secret, but I guess we can never be sure.

 

[InsidiousMage]

That is true, I am assuming that the effects that were explained in the cultural acceptance dev diary are the bulk of the effects. If there is a large amount of unannounced mechanics for cultural acceptance, then my assessment may be completely moot. It feels like it would be weird to keep that stuff secret, but I guess we can never be sure.

I could be reading too much into it but cultural acceptance does seem to work really well with the faction changes in the 1.4 patch. I could be wrong though but I feel there is probably another small change to factions with the DLC patch. Even then, I still think forming a mega hybrid culture is probably better than simply trying to convert everything to your specific culture, which would mean that cultural acceptance is still important.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Not Czechs, but you could created a hybrid with a German culture and switch your heritage to German

It's probably possible to make a mod for that decision, but why would it be initially? If you want to stop getting penalties with Czchs you could improve your cultural acceptance instead, and that's the whole point of this system

Good point. I guess that's one of the advantages of trying to make things more dynamic; now players can resolve problems like this using the tools the game gives you, rather than the devs having to constantly add-in specific work-arounds for edge cases.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Maybe add in new traits to better reflect this particular situation?

• "Bigot"-More likely to attempt to convert wrong-culture holdings and to harass wrong-culture Vassals and Lieges.
• "Tolerant"-Opposite of the "Bigot" trait.

 

[JadenStar10]

cool, cant wait to play it!

 

[Bobwoodword]

This makes me unbelievably happy. I have desperately wanted to real a multicultural empire for YEARS! and this dynasty line is perfect opportunity for such a run. This is awesome Paradox, thank you!

 

[Angrum877]

One question, would it be possible for a tyrannical ruler to take the skulls of his/her enemies and present them at his/her court? I could imagine people doing that if they're sufficiently sadistic

 

[Jayvee94]

Just to clarify, the "grant to local noble" button is only available for barons and counts. Does that mean, I couldn't grant duchies and kingdoms to a local noble?