Characters in CK3 live way too long

[Antimonum]

Your basic point that people die for actual causes is clearly right. But I think it’s peripheral to this conversation. The game neither includes all the various causes nor abstracts them into a realistic overall likelihood of death. One of the two should be done, or more likely a little of each.

Lifespan reduction is not the right way in my opinion. The Idea of becoming infirm wold explain with a medieval narrative and a good enough approximation to reality a lot of unknown diseases. Perhaps its occurrence and frequency should get tweaked a bit though.

 

[Trinculo]

On the other hand, I've noticed a decent number of medieval Muslim scholars and bureaucrats who seem to have lived well into their 70s or even 80s. Granted, these are more bookish types so they may have been more likely to avoid earlier deaths than rulers who were more vulnerable to assassinations, death in battle, or hunting accidents, but it shows that it should not be especially unusual for characters to live that long.

At the same time, though, there were also quite a few who died in their 50s or early 60s, and that I think is where the biggest problem with the CK3 health system is -- characters don't die young that often if they stay out of battle. I think people have already said some good points about this, how diseases aren't deadly enough, or how there are too many health buffs and not enough debuffs, etc.

 

[evilcat]

I must admit that most of my characters live till 70 and few die before 60. However late in life i switch to herbalist lifestyle, and use physician. So player agency is in play.
But same goes to other kings, they live long. Maybe there could be like higher chance of sickness for elders, or expected lifespan could rise over ears. So people will die faster in tribal age.

There is a problem with long lifespan, that every king is perfect, so there is less chaos creating interesting situation. Also means that kingdoms are extra stable.

Bad idea: Each child has rather hight chance of getting child disease, which generally could be cured but with different effects. Sometimes scars from childdisease could be stronger. So There will be random factor changing base health of each character. Some will be sicken from childhood, and that would be more common.

 

[SonofWinter]

I disagree with you. Not on a personal level but on a game mechanics level and a historical level.

I'll explain, please don't feel that this is an attack on you, since I think this game realistically representation of nobles back then.

Peasants starve, malnutrition and disease walked hand-in-hand. Nobles, as you may have already surmised, were the last people to go hungry. Barons, then Counts, Dukes, Kings and Emperors, in that order.

So dying from a disease due to a weakened immune system due to malnutrition, was rare for the nobility add to this, the fact that they actually had access to medical professionals, who did study the Classics in Greek and in Latin. You and me, we'd get to eat mud pies and tree bark jerky, we would probably not see 50. But the Count, the Duke and the King... well, "it's good to be rich" is a saying for a reason.

Next, the game has to adjust for the mores of modern life. You can't have 13 year olds getting married, pregnant and having kids because... well, you know. So they had to extend everyone's lifespan by 3 years.

So while I agree on your most basic stipulations, I think you need to discern between the lifespan of a noble vs. a peasant, first.

 

[MatthewP]

I disagree with you. Not on a personal level but on a game mechanics level and a historical level.

I'll explain, please don't feel that this is an attack on you, since I think this game realistically representation of nobles back then.

Peasants starve, malnutrition and disease walked hand-in-hand. Nobles, as you may have already surmised, were the last people to go hungry. Barons, then Counts, Dukes, Kings and Emperors, in that order.

So dying from a disease due to a weakened immune system due to malnutrition, was rare for the nobility add to this, the fact that they actually had access to medical professionals, who did study the Classics in Greek and in Latin. You and me, we'd get to eat mud pies and tree bark jerky, we would probably not see 50. But the Count, the Duke and the King... well, "it's good to be rich" is a saying for a reason.

Next, the game has to adjust for the mores of modern life. You can't have 13 year olds getting married, pregnant and having kids because... well, you know. So they had to extend everyone's lifespan by 3 years.

So while I agree on your most basic stipulations, I think you need to discern between the lifespan of a noble vs. a peasant, first.

