CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

[BlackPrince]

More space for Traits and Character Modifiers

I expect this to come with some new traits. Not asking for +100 traits like some mods do. I will be happy with less of them but fleshed out. Make all traits having pros and cons, so taking Arbitrary would actually give you "anything".

Prisoner management

Adjusting ransom values maybe, please? It's not fun to capture Bishop of Cluny who has 50k gold and then ransom him for 25 gold. Instead make something like:

Base value(25 for bishop), if target has more gold than base value then add 10% of owned money over the base. Then we could get 25+4997=5022 gold for a Cluny Rockefeller.

 

[Jorlem]

I expect this to come with some new traits. Not asking for +100 traits like some mods do. I will be happy with less of them but fleshed out. Make all traits having pros and cons, so taking Arbitrary would actually give you "anything".

I haven't gotten around to updating my trait mod for 2.6 yet (waiting for 2.6.2 to be finalized before I dive in), but perhaps it could be mined for ideas on how traits might be fleshed out? I made the mod as a proof of concept for a suggestion thread, after all.

 

[MGoods]

I'd love two things in particular.

First, the ability to save filter configurations in the find character interface as custom named presets, ie whenever I'm looking to grant land I want a male of my culture, my religion, not a ruler, etc, having to click through all of the options if I've used the find character interface since I last did it gets tedious fast.

Second, a checkbox next to minor decisions that causes one of those little circles to appear at the top of the screen when you can do it (just like when a major decision can be clicked), specifically I want it for feasts/fairs (when I'm after specific traits) but it'd probably be useful for other things too (like reminding you to invite the jews back when it's available)

Oh, and it'd be great if I could set a custom popup and pause message for a specific date with a custom message, that way I can set reminders like "Your first son is fourteen and a half years old, click the button to introduce him to the realm and choose another guardian with over 10 in two stats so that he might get ambitious, patient or the other one from that education event" (well, the actual message would be, "your son is 14.5 years old" because I know why that's important to me) or "tryanny just wore off, you can now revoke something else" or "you can reset your wol focus"

 

[Fitzjacob]

I have been playing this game since release and I never saw it......

See the encircled button.
The screenshot serves a second purpose of pointing out that the warning texts when declaring war needs more room. And perhaps a new paragraph for each separate warning.

 

[eduardens]

When asking for support from a counsillor, knowing why or which favor is preventing them from supporting you, not just that a favor is influencing that counsillor. Also would be great when you conquer new territories like a list on the map where to choose first from characters from your religious group and culture by default.
Finally a way better differenciate the important minor titles like regent, court fistian and commander, from the others.

 

[Mikaa]

View attachment 208183
See the encircled button.
The screenshot serves a second purpose of pointing out that the warning texts when declaring war needs more room. And perhaps a new paragraph for each separate warning.

Thanks for pointing this out, I guess I have just been blind all this time

 

[iron0037]

I'd love two things in particular.

First, the ability to save filter configurations in the find character interface as custom named presets, ie whenever I'm looking to grant land I want a male of my culture, my religion, not a ruler, etc, having to click through all of the options if I've used the find character interface since I last did it gets tedious fast.

That's a great idea! I would love the ability to save custom filter patterns. I'd have one for "potential vassals," "eligible women," "commanders to invite," "courtiers to jettison," etc.

 

[_Perun_]

Hey,
In the character search window there are only green and red "hands" while it would be nice to have a yellow one as well, similarly to "invite to plot" window. It would come handy especially for those playthroughs that has diplomatic range turned off and enhanced invitations on.

 

[Zoston]

When you raise your demesne troops from the military screen, it doesn't raise your baron vassals. This is very inconvenient, since you generally don't give a hoot about barony vassal opinion. When you're only raising demesne it's usually because you don't want to raise duke vassals, but the way it is now I still find myself manually clicking on demesne provinces since that's the only way to get those baron vassals too.

 

[Sweordweras]

I'd really like a "Load Game" button for the main menu during a game in progress. Resigning and then clicking through the "Game Over!" screen and the following menus takes a long time. I realize this is not a simple UI change and that the functionality is likely to be more complex, but still!

Oh and a "reroll" button when naming your child would be great. If you don't like the suggested name, you have to open the culture file to get other suggestions. People have asked for this for years.

Also this!

 

[Jorlem]

When you raise your demesne troops from the military screen, it doesn't raise your baron vassals. This is very inconvenient, since you generally don't give a hoot about barony vassal opinion. When you're only raising demesne it's usually because you don't want to raise duke vassals, but the way it is now I still find myself manually clicking on demesne provinces since that's the only way to get those baron vassals too.

Your troops are raised with full morale, and vassal troops, including said barons, are not. If I need to grab my demesne troops, I usually want to be able to use them ASAP, instead of waiting for the average morale to hit 100%.

 

[Dragatus]

When I'm arranging a betrothal I often want to check the child's guardian to see what sort of education they are getting (don't have Conclave), however this closes the window that lists potential betrothal partners.

Related to the previous point, right-clicking a character's portrait does not always bring up their character info. More consistency would be good.

It would be nice if the realm size indicator listed both the number of provinces and the number of holdings.

If a character has extra titles of the same rank as their primary title and you have a claim to their primary title the interface will show that if you press said claim you will get the de facto territory of their primary tile, but in truth you only get the de jure territory.

