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CK2 Dev Diary #31: Back to work

Hello all! As some of you may know, Paradox spent the last 4 days in Malta and now we are back in Stockholm exhausted refreshed and re-energised, and ready to get back to work! Speaking of work, the topic of this Diary is the new Council jobs we are adding in the upcoming <Mystery> expansion. These are not quite like earlier jobs the Council could do though, because (with one exception) these are “off-map” jobs - you do not need to place the Councilor in a specific province to perform them.
council 1.jpg

please excuse the lack of unique art for the new jobs, it will be there

Chancellor - Perform Statecraft. This job increases the speed at which your Threat decays, and can fire events which improve relations with random vassals, neighbours, or your liege if you have one. If you have a specific character you want better relations with, the Improve Diplomatic Relations job will be more useful, but for general improvements Statecraft should be your choice.

Marshal - Organize the Army. This job lowers the upkeep cost of your Retinue (Or Horde), and can fire events to train existing or find new commanders.

Steward - Administer Realm. This job increases the speed of Cultural conversion in your realm’s provinces, and can fire events adding economic bonuses to any province. If you own Reaper’s Due, Prosperity throughout the Realm will also increase faster.

Spymaster - Sabotage. This is the exception I mentioned earlier. For owners of the <Mystery> expansion, the existing Scheme job will become “off-map” (if you don’t own it, Scheme will remain unchanged) and a new Sabotage job will be available for use on specific provinces. These provinces will suffer damage, gain unrest, and may even be made easier to siege due to sabotage and bribery.

Court Chaplain - Hunt Heretics. This job enables the Court Chaplain to hunt for members of shadowy cabals who plot against God and man alike.

And while I’m here and talking about the Council, let me mention something we’ve added for the 2.7 patch. When trying to have my Council agree to a vote with Conclave, it always bugged me that I would need to check in the tooltip of the law who was for and against it, then switch to the Council screen to bribe and cajole people, then check the law screen again to see who I had forgotten about. Instead, now you can ask that the Council considers a vote before you actually vote on it, which allows it to be shown on the Council screen along with icons on each Councilor showing how they will vote.
council2.jpg
council3.jpg

While it’s not in yet, we hope to add a button right there to start the voting process so that you don’t need to switch back to the laws tab once you have your votes arranged.


Don't forget to tune in to our Medieval Monday stream with Emil and Steven, starting at 16:00CET on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive.

The stream will, as always, be available to watch later through either the Twitch VOD archive. Or through our Paradox Extra Youtube channel where you can find (pretty much) all our previous streams!
 
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Some good quality of life updates. Nice :)
 
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Funny I was about to suggest additional councilor jobs a while ago, never ended up writing the suggestion down though and now I can't quite remember, but the idea was to split crown focus up into 5 new council jobs each taking (and replacing) part of what crown focus does, for an example the court chaplain could help stave of disease.

I like the idea to give more options to the councillors, but I find your options pretty meh. Not bad mind you just not very interesting, to much more of the same threat reduction is just more blobbing, game's got plenty of that, organize army is just more gold game's got plenty of that too. And worst of all the faster culture conversion thing. It's already pretty fast as it is even with the slower culture conversion game rule on, when will you drop the foolish notion of culture map painting? All it does is reduce the game, make it more homogeneous less complex less interesting as time passes. Now if you want to add a way for cultures to branch out I would love to see it but fewer larger cultures, no thank you.

Sabotage seems reasonably interesting if it's event driven rather than just something that fires at random and does something random, and if it can do meaningful damage.
And the heretic thing is hard to tell since you haven't said what that system is about yet.
 
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These are all exciting changes, although I am wondering about Scheme. Scheme has always been one of the primary ways we discourage vassals from participating in factions. With Scheme being made an "off-map" action how will that part work? Will it discourage random vassals around the map from entering into factions? It seems as though it will be somewhat nerfed in any case just because we can't target the most powerful members of a faction anymore.
 
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Perform Statecraft sounds ultra-useful. Administer Realm sounds overpowered. The council thing sounds convenient. Interested!
 
