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CK2 Dev Diary #63: In the Emperor's Good Graces

Greetings!

Today I would like to talk to you about some of the ways you can gain the Grace of the Emperor, and ways in which you can use it to your advantage! To interact with China you must be within their diplomatic range - which extends throughout the entire Silk Road, and through the influence of the Western Protectorate and any Tributaries China might have. When you are within diplomatic range you have the options to Pay Tribute and Ask for Boons.

Paying Tribute to the Emperor will get you in their good Graces, giving you the option of asking for Boons. While the first thing that comes to mind would be to become an actual Tributary State to China, there are more ways to earn Grace. Of course, being a Tributary State is one of the most effective ways to earn the Emperors good Grace - having the Emperor like you more for each month you stay a Tributary State - though you have to give up a significant portion of your Wealth and Levy Regain rate. As China prefers their Tributaries to keep paying Tribute to them, they are willing to defend their Tributaries from outside threats - Tributary States will have the option of summoning a regiment of Chinese forces when they are under attack. When playing as a small realm in the Tarim Basin, for example, it is very prudent to become a Chinese Tributary as they will help you fend off ravenous Nomads and expansionist Tibetans alike.
Tributary.png



Not everyone will have the opportunity (or want to give up their sovereignty) to become a Tributary State though, in that case there are other things you can do to earn the Emperor’s good Grace. The two most common things the Emperor requires are more Concubines for the harem and more Eunuchs for the administration. If you are able to find characters that suit either role, you will be able to send them off as Tribute. These characters will most often have to be your close relatives, making the choice whether to send them away or not more tactical (perhaps you’d rather keep your daughter for forming a local alliance, or keep your third son as a backup in case your first two sons bite the dust). Note that you won’t be able to send off characters that stand to inherit titles. The selection of a suitable character is made by executing a new type of ‘third party character’ decision, as can be seen in this screenshot:
Selection.png



There are also other things you can do to gain the Grace of the Emperor, I won’t go into too much detail, but they include things such as: Offering a Court Physician when China is suffering a Plague, sending Relief while China is suffering a Famine, sending Artifacts or Gold, and more.

Any Grace you’ve earned will persist as long as the same Dynasty sits on the throne in China - Civil Wars and Invasions might result in a new Dynasty taking the Dragon Throne, making you lose any grace you’ve accumulated. Fortunately the Dynasty changes seldomly, and you get ample warning before it happens (so that you get a chance to leverage the Grace you’ve accumulated with the current Dynasty).

Emperors, like most characters in CK2, have their own personalities. This is characterized through the Emperor’s likes and dislikes - if the Emperor favors Buddhists you will find it more rewarding to both be a Buddhist yourself, and to send the Emperor Buddhists as tribute. The opposite is true for being disliked by the Emperor - with the additional threat that they might, just might, treat you as a priority target should they become expansionist!

Now on to using Grace - if you’ve sent enough Tribute to the Emperor you will be able to request Boons. Boons are generally very powerful, and come in many flavors - I won’t go through all of them in this DD, but here are a select few:

Request Peace Deal - The most basic of all Boons, having an active Peace Deal will prevent China from ever targeting you with wars. It is very cheap to get one and, unless you’re taking a risk by saving up for something costly, you should usually be able to afford one. A Peace Deal lasts for a long time, and also persists through multiple characters should the one who requested it die. In addition to preventing the wrath of China, it also gives quite a bit of passive prestige. Do note that if China is in an Expansionist phase they might not want to hand out any Peace Deals, so get them while you can…

Request Strategist - This Boon has a character trained in Chinese Strategy join your court. This character is both a competent commander by himself, but will given time also train your existing commanders in the art of Chinese warfare. This is represented by special Commander Traits with very powerful bonuses.

Request Master Engineer - This Boon has a masterful Chinese Engineer join your court. For as long as this character stays employed, he will improve your demesne with powerful province modifiers - Blast Furnaces, Paper Mills, Fireworks Guilds and other wondrous things. These modifiers tend to help you advance in Military and Economic technology.

