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CK2 - Dev Diary #121 - Court Improvements

Hello! In this dev diary we will present some changes we have made to the court system. Court Management is an important part of the CK2 experience, and currently there are several code pruning mechanisms that curtail court size, making characters die more frequently when the court grows too big. Now court management has been made more interesting by, for example, lowering the aggressive pruning for player courts, creating expenses/benefits associated with a Large Court, court flavored events using the characters of the court, etc. The intention of these changes is to make the system more interactive and interesting.


ck2_15.png

The court limit as shown in the interface.


Your court will now have a size limit depending on your tier, presented in the interface (see picture above). It’s possible to influence this limit by, for example, investing in majesty tech. We have also removed prisoners from the court-tab to make the shown courtiers more relevant.


ck2_18.png

Example of expenses for a big court (can be turned off through a game rule).


To bring life to the courts, we have added some maintenance events that will give your courtiers more of a life behind the scenes, making them more interesting and fun characters by giving them nicknames, modifiers, and skills.

ck2_16.png

Give a courtier a nickname.


We’ve also made sure that any courtier “randomly” picked for generic content is more likely to be someone with good (or at least interesting) skills, a cool minor title, an interesting relationship, etc. This is done by using a scripted score value that takes into account traits, opinions, and modifiers.


We hope that you’ll have fun with this small new feature, and thank you for reading!
 
Be cool also to make use of minor title people in the court... have the jester perform to cheer people up to his own expense. Have the High Almoner to convert someone zealous. All this with random events.

And have the cupbearer actually be able to poison a hated lord. And the "master hunter" should actually get duties to maintain hunts and participate alongside their lord.

Making minor titles actually function would be a great thing. :)
 
Oh, something that struck me today. @IsakMiller Will you still be able to take prisoners as concubines, since they won't be part of your court any longer?
I asked and got the answer that yes, it will still be possible as prisoners are still technically a part of your court.
They are just no counted towards the court limit.
 
I asked and got the answer that yes, it will still be possible as prisoners are still technically a part of your court.
They are just no counted towards the court limit.
Will we/our court tutor always teach prisoner kids? Did it change, since they kinda aren't in court?

Or perhaps unassigned prisoner kids could be taught in a separate way? For example, by other prisoners (if we allow) or by rats, crows, etc... or even certain voices.
For absurd events you could have kids claim to be taught by fairies/demons/spirits/etc, even if you can't interact with such a character.

I am aware that some of these exist, but it always bugged me how we still educate prisoners. What if we don't want to do it at all, not even appointing a guardian and leave them to be educated by other things or by themselves?
Please consider this in future and thank you for the court improvements.
 
If we're adding game rules in the upcoming patch, please give one that turns the African rain events off; I know some people like them but I find it really puts me off playing in what used to be one of my favourite regions.
 
So, playable landless characters DLC upcoming? ;)

The only reason why I would love is because I like to start as weak as possible and build my way up. Right now the weakest position is count owning single castle (excluding merchant republics). I always wanted to play something below that, in feudal setup.
 
Are you also making it so that prisoners don't count against the court limits?

page 2, post #24

Alternatively simply click "Show only Dev responses" top right and you should have no trouble finding it.
 
Any word from the team?
Right! Sorry for not getting back to you, it's been a busy week!
If I remember correctly, the health malus should have been removed for the players court but we are keeping the fertility one since it was a bit trickier to handle.
 
Right! Sorry for not getting back to you, it's been a busy week!
If I remember correctly, the health malus should have been removed for the players court but we are keeping the fertility one since it was a bit trickier to handle.

So this will be its own game rule, separate from the other court size game rule?