Map Options for future CK2 or CK3

[Mr Tex]

As I am sure many people would either acknowledge or agree to is that for many players the further addition of India has slowed the game down for many people.

*Before you think I'm beating a dead horse and quit reading; allow to continue*.

An option which I would suggest is not that people need to revert to older patches and give up on all of the extraordinary features added in at later dates; would be to allow us to choose our map.

With this inclusion it would allow the player more freedom regarding where and how we play.


Options included would be as follows:


Crusader Kings: Europe, Middle East, and North Africa - excluding India, the Steppes, and *Asia*.

This option would be the mapmode with all features included excluding the map enlargements presented in later patches. Speeding up the game immensely without the need to calculate for all the added characters


Indian Kings: Classic Crusader Kings; including India and The Steppes

This option would be the current state of CK2


Asian Crusader Kings: Asia, in other words China, Japan, and Indo-China, and the Mongolian Steppes

This option would allow us the option of playing a game set within the Far East with new mechanics and religions and many, many more provinces without even having to consider having the game crawl to a complete stop with all the added provinces.


Eurasian Kings: This would include all map modes with every bit of features from all of them

Even though I personally think this would make the game come to a crawl; this would allow everyone with monster Pcs to play an entirety of Eurasia and North Africa to their hearts contempt, without the need of slowing down those with slower PCs.


Now these obviously are limiting in their capacity which is why I suggest another choice;


Custom Kings: All maps are optional

This allows the player to pick and choose the maps available to play and view and which to ignore. For example if you are wanting to play a pure and simple African campaign with only the African map visible you may. Or a campaign entirely focused on Europe and the Middle East but no Africa you may.


However this obviously opens up the problems of wanting to play the Crusades but without Ethiopia and Mali but still want Egypt and North Africa included. Which is why I propose that within the custom map selection screen that every area be divided into different areas.


Europe: *Western Europe *Eastern Europe (Everything East of Poland, Steppes, excluding Finland)

Africa: *North Africa *Sub-Saharan Africa *Horn of Africa (Somalian Nations)

Middle East: *Western Middle East (Holy Land, Syria, Iraq and everything West and North) *Eastern Middle East (Iran and everything East)

India: No options (but maybe a North and South Indian division?)

Asia: *China *Mongolian Steppes *Indo China *Japan


So with the Custom map mode it would, as I stated previously, allow you to completely customize your game. Allowing for games centralized only on China, or Japan, India, Africa, etc.


Now obviously if you choose only a European Game, there arises the glaring issue of the Crusades and how they would be handled. Just like the Mongolian Invasion event there would also be events regarding the Crusades. During the years of the Crusades an event would pop up saying that the Pope has declared the First, Second, Third etc. Crusade.

When the event fires you’ll have two options:

1. Deus Vault! – This will have a follow up event with the amount of manpower you are willing to donate to God’s mission. The contribution would come Solely out of your personal Demense. Your Vassals will receive the a similar event and with the same outcome. This follow up decision will have the options of

a. Full levies – with you leading them (you join the Crusade for a minimum of 4-5 years, with a gain of prestige and piety and the obvious chance of dying)

b. Full levies – Without you as the head but you assign someone from the court (you suffer a prestige and piety hit)

c. Half Levy – Small prestige and Piety hit and relationship malus with your local ministry

During this time different events will appear if you chose to attend the crusade that will provide benefits to you such as new traits and maluses such as being maimed, falling sick, becoming captured, etc. This event will have a 50/50 chance of ending in success or failure with the associated gain of religious authority or decline of such.


2. How about Deus Nope? – This will result in a major relationship hit with the Pope and Bishops within your kingdom, with a chance of becoming excommunicated. Your vassals will still have the option of accepting or declining to join the Crusade. If they decide to join they will have a relationship large malus modifier with you.

Follow up events will also occur that will raise revolt risk, lower army morale, troops deserting to fight the crusade resulting in lower levies etc. HOWEVER, if the Crusade fails you get this follow up event:

a. Religious Fools: You gain an immense amount of Prestige. With a 75% of gaining the trait cynical.


Obviously there will be many more events regarding important historical events, which will more than likely occur within the actual historical date. (Just like the Mongolian Invasion Event)


I doubt this would be remotely possible on the current CK2 engine, however if it is possible I would think this would be one of the best updates in the history of CK2. If it is not possible I would ask for Paradox to strongly consider this for CK3 with the largely anticipated release of East Asia

 

[Thure]

Would be way to complexe. They need to balance EVERY map mod on it's own. And they need to make events for every map mod seperatelly. You nod MOngol events if you exclude Asia. But otherwise you need Persian events as India. And you need events for the Mongols dealing with Europe because Europe isn't on the map. And for the full map you would need to handle the same things without events.

 

[lopo772]

Would be way to complexe. They need to balance EVERY map mod on it's own. And they need to make events for every map mod seperatelly. You nod MOngol events if you exclude Asia. But otherwise you need Persian events as India. And you need events for the Mongols dealing with Europe because Europe isn't on the map. And for the full map you would need to handle the same things without events.

Difficult, I'll grant, but it seems far from impossible. This all seems like fair ideas imho.

 

[Mr Tex]

Would be way to complexe. They need to balance EVERY map mod on it's own. And they need to make events for every map mod seperatelly. You nod MOngol events if you exclude Asia. But otherwise you need Persian events as India. And you need events for the Mongols dealing with Europe because Europe isn't on the map. And for the full map you would need to handle the same things without events.