There’s an analysis of the ages of kings of France earlier in the thread. Of course nobles lived longer and it was no shock to see someone in their fifties or even sixties, but there were many more common causes of early death even for the high nobility than the game portrays.

 

[SonofWinter]

There’s an analysis of the ages of kings of France earlier in the thread. Of course nobles lived longer and it was no shock to see someone in their fifties or even sixties, but there were many more common causes of early death even for the high nobility than the game portrays.

Sure, but like someone else already pointed out, none of us want to watch kids die every other year (or maybe I should just speak for myself) I don't want to watch kids die every game year.

So rather than 50% of the kids dying, they reduced the fertility rates. Which is why most nobles have 3-4 kids and not 12-14.

The average life expectancy of people who lived past 4 years old and had normal nutrition, was not all that much different from ours. Actually, they were less likely to die from heart attacks, diabetes, etc... Even nobles, were rarely fat. That's why fat people were called 'the Fat' because it was highly unusual.

I believe the game represents the life expectancy of nobles, who lived past childhood, fairly well.

 

[MatthewP]

Sure, but like someone else already pointed out, none of us want to watch kids die every other year (or maybe I should just speak for myself) I don't want to watch kids die every game year.

So rather than 50% of the kids dying, they reduced the fertility rates. Which is why most nobles have 3-4 kids and not 12-14.

The average life expectancy of people who lived past 4 years old and had normal nutrition, was not all that much different from ours. Actually, they were less likely to die from heart attacks, diabetes, etc... Even nobles, were rarely fat. That's why fat people were called 'the Fat' because it was highly unusual.

I believe the game represents the life expectancy of nobles, who lived past childhood, fairly well.

The kings of France list includes only one child death. It is therefore evidence that you’re wrong about lifespans. Do you have stronger evidence that you’re right?

 

[SonofWinter]

The kings of France list includes only one child death. It is therefore evidence that you’re wrong about lifespans. Do you have stronger evidence that you’re right?

I'm not bored enough to argue semantics or split hairs. Have a nice day.

 

[MatthewP]

I'm not bored enough to argue semantics or split hairs. Have a nice day.

Me neither, so I’m glad you decided not to start. Enjoy yours as well

 

[WeeLittleSpoon]

I disagree with you. Not on a personal level but on a game mechanics level and a historical level.

I'll explain, please don't feel that this is an attack on you, since I think this game realistically representation of nobles back then.

Peasants starve, malnutrition and disease walked hand-in-hand. Nobles, as you may have already surmised, were the last people to go hungry. Barons, then Counts, Dukes, Kings and Emperors, in that order.

So dying from a disease due to a weakened immune system due to malnutrition, was rare for the nobility add to this, the fact that they actually had access to medical professionals, who did study the Classics in Greek and in Latin. You and me, we'd get to eat mud pies and tree bark jerky, we would probably not see 50. But the Count, the Duke and the King... well, "it's good to be rich" is a saying for a reason.

Next, the game has to adjust for the mores of modern life. You can't have 13 year olds getting married, pregnant and having kids because... well, you know. So they had to extend everyone's lifespan by 3 years.

So while I agree on your most basic stipulations, I think you need to discern between the lifespan of a noble vs. a peasant, first.

I happened to be on Wikipedia the other night and read that Edward the Black Prince died of dysentery, and though he was never king, I decided to go back through a few of the preceeding kings of England and look at their historical cause of death (though it's hardly an exhaustive survey of a population).

