Note, this isn't really a Dev Diary or anything of the kind, I leave those to the ones higher up in the system. Nor is this indicative on any changes we are making to the game, but rather just my personal thoughts on the game, and just creating a discussion on a topic I am interested in, and get some feedback. I am sorry if it comes across as a bit of rambling.
Problems
The game often gives you information through the buttons at the top of the screen, informing you about the decisions you might take, the ambitions you might have, or the commanders you could assign. Personally, I've always found the title creation one the most interesting, as it informs the player that you have expanded your lands and can create new titles. You can become a King, an Emperor, or maybe you've simply moved from a Count to a Duke.
1. Several Duchies. But as it stands right now, I feel the button somewhat loses its meaning as you progress through the game. The first hinder is the simple fact a character can't have more than 2 Duchies, without getting opinion maluses. You are in charge of a bunch of small Duchy areas? Well, you are just not going to make those Duchy titles then. Sucks to be you. Now you are stuck with having the title creation as a permanent part of your life.
2. Titular Titles. Say you've dodged that bullet. You stuck to your original area, you built several baronies in the area you focused on or something of the kind. Then we hit the second hinder, titular titles. You've moved into Spain, and can now create Andalusia, Aragon, Castille and Portugal. That's a lot of titular titles leading nowhere, isn't it? So we create them, give them out, and start focusing on other things. A couple of years pass, and suddenly the game tell you that you can create Aragon, Castille and Portugal again, wait what? Oh right, the King of Andalusia, your power hungry vassal, just ate the other three. Because those are his DeJure areas, and god be damned if he will let the fake Kings of Aragon, Castille or Portugal be in charge of HIS areas.
3. Multiple Empires. And then we come to the final issue I have with the title creation button. Multiple empires. You have reformed the Roman Empire, you are at the top of the world. And now you can create the Empire of Italia! Or Francia! Or Germania! ... And what is the point exactly again? Some more negative opinion maluses? Nah, better just wait for the Kingdoms to DeJure drift into the Roman Empire.
While all of this is happening, you are stuck with having the title creation button on your screen. It is just there. It no longer inherently informs you that something have happened, or that you can do something new. It is just there. And you have to start clicking through them, to find what you want.
Potential Solutions
So how can we fix these issues?
1. Several Duchies. This has always stuck out as a weird thing for me. You can be the ruler of the known world, stretching from Britannia to India, but my god do your vassals hate you for being in charge of THREE duchies instead of TWO. How DARE you?! Preposterous!
A solution here is to tie the minimum Duchy limit either to your personal ruler tier (Duke, King, Emperor), or the realm holding size. It is hard to communicate to the player a realm size limit to it, without getting into numbers etc, so it is probably easier to directly connect it into ruler tier. You are a Duke? 2 Duchies without any opinion maluses. King? 3 Duchies, etc. It's a natural progression, and it makes sense as you progress through the game.
2. Titular Titles. Titular titles have always sort of annoyed me. They are meaningless titles you can use specifically to gain prestige or make Merchant Republics, and that's all they do. I am going to make a change here, coming out with the next expansion, where you can no longer create titular titles by simply holding their capital city. They will all be changed into decisions instead, and when you use the decision and form the Kingdom title, you have a certain amount of DeJure land drifted into the title. Good examples of this currently in the game are the Spanish kingdoms. You use the decision to form Aragon, and the Duchy of Aragon and Barcelona are drifted into the Kingdom title. So if the title are a titular one, you should have a decision to form it, if it has land attached to it, you simply hold enough land to create it. Hopefully that will reduce the Kingdom tier spam somewhat, in the late game.
3. Multiple Empires. Now this is the one I have a hard time coming up with a good solution to. I don't feel like there is any simple good solution to this problem, as things stand right now. One idea I was playing around with, is to incorporate empires into your original one. Either by outright saying "Hey, you are in charge of the whole DeJure area of both Italia and the Roman Empire, so we'll give you a decision to incorporate the Empire of Italia into your other DeJure lands."
Another solution could be to halfway incorporate two titles into one title, and say "Empire of Italia and Germania", share the DeJure lands, but have different succession laws so the two titles could fall apart if you had different heirs. This solution is code heavy though, and will probably lead to a lot of weird bugs, as well as horrendous bordergore and weird vassal splitting.
The final solution is simply removing the opinion malus on having several empire titles. I don't really have any data saying this is good or bad.
4. Other solutions. Another solution to this whole problem, another way of making the title creation more relevant again and less of a permanent fixture in the late game, is to let the player choose if a title is relevant for them or not. For decisions, we let the player decide if they find a decision important or not. We could simply do the same with titles, and put in a checkbox. If the player don't think the Empire of Germania is an interesting title, they click the box and they will never be reminded they can create that title again.
Conclusion
It could be this whole thing is just something I personally find frustrating when I play the game, but I thought I'd at least share my thoughts and see what other people are thinking. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on potential solutions if you find it frustrating to deal with as well, or if you have any thoughts on the changes to titular titles.
.png){kind=avatar}
