April 8th Public Beta: GENERAL FEEDBACK

[Erufailon]

One thing: Internal struggles.

 

[unmerged(36722)]

Yeah it could be (not that it would be any easier or harder to script...just one extra condition line in the trigger) but then what are we accomplishing for our fairly lengthy piece of scripting?

Not much I guess. I think its fine now, I just thought i'd throw out an idea...

 

[unmerged(26044)]

I think it's a good idea to remind people to be patient when downloading patches. If you keep cancelling and restarting the download, you won't get it any faster, and you are just wasting bandwidth for people who are waiting patiently. Either click once and wait, or don't bother.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

In my opinion, CK is desperately in need of some work on message settings: it's impossible to really get the messages you want to show up without getting everything to show up. It would be unglamorous work, of course, but I do hope it gets done at some point.
Also, could the text lines for technology spread messages include the province where the spread happens? It's unfortunate that you can't see where it happened after the fact, or see where it happened at all without having it as a pop-up.

A great many of the messages you're refering to are handled by event rather than code functions and thus there is no convenient way to customize those settings. There have been a few proposals that might be possible for future games, but they are beyond the scope of what we can reasonably achieve with 1.05.

Re advance spread...er...correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that spread messages do include the province name either in the message itself or in the rollover text of the button. (I'll check that next time I'm running a test)

Couldn't it be done as a first name edit? Richard 'Coeur de Lion' of Normandie?
Of course, working out a system for all that would be complex. But it seems theoretically possible, if name edits can be done.

Yes...that would be something that would work if you edit your save file or the scenario character files. It's not something that could be easily implemented into the game as a feature though (either automated or manual). It could be done, but would take more time and effort from Johan (redesign of interface, tec.) than its benefits would seem to justify.

Well, some very successful and important mechanisms (BB in EU and CK) do exactly that - and as it is, the vast majority of players feel EU and CK still get far too easy when you get huge. Admittedly, it is hard to find a solution that will please everyone.

Yes, but that game mechanism is less of an arbitrary "smack you down" penalty and more of a "find a way to continue to challenge a player when he gets big" thing. Players have considerable control over their rate of BB gain and have several mechanisms to reduce it (granting titles, time, adjustments in scuttage to affect vassal loyalaty, etc.) so it creates a realm management challenge for the player to cope with and manage. Having an event set that chcecks to see if you hold two or more titles at the highest level and then arbitrarily switch your laws to break up your realm is a completely different type of situation since the player has few possibilities to avoid potential dissaster (either don't calim/grab the title or keep switching laws back to whatever he wants and suffer his vassal's wrath as a result). Also, I suspect most players would be incensed if their king's laws suddenly changed without them having any control over it or choice about averting it.

That said, I suppose one could make an argument in favour of implementing something like that for harder difficulty levels - or radically altering the possibility/rate of it happening... I guess I'm still hopeful that some of the other things we're considering/exploring for realm issues (internal struggles, etc.) will bear fruit and provide that challenge without going to too great an extreme.

 

[Zander]

Yes, but that game mechanism is less of an arbitrary "smack you down" penalty and more of a "find a way to continue to challenge a player when he gets big" thing. Players have considerable control over their rate of BB gain and have several mechanisms to reduce it (granting titles, time, adjustments in scuttage to affect vassal loyalaty, etc.) so it creates a realm management challenge for the player to cope with and manage. Having an event set that chcecks to see if you hold two or more titles at the highest level and then arbitrarily switch your laws to break up your realm is a completely different type of situation since the player has few possibilities to avoid potential dissaster (either don't calim/grab the title or keep switching laws back to whatever he wants and suffer his vassal's wrath as a result). Also, I suspect most players would be incensed if their king's laws suddenly changed without them having any control over it or choice about averting it.

To be honest I'm not really in favor of that change - I just think that there are some cases where "punishing a player for success" is justified.
I haven't tried out this new "vassals breaking free of empires spontaneously" thing - that may solve some of the perceived problem.

 

[trajan]

And by far the most important change that needs to be made as soon as possible is to please, for the love of Loki, to excise alliances from the game. They're unrealistic to begin with and are absolutely awful. The King of England shouldn't be attacking El Bierzo since Bernaod revolted against his lord, and the HRE or Byzantium shouldn't be marching into friggen Aquitaine.