Name	Age	Cause of Death
Harold	44	Killed in battle
William the Conqueror	59	"fell ill or injured by the pommel of his saddle"
William II	43-44	Hunting accident
Henry I	66-67	Ate too many lampreys
Stephen	57-62	Stomach disease
Henry II	56	Bleeding ulcer
Richard I	41	Wound that turned gangrenous
John	49	Dysentery
Edward I	68	Dysentery
Eward II	43	Died suspiciously in captivity
Edward III	64	Fell ill with large abscess
Edward the Black Prince	45	Dysentery

I think this bears out that there's some truth to what you're saying, that the people who controlled the wealth and resources of the land were the most likely to benefit from those same resources, and these people do have a mean age of about 53, which lives up to around the historical mortality rate of the time (which was about 55, according to Wikipedia, if you don't factor in child mortality). However I think this list also shows that living during this time period was pretty precarious. I don't think it's unusual that almost all of these people died from health problems, but still of the six people here who died in their forties, three died from some manner of disease or infection.

It's not a deep dive into historical causes of death, but I think that this list provides some insight that it's not only about having ready access to food and proper nutrients that keeps one healthy (and in fact, if your doctor tells you to stop eating eels, you should probably do that), but also the hygiene, available medical knowledge and practices, and just general luck all played a part in whether or not people died. Even as kings (and one heir), three of these guys still died from dysentery like a layman on the Oregon trail.

I think you're right that concessions have to be made for video games, but I also feel like my characters are living easily into their late sixties or seventies more often than not. I don't think we need to see people dying in their twenties of a surfeit of eels, but I do think that the world isn't as dangerous as it was in real life, and the life expectancy is a bit too high as it is.

EDIT: Oh, I didn't see Ezumiyr already had this same thought, but better. Well, more of the same then.

 

[SonofWinter]

I happened to be on Wikipedia the other night and read that Edward the Black Prince died of dysentery, and though he was never king, I decided to go back through a few of the preceeding kings of England and look at their historical cause of death (though it's hardly an exhaustive survey of a population).

Name	Age	Cause of Death
Harold	44	Killed in battle
William the Conqueror	59	"fell ill or injured by the pommel of his saddle"
William II	43-44	Hunting accident
Henry I	66-67	Ate too many lampreys
Stephen	57-62	Stomach disease
Henry II	56	Bleeding ulcer
Richard I	41	Wound that turned gangrenous
John	49	Dysentery
Edward I	68	Dysentery
Eward II	43	Died suspiciously in captivity
Edward III	64	Fell ill with large abscess
Edward the Black Prince	45	Dysentery

I think this bears out that there's some truth to what you're saying, that the people who controlled the wealth and resources of the land were the most likely to benefit from those same resources, and these people do have a mean age of about 53, which lives up to around the historical mortality rate of the time (which was about 55, according to Wikipedia, if you don't factor in child mortality). However I think this list also shows that living during this time period was pretty precarious. I don't think it's unusual that almost all of these people died from health problems, but still of the six people here who died in their forties, three died from some manner of disease or infection.

It's not a deep dive into historical causes of death, but I think that this list provides some insight that it's not only about having ready access to food and proper nutrients that keeps one healthy (and in fact, if your doctor tells you to stop eating eels, you should probably do that), but also the hygiene, available medical knowledge and practices, and just general luck all played a part in whether or not people died. Even as kings (and one heir), three of these guys still died from dysentery like a layman on the Oregon trail.

I think you're right that concessions have to be made for video games, but I also feel like my characters are living easily into their late sixties or seventies more often than not. I don't think we need to see people dying in their twenties of a surfeit of eels, but I do think that the world isn't as dangerous as it was in real life, and the life expectancy is a bit too high as it is.

EDIT: Oh, I didn't see Ezumiyr already had this same thought, but better. Well, more of the same then.

So, before we go any further, how many of those dysentery events were due to being 'on Campaign' eating questionable food from questionable sources?

I went to Peru last month, I had the ships for 3 days there, when I came back and had the ships for 35+ hours, I had to go to Urgent Care and get anti-biotics. Eating strange food, away from home, can have a detrimental effect on your life expectancy, especially past 45.

So... dysentery and suspicious captivity is the unnatural death. If your King/Duke/Count is doing dangerous stuff like leading any army, they you should die on campaign. Most if not all of my Kings are homebodies, with high Learning. I expect them to live a long time, while their generals... don't.

