A plea for a return of genetics

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Actually... too much of this is based on the 'core' character stats. There is also education. And not just the CK1 breeding vs DV development model. One option i would have liked was to have double/multiple education traits. e.g. send all my sons to have a court and military training, the daughters to court and religious tutors.

After all, what's the point of breeding a Kwisatz Haderach if he's not going to have Captain Picard teach him to fight, the crazy human-computer to balance the castle-accounts, and a witch to pass on the secret of Jedi mind-tricks?

Plus obviously more variety than Brilliant, Sharp, Average, and Bungling in terms of outcomes.

So i'd like genetics to be optional (cuz i wouldn't use it, but if its there for others to use, fine by me)... but i'd also like to know more about education options. Which in order to pretend to stay on topic... i'll suggest you could link education options to core stats (e.g. inbred idiots might have a harder time picking up an all-round education while prodigies can more realistically aspire to becoming 'renaissance' men) so that in combination with a genetics/DV-development model to generate a more interesting spectrum of outcomes.

 

[themendios]

As much as your comment about Dune mixed with star wars and witches nerd-enrages me it made me think about maybe making a Dune mod.

I remember the old dune RTS, the first one of its kind. The gameplay model hasn't changed much at all, either. Go innovation!

 

[Nick B II]

This meant "It isn't a randomized pre-determined stat change that determines the competency of the child regardless of parents (genes) or upbringing (nurture), right? That would be ridiculous." and is talking about CK2. As is the thread. There shouldn't be a random "TIME FOR AN IDIOT!" mechanism if nothing in his actual life would make that plausible.

AFAIK in DV it was completely and totally random. The only exceptions were kids who got fostered out, who apparently had additional chances at random stat increases, particularly if the court they were fostered in had a genius Spymaster or something. But the devs never chose to go into details on exactly what was happening.

Pre-DV a child's stats were determined at (and visible from) birth, and the largest factor in determining them was the stats of the parents.

The biggest problem with the post-DV system was that it was too generous. The game gave out so many stat boosts that by 1100 any character with El Cid's 16 Mil was about average.

..No. I, in fact, stated the opposite. See "If he/she gets a decent education and is raised by good/intelligent people". That can clearly mean anyone that is good/intelligent, whether their parents or not. If raised by an incompetent uncle or servant then obviously the character should take after their ways and NOT magically be inherently stronger. I am NOT a proponent of making it a "breeding Ubermensch" game. If genetics had an effect in the game it should mostly be with being prone or not prone to certain diseases and the effects of good/bad looks. Intelligence is mostly (it would certainly work in a biological sense to do "eugenics" based on intelligence, but it simply didn't happen that way in the game and would not be sufficiently noticable) based on nurture, not nature, and thus is a silly thing to have in the game.

How do you figure out whose doing the nurturing in-game?

This is made more difficult because in almost every case the actual nurturer of the children will be too low-ranked to appear in-game.

You could probably do it with decisions like "Pick a wet nurse who forces the little twerps to read goddamnit," but it looks like that kind of thing will be left to modders. My fear would be that a) AI wouldn't use those decisions properly, and b) if you did they'd result in ahistorical literacy among the Medieval ruling class by 1100.

Are you kidding me? Studies have even found that having books present in the house increases the likelyhood for intelligent offspring. You don't have to read them. They don't have to read them. Just that they're "there" creates a better attitude towards knowledge. Is it some big coincidence that fat people often have fat children and nothing to do with the kids directly having the diet of the parents? That physically active (good Mil) people would be more inclined to have their children be physically active as well? Not having adults capable of solving [math] problems you're having trouble understanding doesn't reduce the chances you'll become better than your current limit at math? This, quite honestly, just sounds crazy and nonsensical to me. These ARE reasons why someone is incompetent at something. Pretty damn big reasons.

All I can tell you is this:
I have the same genes as my sister. We had the same upbringing. I can multiply 94*86 in my head. She was using her fingers to figure out 9*12 until she entered college, at which point she stopped trying to multiply things. She is the kind of person who is the most entertaining in any given group no matter how big the group is. I am the kind of person who fades into the background of any group larger then three.

