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CK2 Dev Diary #32: Intriguing quality of life changes

Good afternoon. I’m Magne Skjæran, and you might remember me from my modding and optimization dev diary at the end of summer. My last day at Paradox was a few days after that, but since I had a great time working there this summer, I returned to the CK2 team about a month ago to work on the game part-time.
Today I will be covering a topic that’s been briefly mentioned earlier in the Easing Executions dev diary: quality of life changes in regards to the intrigue screen and plotting.

While the image shown in that dev diary was a mockup, the planned changes have now been implemented. However, the actual art isn’t done yet, so most images in this dev diary are touched up based on mockups rather than showing my programmer art. There is after all a reason I work as a programmer rather than an artist.

So let’s go through all the changes we’ve made to the Intrigue screen in detail:
upload_2016-11-28_14-56-40.png

I’ve numbered the changed aspects.

First, at #1, we’ve got the new decisions menu. It now shows 6 decisions at once rather than the old 4, making it easier to find what you’re looking for.

At #2, you can see that each decision now has a button allowing you to mark it as important or not important, thus allowing you to control which decisions you get alerts for. Marking a decision as important will change the background to gold, enable alerts, and move it to the top of the list. The last bit only happens once you exit and return to the decisions screen, since decisions jumping around when you click on them would be rather annoying.

#3 is a button allowing you to reset the priority settings to default.
What decisions are important is saved across campaigns, so you won’t have to mark decisions as important or not important every single game.

Further, at #4, we have a new tab: My Plots. This mostly just moves the plot functionality out of the way to give more space to the decisions list, but it does have one new addition: you can now clearly see who the target of each backed plot is, shown at #5.

Next, let’s go to the Prisoners screen:
upload_2016-11-28_14-59-28.png

At #1, 2, and 3 you can see the new prisoner mass actions. These allow you to release, ransom, or execute all prisoners currently shown on the screen, except those that have been marked as locked using the button you see at #4.

Further, prisoners can now be filtered by the eight different criteria you see at and below #6. This can then of course be reset back to being unfiltered using the button at #5.
A minor change is that this tab now fits 6 prisoners at once rather than 5.

When using the mass actions you’ll be asked to confirm and told about the ramifications of your actions:
upload_2016-11-28_14-57-29.png

This ensures you’re never caught unawares by tyranny or similar.

Next up, Known Plots:
upload_2016-11-28_14-58-2.png

Here there’s two new additions. At #1, we’ve got a new button that lets you ask the plotter to end their plot, saving you a few clicks.

At #2 we’ve got a new feature: if you know about a plot and you’re in the group of people that’s possible to invite, you can ask to join. The AI will always accept this, while if you’re playing multiplayer the other player can refuse if they want to.

The “auto stop plots” button has also been moved to only show up within this tab.
As to the Threats tab there’s nothing new there except for six threats being shown at once rather than five.

That’s it for the Intrigue screen, but we still have a couple of tidbits related to plotting left.
upload_2016-11-28_14-58-36.png

When invited to a plot you’ll now be able to see who the target is, saving you from having to use the character or title finder in order to figure it out.

Finally, when a plotter tries and fails to kill your spymaster due to them discovering their plot, you now have the option to keep the plot a secret, which is ideal for cases where you would rather join the plot than expose it.

That sums up all the changes we’ve made to make the intrigue aspects of the game simpler to interact with, and providing you the information you need to make decisions. Hopefully you’ve found this dev diary as intriguing to read as it was to write!
 
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@Meneth, On the Decisions screen there's the "Promote Commander" decision? Is that a upcoming feature and if it is, what does it do?
 
On the Backed Plots page, would it be possible to see the strength of your backed plots? If the strength is at 20%, I might not want to join. But if it is at 90%, then I'll probably jump in to bump it over the threshold.
Good idea. I'll note it down. No promises that it'll happen.

