CK2's petty kingdoms- confusing for new English language players

[DreadLindwyrm]

Sure these entities existed. But they did not call themselves literally petty kingdoms, their contemporaries did not call them literally "Petty Kingdoms", arguably the word King was not in the language with that spelling at the time. Some scholarly literature calls them petty kings, other use the term King, subregulus, regulus, ri, brenin, etc. It doesn't matter that most of these terms are cognates or synonym for "king" or "petty king" as long as one is selected that does not literally include the modern English language word "king" which has a very specific and significant intentional in game meaning that does not reflect how these "Kings" are actually implemented in the game! Because King is a design keyword it would be a hostile design decision to call these entities "Kingdoms" in CK3 when a) the designers do have multiple defensible choices about nomenclature and b) there is a nomenclature choice available that does not conflict with how they have chosen to model feudal hierarchy.

There is a problem, in that "rex" is the same title that was used in latin for the kings of Wessex and the kings of the whole of England.
It merely shifts the problem to a different language. They would, likely, have all been using variations of cyning in their anglo-saxon titles, whether as "king of Northumbria" or "king of all the English", or "King of all England".

The irish term "Rí" means several things, depending on what qualifications are put to it. It could be a king of a tribe, a king of several tribes, an overking - who confusingly would potentially be subject to a king of overkings, who would then be subject to the Ard Rí ("High King") - who is actually king tier in game terms. Hardly much better, and confusing when you see 4 or 5 levels of title all based off of the same one word, leaving you again reliant on the portrait frame or other indicators to point out their real tier.

"Duke" is entirely inappropriate for an independent ruler in the British Isles.
The Irish would have used Taoiseach or variants on Rí for the entire scale - the Welsh Tywysog (usually translated as "Prince", but really being any ruler) for independent tribes to full kings. The Scots at various stages styled themselves with equivalent titles, with "Kings of the Isles", "Kings of Strathclyde" and so on. "Kings of Mann", independently, and as vassals of England, Scotland and Norway extended into the 16th century.

Largely, if you were independent you called yourself a King if you could even remotely get away with it.

 

[McGrey]

I agree, that the terminology should stay as it is, if the game makes clear enough which "level" your realm has.

The basic problem is simply, that the game try to put the complexity of a medieval title system in a simple four level system. Jear, I get why they do it and I think it's a good solution that works well enough, but you get things like "duke"-level Kings by an admittedly somewhat random metric.

To make more clear, what I mean, let's look at the Holy Roman Empire. You have counts (Grafen), dukes (Herzöge), Kings (Könige) and the Emperor (Kaiser). Easy, right? That's how it is in CK.

But you also have stuff like the Count Palatine (Pfalzgraf) and Margraven (Markgrafen). So they are counts, right? But they seem to be higher then Counts but lower than Dukes. Or are they? And of course, the Count Palatine and the Margrave of Brandenburg are booth count electors, so they are surely on the same level as the Duke of Saxony. But are they on the same level as the King of Bohemia? And the Margrave of Brandenburg as count elector is surely higher than the Margrave of Krain who is not an elector. And were sits the Burgrave (Burggraf) of Nürnberg? Is he higher or lower or on the same level as a "basic" count? And those are questions, that really occupied the minds of their time, for example when the order of seating on the Reichstag had to be worked out.

For the game, you have to either totally ignore the titles as they were or put them somewhere in the four level system, which I would say is preferable. Alternativly you get rid of title levels, but that would massively complicate things.

 

[Rubidium]

Ok, but CK2 models Iberian monarchs as proper kings with small de jure territories or titular titles. I'm aware that "Petty Kingdom" is a scholarly term. But from a gameplay perspective it's a pernicious and confusing trap, because the game models a "Kingdom" as a specific thing but calls a small number of entities that are not "Kingdom"s from a gameplay perspective (Petty) Kingdoms. These Petty Kingdoms are the entities named "Kingdom" that many English language players will encounter first, which muddles players' ability to understand a core game system.

From my perspective there is no compelling reason to use the actual english word "King" as part of the in game styling these characters. The word "King" itself is barely attested before the 12th century, after the last start date in CK3.

CK2 models the Iberian monarchs as proper kings in large part because the "Petty King" approach wasn't introduced until the Old Gods introduced the 867 start, with the various tiny Anglo-Saxon kingdoms still in existence, whereas the Iberian kings are in 1066 from release.

 

[Bulan]

I'm not going to keep pushing this position since there has been almost universally negative response. But I still feel strongly that given the other simplifications the game makes to modeling medieval governance, it's not outrageous to want some consideration given to what kind of message out-of-tier titles send to players, particularly new players.

The message is "it's more important to include a superficial treatment of some archaic terms than it is to make a coherent and approachable game." It's the Dwarf Fortress theory of game development, where having 9 separate species of gibbons represented is more important than having a user interface where the navigation keys are consistent between panes.

