I love Paradox's historical games, and played Europa Universalis 2, Victoria, and Crusader Kings quite a bit. The Medieval period is also one of my favorite historical eras, so when the original Crusader Kings came out, I was very, very excited, thinking it would easily become my favorite Paradox game. But that's not how things turned out. On paper, I loved most things about CK, from the intimate dynasty management on a personal level, to the way it historically simulated processes such as technological innovation and laws. But once I was actually playing it, the gameplay wasn't very compelling to me. The biggest issue was that everything was simply too hands-off, and the few things that did require constant management had to do with micro-management rather than strategy. In my experience, settings like laws and technology directions didnt have to be reset very often, building structures (as in most Paradox games) took a while, and wars couldn't be fought with the same frequency/length as in Europa Universalis games, due to the heavy cost of standing armies. Things like allocating power to population segments were also very hands-off and took a while, and didn't require the player to do a lot. Fighting wars, as in all Paradox games, was also non-player-involving for the most part. At first I thought this was OK, because being a medieval game, CK would emphasize the personal relationships between important nobles, but that part also left me feeling underwhelmed, in terms of stuff to do. You could perform some actions, some of which were present in other Paradox non-dynastic games (e.g. create marriage alliances), but overall, most of them were one-off actions, where you click a button, see what happens, and move on, as opposed to complex, interrelated chains of actions, which is what real medieval intrigue was probably like. So, Crusader Kings became to me, a game where you leave it going, and switch to another window, and do something else, and check in every once in a while. Not exactly the ideal.
So my hope for the sequel is that the developers really ramp up the sheer amount of stuff that a player can do, so that in any given moment, there is something to attend to that has strategic bearing, and is not just micro-management. The biggest area for improvement is probably the character/dynasty management gameplay. In particular, it would be great if important strategies took time to develop, and involved many connected actions over time. For example, say your monarch wanted to assassinate a persky vassal. Instead of just appointing a good courtier for proper position, and then initiating the assassination action, it would be great if first, a spy had to be placed in the target's court to find out their routines/behavior which would be needed by the eventual assassin, and the spy could only be placed via diplomatic actions (like for example, sending a spy in the guise of a young person to be brought up at that vassal's court), and then perhaps using clever diplomacy to provoke a conflict between that vassal and some other noble, to create the illussion of that noble having a motive, and then having the spy plant incriminating evidence after the assassination. This is just an arbitrary example, the point is that such complex interrelated chains of actions in everything from assassinations to diplomacy to warfare would give the player a lot more to do and think about.
I would also love it if the other aspects of the game, from technology to laws to province infrastructure to battles also got more player involvement. And yes, I understand that during the medieval times, kings and dukes and counts didn't necessarily have a lot of control over some of these things, but CK2 is a game in the end. I am a huge fan of realism in games, but not when it really screws the fun over. So to me, a game thats 80% realistic and fun is better than a game that's 100% realistic and boring. If Paradox could find a way to make all these aspects of CK gameplay more involving while maintaining the general realism of the game to reasonable levels, to me that would be ideal.
So my hope for the sequel is that the developers really ramp up the sheer amount of stuff that a player can do, so that in any given moment, there is something to attend to that has strategic bearing, and is not just micro-management. The biggest area for improvement is probably the character/dynasty management gameplay. In particular, it would be great if important strategies took time to develop, and involved many connected actions over time. For example, say your monarch wanted to assassinate a persky vassal. Instead of just appointing a good courtier for proper position, and then initiating the assassination action, it would be great if first, a spy had to be placed in the target's court to find out their routines/behavior which would be needed by the eventual assassin, and the spy could only be placed via diplomatic actions (like for example, sending a spy in the guise of a young person to be brought up at that vassal's court), and then perhaps using clever diplomacy to provoke a conflict between that vassal and some other noble, to create the illussion of that noble having a motive, and then having the spy plant incriminating evidence after the assassination. This is just an arbitrary example, the point is that such complex interrelated chains of actions in everything from assassinations to diplomacy to warfare would give the player a lot more to do and think about.
I would also love it if the other aspects of the game, from technology to laws to province infrastructure to battles also got more player involvement. And yes, I understand that during the medieval times, kings and dukes and counts didn't necessarily have a lot of control over some of these things, but CK2 is a game in the end. I am a huge fan of realism in games, but not when it really screws the fun over. So to me, a game thats 80% realistic and fun is better than a game that's 100% realistic and boring. If Paradox could find a way to make all these aspects of CK gameplay more involving while maintaining the general realism of the game to reasonable levels, to me that would be ideal.
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