Character History

[Caeserion]

Characters should have a character history tab. This is similar to the Chronicle from CK2 but (1) this is per character not dynasty and (2) this is viewable to everyone

Basic life events that should be recorded with the date and wherever relevant the location as well:
Birth, parents
Gained/Created a title
Appointed to/Fired from Council
Made/Removed as Knight
Guardian identity
Declaration of war, result of war
Relationship formation
Marriage
Taking of consorts/concubines
Birth of children whether legitimately or illegitimately
Pilgrimage
Ward identity
Death of children
Reformation of/creation of faith
Major decisions (reformed empire, unified territory, dismantled papacy)
Mutilation details
Imprisonment details
Laws changed
Death, cause of death

Schemes which are secrets should be hidden for alive characters (because you don't want to give too much information to player) unless they are already revealed. This has no gameplay benefit save for helping players build better stories because you need information for that. And to be clear, this should be available for every character, not just landed or characters with dynasties. I get that it can quickly lead to save bloat but perhaps there can be periodic clearing of character histories outside of player lineage every 100yrs. It should also be a expandable tab, like title history is for titles. The other alternative is to clear out the histories of characters who did nothing, they just floated from realm to realm or were generated for an event and then died in it.

For example, if William the Conqueror had a character history the entry would go like this:

Born March 3rd 1028 as a bastard to Robert and Herleva
Became Duke of Normandy on 3rd July 1035
Under the training of Archbishop Robert of Rouen he became a Brilliant Commander and took over the rule of his realm in 1044
Became friends with King Henry I of France
Married Matilda of Flanders on <date>
Launched an invasion of England on 6th January 1066
Became King of England on 25th December 1066
Fathered x on <date> with his wife Matilda
Became rivals with <name> on <date> after <name> executed William's half-brother Odo
His son Richard died on 1081
Died in 1087, was succeeded by his son King William II in England

 

[Liggi]

I think that even if most things are tracked, I suspect many things lack the date and the location on which it happened. Some thing may also be cleared when a character dies or is cleaned out completely. How much extra savegame bloat this is, I cannot really say. I think having a priority of various happenings or characters is also useful when it comes to presenting the information or choosing which ones to implement. If something is easy to track, but not that interesting, it could overwhelm more interesting entries in the history that would require more data to be stored.

I think even just adding a reason to injuries, rivalries and friendships would add a lot of flavour for me. The rest is nice to have.
It's very jarring taking over as a new character and having no idea who their friends and rivals are and why... and also, when characters get injured you have no idea why and so it is jarring to not have anything in your imagination for what happened to them.

 

[Caeserion]

I think that even if most things are tracked, I suspect many things lack the date and the location on which it happened. Some thing may also be cleared when a character dies or is cleaned out completely. How much extra savegame bloat this is, I cannot really say. I think having a priority of various happenings or characters is also useful when it comes to presenting the information or choosing which ones to implement. If something is easy to track, but not that interesting, it could overwhelm more interesting entries in the history that would require more data to be stored.

Any extra information compared to the current state would be helpful tbh. In my view limited functionality is better than no functionality. As it stands the "character history" suggestion is about giving context and background to the traits and relationships you see AI characters have. The major things to track are interpersonal relationships (friends, rivals, marriages, guardians) and major life events (injuries, victories, reasons for special traits, etc). It can also be useful for RP if you're using an elective method of succession, like tanistry where your next character is basically a stranger to the family you spent decades cultivating; being able to click a button and getting more information on why his relationships are the way they are is amazingly helpful. I get that there's obviously going to be some tradeoff but I think most RP-heavy players would appreciate it even if it only tracked some information that is not readily available.

 

[schnizzle]

It would also be cool to have this for rulers and events before the game starts. Roman emperors or characters that are alive but had a lot of things happen to them before 1066, although then it would actually have to be stored as text so this probably won't happen. Apart from that I really support this and considering how well optimized PDX titles can be I imagine computers can still run the game with every character having a lot of events. Maybe make it a toggle switch in the game options. Those who play on toasters or need to save drive space or don't care for this feature can switch it off.

 

[imker]

Could you just add this modification to the game.

Steam Community :: Error

steamcommunity.com

It just implements the improvements suggested in this thread.

 

[noknok]

Yeah I don't have an answer for the memory increase,

If these stories were saved as text fields, then they would add a lot to the size of the save file. But if the field was just a bunch of numbers like character IDs and codes which relate text to a number like a hash table, then it would minimise the extra data added to the save file. Although you would need to use a function in order to decode this data if you are looking in the save file.

 

[x4077]

If these stories were saved as text fields, then they would add a lot to the size of the save file. But if the field was just a bunch of numbers like character IDs and codes which relate text to a number like a hash table, then it would minimise the extra data added to the save file. Although you would need to use a function in order to decode this data if you are looking in the save file.

The problem is that since you are trying to make this a log of events that happened you need to state of the objects at the time those events happened, thus you can't always use the character IDs. Otherwise an event that occurred when a character was a Count will show their current title when viewed later.

 

[noknok]

I guess so. Perhaps you could still use compression type tricks to reduce the amount of size the text field take up.
I would definitely rather have story text fields on characters of interest even if it meant huge save file bloat.

 

[Riamus]

I like the option of storing the extra data based on character pins and having a separate pin specifically for this so you don't store data just because you pin someone for another reason. I think that can work well to limit the amount of extra storage needed for the data. I'd also suggest having the ability to enable (perhaps as a game rule) the storing of data for everyone in your dynasty. It would be interesting at end-game to look back on your dynasty and not just see who made it to royalty outside of your direct control, but also what important events they had.

In terms of dates, I am less concerned about that. I'd care more about the events that occurred without worrying as much about the specific dates involved. If dates are an issue, I'd say to just not bother with them, or potentially just give a year if that is easier.

 

[x4077]

In terms of dates, I am less concerned about that. I'd care more about the events that occurred without worrying as much about the specific dates involved. If dates are an issue, I'd say to just not bother with them, or potentially just give a year if that is easier.

Please don't encourage Paradox to make another feature that uses inaccurate date. It's already bad enough that we can't sort properly by age because of CK3 only using the number of years old vs the actual dates of birth.

I like the multiple pinning idea, and actually considered doing my own mod for allowing multiple different outliners based on user defined criteria before my interest in the game declined so much.

I guess so. Perhaps you could still use compression type tricks to reduce the amount of size the text field take up.
I would definitely rather have story text fields on characters of interest even if it meant huge save file bloat.

Based on the existing compression ratio of the json save game data compressed vs uncompressed you are only looking at a 50% reduction, whereas you are looking at a lot more than double the data. Also, it's not just the save file bloat, it's the memory footprint of the game as well as the time increase in converting internal data objects back and forth to json format for loading and saving.

 

[Anonim97]

I guess we can count it as added to the game now with memories system!