CK3 Dev Diary #08 - Courts, Guests, and Wanderers

[fall back]

Did you mean there will not be DDs of 24th and 31th?

You would force the poor producers to work Christmas and New Year’s Eve producers are people too

 

[Antoine]

Globally the travelling courtiers concept looks very good and will make the world feel more alive.

That said I have a few reservations about how it will work in practice...

a) like in CK2 of the 5 stats / kinds of education only martial seem to lead to many usefull jobs per court (there will likely be even more functions for martial characters in CK3 with knights in addition to commanders and marshall). Learning may eventually lead to 2 (with court physician in addition to bishop - but it's not guaranteed you'll be able to name your bishop yourself), and other specialities only to one council job (and as a council job one your powerful vassals will also want). So unless some new occupations exist for non martial courtiers that haven't been dislosed yet, what is likely to be seen is an army of 'excellent diplomat' and 'incredible stewards' beggars travelling from court to court as they would very rarely find a job, while good martial characters would be far rarer as wanderers. And that higher availability of non martial characters may have an uniformisation effect, where every lord ready to give council positions to someone else than his powerful vassals, will easily find extremely skilled candidates from all the visitors desperately searching an use for their non-martial talents, all of them ending with excellent administrators.

b) speaking of roleplaying and growing attached to characters, an habit I have since CK1, is to developp a few families of servants of the crown from unlanded courtiers that became friends of my character, were heroic commanders or got important positions, dynasties I organize marriages for and try to always keep at least one branch in my court (if I give landed titles to some sons), and whose members end the most important characters for me out of my own dynasty (and often even above the secundary branches of mine). It's for me a big part of attachment to characters and feeling like a king to remember that a courtier is one of the grand-grandsons of my heroic first marshall, and search to give him the best marriage possible, forgive him if he's plotting to kill some rival, and keep him around in memory of his ancestor, even if his skills don't make him a directly usefull character. While this playstyle will probably remain possible giving honorary titles to the member of servant families you want to keep around, it will now have the cost of having less titles to distribute to please your vassals if you want to also keep servant families around, and I'd hate to see families I care about for generations leave my court just because there's a temporary shortage of those titles (or a situation like regency making me unable to give them to the character about to leave). A suggestion I have about that, would be to create a few hereditary unlanded honorary titles (say a number equal to higher title rank, so a count would be able to have one honored family title and a king 3), you can give to the loyal servant families you want to keep around, not conflicting with the kind of honors you'd give to landed nobles (but with a money cost per member of those families, as naturally they need to have a living).

c) in late game in CK2, the main function of invite debutante (and to a lesser extent invite noble or religious) was to purify blood, precisely get characters that have no family tie with all the families that usually intermarry in your area to counter the growth of inbreeding or bad genetic traits, which was especially usefull if your realm had a rare religion/heresy restricting the marriage options. In a system were the characters you can invite to court are wanderers from existing families, and unless the genetics system is changed (or the way the AI ignored it, leading to incredible multiplication of bad genetic traits in CK2 ), I fear it will make the inbreeding / bad genetic traits creep problem even more prevalent in late game (especially for rare religions nations as wanderers will avoid courts of different faiths), and we'll end with lots of marriage candidates travelling to your court only to be refused a marriage because they are too close relatives from families you want to avoid the bad blood (or the AI lords only would take these, and get even worse genetics).

 

[Mangi Qahan]

Wanderers can become a traders system.
Traders will travel in accordance with the business roads to bring new items to the lord. The business system can also be started by traders. Traders will move around the provincial capitals to form business roads. The factors of traders flow will be the topography of the provinces, local prosperity, development, the degree of control of the lord over the place, and the type of goods (the type of goods in each SLOT[Barony] will be one to several during the opening period and the Traders n a province to enrich the type or increase the number of products) (not as fixed as CKII ).

 

[Calardaras]

No, it will not be possible.

Or can a playable character take a small wandering?

 

[neutrondecay]

Banished characters without titles and characters you ask to leave your court won't reappear in your court, will they? In other words, will characters that become wanderers be able to remember which courts they are not welcome in? The idea of heresiarchs and apostates wandering back to my court after I told them they weren't welcome in my court is irritating.