Please, please tell me that "increased cultural conversion" indicates that cultural conversion will be slowed substantially from current rates in a future patch or in the Mystery DLC?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-some-cultures-are-endangered-species.971726/

I suggested in the above thread that cultural spread be established as an council option instead of something that happens automatically. I'm not thrilled at the idea that it would simply be sped up from current rates, which are already too fast, even with the options enabled. On the other side of this, if the Mystery DLC involves substantial changes to culture mechanics I will happily sacrifice four Danes in Paradox's name at the yearly blot.
 
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If councilor on off-map job add some points to appropriate realm ratings it would be nice. (Like wife. :) )
I.e. steward on Administer Realm could add some points to steawdship rating (so could increase demesne) or chancellor some adding to vassal limit.
 
We have always wanted more councilor jobs.

Will the new off map scheme still be geared toward rooting out plots against me? Or has that perhaps been moved somewhere.

The real question though is to what end will heretics be hunted?

To remove them, or to join them?
 
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Not bad at all, Paradox. I could definitely see using some of these new jobs and with the Chancellor especially, I find if I'm not fabricating a claim I usually aren't doing anything with them at all.
 
These are all exciting changes, although I am wondering about Scheme. Scheme has always been one of the primary ways we discourage vassals from participating in factions. With Scheme being made an "off-map" action how will that part work? Will it discourage random vassals around the map from entering into factions? It seems as though it will be somewhat nerfed in any case just because we can't target the most powerful members of a faction anymore.

I hadn't thought of that it is a concern.

My first concern was how will I be able to detect plots against my own person after this?

They could imply put both of these things into another action like build spy network.
 
Would you consider reviewing the existing jobs at the same time, and adding some helpful hints to their descriptions?

Chancellor - I often use "Improve Diplomatic Relations" and "Fabricate Claims" but haven't used "Sow Dissent". It would be helpful if you could use it on a rival king's capital, and have it trigger events against their random vassals (a good chancellor should increase the chances of relationship-damaging events on powerful vassals as opposed to some nobody).

Marshal - Does anyone use "Suppress Revolts"? It feels underpowered compared to the other two. Perhaps it should be off-map as well, to suppress revolts in all provinces? It still won't be as powerful as training own troops (since, well, an increase in personal levy helps not just against revolts, but also rebel vassals and external threats), so perhaps make it so it is more useful if your Marshal is relatively un-skilled (i.e. higher floor, but lower cap for effect)?

Steward - I often use "Collect Taxes" and "Spread Economy Tech", but "Oversee Construction" seems largely useless by comparison. The new "Administer Realm" option does feel like a good replacement for it, but that means that stewards still only have three useful jobs, rather than four.

Spymaster - a good selection of jobs, and "Sabotage" should make a nice addition.

Court Chaplain - another good selection of jobs.
 
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Would you consider reviewing the existing jobs at the same time, and adding some helpful hints to their descriptions?

Chancellor - I often use "Improve Diplomatic Relations" and "Fabricate Claims" but haven't used "Sow Dissent". It would be helpful if you could use it on a rival king's capital, and have it trigger events against their random vassals (a good chancellor should increase the chances of relationship-damaging events on powerful vassals as opposed to some nobody).

Marshal - Does anyone use "Suppress Revolts"? It feels underpowered compared to the other two. Perhaps it should be off-map as well, to suppress revolts in all provinces? It still won't be as powerful as training own troops (since, well, an increase in personal levy helps not just against revolts, but also rebel vassals and external threats), so perhaps make it so it is more useful if your Marshal is relatively un-skilled (i.e. higher floor, but lower cap for effect)?

Steward - I often use "Collect Taxes" and "Spread Economy Tech", but "Oversee Construction" seems largely useless by comparison. The new "Administer Realm" option does feel like a good replacement for it, but that means that stewards still only have three useful jobs, rather than four.

Spymaster - a good selection of jobs, and "Sabotage" should make a nice addition.

Court Chaplain - another good selection of jobs.

I agree with Sow Dissent. I like the idea of being able to sow dissent in powerful realms, but the execution of it is terrible.

I use suppress revolts sometimes to pump up arrest chance, but other than that not really.
 
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