CK2’s Life cycle is nearing its end, and I had a list of suggestions that I wanted to at least put out here before that time. This list is batched together form a lot of notes, so there might be a few overlapping or contradictory points. I guess I should have created separate posts, but I didn’t want to create about 50 posts (and a lot of them would probably be duplicates).
- EU4 like peace treaties - Limiting the player to only fight for one claim at the time seems too slow. Even in a war between two empires, you might only be eligible to claim one province. An alternative would be peace treaties where you could spend war score, prisoners, etc. to receive provinces, titles and vassals (for yourself, your vassals and allies), gold, release prisoners, demand artifact from treasury. This would be a large change in how wars work in CK2, but with the new mechanics for threat, it might not be too OP. Alternatively there could be done a series of smaller changes.
- Press multiple CBs - Sometimes you need more than just one of the valid CBs, and “press all claims” helped, but it still would be nice to press all de jure claims, press claims for more than one vassal, or take some titles yourself and some for a vassal. It could be as easy as to check off multiple claims before you declare the war.
- Turn war - If you are winning a defensive war and have claims on your enemy, you should be able to use it as an opportunity to declare a war goal against the aggressor. Currently (after a potentially long and costly war) you might choose between white peace and enforce demands, neither of which feel any rewarding. Turning the war aggressive would give a more satisfying schadenfreude.
- Continue inconclusive wars - One of the more annoying aspects of the game is the abrupt end of an inconclusive war. If the a character dies, gets dethroned or some other thing happens that would end the war, the war should be inherited, and the attacker gets an event and must either relinquish their occupied territory, or continue the war against the new target.
- War against revolts - No one should not be able to declare a war against a revolting vassal without declaring on his liege as well (or at least let the liege get the choice to defend).
- Get 3rd party occupied territory - It’s annoying when you win a war and some revolt or 3rd party occupies territory (IE. revolt walks over some nomadic land) while you wait for them to accept the peace. They should not be able to say “It’s occupied, we can’t give you that”, just to get it back a short while later.
- Unit supplies (bar) - One tick in bad terrain, or when an AI marches through your terrain can kill thousands of your units. If the armies had supplies, they would be able to outlive one or two ticks without too large of an effect, also the attrition could get worse for each tick of lacking supplies. Maybe ships also could store supplies giving units a bigger buffer while being supported by them, or pillaging the land could replenish some as well. Having supplies and loot taking from the same capacity could also be an option.
- Unit loot (bar) - It would be nice if you could raid inland provinces or pillage holdings in a war, and the units would be carry some loot (like ships do).
- Invasion attrition - 200k Chinese assaulting castles in the middle of a Siberian winter without attrition is no fun. No army (AI or player, event spawned or not) should be immune to attrition. Reduced effect is fine, but it should not be near to or fully immune is just breaking.
- Hostile actions - If you are in neutral land and the supply limit isn’t high enough, you should be able to pillage/raid targets that would otherwise be unavailable. Like when some of the crusader armies pillaged other christian nations on their way to “The Holy Land”.
- Mark as hostile - If a foren army is marching through your land, you should be able to mark them as hostile and hunt them down (especially if they are causing you to take attrition).
- Allow sites with fewer attackers - Sieges were often just a blockade of resources, causing the defenders to sally out, starve or surrender.
- Sally - If you are being besieged by a lesser force, or fighting by one of your holdings, you should be able to sally with your garrison, giving you a small edge.
- Assault opportunity - A small chance of finding opportunity of assault during a siege (e.g. bribe guards, cause rebellion, find unprotected sally gate), giving an advantage if you were to assault.
- Marshal stat in combat - A commander's combat ability seems to be too.. something by their marshal score. A commander with 30 marshal with no leadership traits can be outmaneuvered by an imbecile with a trait, and then suddenly become the incarnation of a god once he learns a trait. There are also some of the same issues when their ideal conditions aren't met (i.e. when a flat terrain leader moves into hills). Marshal should be applied to their combat ability, and then the traits should be added. Scaling the effect of the traits makes the commanders’ abilities very volatile.
- Character goals - I do miss some more “active” character options / progression. We do have ambitions and focus and some random events (plus some plot and faction opportunities), which seems like a decent amount, but they all come down to random events, and restructuring it into some kind of “mission tree” could make it more interesting. With missions like “become a king” and “get an heir” it would be overlapping with the current ambitions system, but it could also have “martial education” (improve your own marshal skill), “study technology” (improve the technology of your realm) and “develop capital” (increase the development in the capital) that had more reliable progression and outcome. You might still be able to “focus” on the progression of one mission, but the others would still be available at any time.