Request Imperial Marriage - The Emperor has many daughters (and in the case of female rulers, cousins and kinsmen) and if you stand in their good Graces you might be allowed to have you or one of your children marry one of them! Such a marriage is not only very prestigious, because a princess doesn’t leave China alone - along with her she will bring a regiment of Honor Guards that you can call upon at will. Unlike the troops you can call upon from being a Chinese Tributary State these Honor Guards can also be used in offensive wars - giving you an edge in warfare. An Imperial Marriage also sets a Peace Deal in place.
Princess.png



Request Invasion - This is the most costly Boon of them all, and will be a challenge just to gain enough Grace for - if there is a realm that has grown too large and powerful for their own good, you can suggest that China invades them with the sole purpose of dismantling their realm. Of course, it might not be very likely that China would succeed in taking down a distant Empire (i.e. Byzantium) and there is no absolute guarantee that they will win regardless. If you are independent you can choose to join in the war yourself, which is especially useful if you really want the war to succeed. Having Peace Deals with China will protect characters from Requested Invasions and normal invasions alike.

There are plenty of other things you can request; Scholar-Bureaucrats, Siege Engineers, Chinese Artifacts, Silk Road Trade Contracts and more - but I won’t go into more detail in this DD!

Finally I’d like to say that many of these features will be controllable by Game Rules. If you want to disable the Diplomatic Range of China and gain Grace as a count in Ireland you will be able to do so - the same if you do not wish to have China launch any invasions, along with many other things. And as always, if you have any ideas/questions/concerns for Game Rules relating to the features presented in the DD, feel free to suggest them here!
 
This looks brilliant. Mostly the marrying a princess bit.
Will the Emperor sometimes turn down the family members you send off to serve him? or will they always be accepted?

It'd be cool if Zoroastrian rulers could get a special alternative where they could send away for the true heir to the throne (sassanids became the li family, generals of the tang dynasty) to come and marry them and give a claim on persia?
 
Dear devs, may I have your attention? I've found your placement of Tibetan advance in the Tarim Basin odd.

While Wikipedia indeed says that Tibet conquered Karashahr in 763, I found the source of the information (An Historical Atlas of Central Asia, Bregel) and found that the year appears to be spurious and out-of-place even in context. Can you consider rolling the Tibetan back a bit in the final release?
I went to a library and photographed the relevant pages:

4W2COGx.jpg

Well that's... extremely annoying. Bregal's map and Wukong's account almost irreconcilably contradict each other. Not just the year of Tibetan occupation of Karashahr, but the Uyghur occupation not mentioned in the wiki as well. Wukong mentioned that when he's leaving Beiting (Beshbalik) in 789, because the way through 沙河 (the desert between Hami and Anxi the city according to my Google-fu) was blocked, his group had to take a detour through Uyghur lands, and he had to leave the Sanskrit scriptures behind because the Khagan didn't believe in Buddha. This directly contradicts with Bregal's version of the extent of Uyghur control.

The text next to the map mentions the expansion of Uyghur power but not the supposed conquest of Karashahr in 763.
mndkoNo.jpg

...and that the map is not based on any existing map.
5Hi338T.jpg

The part of Wukong's account mentioned:
http://nigioikhatsi.net/han/16-shizhuan/51/2089/2089-2.htm

How I feel right now:
q7Inv8w.jpg


I've consulted the digital versions of An Historical Atlas of Central Asia and The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, the only referenced work that's somewhat relevant to the late 8th century Q/Karashahr. There's absolutely nothing on when the city fell to the Tibetans besides the arrow on that one map.

WTF I hate bibliography now.
 
If you want to disable the Diplomatic Range of China and gain Grace as a count in Ireland you will be able to do so.
I appreciate your acceptance of people like me who want to do bonkers things like this. Question, though: Diplomacy is one thing, but how will this affect China's power projection in the world? Can there be a "hidden" distance modifier assessing the threat of China? Far-flung realms shouldn't care about Chinese military protection beyond a certain range, that would just get too silly to see Chinese doomstacks projecting their military influence in places like Spain.
 
Okay, I need citations and timeline data here.
The show established it.
Books need to catch up. The only reason ravens were apparently flying at normal speeds in the books is because they were regularly taking holiday trips to Essos in the midst of their work.
A trial for abuse of position is currently ongoing, and is going neck-to-neck in a contest for the most genuine and unpredictable plot line in season seven.
Right after the question of whether Brienne of Tarth will trust her sword into Tormund. Or the other way around.
 
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Looks very good.

Wondering what's going to be in the patch for those of us without the dlc? I suppose we get a very minimal form of interaction
 
The face pack looks so good! Especially that Chinese princess. Maybe better than the East Africans. Well done Crackdtoothgrin

the east africans are amazing
but you may be right
Can't wait to see more of them
 
I hope there's an event where crazy stuff happens if you were to send your spawn of Satan child as a eunuch/concubine. Maybe a sunrise invasion!