@Meneth, On the Decisions screen there's the "Promote Commander" decision? Is that a upcoming feature and if it is, what does it do?
That's an existing decision (it's been around for years. Possibly since release) that generates a character with a martial education.
 
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Honestly as much it could be done with an extra button or two.

Do we really need a mass castrate / blind button? I mean who has the opinion built up or the purpose to blind or castrate more than a few people?
 
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Honestly as much it could be done with an extra button or two.

Do we really need a mass castrate / blind button? I mean who has the opinion built up or the purpose to blind or castrate more than a few people?
Speak for yourself - I had a demon spawn campaign where I ate everybody. Game gets quite easy when everyone has -100 opinion of you :)
 
Quality of life improvements are good, but what's much more important is a) transparency on why certain plots (revoke, murder) are available and others of the same category are not available and b) a way to bring those plots below 100% above it somehow.
 
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Good changes! I presume the is_high_prio modding option will remain, given that it could be used for the default important decisions.
 
One thing I've been asking for for *YEARS* is for when you get the "Legitimate Arrest" Icon. All it tells you is that the vassal "Acted Dishonorably". But it doesn't tell you what the vassal did to earn that Legitimate Arrest Icon.

Call me a Lunatic if you must, but I prefer to know *WHAT* the perp did before I arrest him/her.

Could be some penny ante thing that isn't worth the time or effort.
 
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Any chance to have the same kind of QoL improvements for the character finder tool ?
It would be great to set up your own custom filters, depending on what you are looking for (wife, husband, new vassal... ).
And a reset default button would be nice too, this would also save lots of clicks.
 
Small suggestion for threat page - a button "send money" to vassal (and different icon if I can't do it) - it is easy way to fight big factions, because factions page is overloaded when you have big realm with up-to-limit vassals and they are angry.
 
What about an option to auto-hire next best character for your cabinet and an option to auto-continue mission (research, fabricate claim, train, etc.)?

These could be tick boxes which are optional for those who like to micromanage everything and at the same time it gives an option to those who would rather focus on other parts of the games undistracted by appointing characters.
 
Also, an extended kin notifier would be nice too. Like being able to see your more distant relatives (cousins and such).

Examples: Grandfather's first cousin, Mother's second cousin, Nephew's son, etc.
 
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The ability to join other AI plots is something that was sorely needed. I always wondered why I had to wait for an AI to ask me to join their plot when I already knew it existed! :)
 
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Next, let’s go to the Prisoners screen:
View attachment 221146
At #1, 2, and 3 you can see the new prisoner mass actions. These allow you to release, ransom, or execute all prisoners currently shown on the screen, except those that have been marked as locked using the button you see at #4.

Ok, couple of points
  • I'd have expected the exact oppositeresult of the process if I hadn't been told this. Ticking multiple checkboxes and clicking a button to apply to all of them is something I've seen in UI's for years, this is selecting exceptions and applying a command to the rest.
  • This is only applying to the visible prisoners in the menu, not all the prisoners? That's unintuitive too. I can't think of another program that uses visibility determined by scrollbars to create a working subgroup to apply actions to.
  • This may be a way that requires less clicks to achieve a desired result once it's learned, but isn't an intuitive way of applying an action to a group. This is going to add to the all ready steep learning curve of a complex game in the genre of grand strategy.
Please try and design the UI and actions around habits and assumptions computer users probably already have.
 
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I'd have expected the exact oppositeresult of the process if I hadn't been told this. Ticking multiple checkboxes and clicking a button to apply to all of them is something I've seen in UI's for years, this is selecting exceptions and applying a command to the rest.
Wanting to exclude someone is a less common usecase than wanting to include someone, thus everyone is included by default.

This is only applying to the visible prisoners in the menu, not all the prisoners? That's unintuitive too. I can't think of another program that uses visibility determined by scrollbars to create a working subgroup to apply actions to.
It isn't determined by the scrollbars, of course. By "visible" I mean not filtered out. I should probably have written "listed" instead.
 
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