It's not easy to think of a system that replicates those results and doesn't involve a whole lot of randomness.

Nick

 

[TempestDK]

AFAIK in DV it was completely and totally random. The only exceptions were kids who got fostered out, who apparently had additional chances at random stat increases, particularly if the court they were fostered in had a genius Spymaster or something. But the devs never chose to go into details on exactly what was happening.

Pre-DV a child's stats were determined at (and visible from) birth, and the largest factor in determining them was the stats of the parents.

The biggest problem with the post-DV system was that it was too generous. The game gave out so many stat boosts that by 1100 any character with El Cid's 16 Mil was about average.

How do you figure out whose doing the nurturing in-game?

This is made more difficult because in almost every case the actual nurturer of the children will be too low-ranked to appear in-game.

You could probably do it with decisions like "Pick a wet nurse who forces the little twerps to read goddamnit," but it looks like that kind of thing will be left to modders. My fear would be that a) AI wouldn't use those decisions properly, and b) if you did they'd result in ahistorical literacy among the Medieval ruling class by 1100.

All I can tell you is this:
I have the same genes as my sister. We had the same upbringing. I can multiply 94*86 in my head. She was using her fingers to figure out 9*12 until she entered college, at which point she stopped trying to multiply things. She is the kind of person who is the most entertaining in any given group no matter how big the group is. I am the kind of person who fades into the background of any group larger then three.

It's not easy to think of a system that replicates those results and doesn't involve a whole lot of randomness.

Nick

Isn't this really a matter of the "age old" question of nature vs. nurture?? ... as debate that as far as I know haven't been settled yet.

I think most agree that we are all part of a sum of nature and environment, but how much?? ... if I was pre-disposed to be a brilliant mind, but my mom stuck me in a cave somewhere, would I still be able to learn advanced mathematics when I was introduced to the world at the age of 22?? ... or could any amount of highly educated men and women make me smart if I was just plain unintelligent??

The thing is that at some point the devs will have to draw the line, and decide on how genetics works in their game world, which will never be able to model real life in this regard (especially since we don't yet know how real life works). Whatever solution they use, it will have to balance what is feaseable in coding terms, what gives good game balance and fun game play, and what seems somewhat realistic. And it will probably not be to everyone's liking.

 

[Nuril]

How do you figure out whose doing the nurturing in-game?

This is made more difficult because in almost every case the actual nurturer of the children will be too low-ranked to appear in-game.

If you raise the kid yourself, your character is applied. If it's a noble from your domain, his/her character is applied. If it's with the Church, maybe your Bishop/LordSpiritual's should be taken into account (in lieu of specific characters at a lower church level. Though that might be fixable if there are religious traits, then you could just check for characters with "ChurchStuff = Yes" on good terms with the Parent). If it's just general nannies, mediocrity is applied (possibly for Church too, if it's too abstract). I think you're trying to interpret into it a level of micromanagement or new level of detail that I'm not implying or asking for.

(And the term is Who's, as in "Who is" as opposed to "Whose nurturing are you referring to?" )

You could probably do it with decisions like "Pick a wet nurse who forces the little twerps to read goddamnit," but it looks like that kind of thing will be left to modders. My fear would be that a) AI wouldn't use those decisions properly, and b) if you did they'd result in ahistorical literacy among the Medieval ruling class by 1100.

First of all I never mentioned literacy (although for people raised with scholarly pursuits in mind... obviously most would be literate), but what is this "historical level of literacy for the Ruling Class"? Since I know Charlemagne (In the mid 700s-800, so hardly applicable) struggled to write his own name and that the general public was quite lacking in literacy during the period. I'd imagine the ruling nobility had much better statistics on literacy in any case.

And you think the new AI will be worse than the CK1 one was when deciding on the upbringing of children? I don't buy that.