Or keep sending your daughters with all sorts of diseases and plagues just to troll the living crap out of the emperor. XD
 
This looks brilliant. Mostly the marrying a princess bit.
Will the Emperor sometimes turn down the family members you send off to serve him? or will they always be accepted?

An important point. Dumping your Inbred Lunatic family members on the Emperor should probably annoy him (to put it mildly) whereas sending a Genius with a top education trait would be well-received. Obviously not all traits should matter but a few of them would be downright insulting.

The show established it.
Books need to catch up. The only reason ravens were apparently flying at normal speeds in the books is because they were regularly taking holiday trips to Essos.
A trial for abuse of position is currently ongoing, and is going neck-to-neck in a contest for the most genuine and unpredictable plot line in season seven.
Right after the question of whether Brienne of Tarth will trust her sword into Tormund. Or the other way around.

Tsk, tsk. Unless GRRM has retracted his statement the television show diverged from the books when it passed them. As I am a book snob my canon is better than your canon.
 
I can see that paradox studio listened to our whining about chinese imperial names and decided to include a personal name (Li Chu) before addressing the temple name (Daizong) of the emperor. Appreciate that!

Still, one more nitpicking: Emperor Daizong was only called Li Chu (李俶) before his ascension to the throne in 762, after that he changed his name to Li Yu(李豫).

Also, i would still suggest to completely abandon the temple names for historical immersion. It's a posthumous name, so calling a living emperor by that means serious disrespect to the emperor, punishable by death. Since there is only one Chinese emperor at a time, and the identity of the monarch of an off-map object is rather unimportant, why not just call him the "Heavenly Emperor of the Great *dynasty name*" in diplomatic messages? (It's how the Tang emperors refer to themselves in Sino-Tibetan diplomatic records and how Song emperors did in several peace treaties with Khitans and Jurchens)

We can always view the emperor's personal name in the menu, and if pdx really loves temple names that much, a temple name can be generated for him when he dies, in a mechanic like the current nickname generation.
 
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I hope there is a limit on how many "gifts" you can give the emperor as otherwise I can see players carting of people to china by the dozens.

Yes and as CannotrsistDLC said above, we aren't sending our best. Something needs to stop us from sending our dull, inbred, lunatic son. I doubt he will be useful to the Emperor. I can see an event chain where they get super pissed off.

The genius and quick traits, as well as all the highly learned traits, should be highly regarded over dull, slow, etc.
 
Is there any way to marry an Imperial Princess without paying tribute? If I am the Roman Emperor of all lands from Delhi to Ireland it doesn't make much sense for me to pay tribute to another Emperor. Or if I'm caliph of the abbasid empire and am bound by religious texts to not bow to anyone other than god (I normally RP all my emperors/fylkirs as not bowing to anyone except so paying tribute would sit wrong).

Also questions of RP and willingness to pay tribute aside, in the game it is feasible that you could reach a level of power that the Chinese Emperor would have to request you not to invade him. Is that a possible event chain in game?

And how does this mechanic affect/mesh with the Mongol Invasions? I would hate to see Genghis Khan willingly pay tribute to the Chinese. One of his rallying cries to unite Mongolia was to paint the chinese as aggressors.

Is there an event chain for the mongols to take the chinese empire?

EDIT: Can the family members you send to China affect the Emperor? Convert him to persian sunni or some such?
 
i personally Think this DLC is getting better with every DD. keep it coming.

If you play a small state in the Tarim area, you finally can call on your big brother if the big bullies from the steppes ride into Town.

Nice!
 
the Chinese Emperor would have to request you not to invade him.

Besides actual Chinese military and economic supremacy which would give even the historical Roman Empire a ton of problems, the mindset and cultural values of dynastic China could "never" allow them to do such a thing - even as late as the Qing regime they refused to bend down, even to superior forces.

As such, I do not see how the Son of Heaven, ruling the greatest city on Earth at the Middle Kingdom, heart of the universe, would ever consider sending tribute to anyone, however how powerful.

EDIT: Some people pointed out that the Emperor did agree to send "tribute" to barbarian hordes. However, most if not all of these tributes were given by provincial governors, not the Emperor himself. Anyway, I agree it can be a possibility, specially since CK2 is also a work of alternative history.
 
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