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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 , Will the new ui changes be fully moddable? Please, no hardcoded positions/offsets.
Moddable to the same extent as the UI normally is, yes. I made sure to not hardcode any of the numbers involved.
 
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Like the character finder, you can currently have it only list people of your dynasty.
It can? The only way I can think of that possibly working is by searching for your dynasty name and I'm not even sure that works, since IIRC search goes for first name and not dynasty name. And anyway there's no search bar in execution.
Setting great house to yes lists all great houses; not just your dynasty. Or has there been added an option under great house to just select your dynasty?
It did during early development, but it was rather horrifying. Now only the first death sound gets played.
Can we get an option to have that back in?
 
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It can? The only way I can think of that possibly working is by searching for your dynasty name and I'm not even sure that works, since IIRC search goes for first name and not dynasty name. And anyway there's no search bar in execution.
Setting great house to yes lists all great houses; not just your dynasty. Or has there been added an option under great house to just select your dynasty?
Yes there is an option under great house for your own dynasty already. Has been there for quite a while.

Searching for the name did work though, the main issues were that some dynasties have names people also do so you would get the odd random character and that some were difficult or even impossible to type.
 
Yes there is an option under great house for your own dynasty already. Has been there for quite a while.
Must have missed it then. Or perhaps I've just not filtered by great house since that was implemented. Since I just remembered it as having yes and no options.
 
Must have missed it then. Or perhaps I've just not filtered by great house since that was implemented. Since I just remembered it as having yes and no options.
I only know because someone mentioned it in the forum a while ago(two months I think?) as already existing for a while since I pretty much never touch that filter.
 
They all play at literally the same time, so you can't even make out the distinct executions.
So probably not.
I'm aware that they play pretty much at the same time. And that actually sounds really despicable and hence fits well with a merciless ruler. You can get a feel of how it'd be already by executing people fast; if you are a fast clicker and use c for confirm you can manage to get many death screams running at the same time. And I don't think it sounds bad. So I would like it in, since as mentioned it fits immersion wise with being a merciless ruler.
 
Looking forward to some nice quality of life stuff. Glad to have you back on the team over there.
 
They all play at literally the same time, so you can't even make out the distinct executions.
So probably not.

How about simply making any mass execution use 2-3 instances of the same death sound with a small pause between each one so that they overlap. Thus executing two or twenty would yield the same wail of overlapping 2-3 death sounds.
 
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How about simply making any mass execution use 2-3 instances of the same death sound with a small pause between each one so that they overlap. Thus executing two or twenty would yield the same wail of overlapping 2-3 death sounds.
Would require quite a lot of code changes compared the benefit, as currently death sounds are tied to the actual death themselves; they happen as part of the actual death itself rather than being queued up in any way.
 
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1. Will we finally have a way to tell how many years are left until we can use the 10 year cooldown decisions?

2. can we make plots on the character screen linkable? so we click on the spot next to ambitions and focus and itll redirect us to the target of the plot?
 
How about simply making any mass execution use 2-3 instances of the same death sound with a small pause between each one so that they overlap. Thus executing two or twenty would yield the same wail of overlapping 2-3 death sounds.

It isn't worth it If it costs time and resources and code changes just for what an elaborate death sounds queue?

Will mass execution make all prisoners scream at the same time? New death sounds are so good :D

It did during early development, but it was rather horrifying. Now only the first death sound gets played.

This however, the horrifying raw mass of sound effects in unison now that I wouldn't mind having an option to hear.

But only if it was easy I simply don't consider it important enough to devote that much time to.
 
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Amazing changes!!! Thanks so much!

A few quick extras that a few of us (mostly me) are just dying for if you could:

1) Some sort of ability to 'pardon' a person with whom you have righteous imprisonment. Sometimes I don't want to put my best friend in jail. The issue is that if i don't act on it, I won't get a new alert when someone else does something 'bad'. If I disable the alert, same problem.