 

[X_FloW]

So, before we go any further, how many of those dysentery events were due to being 'on Campaign' eating questionable food from questionable sources?

I went to Peru last month, I had the ships for 3 days there, when I came back and had the ships for 35+ hours, I had to go to Urgent Care and get anti-biotics. Eating strange food, away from home, can have a detrimental effect on your life expectancy, especially past 45.

So... dysentery and suspicious captivity is the unnatural death. If your King/Duke/Count is doing dangerous stuff like leading any army, they you should die on campaign. Most if not all of my Kings are homebodies, with high Learning. I expect them to live a long time, while their generals... don't.

Things were different in the middle ages, kings usually went to battle, so it'd be a nice addition for CK3 to add high disease rate when commanding (or being a knight, hopefully)

However, you also have to take into consideration other transmitted diseases, kings and dukes meet nobles, nobles meet people who may have contact with peasants, whom may be ill with an infectious diseases. Also being a king doesn't mean the food is always good, there is risk of infestation, food going bad etc, since there were no fridges or other means of modern preservation.

That aside, there is also a risk of strokes, heart attacks and other life threatening emergencies due to an inactive lifestyle or high stress or whatever, and especially drunkards shouldn't be able to hit above 45 in my opinion.

 

[Slow Bathroom]

I remember I had a ruler in CK2 that had really good traits and I had high hopes for but he ended up getting incapacitated while leading a battle when he was like 20. It was very tragic and memorable. I don't remember any of my CK3 rulers, they are all really good and nothing ever happens to them.

 

[Niall9]

I think the main issue is not how long people live but how predictable their deaths are.

Both from the sense that 90% of my rulers die between 60 and 70 so easy to prepare in those years.

But also that I know my current characters state of healthiness at all points so know when he is likely to drop dead. Personally would prefer to remove the information shown on how well you are and only reveal it with perks from learning tree.

 

[La Clef]

I think the main issue is not how long people live but how predictable their deaths are.

I completely agree. Life expectancy and the causes of death in the Middle Ages are interesting topics in themselves, but the problem is rather what is fun in the game and what is not.
In this respect, I agree with what was said before: our character's life expectancy is currently too predictable, surprises are too rare, physicians are too efficient so that we don't really care about diseases. And that tends to make some of the game boring because long reigns over and over again are boring: at the end of a reign, there's not much going on in the kingdom and it's not time for a big project because you know the end is near. So you get bored by letting time pass and either hope that your character will die soon (which is strange, to say the least), or you act to make him die (which is even more strange in terms of gameplay).

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I completely agree, but it's not a good idea to include it in the game from a business perspective. Some people, and more importantly new players, are just going to get angry that their character suddenly died and ruined their plans or destabilized their realm. Just look at what the devs have done so far, they've mainly given players more boosts, not constraints. It doesn't seem likely that they're going to add anything that might make the game more difficult.

Maybe they'll add it in as part of the difficulty settings, but it looks more like they'll ignore this problem and forget it exists until much later during the game's development.

This is why ck3 is worse than 2 in my view, there's too many buffs which are easy to get and easy to stack
Yes you could always do eugenics in 2 but didn't have it made easier by bloodlines reducing incest traits and increasing eugenic traits being passed on
High learning physicians were also harder to get as tribal in 2, so tribal realms were less stable due to their more frequent partition

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

I completely agree, but it's not a good idea to include it in the game from a business perspective. Some people, and more importantly new players, are just going to get angry that their character suddenly died and ruined their plans or destabilized their realm. Just look at what the devs have done so far, they've mainly given players more boosts, not constraints. It doesn't seem likely that they're going to add anything that might make the game more difficult.

Maybe they'll add it in as part of the difficulty settings, but it looks more like they'll ignore this problem and forget it exists until much later during the game's development.

