Crusader Kings 3 Dev Diary #72 - Holding Court at Court in The Royal Court (in a courtly fashion)

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Wokeg

CK3 Experienced Game Designer
Paradox Staff
May 14, 2018
493
13.576
Welcome comrades! In today’s dev diary, we’ll be taking a gander at a neat part of the upcoming expansion: Holding Court. Per the usual, I’ll preface this by saying that the court scene is a work in progress, the UI of the court scene is a work in progress, and the art generally is work in progress; we also have some missing animations and camera perspectives, so take all the images here with a grain of salt.

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As with any medieval ruler, monarchs in The Royal Court are vain creatures. It’s not enough to control the largest or best-developed realm, you have to have the largest palace, the fanciest food, the most renowned courtiers, and so on: after all, what’s the point of taxing the masses if you have to live like a peasant anyway?

Sometimes, though, you can’t quite afford the fanciest feast, the latest fashion, or even just the shiniest artefact to spruce up your court.

When times are that hard, and you really need just _immediate_ distraction from the flaws in your life, it’s important to spend some time indulging those with lives even harder than yours. Like nearly everyone else. For times when you feel like slumming it amongst the weird and wonderful characters of your realm, you can Hold Court.

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This repeatable decision lets you hear a number of requests from various characters, listening to petitioners seeking your aid and legal ruling on many subjects. They might be guests, courtiers, neighbouring rulers, vassals, spies, the odd bumbling peasant…

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At present, you’ll receive three such petitioners each time, with all events delivered in the new courtly event style (though follow-up may be character events or similar).

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Some choices are easy…

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… some choices are hard…

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… and some are just weird.

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After you’ve made your ruling in each case, in addition to the effects of each turn, you’ll gain some court grandeur to bolster your overall supply. We’ve got just shy of a hundred or so of these events alone, so there should be a goodly amount of variety for most playstyles.

This system is something pretty dear to our hearts, as it models a task that would’ve been a pretty big part of the day-to-day for many rulers, and we’ve put a lot of effort into getting plenty of alternate events to keep it as varied as possible for as long as possible. We hope you find it a fun & proactive way to explore some of the smaller (and uhh, not so small) issues developing in your realm.

Small dev diary, but that’s all from me for the mo. As ever, I’ll be around in the comments for an hour or so to answer questions, but otherwise, see y’all next diary!

… Y’know what, let’s have a few more events to show off before we finish for the day.

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[sweats furiously in potato-machine]
Seems great! But only 3 petitioners every time? Isn't a bit too low?
Seems like the perfect amount- anymore than 3 and eventually players will not use the function because it’s too tedious with too much clicking and reading to be enjoyable.

If there’s 100 events, it also means players would burn through the current pool very quickly and start to see repeated events.
Vanticus pretty much hit the nail on the head here: that said, it's an adjustable tally, so if we wanted to increase the number, it's just a case of incrementing one value and the system should be fine.
Hey Ewan!
Thank you for your work! I'm a big fan of the highly character-driven gameplay that is the focus of this system.

Have you and the team considered enabling this system from the other direction as well? I am mostly thinking of, for example, a player having something that resembles the events above and choosing to bring it to their liege? I may have a claim that, instead of pushing in a bloody war, I want acknowledged and pushed through by the king.

Cheers!
3.) Can I be a petitioner as a vassal? Say for example I am playing as Duke Ramnulf and I want the County of Limousin but I want to try a peaceful solution first.
I realise that there's enough to polish and get done as it is, but I echo what some others have said, that I would love to be able to interact with this system from the other side too. I feel like often there's an assumption that players always want to play the King role, or the Emperor role. You can't fight as a Knight for your liege, as a member of the Council you aren't really expected to do anything for your liege and you get nothing but benefits. Again, with this system, it feels a little like there's no content for the Vassal side of the Vassal / Liege relationship.
I would like to join the people asking if I can be a petitioner for me liege's court as well. Or maybe for the court of a neighboring ruler, if the event allows for that.
:cool: Watch this space.
Looks excellent!

Two questions:

1. Can a king view other kings' courts? Your Abbasid screenshot is being viewed by a Christian character according to the piety icon in the upper right.

2. Can we please have customizable Forms of Address please? (king, queen, prince, duke, etc) Please?
1) :) You can indeed! That's exactly what I'm doing here.
2) Not for this DLC, I'm afraid. Maybe in future!
Are some of these events regional or cultural?
^^ Indeed! A few are tied to culture (generally via traditions) or else to specific regions of the map (elephants).
Nice dev diary! The events will be interlinked with the Lifestyle mechanics? Or they are mostly independent?
Independent from lifestyles for the moment, I'm afraid.
A few of these seem to be reactions to things you can do as a player like swear fealty. Will things like swearing fealty work normally on the player end or will the player somehow have to interract with the AI's court?
The Swear Fealty/Offer Vassalage interactions work normally, this is just a specific event that might fire when holding court if there's someone valid for the event.
This is cool. Some questions

1.) what do the three icons at the bottom mean? the Brackets, papers, checkmark and question mark.
2.) One of the events mentions a saint. Are these just randomly generated or do they use some historical saints?
1) Debug tools! Pay them no mind; they're only relevant if you're messing around in debug mode, which I was when I took these screenshots.
2) Randomly generated, for the moment. It's a local saint, rather than a part of a wider religious saints rework.
I'd love to see my character depicted in a Court scene where I'm the Steward, and I'm NOT sat on the throne.
I believe you may notice yourself stood around your liege's court, on occasion; it depends on your character and their circumstance generally.
View attachment 754115

Any idea what are these three buttons?
:D Oh absolutely, yes! Not mine to tell, though, unfortunately.
"Oath of Fealty" makes me afraid that dynamics of large countries' covering the map will change too drastically between buyers and non-buyers of DLC. Free patch needs a corresponding (simpler) mechanics of vassalization.
;) Wouldn't worry too much: it's just one event that I thought was quite cool, amidst a swarm of others and available only to kings holding court. It shouldn't affect game balance much at all.
 
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2. additionally what will happen with the current events pre 1.5 that might be more suitable for this hold court mechanic (wanderers looking for a home, peasants demanding to burn a witch, vassal requesting recognition for claims, someone claiming one of my courtiers slept with his daughter etc.)
At present, I don't think we've converted these into court events. There may be courtly versions added in the future (I'd certainly like to see such, though naturally they'd have to be alternate versions so that we don't remove content from the base title), but we wanted to focus on getting as many new events made as possible.
Will there be a "hide controls" button like in the barbershop that way we can get pretty pictures?
I believe we have something in the works for this, though I can't give details/promises atm.
 
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Will it be possible to simulate the gender-segregated lives of, say, some parts of the Muslim world where women rarely left the harem and would not meet the vassals of the realm?

What about harems in general? The Fatimids did not allow their dynastic women to marry nor be seen or mentioned by other than honorific titles.
This is not supported in the base title.
Are those events moddable, can you create own events?
^^ You can indeed!
 
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Thank you so much for your reply.

The lack of Customizable Forms of Address is really unfortunate and should be reconsidered. After all, this is a DLC about customizable cultures in a game about hereditary titles. Royal Court will allow us to change the COLOR of our realm on the map, but it won't let us decide how our courtiers are addressed?

This is a very big oversight and missed opportunity.
Changing the color of the realm is much easier than custom forms of address. And it is not something that can be scoped in at this point in development given that our time is already full until release.
 
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