Like a few others that have posted in this thread, I don't have much time to play CK -- I've gotten about 70 years into a new game since the April 1 beta came out. But I keep coming back to it and want to contribute to making it a better game. I've been running with debug on, but (knock on wood) I haven't had a single CTD since I installed the April 1 beta. I did post a minor bug in the bug forum though so I feel I have contributed something. Won't be able to check if it's in the 4/8 patch until tonight or tomorrow.

I don't post much, but I've been around a long time and I check the forum almost every day. I just wanted to let MrT and Johan and everyone else who is contributing to the beta patches to know how much I appreciate the fact that they're still working it. I think it's a good game now (since the betas) and is so close to being a great game.

Finally, I just wanted to add an "Amen" to Damocles. I really dislike the current alliance system and am glad to hear that something is being done about it. I would even take an option in the game setup to turn alliances on or off, but I suspect you have something cooler in mind...

EDIT: Just noticed my next post is a promotion. It only took 4 years

 

[unmerged(29596)]

All land given to family members should become "appanages" and should return to the one or a decendant that had given it away. This can be done by making the one who had given the land away (or his decendant) the successor.

I like to keep my titles and land in the family

 

[unmerged(40814)]

The martial bonus seems to be too effective in the case of 1006 castille. This is on normal/normal so maybe it's less effective on higher difficulty, but I probably wont have time to check that.

I can run one army out of burgos and take out 3 or 4 provinces straight away, let it get to around 600-700 men (starting at 1200-1300) and disband it in a freshly captured territory and it is instantly back up to full capactity, no retraining time needed!

I did have a training ground in Burgos, but even still, disbanding and having an instantly maxed army just seems totally out of whack. Even new provinces are trained to full fairly quickly. I'll take note of how fast a new province maxes out next time I take one.

The muslims around me dont have a chance (and I'm not even that good of a CK player). By the end of 1075 I've taken out the eastern muslims in Iberia and Toledo has been wiped out. Seville is fairly large (about 12 province demesne), but they're depleted after the landgrab so it wont be hard to take them out. My major problem so far is having enough people to hand out titles

It's nice to have the wharfs back, and I've noticed a lot more male courtiers so far (YAY), but I'm really concerned about the martial effects. Just out of curiosity, what is the formula for determining the effects of the value? Is it a sliding scale with a min/max bonus? Knowing how the bonus works would help when trying to suggest possible improvements.

 

[Spruce]

Yes, that could be scripted (wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to do since it would have to be scripted on almost a case by case basis, but it's certainly possible).

I guess the question becomes just how happy a player would be if his realm was suddenly forced into a shitty law just because he'd been highly successful in the game? The principles of game design would generally tell you that punishing a player for being successful is a bad (gamebreaking!) idea. Are you certain that this is something that you'd want modeled?

well I'm aware of that - the reason for my question is not that I would argue for a de facto gravelkind law change. No the event should exist for both AI and human player and would stay rare. So only when the king has more king titles, and when he has 2 or 3 male sons, with high intrigue ranking.

and still then the king can choose to stick with the old law but then chances are high the youngest son goes independent. Another option is to compromise and choose for elective,

I must admit that the story of Charlemagne inspired me for that idea I would give it a chance to consider,

 

[The Regent]

The Cumans have the power to walk on water!

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Just out of curiosity, what is the formula for determining the effects of the value? Is it a sliding scale with a min/max bonus? Knowing how the bonus works would help when trying to suggest possible improvements.

I don't know exactly what formula Johan ended up using but the change was based on (and in response to) several people's reports that the way it was implemented last week was resulting in too great a swing of results. I suggested that he take the previous forumla for regain rate and then apply a modifier to it such that:

new_recruitment_rate = base_rate * (1 - (ruler_martial - 5)/100) * (1 - (marshal_martial -5)/100)

Assuming a normal range of martial stats to be 0-15 this would result in an adjustment to the base (1.04a) rate of between 0.81 and 1.1025 (thus between a 19% increase and a 10.25% decrease depending on the stats) which seemed fairly reasonable at the time. Whether he ended up implementing that exactly, I'm not sure...

