• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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

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.

001.png


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.

002.png


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…

003.png


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).

004.png


Some choices are easy…

005.png


… some choices are hard…

006.png


… and some are just weird.

007.png


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.

008.png


009.png


010.png


011.png
 
  • 138Like
  • 89Love
  • 13
  • 4Haha
  • 4
Reactions:
I'm concerned that the mechanic of randomly selecting events from a pool will exacerbate an existing issue with the game. It already feels like a large majority of interactions I have are with characters who I have little reason to care about. An event will pop up at a feast involving the wife of one of my vassals who I've never interacted with before and will likely never interact with again. The result is that the interaction feels hollow - I don't really care about this person or the event. The game already has a lot of that, and I don't really feel like I need a new button to generate three more hollow events for me.

I was hoping that holding court would be less of a barrage of more randomly-generated events, and instead offer some opportunities to interact with the subset of characters that I actually do care about. At least from the example events in this preview, I'd say my excitement for holding court is pretty low.
 
  • 20Like
  • 10
  • 3
Reactions:
I love that the quirkyness of even weird events is added and that they will be connected also to ongoing conflicts in your realm, like the land claim conflicts. I hope we'll get additional mechanics that might maybe emphasize our main courtiers like chancellor etc for some kind of court council :)
 
If I organize my feast as a suzerain, will I be able to gather all the guests in my throne room and choose who I want to interact with myself? And will it be possible in the future to choose who I want to see at my feast?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Is there a chance we might get counsel from the council with regard to these events? Maybe the members of the council could have their own agenda with regard to some of the petitions. By making a certain choice on the petition, not only the petitioner(s) but also the council member(s) would react in certain ways (at least a change in opinion).
 
  • 10Like
Reactions:
;) 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.
Just like how that one, rare event that lets pilgrims convert to Adamitism "doesn't affect game balance much at all"?

A rare event becomes a serious problem when multiplied by every AI ruler over hundreds of years.
 
  • 7
  • 2Like
Reactions:
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.
You say that like a full release date is already set. I don't suppose you're planning to announce that any time soon?
 
  • 4
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Can lower ranks players take place in court activities? For example if we are a vassal and our liege have a court, will we get a prompt that court is being held and we can attend it?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Looks like a nice interesting mix of events.

But I do hope these courtly events are accompanied by relavant visuals, either in the court itself or the large empty space at the bottom of the event.

I especially hope the feature from regular events where the relevant characters are highlighted when mousing over the options is included in these courtly events.
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
^^ Indeed! A few are tied to culture (generally via traditions) or else to specific regions of the map (elephants).
Please tell me there will be an event in said parts of the world where you can gift a petitioner who annoys you a White Elephant giving them a modifier forcing them to spend money to upkeep it.
 
  • 8Haha
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Will there be a "hide controls" button like in the barbershop that way we can get pretty pictures?
Lol that barbershop is a mod.

But yes, would love this either way! And in fact, with a 3D court, it'd be pretty awesome if the game could implement a native 3D barbershop as well, akin to the mod.
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
This looks great, thank you so much. However, courtiers (not to mention peasants) addressing the ruler as “King” (as opposed to, say, “Your Majesty” or suchlike) looks weird.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
You say that like a full release date is already set. I don't suppose you're planning to announce that any time soon?
more like "the current teams all have projects to finish before the expansion can release, with none projected to have 'free time' or finish with any significant time to spare"

project management is controlled chaos, even if they dont have a date, the dependencies of teams on eachother, design, art, programming, UI, etc, means that even if they dont have time, the projects they have left dont allow for more content to be added without significant delays.

something like a "custom forms of address" field seems like a task more fitting for a dev whose interested to work on in their own time while waiting on other teams to hand them off a project, not as something that needs space made for during crunch time
 
  • 7
Reactions:
Looks like an interesting concept. The tricky bit I think will be making it so that what the player does when they hold court actually matters within the wider context of the game. Otherwise it would basically just become a pretty looking overlay for a barrage of inconsequential random events, and would become annoying instead of fun.
 
  • 11Like
  • 3
Reactions:
I think Paradox should have their own mailbox in which fans can send in events they write and code themselves, and let the game designers choose (probably a small minority) the ones that are most original and good, and fit thematically with the game. Perhaps PDX could pay people, like say, 1 or 2 euros per event approved? Or something.

With this in place, CK3 players would potentially be able to never see an event repeated in their playtime.
 
  • 17Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions: