Improve Game Performance: Stop Spawning Courtiers

[Anonymous01]

Please disable auto-spawning of courtiers.

This includes both the regular stream of maidens and also the men courtiers automatically created when an unlanded character is granted a title.

There are 5 reasons for this:

1. They severely clog the history files and contribute to extreme lag as time progresses.

2. Most of them do nothing at all. Ever. For their entire lives. Of the few who do anything at all, they mostly limit themselves to conceiving illegitimate children who do nothing. For their entire lives.

3. They penalize players by violating the Court Size/Court Fertility Cap. This is obnoxious, Paradox, because a, players don't ask for these characters but are penalized for having them anyway; b, players are penalized with tyranny maluses for eliminating them by execution or murder; and c, banishment also invokes tyranny, and it in addition to marrying them away solves the Fertility Cap problem but doesn't solve the game processing speed problem.

4. They break immersion. Having random characters with no history, no backstory, and no relationships in a game about characters and relationships (at least that's how I play it; I know some of you paradox coders think it's a game about war) is distracting.

And 5. They are unnecessary. The game provides players ample ways to create unlanded courtiers if they want them: pregnancy, Hire a Courtier/Debutante, Invite to Court, and several courtier-spawning events. If the AI doesn't use all these features, it should. And if you're concerned about players and ai rulers having empty councils at game start, spawn five male relatives for each ruler at the start of the game, give every ruler a teenaged sister for political marriage purposes, and call it a day.

That's it. No more stream-o'-courtiers.

More realism. More game speed. More playability.

DO IT PARADOX.

 

[NewbieOne]

I agree to an extent. I like those random 'nobodies', i.e. nobles who have only just come into the notice of their superiors. However, it might be better not to spawn so many of them and rather focus on getting the normal nobles from normal families properly married to each other.

Besides, the game still picks those ugly lowborn spouses twice older and with poor stats anyway.

 

[BaronIronmaggot]

A tip, you can get rid of them in non tyrannical way. Just marry the women off and marry the men off matrilineally.

 

[Talq]

The randomly spawned courtiers are, to put it politely, not not a big issue, and do serve some useful purposes (like finding a count for a newly conquered territory who isn't related to somebody else & addressing the start of game wife drought). The vast majority of courtiers running around are actually the result of gameplay (notably WoL, but conquests themselves can generate quite a few).

A tip, you can get rid of them in non tyrannical way. Just marry the women off and marry the men off matrilineally.

Unless your court is over 30, then this will just spawn 2 new ones for you (at the level he's talking about).

 

[BaronIronmaggot]

Unless your court is over 30, then this will just spawn 2 new ones for you (at the level he's talking about).

IMO this would be a good way to be a courtier breeder. Always cull the worst one's and eventually only the best of the best are left.

 

[Anonymous01]

A tip, you can get rid of them in non tyrannical way. Just marry the women off and marry the men off matrilineally.

The randomly spawned courtiers are, to put it politely, not not a big issue, and do serve some useful purposes (like finding a count for a newly conquered territory who isn't related to somebody else & addressing the start of game wife drought).

I specifically addressed both these points in the opening post.

The vast majority of courtiers running around are actually the result of gameplay (notably WoL, but conquests themselves can generate quite a few).

All Lowborn courtiers are auto-generated by the game or descend from an auto-generated character. The same is true for many (though not all) non-lowborn unlanded courtiers. Also, I've never seen the game create new courtiers after a conquest -- I've only observed courtiers shifting from a destroyed court to an invading court. I don't know what you're referring to as 'the result of gameplay,' but as I said in the opening post, auto-generated characters serve no purpose in-game since players can manually create all the characters they want, nevermind the dozens of already-extant great house characters.

 

[NewbieOne]

To avoid 'gaming it', you can always marry those with a powerful relative regularly to a landed woman.

 

[Anonymous01]

To avoid 'gaming it', you can always marry those with a powerful relative regularly to a landed woman.

Again, that gets people out of court, but not out of the game. These characters' presence in the game files is what slows down the game, not their presence in my court.

 

[Talq]

1. Leaving aside, 'as many as you want' actually has a cost, I don't want to generate 30 potential wives or 30 potential counts myself when I need one. (and, well, it would explode my court in the process)
2. The random courtiers (like event jews/eunechs) are actually killed off when a court is destroyed (including on succession) unless they are married or have a council position. The female will even be replaced if shes unmarried at 45. Everybody who moves is (or was) married to somebody or related to somebody. Any form of family history will give them that status including being somebody's bastard child. Most of the large courts happening how are indirect results of the seduction focus.

Anyway, I recall this poster & idea floating around the main forums.