Well unless there is a historical invasion of India from Iran then there is no reason for an event concerning them. It would be as it is now; we don't receive the Mongolian invasion event until the day it happens. I believe the events for the Mongols dealing with Mongolia could be handled the same way as the crusades for the Europeans. A simple one time event with follow up events, of gaining prestige and ducats or loss of prestige and loss of ducats. With the event chain ending with the death of the Khan.
I believe it would be a simple event check of if map X is active then the event Y would not occur; or if map X is not active then event Y will occur if the map is A or C.

I agree this would be VERY complex for a later CK2 expansion; however I hope that Paradox will consider something similar to this for CK3. Even if it means doing what they did with CK2 and that is releasing different Map packs/expansions separately.
I personally would like to have the possibility of playing the Mongolian Empire spanning from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea; or just have a game centralized on Europe without having to worry about the game checking on all these characters from all over the map. The developers have already expressed their desires to have more focus on other parts of the world and not centralized entirely on Europe; and I believe this could be one of many possible ways for it to happen effectively while appealing to many people.

How would you suggest the events to happen? How would you personally do it so that only the very major events of the period are reflected without having to bog down the player with unnecessary events? If Europe was disabled; which events would the Chinese NEED to be influenced by? Or likewise if Asia is turned off which event(s) would the Europeans NEED to have represented to help historical immersion. (excluding the Mongolian invasion; I believe just about everywhere but Sub Saharan Africa would be influenced)
For example it isn't necessary for the Indians to hear about the Crusades or likewise the Chinese.

 

[Mr Tex]

[

Difficult, I'll grant, but it seems far from impossible. This all seems like fair ideas imho.

Thank you

What would you suggest as changes to this idea to make it easier or possible?

 

[Thure]

Well unless there is a historical invasion of India from Iran then there is no reason for an event concerning them.

Ever heard of the Mughals? And the Ghurid dynasty? Invasions from Persia into India were very common.

 

[lopo772]

[


Thank you

What would you suggest as changes to this idea to make it easier or possible?

I don't know, really.

This might actually make things MORE complicated, but maybe there should be an active map range for your area of control? So if you're in Ireland it might barely reach the holy land, but if you're in Italy you might reach all the way to India. This would require a dynamic map with added characters being put on constantly though, so maybe not a brilliant idea but it's food for thought.

Also, if you treated the different map-versions like mods or dlcs (that is, you select them from the launcher), then you could reduce the amount of unnecessarily loaded events, portraits, history, etc. It'd be a hell's more load of work for pdox but I know that atleast for myself it would be this kind of an addition that would mark significant attempts to improve and add on to the game in CK3, and really push the boundaries of "giving stuff to the player".

 

[Alfy]

I think the original idea in the OP is too complicated, but a partial implementation of it is perhaps feasible. There's a sub-mod, part of the HIP package, that disables India, removing all the characters and making unpassable land, and I have to say it does absolute wonders for the game's performance.

I'd point out one thing though concerning a potential inclusion in a potential future CK3: a potential CK3 would have higher hardware requirements, and who knows, miracles happen, perhaps even an implementation of a 64bits version of Clausewitz, while at the same time offering much less in terms of number of characters of even surface of landscape at release. Paradox has not been good at offering options that would mitigate existing slowdowns for older computers, clearly leaving that work to modders (I'm not saying they don't optimise their code with patches though), so I don't see them including that much work in a new release just to mitigate potential future issues.

 

[Thure]

I think the original idea in the OP is too complicated, but a partial implementation of it is perhaps feasible. There's a sub-mod, part of the HIP package, that disables India, removing all the characters and making unpassable land, and I have to say it does absolute wonders for the game's performance.

I'd point out one thing though concerning a potential inclusion in a potential future CK3: a potential CK3 would have higher hardware requirements, and who knows, miracles happen, perhaps even an implementation of a 64bits version of Clausewitz, while at the same time offering much less in terms of number of characters of even surface of landscape at release. Paradox has not been good at offering options that would mitigate existing slowdowns for older computers, clearly leaving that work to models (I'm not saying they don't optimise their code with patches though), so I don't see them including that much work in a new release just to mitigate potential future issues.

64bit, multicore support... the Clausewitz engine really needs an update. CK2 could work so smooth if Clausewitz would be more modern.

 

[Alfy]

Yeah. In a game where a lot of the work is due to individually tracking millions of numbers, having 16GB of RAM and knowing three quarters of it is not being used and seing my HD light blinking like crazy is infuriating. I don't blame them for getting as much as they can from the current engine, but I don't care how good the latest games look (which has more to do with the right artistic choices anyway), I feel it's becoming really restrictive. And now we're gonna track individuals scars across all characters? Sigh...

 

[PK_AZ]

Well, I disagree with nearby every detail, but general idea is nice.

 

[DPS]

Well, I disagree with nearby every detail, but general idea is nice.

Yeah, but the devil is in the details.

As far as appearance and mapping is concerned, I'm still hoping for a future release in which the game map is an actual rotatable (and, obviously, voomable) globe. I've been waiting for that since it was announced that EUIII would be 3D. Though that would benefit EU and HOI a lot more than CK. And I doubt that Paradox will even actually do it, because it would mean that Scandinavia wouldn't appear so much larger than it really is on the map.