- Character achievements - If a character fulfills a major event (create an empire, win a great war, etc.) they could be awarded an achievement that also gives the character status effects. There could also be similar mechanic for dynasties (ie one in your dynasty unified or reformed the religion gives opinion bonus from other characters of that religion).
- More open focus - The focus options are great for letting the player “nudge” his character in a direction, giving variation to the gameplay, but after a while, the variation gets repetitive. You often end up choosing the same focus for one specific reason (event or trait), and are therefore locking away content that would give some nice flavoring throughout the game.
- Save opportunities for extortion - During the game you might get some events where other characters traits or actions (like homosexuality and affairs) are discovered, and you might choose to act upon it right then, or let it go. Would it not be better to “keep it in store” for later use. Maybe they could be used for granting or countering favours, revoking titles or pure blackmail. Imagine knowing your brothers wife was having an affair while giving birth to a boy who now is king. Giving you a reason to “Delegitimize” him and claiming the throne for yourself.
- More open intrigue - There are some interesting options for spying and slandering, but a lot of it is locked behind the intrigue focus and other is lacking. Intrigue should be available to all characters. There could be actions like bribing other characters vassals and courtiers to become spies or share information, or slandering / divulging information reducing their legitimacy or causing a revolt.
- More reliable claim fabrication - The randomness behind fabricate claim is too unreliable, might take too long and cost too much. Sometimes you should not have to “fabricate” it at all, but merely point out your actual claim (by inheritance) and challenge the current title holders legitimacy (he might be a filthy heathen or foreigner, unfit to rule after all).
- Add slaves and indentured servants - It might not be the prettiest part of out history, but slavery was common (with religious and cultural exceptions) at the time. It’s strange that the game hasn’t gotten more mechanics for this. You often end up with prisoners that nobody wants, and rather than just releasing them or leave them to be forgotten, you could enslave them yourself or sell them to others. This might also give you the opportunity to buy and release other slaves, letting you get grateful courtiers that you later can use for their claims or ties to powerful dynasties.
- Transfer prisoners - Your vassals often end up imprisoning each other or characters of interest. The possibility of requesting / demanding a vassal to hand a prisoner over to you, or offering to pay off their ransom fee would be useful at times.
- Duel as an alternative to war - War is costly, and the option to challenge your enemy’s leader to a duel / holmgang (single combat, or a single battle) to decide the outcome of a war would could simplify the process of combining the realm after it being split apart by gavelkind.
- Trial by combat - Someone that have been slandered / accused or imprisoned (or as a reaction to attempted imprisonment), should be able to request a trial by combat. Depending on the circumstances, the challenger might go free or the defender be marked as an outlaw (“Niðingr! Niðingr! Niðingr!”).
- Duelling champion - Not all character are well suited for combat, and the possibility of appointing a champion (minor title) useful at times. Sending your champion in your place should cost some prestige or opinion penalty.
- Opt-out of a duel - You should not have to accept every duel to avoid being branded a coward. This could be done either by acknowledge the accusation, try to talk the challenger out of it, or ff you are a renowned fighter with either many duels or battles behind you, you should be allowed to (in some circumstances) laugh at the request.
- Outlaws - If someone does a grave offence toward liege or religious head, I would like to see them outlawed / excommunicated, allowing anyone to attack them, or their liege force the subjects abdication, imprisonment, or revoke titles freely.
- Disown - Some children are not worth keeping around. If one of your children are really bad disowning, disinheriting and banishing them should be an option.
- Adopt and legitimize - You can legitimize your own bastard children, but you might get in a situation where there are no available heirs because your son only fathered a bastard before he died, or for somehow got into a matrilineal marriage. I would like to see some kind of adoption, and/or legitimization of those orphan bastards.
- Loans - Lending money to or from other rulers should be an option. If someone were unable or unwilling to repay the loan, actions (like gain favour, seize possessions, declare war, revoke titles or forced into indentured servitude) would be available to compensate. Instead of some armies instantly despawning after going into debt, you would owe them money.
- Abdication - Some people are content with their life, not interested in taking the role as a ruler. Adding an abdicate option with certain circumstances would be an appreciated.
- Request title - If you were to grant a vassal wring title by accident, or he has a title you would rather belong to someone else, you should be able to ask them politely, instead of demanding it. That way you would be able to avoid causing an outrage among all of your vassals.