 

[Anonymous01]

1. Leaving aside, 'as many as you want' actually has a cost, I don't want to generate 30 potential wives or 30 potential counts myself when I need one. (and, well, it would explode my court in the process)

So don't. Why would you?

2. The random courtiers (like event jews/eunechs) are actually killed off when a court is destroyed (including on succession) unless they are married or have a council position. The female will even be replaced if shes unmarried at 45. Everybody who moves is (or was) married to somebody or related to somebody. Any form of family history will give them that status including being somebody's bastard child. Most of the large courts happening how are indirect results of the seduction focus.

All that (except the game auto-generating maidens) sounds great. All the more reason to stop auto-generating characters. The game doesn't need them.

Anyway, I recall this poster & idea floating around the main forums.

Haven't seen it. If you come across it, let me know.

 

[superkamiguru]

Does everybody else have a perfect computer? The game chokes up performance wise consistently after 200 years. Yes, the no history courtiers are useful for certain situations. But are they good for the game? Probably not. I'd like to see if there is an alternative to the council system that's implemented. Instead of these vague seats with special powers, as king you would have these powers and were able to elect certain people via something like the patrician respect system. But these characters outside landed families would be completely disposable after they died.once a family is not landed, then the recycling would start.

 

[Anonymous01]

Yes, the no history courtiers are useful for certain situations.

Which situations are those? Can't a Great House character brought into the game via the pregnancy system fill any such situation just as readily? (Or maybe more readily, since Great House characters are almost invariably tutored and tend to have higher stats than game-spawned Low Borns.)

 

[Anonymous01]

Some recent quotes from Groogy on topic:

I can pull up an example from optimizing the Crusader Kings II recently. The statistics were quite incredible and I will take out a slice of 2 000 characters in the game, these people together were running about 1.4 million events triggers between them every day. If you scale that up to the full population of 40 000 it becomes 28 million triggers that would be run every daily tick. So we do have quite a performance demand when it comes to our scripts.

Dead people are only there for smaller things like history information or reference in events(we both share the same father, etc.). The only thing they add to that is big really is inheritance. Killing children still adds dead characters, it doesn't eliminate potential dead characters or anything like that. So what you've been doing hasn't added less dead characters but actually more than usual. But since it removes more living characters it means less characters are evaluated on a day to day basis.

In essence, more dead characters doesn't make game slower. More alive characters does.

All the more reason to implement this suggestion.

 

[omega20056]

Your court should be empty apart from your family unless you invite in characters or take the decisions that spawn courtiers.

 

[LordPeter]

100% signed, good explanation.
In the light of the recent Groogy post you quoted, Anonymous01, I think the devs should really answer to this thread (or just sneak in these changes - I'm fine with either ^^).

The only reason I ever needed them was as a dying Zoroastrian sect at game start - a few characters generated only at game start would be sufficient enough there, however.
Once, when I ruler designed a nation, they even brought my realm down: Because they were generated with my country's culture rather than mine, they all hated me and plotted my death. Now how would I ever want to invite some random local people to my court, who all hate me and want my death? That is really plausible by no account, and just got me really annoyed.

Stop these hardcoded horrors!

 

[pf7]

I agree with Anonymous01, except that large number of courtiers is ahistorical. Vice versa - more famous and powerful landlord, more courtiers were in his court. However, in CK2, much of that courtiers are useless. Playing as Roman/Byzantine Emperor with imperial administration and revocable exarchats and themes, I had court with more than 400 courtiers. Managing so big crowd is boring and time wasting, but when I want to find somebody usefull it is difficult.

I suggest some improvements with managing courtiers.

1. "Retiremnt to monastery" should be changed.
Now it acts: when courtier has good stats, he goes to one of Knights Order, when he has bad stats, he/she recived trait "Monk" or "Noun" and stays at your court. That behavior should be changed.
a) Action "Retiremen to monastery" used on courtier (man or women) with bad stats should add some small piety to ruler and remove that courtier from game, in case when courtier has no claims, is lowborn, isn't married, isn't hair, his/her parents have no titles or claims.
b) When courtier is your dynasty, has some presitge, claims etc. ruler lose some prestige (10 or more, when courtier is close relative - uncle for example) and is triggered new event based on claims and statistics. When no claims and good martial - he goes to Knight Order. When bad martial and some claims, he eventually goes to one of bishoprics. When close relative and/or has claims - he can refuse retiremnt, can fly to other court and became hostile to you, in extreme case he can even start rebellion hiring mercenaries or start preparing invasion against you.

2. New action: "Retirement to country".
Courtier with no claims, childless, older than 40 (35-?), bad health - should be removed fom game, adding some prestige to his/her dynasty. It should cost some money (5,10 gold)

3. Should be added new event: "Courtier ask your consent to serve in your vassal/friend/ally court". Frequency of this event should depend from size of your court. Event should be triggered for courtiers with no honorary titles, bad stats etc. Final decision about his/her future is yours.