All I can tell you is this:
I have the same genes as my sister. We had the same upbringing. I can multiply 94*86 in my head. She was using her fingers to figure out 9*12 until she entered college, at which point she stopped trying to multiply things. She is the kind of person who is the most entertaining in any given group no matter how big the group is. I am the kind of person who fades into the background of any group larger then three.

It's not easy to think of a system that replicates those results and doesn't involve a whole lot of randomness.

Yes, because there's no difference at all between modern and medieval society with extremely different levels of autodidacticism and general availability of knowledge, no Sir! [/sarcasm]

Anyway, stop reading so much into what I'm saying in an attempt to build a strawman. I am talking about TENDENCIES, not certainties. A child of a renowned Scholar will not without exception avoid being an incompetent for scholarly pursuits, but he damn sure will be more likely to be apt for it. The same goes for most things. I guarantee you a peasant in the Middle Ages would be a million times more capable of surviving on a farm than the vast majority of westerners today, because we lack the upbringing and general aptitude for it.

I can also, without a doubt, guarantee that you did NOT have the same upbringing as your sister. Are you identical twins living inside the same body experiencing all events identically and at 18 splitting off into two individuals and then suddenly one of you started being good at math? Didn't think so. If tendencies gotten from upbringing was a fact in the game it wouldn't ever result in clone-children since none of them would have identical series of events or general circumstances. The similarity would just be who's doing the raising and what they strive for the children to be, not how they follow that path laid for them.

 

[John Forseti]

I'm not really sure how exactly stats and attributes work in CK II being new and having never played CK I, so this or something like it may already exist,

If you take the stats and attributes and divide them up into five ranges: Terrible, Poor, Midling, Good and Excellent. Then for every range outside the inheriting parents' apply a malus to the probability of the stat or attribute being in that range.

That way a child of a parent with midling health, if it inherits that attribute from that parent rather than the other, is most likely to also have midling health but will also have some chance for poor or good health and a small chance of having terrible or excellent health.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I wouldn't mind if independent stats were removed completely, myself. Everybody would start at null, with "average" abilities (however you want to define that--10 or 0 or 20, it doesn't matter), and they would be distinguished in their abilities by their traits. I've always thought it kind of weird that we have these two completely different sets of variables which sometimes have almost nothing to do with each other--a wise character could easily have 2/3/5/3 stats, for ex. So this idea would solve that problem. It would also cut down on save file sizes and, possibly, CPU usage. And I think it would make personality, education, diseases, and the like more meaningful and impactful in terms of gameplay.

 

[themendios]

I wouldn't mind if independent stats were removed completely, myself. Everybody would start at null, with "average" abilities (however you want to define that--10 or 0 or 20, it doesn't matter), and they would be distinguished in their abilities by their traits. I've always thought it kind of weird that we have these two completely different sets of variables which sometimes have almost nothing to do with each other--a wise character could easily have 2/3/5/3 stats, for ex. So this idea would solve that problem. It would also cut down on save file sizes and, possibly, CPU usage. And I think it would make personality, education, diseases, and the like more meaningful and impactful in terms of gameplay.

Tell me, what good is a character ... if you have no stats?

Really though I think you have hit on a different problem, namely that traits as they existed (and probably will continue to exist) were just stat modifiers and have little to no bearing on the 'personality' because there wasn't any to speak of since you got the same events and choices no matter what traits you had - although some rare exceptions did actually discriminate, most just had minor mtth modifiers if anything.

It's something that bugged me, traits as minor stat modifiers are exactly as you point out but what I would want is that they actually open different event branches and/or have more bearing on the feel of gameplay as to be identifiable as a personality, and have the stats modification aspect as the minor secondary part.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I just don't see the point of having these two completely different sets of variables. Your aptitudes are founded in your personality, your physical characteristics, your education, etc. Why do characters in CK1 (and presumably CK2) have aptitudes that are almost completely separate from it?