If wanderers do remember which courts they aren't welcome in, what happens in the extremely unlikely case that they are rejected by every court in the game?

I imagine they'll eventually vanish. In the 18th century, Casanova managed to get himself either banished from court or driven out by the civilian authorities in every major nation in Europe. He eventually retired to be a count's librarian.

I really like the Wanderer idea, but isn't years a long time to have them as guests? Would months not be better? Or would that result into too much computation of wanderers shifting around courts?

These people aren't necessarily living uninvited in the title holder's spare bedrooms. They may well rent rooms or even an entire mansion near the palace, and come to visit as often as court custom permits - which could be every day.

nd

 

[Serenity84]

Wanderers will not visits courts if the ruler's faith is hostile to their faith. Wouldn't be a fun visit!

Please include Norman-Sicilian culture and allow Arab and Greek courtiers for them. Some other realms like the Mongols would also benefit from more tolerance.

 

[Kadmus]

something i noticed about taljat is that her teeth are showing and her mouth is in a slightly weird position, is that what harelip is supposed to look like or is it just her personality and pose?

 

[Kadmus]

Please, tell me there won't be Knights for Muslim (moreover - any non-Christian) religion. You should think of at a proper localisation imo

It's probably just a placeholder for now since they must have the knight title there but not the localization yet. For christian characters, we haven't seen sir as their title even though they're knights

 

[tapewormlondon]

Man, im trying so hard not to get hyped for this game due to my bitter experiences with sequels of great games, but boy this one sounds absolutely awesome.

 

[Gunthah]

Pressing a courtier's claim will make them your vassal (if possible).

Honestly, I think this mechanic is one of the most unrealistic in CK2 already. How many instances were there of kings and emperors pressing other people's claims and having them become their vassals in exchange? This is mainly what the AI does all the time in CK2 and causes the HRE to blob the whole of Europe more often than not. Expansions were mostly carried out through conquest (without a dynastic claim) or dynastic struggle over claims held by the rulers themselves, not by rulers pressing dozens of claims of their vassal counts on the periphery one by one.

 

[Denkt]

Honestly, I think this mechanic is one of the most unrealistic in CK2 already. How many instances were there of kings and emperors pressing other people's claims and having them become their vassals in exchange? This is mainly what the AI does all the time in CK2 and causes the HRE to blob the whole of Europe more often than not. Expansions were mostly carried out through conquest (without a dynastic claim) or dynastic struggle over claims held by the rulers themselves, not by rulers pressing dozens of claims of their vassal counts on the periphery one by one.

Don't they become vassals if they are of your dynasty and otherwise they must already be vassals and the new title have to lower than your title. So they Always becoming vassals if possible seems a bit more extreme but maybe you will have less access to claimants compared to CK2?

 

[Lordy's]

Given that the dev diary talked about "guests and wanderers", will there be a distinction between these two? I'd really like to see actual guests (people belonging to a different court joining your for a short period of time), f.e. your vassals that come visit your for the great tournament. Speaking of guests, are prisoners considered to be guests?^^
Also, you said that the player will be notified when important wanderers arrive. Can there please be an option (otherwise it would be annoying) to always be informed whenever somebody arrives, with the option to just send them away immediately? Because I'd imagine it could be quite tedious if you have to check for unwelcomed guests every now and then. Specifically I fear that wanderers might not like you and plot to kill you - it would be silly that they can just come to your court and do so without your permission.

 

[Svennie 135]

Lovely DD, but I wonder if the portraits are still being changed because I find it weird that the characters of today (being muslim thus middle eastern) look very similar to the anglosaxons of last week. They even have the same hairstyles (for women that's especially strange)

 

[Delta5ff]

Will it be possible to stop your family and courtiers from becoming wonderers without marrying them off or giving them titles first?

It might be interesting to know that claimants will be significantly more costly to recruit compared to other guests

While this makes sense from a balance perspective, surely it would be more realistic if they was cheaper to recruit since they are joining because you can do something that personally benefits them, for example would it be possible to invite them for next to nothing if you promised to press there claim with in a set time frame?