4. New events, when your courtier with claims on title owned by your/his enemy, no matter inside your realms or outside, ask your consent and support to start war on his own. You can support him with mercenaries, gold. Such action no cause war between you and target character. Your courtier should recive temporary title, and close family as a his court members (likly from your court). When he win - he gains land, becames your friend and/or vasal, when he lose - he becames imprisoned and likely executed (his/her family also). It makes game much more interesing, dynamic, adding some new possibilities of diversions against your enemies.

5. New action: "Banish from court" - when courtier is coward, craven, acted dishonorable, mother of bastard child, is of other religion and you are zealous, plotting against somebody - when you are not in plot, can be banished from court without penalty or with small penalty in piety/prestige/opinion.

6. New event, when character educated in other court ask your consent to let him/her stay, when he lived, in case when he has friends there.

7. When rebelion starts (religious, national, peasantry) - some characters from your realm (and your court too), based on their nationality, religion, statistics, traits and status - should voluntary support rebellion and gain temporary titles, takes honorary titles and minister functions in rebellion court. Characters with some gold should even hire small random generated troops. It is much better than always generate new random character. Trait peasant leader can be granted for example to someone lowborn from your court, who disklike you and has traits arbitrary, brave.
When such rebellion starts in your neighbuor/enemy realm - some of your courtiers can ask you to let them support insurgents. When rebellion is defeated, its 'courtiers' should be imprisoned and likely executed.

8. More than 3 concubines for each tengri ruler (on each level), harem for sovereign muslim rulers (action "take to harem") possible for non-married woman in court or captured during sieges. New events for harem.

9. Much more frequent event, when court members residing in besieged/captured/looted holding dies during or after succesfull siege. This can reduce some total number of characters in game. That should also concerned commanders in lost battles.

10. New traits: outlaw, criminal - such character can be banished from realm/court without penalty.

11. New 'honorary' titles: lady-in-wating (queen companion lady), court executioner, herald - and new events related to them.

 

[Chancellor Ocato]

I only know that it's a huge pain to accurately try to marry off as many courtiers as possible to avoid having your court become the size of a small town (had 170+ or so for decades as a Roman Emperor).

Plus it involves tons of micromanaging and effort in keeping track of who's who, and increases the risk of human error, such as accidental (or lazy) marriages for important family members such as cousins etc.

 

[Talq]

I agree with Anonymous01, except that large number of courtiers is ahistorical. Vice versa - more famous and powerful landlord, more courtiers were in his court. However, in CK2, much of that courtiers are useless. Playing as Roman/Byzantine Emperor with imperial administration and revocable exarchats and themes, I had court with more than 400 courtiers. Managing so big crowd is boring and time wasting, but when I want to find somebody usefull it is difficult.

(had 170+ or so for decades as a Roman Emperor).

Virtually none of the courtiers in either of your cases would be randomly spawned - randomly spawned characters without children, marriage, or dynasty would have been wiped on the transfer to your court. So OPs suggestion would do virtually nothing. (transfer of courts is partly an issue (don't give viceroyalties to people with no heirs unless you want (almost) their entire court back), partly a bug (apparently dynasty members always tranfer their court to you) with viceroyalties).

Which incidentally is what the problem is with the OPs suggestion. Generally your randomly spawned courtiers stop at two (events can add extras (as incidentally do revolts & some pagans/muslims get more but again they don't spawn infinitely) so if you have a 100 person court, they either all have dynasties or you are doing something silly like marrying your courtiers every few weeks. Contrary to his belief, his proposal won't make a meaningful difference.

The large number of unlanded people running around at the moment is mainly the seduction focus (with some bonus from family focus). That needs to be fixed - this isn't even going to help materially.

 

[Anonymous01]

Virtually none of the courtiers in either of your cases would be randomly spawned - randomly spawned characters without children, marriage, or dynasty would have been wiped on the transfer to your court.

What is the paradox developer quote or game code reference confirming this?

Generally your randomly spawned courtiers stop at two

What's the developer quote or game code reference?

The large number of unlanded people running around at the moment is mainly the seduction focus (with some bonus from family focus).

The endless spawn of courtiers was a problem long before WoL.

The courtier caps you describe are not at all my experience in game. What is your support for these assertions?

 

[Talq]

What is the paradox developer quote or game code reference confirming this?

What's the developer quote or game code reference?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

The devs aren't going to comment on something like this. But they also don't sit there listing every game mechanic to provide authority for people spuriously looking for it.

Or put more simply, look at your game & follow what happens to randomly spawned courtiers.