There would actually be stats in my idea, but they would tend to be in the single digits. Everybody is 0, average, by default unless their traits modify their stats one way or another. A valorous character might have a +1 or +2 in martial. A cowardly character would have -1 or -2. The relative impact of those stat increases would hopefully be greater since there isn't some completely detached, arbitrary "martial" score that this character's traits are competing with.

e: The other thing you mention is certainly a valid thing to complain about, but I have more faith that Paradox will fix it (or enable modders to fix it). Based on the dev diaries, it seems that CK2 will have a much more robust and in-depth event system that CK1 ever did.

 

[Nuril]

But they'd still be variables separate from the traits, right, Calanctus? Because remember things like events that give Generals an extra point of Martial for his competency in battle. It'd be a bit cluttered to have separate traits for every such occurrence rather than just go "It's part of his character that he has gotten 1 point better at Martial matters now".

 

[ZhugeKongming]

Well, the way I imagine it, instead of that event giving generals some arbitrarily better aptitude in martiality, you can take a cue from EU: Rome and give them traits that enable various kinds of useful combat events--ambushes, envelopments, charges, etc. And don't forget that this is in addition to the many already existing traits that add a point or two to martial. There's really no need to add tons of traits, you're just too used to thinking in terms of the CK1 stats system.

 

[Nick B II]

Anyway, stop reading so much into what I'm saying in an attempt to build a strawman. I am talking about TENDENCIES, not certainties. A child of a renowned Scholar will not without exception avoid being an incompetent for scholarly pursuits, but he damn sure will be more likely to be apt for it. The same goes for most things. I guarantee you a peasant in the Middle Ages would be a million times more capable of surviving on a farm than the vast majority of westerners today, because we lack the upbringing and general aptitude for it.

And I might agree that, in the modern context, such a tendency exists. A scholar's son may be slightly more likely to be scholarly then the general population.

The problem is we're not talking about a modern context and we're not talking about the general population. We're talking about the High Nobility of the Medieval period. That's it. The question isn't will El Cid's son have a tendency to be a better soldier then some pissant little peasant, the question is will El Cid's son have a tendency to be a better soldier then the Crown Prince?

I'm arguing that there's no mechanism for El Cid's son to learn more then the Crown Prince because they're both being taught by the same people. They're being nursed by the same wetnurses, raised by the same nursemaids, and instructed by the same soldiers (in this case both are taking lessons from El Cid). They should end up with different Mil stats due to differences in raw talent, not because one of them is closer to El Cid by blood then the other.

But the only way to get that result without also quantifying raw talent, and figuring out a way to simulate it, is randomness.

Nick

 

[Nick B II]

Well, the way I imagine it, instead of that event giving generals some arbitrarily better aptitude in martiality, you can take a cue from EU: Rome and give them traits that enable various kinds of useful combat events--ambushes, envelopments, charges, etc. And don't forget that this is in addition to the many already existing traits that add a point or two to martial. There's really no need to add tons of traits, you're just too used to thinking in terms of the CK1 stats system.

This is not a bad idea.

It's probably too late for them to implement it in CK2, but not a bad idea nonetheless.

Nick

 

[unmerged(183563)]

Dumbing down the game=Stick to CK1

 

[TempestDK]

It's probably too late for them to implement it in CK2, but not a bad idea nonetheless.

Nick

Most likely, as I can imagine this is one of the first things being built into the game.

Personally I like having the stats for the characters, not removing them and having traits and educations take their place. As for CK3 (yeah, I would hope), maybe something akin to the Football Manager system of Current Ability and Potential Ability could be used to simulate the "genetic potential" of a kid.

In FM these stats are hidden from the player. But each footballer has a current ability and a potential. Whether he ever reaches his potential relies on things like how good your facilities are, how many competitive matches he plays, on what level and how well he plays, as well as factoring in coach abilities and the footballer's own mental stats.

In CK(3) this potential could be somewhat inherited from his parents (but not completely or all the kids would be the same .. some randomization would be needed). So in the El Cid example above, maybe his son has great potential to be a military leader. But I decide in my infinite wisdom, to send him off to learn from a drunken, lazy priest in some god-forsaken little county in North Africa. I would then most likely end up with a guy with no near the stats he had the potential for. So Potential Ability could be his "genetics" and then it would be up to the ruler to get the most out of that with education.