It would be nice to have a button to re-roll a random name for a new child if you're unsatisfied with the one the game offers.

In the plot selection menu several plots are grayed out, but the game gives no feedback why that is.

It would be handy if honorary titles and commanders were split into two different tabs.

In the character finder I would like to be able to filter out any characters outside of diplomatic range as well a characters that won't accept invitation to my court. This is low priority since there are icons that show whether they are in range and will accept, but it would be nice to have.

Sometimes I want to search for characters of a specific culture or religion that doesn't match mine. There are currently no filters for that.

I also sometimes want to search for characters of my dynasty, which can be done by sorting by dynasty, but is a little awkward. Especially when the dynasty grows large and I want to rank them by other factors too. It would be nice if "my dynasty" and "not my dynasty" would be added as options to the Great House filter.

A way to separate vassal and demesne levies would be useful. Add them as options to the button that lets you separate mercenaries and retinues from the army.

 

[SlyEcho]

Decisions list should contain things that you only rarely need to access. All of these things should be removed from this list:

1. Open/shut gates
2. Borrow money from the Jews.
3. Change religions/patron deity etc. This should be in the religion screen. Except maybe the decision to convert to attacker's religion, since this is a desperate move.
4. Convert culture.
5. Go on a hunt/hold a festival. I feel like these should be handled using a different system, especially because they usually depend on the time of year. Maybe an event that pops up occasionally at the appropriate time in the calendar.
6. Create courtier. Yes, sometimes it's hard to find good characters to marry etc. but that should be part of the challenge when you pick for example a smaller religion that doesn't have that many marriageable women. The game generates random characters anyway so the player can choose to use them. This should also apply for the guru and court physician.

Vassal and court lists should be the same kind of lists that are in character finder and other places where you can see all the stats and traits and also sort and filter them.

Take out the budget screen from the title view. It belongs in a dedicated place.

There's a whole tab for your vassals' levies but no screen to see overview/composition for your own levies.

As others have pointed out, granting titles could use some work.

Notifications are annoying. It requires you to periodially clean up but at the same time if you dismiss something important it is gone forever. I think something like a list would be better. There should be no need to dismiss them, and there should be no number of them "unread". Maybe they could disappear after some time has passed. In some ways it would be like the log, but better.

Way to see who the plot target is. The tooltip on the character screen for the plot icon gives the name of the person that they are plotting to kill, clicking on it should select that character.

There is currently no way to see laws of kingdoms other than the one you're in. It should show the laws somewhere in each title's screen.

Show the holding ruler characters in the county view. It can just be a small portrait overlaid on the holding icon, or if the county owner owns it, no portrait.

 

[zebez]

Decisions - there's too little room for them.

For now you can use this mod. It's a little more room for them.
BiggerDecisionWindow

 

[Yeekim]

When I mouse over a title, I get to see a list of names of who stands to inherit that title first, second, etc.
Sadly, it is just a non-interactive list of names and if I want to see whether one of these might be available for marriage, I´ll have to track them down in a character finder... you see where this is going

 

[Darkrenown]

"My Dynasty" is already a filter, isn't it?

 

[Aoki4444]

Overall technology level mapmode. Please!

 

[Haldan]

Give us a better info screen/UI/whoteva for your own Mercenary Company.

 

[Keizer Harm]

Regarding information I'd like a simple way to see a foreign realm's laws. Before Conclave you used to be able to know what crown authority level they were at but now I don't think it's even possible to see whether they allow external inheritance for instance.

You still can. Use the de jure kingdoms map mode, and hover over the kingdom you want: the tooltip tells you whether they have regulated inheritance or not, for example. That's how it used to be before Conclave too iirc

 

[GinjaNinja32]

Spoiler: quotes!

Giving out land to vassals!

When giving out titles, I wish I could click on a barony or province and have an icon there that allows me to select from people in my court or otherwise eligible -- there exists for baronies a button to create a new vassal, but that isn't usually what I want to do.
Constantly having to click on my portrait and then traverse the court or dynasty screen to find the right person, then choose from a text list of titles is frustrating when there are a lot of titles to hand out, and works in the opposite way of how I would want to do it.
Working from the map would be so much easier.

Handing out titles really needs to be improved, yes. I'd like a create new vassal on county level that immediately also creates a new vassal for all baronies. That would really decrease the number of clicks. Being able to select several counties at the same time would also be great, allowing you to hand the off at the same time without having to hand out full duchies (using the include lower level title option). A decision to create new vassals for all recently gained baronies (after a Crusade, perhaps) would also be good.
An option for nomads to create a new clan and giving the new clan all the land held by the clan that recently died out would be really useful. Perhaps even a new map mode where you can add and remove provinces to custom regions (similar to how HQ worked in HoI3) that can easily be handed off at once (i.e. grant all titles held in region x)

On the grant landed title interaction, it would be grand if we could hold down shift and choose more than one title at a time. It would be even grander if you could select a title from the map!

+1 to all of these, and a couple of additional requests: that the grant-landed-title window should be larger (currently you can only see 4 (might be 5?) titles at once, it'd be nice to see, say, 10), and sorted into title rank then alphabetical order, rather than title rank then... order obtained in? I have no idea what the ordering is currently, but it's not obvious and I end up scrolling through the whole list to find the particular title I want to hand out, which gets annoying in a large nomad realm where you might be holding a lot of counties in your demesne while you pillage them.