- Request support - Vassals might not be obligated to join you in war, but sometimes they should be willing if you asked them.
- Organize provinces in hierarchy - Having all of the titles listed in one list works just fine with a small realm, but if you end up with a lot of provinces, it might would be better if they were sorted and collapsed by duchy (or even kingdom). If you wanted to give someone all titles within a duchy, you would only have to check off a checkbox next to its name. If you only wanted to give the duchy but not all of the counties under it, you would expand it, and check off the duchy and some of the counties. This list could also include “transfer vassals”.
- No culture locked nations - It is fine that some nations have alternative means of creating “special” kingdom titles (either by events, or some other means), but when there are so many “ahistorical” kingdoms that can be created by anyone, it seems strange to lock others behind culture or religion. It’s fine if christians get an event to create “The Kingdom of Jerusalem” but other religions should still be able to create something like “Palestine” in the same area. This could be placed behind a rule option.
- Title over (or under) emperor - This would only be for the few times someone wanted a world conquest, and it can be simulated with granting multiple kingdoms / viceroyalties to one character. But some kind of high king (yes, there is a name conflict) would reduce the number of vassals that you have in the end.
- Trade and treaties - A method of trading provinces, artifacts, prisoners, treaties (ie. technology, marriage, peace), etc. to people inside or outside your realm would be a convenient solution at times.
- Favour points - Having favour as a point system (like opinion) seems like a better solution than just a binary true or false. That way one could work up favour over time, and then (if they have enough) demand some in return. You could also spend the appropriate amount of your favour in many smaller interactions (eg. council support, back/stop plot, revoke titles, join war, offer vassalisation, etc.).
- Queued development - Being able to queue, or build multiple buildings in the same province at once would be a great quality of life improvement. Alternatively even have an option for automatically developing a province.
- Improved character search - Add a few more search options (ie young-adult) and add people that can be bribed to “join court”. Fix text search (it ruins the sorting), also pressing enter while the text field is active should deselect it (so that you can use hotkeys without having to click outside the search box).
- Better treasury - add better sorting of the treasury, and filter for equipment, mist, and ingredients. Also maybe an option to give duplicate / inferior items on appropriation.
- Inbreeding warning - Give an additional warning if close relatives are about to marry.
- Alarm clock - A huge quality of life improvement. A simple popup that can be set to any date, or a calendar (maybe with upcoming events) where you can add or toggle popup notification.
- More toggleable message boxes - Some of the message boxes (like call ally to war, ransom prisoner and join court) should have the ability to be set as “high-” or “low priority“. There are also some events that you might never want to accept (like people asking for your titles), and they could be moved to the “action list” on the top, or just have the option “No, never ask me again”.
- Raise and stand down in hostile - Set the default raise and stand down to only raise when there are no enemies in the province and stand down when no units will be lost. Holding ctrl would raise in occupied territory and stand down with losses.
- Allow to declare war with raised armies - Its potentially game breaking, but at least make it a game rule option.
- Demand return to de jure - Demand a vassal to return territory outside his primary title to its de jure lord.
- Play as a theocracy - CK2 is about building your dynasty, but it could be fun to play as a religious title at times.
- Landless Mercenary / adventurer - Usually it is game over if you don’t have any county title or above, but it would be interesting to work your way from a “nobody” to gain gain a title. Let players be courtiers, and then either get enough favor from your liege to make him grant you a title, or maybe join or organize your own mercenary band or adventurer band.
- Allow events while at war - Some events (like feasts) can only be activated while there is realm peace, even the smallest rebellion on the other side of the world would prohibit you from making a feast.
- Reduce “cooldowns” - Reduce or remove the wait time for moving advisors, child education, focus etc.
- Rework technology - The current technology system seems a bit boring and unintuitive. You might end up spying on your own vassals, or even your previous capital if you moved it. While development (buildings) should be tied to the titles (baronies, cities, etc) technology might be better off tied to the realm (or at least have a better method of improving and spreading it).
- War tax - If you are running low on gold, you should have the option to “raise war taxes” that would increase your income at the cost of opinion of you vassals or revolt risk.
- Support claim - Say to another character (AI) that you would support their claim and join in a war (Helps AI to start wars where you would guarantee a victory. Sometimes they just need a kick in the ass.).
- Colonize in the new world - The distant realms function (China) could be used for other nations or even colonize places (ie.The Americas (support and succeed Vinland event (maybe even spawn characters with norse-american/skræling culture)), South-Africa or Oceania). From some exploration event.
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