2) Please stop bothering us with the education events for all the little foreign-culture foreign-religion children in our prisons. I could *not* care any less about what the hell some 7 year old life-long prisoner's childhood is like. I just want them to sit in their dark dungeons until their parents can finally afford to buy them. We should not be the default 'guardian' of the children just because they are in our court. Likewise, if some courtier's kids end up in my court because their parents have both died, I would prefer they get assigned to anyone other than me, unless I specifically ask to educate them.

3) That same amazing 'reset' button you've added to the new screens *needs* to be added to the find character interface. And preferably some sort of button that will allow us to save frequently used settings. Give us 2-4 boxes we can use as 'saved settings'.

4) Can we please get rid of the newer version of the rebalance army interface? The one with the silly 'click and hover this thing around and lag the crap out of your computer' button? Try doing it with a huge army comprised of hundreds of small vassal armies and it is practically non-functional. It is also *horrible* compared to the old system, because I used to be able to keybind the 'send army right', 'send army left' buttons, but now with the hover-drag nonsense I can't. Drives me bonkers!

5) On the prisoner's page I didn't see a filter for religion, is that something you might also add?

6) We need some sort of ability to raze holdings that we don't want. Specifically, I am doing a campaign where I am trying to build the Kingdom of David, and some jerk built a barony in the only sub-slot in the province of Sinai. So now it is not possible to build a temple there, which is a Jewish holy site. The only way that I am aware of that I could possibly open that slot back up would be to repeatedly subject the province to raids (which my faith doesn't allow me to do), or massively raise up the prosperity in the province and hope for an event that increases the number of sub-slots. This seems... silly..

7) Please split up the minor titles tab in the council page into two separate tabs. Why use a checkbox to filter half out instead of just having two tabs?

8) Please allow us to see all commanders at all times when trying to appoint them to a flank. There are situations where they don't show up in the list of available commanders. For example, when a leader is in charge of a siege you cannot seem to appoint him elsewhere without first manually resigning him from the existing army's flank. Also, if somehow a commander ends up in charge of a levy directly (not the actual flank) then he doesn't function as that flank's commander. The flank still has 'no leader', even though there... is a leader.... I believe it should automatically use the best leader of all available leaders assigned to levies in that flank.

9) Can we please get rid of the whole siege leader/movement speed generals MUST be in the center of the army to do anything at all with their stats? It is a very tedious task to manage your generals optimally. Sometimes you need to move the army faster, but the guy with movement speed has horrible combat stats. So you put him in charge for 99% of the walk to the next province, then sit him out for the battle. You also teleport your siege general all over the planet (instantaneously mind you) in order to speed up your sieges. I would propose that *any* leader in charge of any flank should provide their bonuses to the army. Naturally modifiers like 'leading the center' would still only apply while in the center, but at least remove the tedium of alternating your siege general from the right/left flanks into the center flank for sieges, and then sending him back to the sides again so your *other* general (with direct leader) can get his bonuses.

10) Where is the random name button for children? Why Paradox? Why!?

11) Dynasty filter button on the nominate interface please. You can use the text field, but if by some chance there is a character with the same name/dynasty as yours, they show up as well. Obviously in an elective kingdom/empire I only want to vote for my own dynasty.

12) There should be a button to filter out your commanders from your list of eligible characters for council positions (and vice versa).

13) There should be a button to filter out commanders that are already appointed to other armies when trying to select a commander for a flank.

Sorry if any of these ideas sound like I am unhappy with the game, because I'm not! I am actually really really enjoying it again after having not played it nearly as much as I used to, and I would just love to see more of these quality-of-life type changes.

Thanks again!
 
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Give us the option to disable commanders being auto-assigned to sub-armies.

Possibly add an indicator to show which diseases/traits can be inherited. (i'm convinced both cancer and lunatic are hereditary.. )
 
When creating a Kingdom or Empire through the Create option (de juris) Succession laws of your main title get copied, but when a title is created through the decision screen, a default law is selected . Is this intentional or an oversight?
 
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