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CK2 Dev Diary #66: Quality of Life

Good afternoon. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, programmer on CK2, and I’ve once more been let out of my cage to write a dev diary for you guys. In the past I’ve written diaries about modding, optimization, quality of life, and some filler diaries over the summer, and today I’m returning to one of those topics: quality of life.

Back in 2.7, we added a number of quality of life improvements, which I had the honor of writing the dev diaries about. These changes proved hugely popular, so we thought we’d try to repeat it for 2.8. Our first step towards this was the Rally Points feature that will be included in Jade Dragon, but we decided to also add a bunch of free functionality.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
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If you’ve ever had multiple artifacts of the same type, you have almost certainly felt the tedium involved in replacing an equipped artifact. First you had to unequip it, and only then could you equip something else into the slot.
We’ve simplified this by making “Equip” available even if a slot is filled; it’ll simply unequip whatever is in the slot first to make room. For mods that have slots that can take more items than one, it’ll unequip the first item it finds that uses that slot.

Another common frustration with artifacts is that the amazing weapon you just spent a fortune on can simply randomly disappear during succession. We’ve now eliminated destruction on succession for all equipped artifacts. Only artifacts that aren’t equipped now have a chance of being destroyed. Note that this does not apply when artifacts are inherited by a character’s liege as a last resort; then even equipped artifacts can perish.

One last frustration with regards to artifact is that upon succession, your heir just ignores what you had equipped, and instead what they already had equipped takes precedence. We’ve now changed this so that your heir will attempt to equip anything you had equipped, unequipping their own equipment if necessary to make room.

Now let’s move onto a different topic: the character screen.
I’m afraid it still looks the same, but we’ve made it slightly nicer to work with.
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First of all, when you select a landed character, their realm will get glowing borders on the map, making it much easier to tell where that quarrelsome duke is actually located.
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Further, we’ve long had a variety of status icons. Back in 2.7, we made the “prison” icon take you to whoever is keeping the character captive. We’ve now applied the same idea to a few other status icons:
  • Job action: This will now pan to where the councillor is performing the action
  • Guardian: This will now take you to the guardian’s character screen
  • Leading troops: This will now pan to the army in question, and select it if it is one of yours
  • The character portrait itself: If you click the character you’ve selected once more, you’ll now pan to their location
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One brand-new addition to the character screen is the “Restrict Marriage” checkbox. Some of you may have already seen this on last week’s stream.
For your children and grandchildren, you can now choose to disable the marriage AI so that they don’t get into marriages you don’t want. However, note that they may still marry by event, so you better not wait too long to arrange a proper marriage.
To help you do that, you can now also arrange marriages on their behalf as long as “Restrict Marriage” can be enabled.
Since this is an incredibly powerful tool, it does come with some restrictions. First of all, it can only be used on your children and grandchildren.
Second, they have to be your vassals or below, or courtiers in your court or that of a vassal or below.
Third, they cannot have been landed for more than 10 years. After being landed for such a long time they no longer accept their parent or grandparent interfering with their marriage.

Overall, this removes one of the big reasons why players often refrain from landing their children, and provides the control you need to ensure the continued greatness of your dynasty.
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We’ve also added the line of succession to every title screen, showing you who stands to inherit, instead of having to search for the characters based on the title’s tooltip.

Note that this art is not final; it’s simply an example of my amazing programmer art.
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Finally, we have one last change: The Proselytize council action has been made easier to use. It now highlights provinces of the wrong religion in blue, and puts what religion it is in the tooltip if you hover over it. Foreign rulers that you can convert are now also highlighted in red.
This system can also be used by modders to define any color scheme they want based on the target province and the ruler ordering the job action.

That’s all for today. If you have other ideas for quality of life improvements we would be happy to hear them, but we cannot promise that we will have the time to implement any of them in 2.8.
 
How about organizing traits into two rows, with personality traits in the second one.
 
One brand-new addition to the character screen is the “Restrict Marriage” checkbox
Oh goodness-gracious, that was so needed!
 
How about organizing traits into two rows, with personality traits in the second one.
The main problem is a lack of room in the UI. We've had some ideas for how to improve the situation (mainly, making the window wider so more can fit), but we haven't had the time to implement any such ideas.
 
It seems I can play as a Horse in 2.8?
Or, have you ever used any console commands?
 
Cheers for the DD Meneth, and love the quality-of-life improvements :D. I'll plead guilty to not landing sons because of losing control over the marriage, and being able to see the line of succession up-front, in a way that can be clicked on straight way, is right handy, as are all the other changes - great work :).
 
What is that Hammer icon for, it seems new? Making new artifacts or destroying them perhaps?
That's the "Destroy Artifact" interaction. I think we've mentioned it in another DD. It'll be added in 2.8.
 
Could you add a button to that would exclude you from being a candidate in an elective monarchy? Eg. as a duke-tier or higher vassal in the HRE. Seems like a lot of people want this.
 
These are excellent changes.

Thank god for it remembering what you had on after death.

I haven't fully wrapped my head around the restrict AI marriage though. Seems awesome I just I dunno man letting family go with no fear of losing marriage control for 10 years?

The trade off between landing because you want to and losing control has always been like as static as the color of the sky to me.

That's the "Destroy Artifact" interaction. I think we've mentioned it in another DD. It'll be added in 2.8.

This is the first time I'm hearing about it.

I'm honestly a little confused as to why we want a destruction button I mean what was the motivation for it?

If you think it's needed sure but why over just keeping them or giving them away?
 
Does AI consider not to offer marriage to the restricted marriage characters?
It might still offer the human a marriage, I'm not 100% sure; for some actions it ignores whether it thinks the human character would want to accept, while for others it accounts for that. I can't remember which category marriage is in though. So it might be the case that if you restrict marriage on a courtier, that you'll still get offers.
But once they're rulers, no AI will bother to offer marriage since they know they'll refuse.

I haven't fully wrapped my head around the restrict AI marriage though. Seems awesome I just I dunno man letting family go with no fear of losing marriage control for 10 years?
They do have to remain your vassals, and this doesn't stop any marriage events, so it is still possible (but unlikely) for them to elope.

I'm honestly a little confused as to why we want a destruction button I mean what was the motivation for it?

If you think it's needed sure but why over just keeping them or giving them away?
A lot of people asked for it, and it was pretty easy to implement.
 
Cool and very much needed stuff about artifacts! At least, it will be possible to make magus opuses of lower quality then 25 learning and not get stuck with it, huh.
But marriages isn't quite a reason, why people don't land their sons... Well, from my example as a viking ruler with sun invasion on: I landed my son, and 3 month later he was captured and sacrificed by aztecs. Because of this kind of scenarios you never land your sons.
 
A superb diary as always. Glad too see you keep revisiting some older areas of the game!

The new shortcuts in the characters' portrairs are simply awesome. And Restricted Marriage is simply revolutionary. Thanks for the changes, some of them were long due!
 
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Here's the biggest QoL improvement that I can think of that I would absolutely love to have: Pop-ups that would put the newest pop-up on the bottom of the stack, instead of on top of any pop-up that is already present, and that the player might be interacting with.
 
In the inherritagescreen, when hovering over your current laws of inherritage, it doesn't tell what they mean - there are only descriptions on those you can change to.
It would be nice to be able to see what your actual law was about, if you cannot remember it by heart...
 
Once again great work.

Any chance of some sort of quick way to jump straight to a title history screen ? Often times i stop the action to see what the world has gotten up to while I was busy, it can be a pain right clicking on provinces to bring up the realm holder then multiple clicks to get the title to find out just when the last holder died.