People bought and played Oregon Trail. I'm not sure anyone ever actually won that game. But it defined a generation.

 

[WeeLittleSpoon]

People bought and played Oregon Trail. I'm not sure anyone ever actually won that game. But it defined a generation.

I agree with this sentiment, and I think bad stuff happening is way more interesting than good stuff in games like these. Like La Clef said, the most important thing is what's fun, and I wouldn't want to play a game that's all misery all the time, but voltality creates conflict, and that's where I think the fun of Crusader Kings lies. If a fundamental pillar of the game is to create player stories that are relevant, impactful and immersive, thenhaving a reliably good chance of dying of old age is letting that down.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

I agree with this sentiment, and I think bad stuff happening is way more interesting than good stuff in games like these. Like La Clef said, the most important thing is what's fun, and I wouldn't want to play a game that's all misery all the time, but voltality creates conflict, and that's where I think the fun of Crusader Kings lies. If a fundamental pillar of the game is to create player stories that are relevant, impactful and immersive, thenhaving a reliably good chance of dying of old age is letting that down.

Yep. Also, if there is a path of recovery, misery isn't so bad. It's when players are punished for no clear reason and can't eventually recover that it truly becomes unfun.

If I lose a war because allies choose to fight some other dumbass war, withdraw troops right as I'm at 97% warscore, that's unnecessary misery with no real recovery option (there's no lever in the game to convince their armies to stick around, or to punish them for fufking me over).

But it kids die because thats what tends to happen with kids and I need to plan accordingly, or the game provides me levers to pick heirs, then its manageable misery and that is still fun.

I also play factorio and it has a good system for misery management. You start out with no automation and you have to craft and carry stuff around manually. No fun. So you are encouraged to automate. Now things are better, but they don't scale or you run out of resources or biter attacks get more intense. But the game gives you tools over time to counter these things. New problems arise and new solutions appear. It can be really frustrating and you can definitely build yourself into a corner, but with time and ingenuity, you can fix your misery. The game even guides you to the fixes.

I'd love to see that kind of mindset with these games. Things should suck sometimes, but that should present a challenge that, with strategy and planning, or some quick ingenuity, results in overcoming the challenge. That is what makes games actually fun.

 

[King Jong Un]

We probably should take the action of human player into consideration. If human player protect their kings well from assasination, prevent sending them to battlefield and give them good medical care, 60~70 year old doesn't sounds too crazy. Outside of human player's realm there's a lot of death due to disease, war and assasination but we rarely pay attention to AI charaters.

I think this is actually part of the issue. As the human player you can freely choose any lifestyle perks regardless of their stats/personality traits.

This means, for example, if my ruler seems like someone with decent stats, reasonable traits etc I can go down the Learning tree, take the perks for all the health/disease resistrance boosts I can get and know I have a very high likelihood of my ruler hitting 70-80 years old. With that extra life span I can then fill out other perks from different lifestyle trees as I feel like it.

There is only a small boost to a lifestyle tree depending on your rulers traits and nothing else. I think changing this so there are seriously large penalties to the amount of lifestyle points if you focus down some trees depending on your rulers personality. So for example if a ruler has martial personality they might get a boost for focusing the martial lifestyle but a serisously negative impact on say diplomacy and learning trees if they focus them.

I also think there should be stress gain for picking the "wrong" tree. That way stress actually means something.

It would still allow you to go down the Learning tree and potentially live a longer life even if your ruler finds it very stressful to focus on such a lifestyle - its just that it will come at a big detriment to the other perks you could have taken and your rulers life wont be as productive.

It also would give rulers some personality due to the way they live their life and how it affects them.

Finally it would add some challenge to the game because the AI already players like this. If it has a diplomatic personality it almost always goes down the diplomatic tree. The player is not restricted like the AI so can always pick the best perks for the job, regardless of how your ruler's personality is. It would bring the player down to the AI's level.