 

[themendios]

Honestly if I want to play a game where there are icons telling me "everything I need to know" about my character I'll play Dragon Age 2 or the like.

I like Paradox games because they give me a lot of NUMBERS (and usually a detailed explanation of what they do). Simplified/hidden game mechanics are for EA and Bioware imo.

But where I think this system fails in this case is solely using those numbers and not taking into account the icons beyond affecting the numbers ie affecting gameplay or at least gameplay events. But that's something that a mod can fix.

 

[RedRooster81]

The difference between potential and actual numbers, well, I think that I would rather have events and experience to expand what my character or heir can do. So if you opt for parental upbringing or keep him close at hand after he is finished training, sort of as your own squire and then marshal or chancellor (which he might demand to be--you can't just send your children away by giving them titles, they'll want to have titles and a seat on the council), then you should give him experiences to deal with learning how to be a lord. Force him to pass judgement over a murder case, send him to put down a food riot, and so forth. Then he should gain extra traits to buttress or change his occupational trait. You can learn to be a "brilliant strategist," I suppose, but you will remain untested and might never command an army in the field, which was the case in CK1.

I'm not so hot on the education traits to begin with. As someone mentioned earlier, an heir apparent should learn a lot of different things, not necessarily have to pick between being a knight or a scholar off the bat. Any boy of noble birth should learn the basics of melee fighting and archery, some book learning, and the hard bits of how to rule. In the latter case, the liege of the court where he is growing up should help set the tone, correcting as the devs have said less desirable traits and encouraging what that character sees as desirable ones. So there should be some basic personality traits that should be hard to change beyond rather early childhood, as the devs have said, and then traits that you gain as you grow. Some of these latter should be rather rare. The screenshots that I have seen suggest that each character will have a few traits a piece, not the ten or twelve that were common in CK1.

 

[Ivashanko]

I dunno, I think the LEVEL to which it affected things was plainly ridiculous. Sometimes, two brilliant people can have a blathering idiot of a son. I would like it to be MOSTLY random, and slightly affected by genetics.

Well, yes, that is true, but genetists are finding more and more things that are determned by genetics rather than 'random chance'. Of course, how a child grows up also affects competency (and even IQ- but that's another matter) but not every child has the same... or even similiar... odds of being a genius- or even of being competent.

 

[Maestro Ugo]

I'm surprised to see so many misconceptions about genetics floating about. Attributes characters have in CK (Stewardship, Intrigue, Martial and Diplomacy) are hard to define and conceptualize. Let's take Martial for example, it's comprised of a huge number of factors from physical strength and robustness to leadership, ability to inspire and skill with a weapon. Constructs as complex as this are bound to be determined by such a tangled array of different genes, environmental influences and interaction between the two that notions of inheriting a martial attribute of 8 just because your parents had 9 and 7 is absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that if there was "genetics" in CK2 a good character will always have good children.

Let's take one very simple example from classical Mendelian genetics where one gene determines one trait. Genes have two "parts" (called alleles), one inherited from our mother and one from our father. both can have two "states" either dominant (A) or recessive (a). If a child has a homozygous recessive pair (aa) the recessive version of the trait will be inherited, all other combinations (Aa, aA and AA) would result in a dominant phenotype. This basic principles hold for inheriting simple traits in simple organisms like flies and peas. Complex traits like those mentioned above are determined by hundreds and thousands of genes, by the environmental influences and by the interaction between genetic pattern and environment.

So what does that mean in terms of CK? If some version of genetics was modeled in the game things like a brilliant father having an idiot sun could happen, definitely - but some characteristics would be present in a certain dynasty for some period of time, just like it happens in real life.

 

[Garak]

Numbered stats are good. What's wrong with a "wise" character having lousy stats? None of the stats are directly related to wisdom, after all. A wise character isn't necessarily a good general, or a good accountant.