Mostly a repost of a reply I put in another thread, but worth touching up in light of further discourse on the forums around Characters since 2.0 launched. The image below also expresses my general view on how Factions and Senates should work, but that will be a different post.
I'm relatively OK with how these systems work, so I'm not going to propose a massive expansion of the game role or anything; but we could do with a few tweaks to better systematise everything, and make a coherent base to riff from for flavour stuff.
Family Basics TLDR: Make the Family an Object in the same way Legions have been made an object, using some of the same idea.
Family and Powerbase TLDR: Remove Grateful/Scorned Family mechanic, have approval based on change in Prestige
Thanks, let me know if there's stuff I've missed that undermines this suggestion, or could add to it
I'm relatively OK with how these systems work, so I'm not going to propose a massive expansion of the game role or anything; but we could do with a few tweaks to better systematise everything, and make a coherent base to riff from for flavour stuff.
Family Basics TLDR: Make the Family an Object in the same way Legions have been made an object, using some of the same idea.
- Following from the change of Legions to become their own object in the Marius update, I would take a similar approach to better formalise Families. Families should be an object
- Certain actions would therefore be transferred to acting on the Family object itself - for example an entire Family could be proscribed or exiled, and continue to exist as an object
- Like Legions, families would ideally have a limited log of their history - characters that have performed great actions, or have become leaders, moved state, things like this.
- Certain mission chains or events could be tied to Family objects rather than state tags, adding a bit more flexibility over things that would work well for DLC flavours
- Like Legions, families would develop Family Traits, which could be taken from great actions of their members, or from highly formative traits of prominent characters in their history
- This would subsume the "Bloodline" traits that exist at this time, which would become Family Traits that exist at game start
- Characters born into a Family will immediately have its traits applied to the Character at their birth
- This will end up shaping members of the Family to be relatively similar to one another, which makes it a bit easier to personify the family unit, and leads them to be more likely to have similar preferences for Factions
- Like with Legions, this could be a nice area to add in flavour packs to flesh out particular families that were important in history
- Each Character is a member of 0-1 Families, and will become a member in one of the following ways (fairly basic stuff like now)
- Birth: Depending on succession laws, a child will be assigned to the Family of one of its parents, if they are a full member of a family
- Marriage: Again depending on laws, marriage could transfer a character to a new Family; but not always (eg Rome I believe did not do this)
- Clients: Minor Characters should be able to become Clients of Families. They act like adopted characters in most ways, but their children would begin as minor characters and do not get familial traits.
- Minor Characters should be more likely to seek out a Patron Family based on the Family's prestige value
- Their children will probably become Clients of the same Family, but may find a different patron while growing up. They might be attracted/lost based on the Prestige value of a Family, personal riendships and so on.
- Clients would still be elligible to form new Great Families when such events fire, indeed Clients will likely be more prominent
- Adoption: Only full members of a Family can adopt, and may only adopt close relations from another family (eg sister's child) or Clients. Adopted characters would become a Full member of the family, so any subsequent children can inherit the Family Traits - leave the pure eugenics to CK
- Families would be generated more or less as they are now: when a new Great Family is created due to state size growth, it creates the new object
- If a Family is allowed to live following being annexed, there should be an option to allow it to remain as an object in the conquering state, but this would cause a massive approval drop for existing families, and over time the Great Family with the lowest Prestige should be at risk of losing their status
Family and Powerbase TLDR: Remove Grateful/Scorned Family mechanic, have approval based on change in Prestige
I really dislike how gamey and exploitable the Grateful Family mechanic works, I'd rather see this be smoothed out. Families would have Prestige tend towards the State Powerbase of their Family, when Prestige is rising their Approval value is higher, when Prestige is falling their Approval is lower. This way not all offices are equal, the value it has for family approval is directly tied to the powerbase it grants.
- Families have a Prestige value, as now, shown on the Family screen.
- Prestige is mostly determined by the Powerbase from Offices held by its Family Membersand Clients
- Prestige will "decay" slowly towards their share of Office Powerbase held at the time (absolute rate of change is quicker the further away the value is, as seen elsewhere)
- Powerbase from other sources are not included - including Family Head, Faction Leader, Holdings and Loyal Cohorts
- Crappy one-ship Navies will not contribute much powerbase, while Governorships will become the most important factor to balance; leaders would naturally generate Prestige from the Capital Region's powerbase
- Family Heads continue to have Powerbase according to the proportion of Family Prestige their Family has
- The rate of change of Prestige is the main determinant of Family Approval
- Other events or traits should also be able to directly modify family prestige, particularly those that would be included in the Family histories, or alter Family Traits
- This could include actions taken against members of a Family, such as losing (or bribing your way out of) a trial, events that harm a Character's popularity etc
- Likewise actions that are taken directly towards the family as an object could have more dramatic immediate impacts on their Prestige
- The Prestige value of a Family bestows Prominence upon all of its members
- Clients will get a relatively smaller bonus to their Prominence from Family Prestige
- The Prestige of a Family could also grant Statesmanship to its (unemployed) members, to simulate exposure to the works of their family members, and make them more likely to be elected in Republics
- Prestige is mostly determined by the Powerbase from Offices held by its Family Membersand Clients
- Families have an Approval/Loyalty value, relative to the state they're in, that holds a base value of 50, which in turn acts as a component of Character Loyalty. Also shown on the Family screen.
- This is largely determined by the trajectory of the Family Prestige within that state
- When the Prestige of a Family is falling, then the Approval value is proportionately lowered; and vice versa. If a Family are overemployed/on the rise compared to where they've been historically, they will be happy; if they're slipping from their previous heights, they will be unhappy. If their Prestige matches their Office Powerbase, then there is a neutral effect on Approval, and only transient factors will alter it.
- The trick will therefore be that if you have recently leant heavily on the talent of a family, you will be forced to continue using them to a degree, or their Prestige will begin to fall very quickly and they will quickly become unhappy
- I think this feels a bit more natural than the cliff-edge approach of # offices as now, where a family is either totally happy or scorned. Instead, they will be slightly happy/angry depending on whether or not the sum total of Prestige of their offices is more or less what they've been used to
- Family Approval can also be impacted by other transient factors, events and so on, working like Character Loyalty at the moment
- Whole Family Approval can be gained by Character interactions with the Family Head (matters such as Family Stipends etc). Anything that currently applies a Loyalty effect to all Characters in the Family could instead directly apply to the Family Approval
- Low Approval comes with a warning like Disloyal Characters/Provinces, replacing the scorned Family warning.
- Character Loyalty of Family Members will be impacted by their Family's Approval value, replacing the Grateful Family/Scorned Family bonuses
- I'd like to say ~25% of Character Loyalty value is determined by Family Approval, with ~25% from Faction Approval and ~50% personal factors like Powerbase/Appointments etc. The weights a character places on the Approval of their Family/Faction could itself be altered by personal traits. But I'm agnostic on the exact mix.
- Ideally this could lead to the Family unit being a source of its own kind of seperatist rebellion, especially among Tribal nations and Monarchies, if they have sufficiently low approval, without necessarily having to meet the conditions for a full Civil War; like Provincial Loyalty acts as another route.
- This is largely determined by the trajectory of the Family Prestige within that state
Thanks, let me know if there's stuff I've missed that undermines this suggestion, or could add to it
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