 

[Andrzej I]

While this makes sense from a balance perspective, surely it would be more realistic if they was cheaper to recruit since they are joining because you can do something that personally benefits them, for example would it be possible to invite them for next to nothing if you promised to press there claim with in a set time frame?

Perhaps to balance it out (and prevent the CK2 method of just inviting claimants to make a super-council with no intention of pressing claims) recruiting claimant guests maybe should bring some manner of penalty with the holder of the title their claiming, and also with the invited claimant if their claim is not pressed after a certain amount of time.

 

[Denkt]

Perhaps to balance it out (and prevent the CK2 method of just inviting claimants to make a super-council with no intention of pressing claims) recruiting claimant guests maybe should bring some manner of penalty with the holder of the title their claiming, and also with the invited claimant if their claim is not pressed after a certain amount of time.

Maybe you should even get penalties if your vassals are not in the council, well CK2 have powerful vassals but maybe a small opinion penalty for every non vassal who is in the council could nerf the invite mechanic a bit.

Speaking of guests, are prisoners considered to be guests?^^

Well if you are the king of France you will probably feel like a guest but you have to pay a large amount of Money to leave. Not so much on other hand if you are Jeanne d'Arc. So kind of depend on who you are.

Because I'd imagine it could be quite tedious if you have to check for unwelcomed guests every now and then. Specifically I fear that wanderers might not like you and plot to kill you - it would be silly that they can just come to your court and do so without your permission.

They probably should not be able to plot against you if they are guest or atleast have some sort of waiting time Before they are allowed to plot.

Will it be possible to stop your family and courtiers from becoming wonderers without marrying them off or giving them titles first?

Imprisonment maybe works?​

​

 

[Andrzej I]

Maybe you should even get penalties if your vassals are not in the council, well CK2 have powerful vassals but maybe a small opinion penalty for every non vassal who is in the council could nerf the invite mechanic a bit.

I don't know about that. In my limited knowledge of things, a number of figures who held positions that count as "council" positions for CK were not landholders sufficient to be shown as barons, much less higher. If you look at some of the lord chancellors and chancellors of the exchequer for England, for instance, you'd find a number of effectively-bureaucrats given these positions, rather than one of the earls. Of course, the problem lies with the fact that CK's "council" is representing a combination of both the high nobility whose opinions the monarch would have to consider... as well as the monarch's household, which didn't necessarily overlap.

That said, what I'd love to see is if the "council" of CK3 (provided it works like Conclave!) was made up of not only the five councilors... but also powerful vassals as well. Furthermore, I'd love to see the councilor positions gain some control over their respective areas (so stewards could embezzle, etc.), making them an alternative to land when it comes to having power in the realm. In this way, you could either empower your powerful vassals (for the opinion bonus of holding a councilor title) and limit your number of councilors to sway for votes... or you could empower courtiers as members of your household in competition with the landed vassals, offering a counterbalance to them, but at the cost of not boosting opinions with your vassals, who control the "real power" of the realm (armies, etc.).

 

[FleetingRain]

That isn't exactly surprising - they are still nobility (or closely related to it), and it wasn't rare to have such guests in medieval courts. They could just hang on doing poetry, being a friendly envoy from a neighbouring county, or... well, being courtiers. At least as long as they had the favour of the local ruler.

...huh, I didn't think of it. I was expecting wanderers to be mostly peasants as sometimes you could get a peasant majority in your CK2 courts.

 

[ejnomad07]

This confirms it. Wandering Cats joining courts. Maybe sent by a Witch to gather hooks on my court!?

Although seriously, I'm really encouraged to see this is a great way to cut down on useless character bloat in courts as they shuffle around where needed rather than spawn ANOTHER set of court characters every time a new character is landed.

 

[Will Steel]

I hope we can invite characters to be guests too, in preparation of recruiting them later. This was the best way to get talented councillors in CK2.

and suitors might appear if you or your adult children are unmarried

Do I see this as a potential future courtship system?

Because that would be amazing!