 

[LordofLight]

Some of the simplifications make sense. Primogeniture for example means absolutely nothing to a new player. And there is no way a new player can even guess by just looking at the word.

Petty Kingdom is something a new player can deduce. I'm an absolute brainlet and I deduced it easily enough. Granted I still had to go on the wiki to see what Primogeniture is and I've been playing since 2012.

 

[viola]

Some of the simplifications make sense. Primogeniture for example means absolutely nothing to a new player. And there is no way a new player can even guess by just looking at the word.

What? You have to be illiterate to not be able to figure out what "primogeniture" means in terms of succession, even if you know little of Medieval times. It got nothing to do with being a new player.

Let's not justify terrible naming choices that, at best, are patronizing toward the playerbase's intelligence, shall we?

 

[LordofLight]

Perhaps it makes more sense when you're british or something, but not at all when you're Russian. Nor does not knowing a rather obscure word that you'll more than likely only see in Ck2, and in my case only ever seen in CK2, mean you are illiterate.

In fact, going by ngram viewer
https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...l=t1;,primogeniture;,c0#t1;,primogeniture;,c0

No books in 2012 and later even use it. But once again going by ngram.

 

[viola]

Perhaps it makes more sense when you're british or something, but not at all when you're Russian. Nor does not knowing a rather obscure word that you'll more than likely only see in Ck2, and in my case only ever seen in CK2, mean you are illiterate.

I'm not a native speaker either and "Primogeniture" is of no difficulty to me, nor is the word obscure at all.
It's a common historical term, even "Gavelkind" is more obscure than that.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

What? You have to be illiterate to not be able to figure out what "primogeniture" means in terms of succession, even if you know little of Medieval times. It got nothing to do with being a new player.

Let's not justify terrible naming choices that, at best, are patronizing toward the playerbase's intelligence, shall we?

That depends what language you speak. If it's french it's easy (Primaire-> First, Geniture -> Birth), but in English it's very obscure. Prim does exist in primary, but primary while common is very formal english and not used in general speech, but the sylabble "Prim" equally could be "primal", which means something completely different. As for Geniture, it's very obscure latin and does not exist in English. I know a lot of history, and I had never heard of primogeniture before playing CK. and I couldn't figure out what it meant until I looked it up.

So if you speak a latin language it's meaning is obvious, but players don't speak Latin based languages.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

That depends what language you speak. If it's french it's easy (Primaire-> First, Geniture -> Birth), but in English it's very obscure. Prim does exist in primary, but primary while common is very formal english and not used in general speech, but the sylabble "Prim" equally could be "primal", which means something completely different. As for Geniture, it's very obscure latin and does not exist in English. I know a lot of history, and I had never heard of primogeniture before playing CK. and I couldn't figure out what it meant until I looked it up.

So if you speak a latin language it's meaning is obvious, but players don't speak Latin based languages.

It's not entirely absent in english.
It connects with "generate" (in the sense of "to bring forth") and "beget" - so it would be "primo-"(first) "-geniture"(generated or born). It's not exactly common for someone who is a second language speaker to run into those as that usage of generate (and the word begat) are a little archaic.
It's also why the word in english for "breeding organs" in general is genitals.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I'm not going to keep pushing this position since there has been almost universally negative response. But I still feel strongly that given the other simplifications the game makes to modeling medieval governance, it's not outrageous to want some consideration given to what kind of message out-of-tier titles send to players, particularly new players.

The message is "it's more important to include a superficial treatment of some archaic terms than it is to make a coherent and approachable game." It's the Dwarf Fortress theory of game development, where having 9 separate species of gibbons represented is more important than having a user interface where the navigation keys are consistent between panes.

You entirely misunderstand.

How is it more player friendly to use the wrong title in an area?
How is it more player friendly to load the interface with obscure terms that people would *still* have to look up to understand, or would *still* have to rely on the markers on the portrait (or the crown on the coat of arms)?

Even more so when there wasn't really a title for "independent minor king" in the culture. You were a king if you ruled independently, You *might* still be a king if you were technically a vassal, but it'd be clarified.

If anything, having "dukes" in Anglo-Saxon realms is grating enough, because that's not a term that Anglo-Saxon England used. It's not even a term that early Norman England used at first, with titles still being handed out as "Earl" even when they'd be what we'd recognise as a duchy.

 

[Lord Frost]

Are you sure about that? Because to me it seems like konungr just means "king" in Old Norse, and konge (a Danish and Norwegian) evolved from that with the same meaning.

You are entirely right on this. Updated original post to reflect.

 

[Arbus]

Every Man a King!


Oh wait, wrong forum.