Another thing to keep in mind is that even while the regiment is away fighting your wars, your province is still recruiting and "saving up" forces for when the regiment is returned to the province. These are lost if you disband the regiment in enemy territory, but if you are in your own realm then the stored forces aren't lost and neither are the remaining forces in your regiment. If you're fighting a somewhat protracted war (or don't suffer too many casualties) then this could mean that you have enough men stored to reinforce that regiment back to full (or nearly so) when you disband it.

Or maybe you just have super-high martial stats for both your ruler and marshal?

Anyway, I'll do some testing to see if the rates appear out of whack.

 

[unmerged(40814)]

Assuming a normal range of martial stats to be 0-15 this would result in an adjustment to the base (1.04a) rate of between 0.81 and 1.1025 (thus between a 19% increase and a 10.25% decrease depending on the stats) which seemed fairly reasonable at the time. Whether he ended up implementing that exactly, I'm not sure...

That does sound reasonable, but the newly captured provinces seem to restock men way faster than expected..but that could just be perception on my part

Another thing to keep in mind is that even while the regiment is away fighting your wars, your province is still recruiting and "saving up" forces for when the regiment is returned to the province. These are lost if you disband the regiment in enemy territory, but if you are in your own realm then the stored forces aren't lost and neither are the remaining forces in your regiment. If you're fighting a somewhat protracted war (or don't suffer too many casualties) then this could mean that you have enough men stored to reinforce that regiment back to full (or nearly so) when you disband it.

Hmm, I thought that this applied to the AI only. That would explain the results I was seeing however as I would be out for a while before disbanding. As far as my stats, the marshal has a 17 value and the ruler has 8 (i think). Just start a 1066 game as castille and you can check it right away.

 

[Damocles]

Thats about what I would expect from a ruler with El Cid as a marshall.

He needs to go get Valencia though!

 

[richvh]

One irritation from recent betas that I don't see addressed in the list of changes in the new one is fog of war. It's dispersed around your armies and allied armies, but not around your vassals' armies unless they are under your control. I should think that you would have at least as good intelligence from your vassals as you do from your allies, and you do have better intelligence from your vassals when it comes to provinces (you can see provinces adjacent to vassals' and subvassals' provinces, but only the demesne provinces of allies.)

 

[unmerged(40711)]

Finally, I just wanted to add an "Amen" to Damocles. I really dislike the current alliance system and am glad to hear that something is being done about it. I would even take an option in the game setup to turn alliances on or off, but I suspect you have something cooler in mind...

I'd like to see alliances be possible, but rare. Tie it to a marriage between two families where both rulers are 'Just' and both have a certain (high) prestige level, and the alliance only stays in effect while those two rulers are in power (i.e., it's more of a personal alliance). And since this is a matter of trust between the rulers, violation of the alliance should bring some pretty nasty consequences (disolve the marriage, reduce the prestige of the offending party, decrease the loyalty of the peasants/burghers/nobility in the offenders demesne, etc).

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Yes...that would be something that would work if you edit your save file or the scenario character files. It's not something that could be easily implemented into the game as a feature though (either automated or manual). It could be done, but would take more time and effort from Johan (redesign of interface, tec.) than its benefits would seem to justify.

Certianly i would like to see a way to have character's last names change for whatever reason. This would help beat down the swell of late game tides of just a sea of everyone with the same last name, wherever they are.

I guess the question becomes just how happy a player would be if his realm was suddenly forced into a shitty law just because he'd been highly successful in the game? The principles of game design would generally tell you that punishing a player for being successful is a bad (gamebreaking!) idea. Are you certain that this is something that you'd want modeled?

Perhaps using gavelkind is the wrong method. A better way would be with more breakup events the larger your realm is. Europe in this age was about balance so someone definatly larger than Germany would definatly be difficult to watch on every front and is quite historic to have rebel dukes and revolts taking hold and pesaants leaders becoming local rulers.

This would require a new trigger for realm size, however i believe these things could be used much more effectively in some cases where demense penalty fails us now (such as mongols).

 

[Damocles]

I'd like to see alliances be possible, but rare. Tie it to a marriage between two families where both rulers are 'Just' and both have a certain (high) prestige level, and the alliance only stays in effect while those two rulers are in power (i.e., it's more of a personal alliance). And since this is a matter of trust between the rulers, violation of the alliance should bring some pretty nasty consequences (disolve the marriage, reduce the prestige of the offending party, decrease the loyalty of the peasants/burghers/nobility in the offenders demesne, etc).

However, in the event that something of that nature is too complex to introduce, it'd still do far more good then harm to just nix it entirely.

Though, if it's kept...Having a prerequisite of a marriage between the two dynasties should be the least of the requirements. At the moment, you can set your watch on every kingdom being allied with as many kingdoms as they're allowed to be right out the gate.

Another possible measure would be to only allow alliances between kings and independent duchies and counts. Or if one kingdom is significantly smaller.

It's not that I have some row to hoe against alliances. It is just really depressing to be invaded by someone across the world from me because I'm in a dispute with my would be liege. Cause I doubt the Kings of Denmark, England and France would call the levies and set sail for El Bierzo at the behest of their noble common ally, the King of Leon in his attempt to subdue his wretched 1 province count, heh.

 

[Zander]

Re advance spread...er...correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that spread messages do include the province name either in the message itself or in the rollover text of the button. (I'll check that next time I'm running a test)

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough: the pop-up window does say where the discovery took place. But the line in the game log doesn't: which is a pain if you're checking it later, or if you've turned off pop-ups for technology.

Example:
"A New Technology spread to our lands: Battering Ram happened to us"

 

[stnylan]

Just played a game upto the late 1070s (which then crashed, but wasn't running debug). In the event the Christians were on the ascendent in Iberia, with every sign of finishing off the last major Muslim state (Seville). At first there was a little see-sawing, and then the Zirids and Al-Muratibids declared war on their Muslim cousins for some reason, and the French, English, and Irish joined in with their Iberian cousins against the Muslims. End result is eastern Iberia over-run, and when the game CTD's 4 of Seville's provinces were under seige and probably about to go down. Castille and various French vassals seem to be the big winners, though Spanish Galicia had a brief moment in the sun.

Oh, and Crusade launched in 1075 against Jerusalem. The Pechenegs didn't last to see 1070. Hungary and Poland were carving up the Baltic States. The Cumans were reducing Russia quite happily.

 

[Grell74]

Alliances have been one of my major peeves since they were first introduced. As they currently are I would prefer not to have them at all. If alliances could be tied to an event wouldnt that improve things alot? As has also been suggested tying alliance to marriages of your family members would also improve things. The benefit or making them linked to events would allow modifiers for prestige, traits, etc to be considered and prestige penalties/bonuses for rejection/acceptance. Currently it is really annoying for every nation to immmedietly rush for their full quota of allies, some of whom can have opposite traits and be across the other side of the map, which can result in some very un-historical situations.

I also like the Gavelkind event idea and believe it has historical and gameplay justification. The current 1066 Catholic Iberian setup was a direct result of Ferdinand I The Great dividing his Kingdom titles among his sons. This does not have to penalise the Player for making great achievments. The event can have multiple options. E.g. You are King of Catile and also hold the titles King of Leon, King of Galica and King of Navarre, you have 4 sons and the event fires (again this can be modifed by traits e.g. more likely for generous, merciful, just, etc) you have 2 options: 1) ADOPT GAVEKIND [gain prestige, -loyalty and prestige for heir and 20% trait generous]; 2) KEEP CURRENT LAW [all other sons besides the heir get -loyalty and prestige, 20% chance they become independent / leave you court].

Specific April 8th observations (hands off - normal/normal):

-Fatamids still break up very early (was around 1070 for me).
-Crusade fired 1079 to Alexandria (arent these still be callled approx 20 years too early?).
-Muslims seem pretty weak still (cant they be given horse archers please.
-Cumans and Prechengs got hammered. Byz had taken 10 Cuman provinces and Poland had 9 Precheng ones by 1080.
-Byz seems pretty stable (i didnt notice any rebellious vasslas).
-I didnt notice any D-Day amphibous assaults, so those sea changes seem to be helping.
Nice work guys keep it up