 

[Kazanov]

For threads like this PDX gets the wrong signals and proceeds to uber simplify the game and its mechanics.

The first time i found the term "petty king" i was amused...you see... in spanish the translation is hilariously bad ( rey mezquino, one of the reasons why i never play using the localization)...but instead of having problems with the term i just went to wikipedia and researched about it.

Lots of historical terms ingame requires the player to READ and LEARN history...and that is always a good thing.

Always.

A

Good

Thing.

For these "confusing" ingame terms and details a lot of us learned about history and fell in love with CK-EU-VICKY-HOI...more if English is not our primary language.

 

[Bulan]

You entirely misunderstand.

How is it more player friendly to use the wrong title in an area?
How is it more player friendly to load the interface with obscure terms that people would *still* have to look up to understand, or would *still* have to rely on the markers on the portrait (or the crown on the coat of arms)?

Even more so when there wasn't really a title for "independent minor king" in the culture. You were a king if you ruled independently, You *might* still be a king if you were technically a vassal, but it'd be clarified.

If anything, having "dukes" in Anglo-Saxon realms is grating enough, because that's not a term that Anglo-Saxon England used. It's not even a term that early Norman England used at first, with titles still being handed out as "Earl" even when they'd be what we'd recognise as a duchy.

"Petty king" is not the "right" title. Neither is "King". I challenge anyone to find a middle english source that includes that word with that spelling from around the earlier start date, because there is none. There is no one "right" title and Paradox should use a title that does not pose the dificulties of "Petty King". My issue is not that the term "Petty King" is obscure, rather, it is that it conflicts with an in game keyword "King" with a specific mechanical meaning. Using the term "Petty King" can short circuit the inquisitive process some players use to learn the game. Players will quite reasonably assume that these are King tier titles - because they include the literal word King!- and then later discover that their assumption is wrong.

If a weird cultural title other than Petty King is used, one that has no intersection with keyworded game terms, then yes indeed, players must look for secondary cues like portrait frames or tooltips or googling or whatever to determine the tier. This will be because the name of the title alone will give them no grounds to make an assumption about what tier it is. They must seek additional sources of information. That's better than misleading the player and better than giving them an opportunity to make a bad assumption based on their knowledge of game mechanics. "Petty King" or "King" used for non king tier titles is terribly misleading.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

"Petty king" is not the "right" title. Neither is "King". I challenge anyone to find a middle english source that includes that word with that spelling from around the earlier start date, because there is none. There is no one "right" title and Paradox should use a title that does not pose the dificulties of "Petty King". My issue is not that the term "Petty King" is obscure, rather, it is that it conflicts with an in game keyword "King" with a specific mechanical meaning. Using the term "Petty King" can short circuit the inquisitive process some players use to learn the game. Players will quite reasonably assume that these are King tier titles - because they include the literal word King!- and then later discover that their assumption is wrong.

If a weird cultural title other than Petty King is used, one that has no intersection with keyworded game terms, then yes indeed, players must look for secondary cues like portrait frames or tooltips or googling or whatever to determine the tier. This will be because the name of the title alone will give them no grounds to make an assumption about what tier it is. They must seek additional sources of information. That's better than misleading the player and better than giving them an opportunity to make a bad assumption based on their knowledge of game mechanics. "Petty King" or "King" used for non king tier titles is terribly misleading.

Unfortunately, when Anglo Saxon warlords were deciding which title to go by, they weren't thinking of how it would mess up the mechanics of a 21st century video game.

 

[LordofLight]

I don't think they'd care what a bunch of landless plebs would think either.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Players will quite reasonably assume that these are King tier titles - because they include the literal word King!- and then later discover that their assumption is wrong.

This is really only true if the player completely ignores every other context clue in the game that signifies that the title is duke tier. Of which there are many. One of which being that it's indeed not called just "King," but rather "Petty King." If you really wanted to make things easier for the player, instead of advocating for an even more confusing and unknown cultural title, you should be advocating for the use of the standard Duke name for all duke tier titles in the British Isles.

 

[Bulan]

Duke is unambiguously "right" from a mechanics/ux perspective and unambiguously "wrong" from a historicity perspective. Petty King is "wrong" from a mechanics/ux perspective but only weakly "right" from a historicity perspective. I am advocating a solution (some cultural title that does not include a tier keyword) that is weakly right from both a mechanics/ux perspective and from a historicity perspective.

 

[Aemr]

Giving that CKIII's tutorial will take place in Ireland, a region of petty kings, it will surely clear up any confusion that newcomers might have about the terms. Plus, the word 'petty' is there. That's a big clue.

As for the native language localisations? I don't think it helps. For example you would have Anglo-Saxon petty kings called 'cyning' and Anglo-Saxon actual kings called 'cyning', merely changing the problem to Old English.

Not that I really think there is a problem.