Searching new councilors - is it a kind of exploit?

[mim1983]

So we all know that having councilors with high stats is nice and could significantly improve your chances for achieving political goals.

When I first started playing CK 2, I din't know that there was the character search tool. So when I lost councilor, I had an option to nominate another best character from my court or to "manually" search for new character with desirable stats (clicking on neighbouring counties, checking all characters in a court, etc.).

Then I found out that there is a very useful character search tool - you can sort all characters in the whole world by their particular stats. I really makes the task of finding the proper candidate for the office very easy, but also very ahistorical.

So, I started to wonder - could searching characters only for their stats be classified as exploit? In practice I find it very easy to have always all councilors with stats over 20. On the other hand, AI does not do it.

What is your opinion? Do you also do it when playing CK 2?

 

[DukeDayve]

I suppose you could put a limit on yourself, by only searching for councillors from your own realm. Would that be a-historical? I'm sure kings and emperors from time to time would scour the land for the best men for the job.

 

[RelVleDy]

I don't see how this is an exploit when "invite to court" is based heavily on opinion modifiers. It's a fact when you search for people outside your realm, they'll likely have a negative opinion of you based on a difference in religion and culture. For this reason, it's almost impossible for me to invite anyone outside of my realm, unless they're the opposite sex and I can manage to seduce them. Even then, it's hard to invite someone to court who is either married or has a higher opinion of their liege than of you. What's worse, if you're a male ruler, the "attraction" opinion modifier doesn't work on other men (Unless they're homosexual? Not sure.), but men are required to fill some of your cabinet's positions, based on your laws.

 

[mim1983]

Well - I wouldn't agree. It is very easy to find someone from your religion and culture group (it doesn't have to be exactly the same - it is enough that the group is the same; and of course the searching toll even allow us to sort character by the same group) who is ready to join your court, especially if don't have any negative opinion traits and have some gold to sent them a gift.

As I have already said - I always managed to invite characters with stats over 20 only to be councilors in my court, and they usually were not from my realm (although the same religion and accepted culture). For me the problem is the database itself and the sorting tools - this is what makes it ahistorical (that you can so easily find the best 10 diplomats in the whole world and try to invite them to your court).

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

No.

Ther are enough limits.
When they have something around twenty as an attribute they also usually have a job and are thus uninvitable.

 

[jfoytek]

This is definately not an exploit, and definately not meta, the only people likely to join are people with claims they want pressed, its rare to get someone without a claim to press to join your court, so they are just fine and happy to join your court in the hopes you may someday press there claim. And if you don't they will likely take off on there own at some point deserting the job in the process. Its honestly some of the most fundamental and core features to the game.

So no don't touch it, its just fine the way it is!!!

 

[CrabHelmet]

It's sort of an exploit insofar as the player is doing something very strongly ahistorical. As a medieval ruler, you wouldn't have known the competency of some random courtier in a faraway land except by rumours of their prowess if they were especially good at their job, whereas you could estimate the competency of people you personally knew. So it's an "exploit" introduced by the fact the player has perfect information and contemporary rulers did not in the slightest. It's not really clear how you'd correct this, though - you need to be able to invite characters from far away to press claims, which was something contemporary rulers certainly did since claims were known unlike 'skills', so you can't just gate it using distance. The only way to eliminate the "exploit" in the sense of "incentivize the player to act in the same way as medieval rulers" would be to place the same contraints on them (imperfect information), and I don't think players would like it very much if only the skills of people in your own court were displayed (although I personally would be interested to test-play this).

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

...and I don't think players would like it very much if only the skills of people in your own court were displayed (although I personally would be interested to test-play this).

There is a mod that hides stats/attributes for everyone, Hidden Stats: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mod-hidden-stats.829737/

Just for info.

 

[CrabHelmet]

There is a mod that hides stats/attributes for everyone, Hidden Stats: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mod-hidden-stats.829737/

Just for info.

This is super cool, thank you very much for this!

 

[vandevere]

This is definately not an exploit, and definately not meta, the only people likely to join are people with claims they want pressed, its rare to get someone without a claim to press to join your court, so they are just fine and happy to join your court in the hopes you may someday press there claim. And if you don't they will likely take off on there own at some point deserting the job in the process. Its honestly some of the most fundamental and core features to the game.

So no don't touch it, its just fine the way it is!!!

I agree.

But, there's been this move to reduce player agency. Every Patch, and every DLC lately, has been about reducing player agency; so we have entire options removed, and others chopped down.

The worst part is that most of these nerfs are seemingly designed to contain blobbing. I say "Seemingly", because, for the most part, the blobs remain unaffected.

It's generally the small realms that suffer the burden of the nerfs designed to contain blobs. And that's the opposite of what the devs say they want.

 

[REgentle]

(In this post I'm assuming mim was referring to using the character search function either to find attractive characters in other courts/realms for the purpose of inviting them to one's own court, or to just have them educate the kids in one's court.)

There's a lot going on here. The situation may have changed with conclave introducing favors; although I remember well people talking about how it was (too) easy to use this or that method to rope a foreigner into joining one's court many months ago, I could never seem to make it work quite that easily, and now favors have made the process of outright poaching somebody (as opposed to just having them teach one of your charges, as I'd generally done before, which takes time and may risk contaminating them with foreign ways) basically foolproof. (So I'm assuming, having failed to get around to trying out conclave for myself yet.)
(Edit: I thought I'd read somewhere that one of the favors let you force somebody to come to your court, is that actually so?) (Should've looked before I leaped, probably)

Consider what taking away the option to obtain foreign education altogether would leave us with, though. A player (or any ruler, really) with a small realm may well start with a relatively bad court, and if they can't search for foreign expertise or at least some tutors, they might well be stuck with some sub-10 2-star councillors. That would kinda suck. I might argue unnecessarily so.
And also consider the intertwinings of the stat and education systems/mechanics: what can they be said to represent? In CK2, where human capital directly translates to the efficacy of the playable state (such as we play a state, vs a character, you know what I mean etc.), education, as in directly having one character teach another, is one of the only (relatively) reliable methods that the player can use to influence how good their character/state is at doing stuff (with marriage and personal decisions being a bit behind).
I can't speak to whether it would be accurate to have courts be basically stagnant unless and until they conquer territory that generates better courtiers (not sure how that works in general) or marry in somebody more skilled to do the job/teach the next candidates, but as somebody who enjoys the court management aspect of the game maybe a bit too much, as well as just the whole idea of playing as this reformer who takes their court/institutions to the next level and leaves contemporaries in the dust by any means, I do find the prospect of having those capabilities defanged to be less than ideal, both in simple gameplay terms and in concept.

Also, consider how much it would suck in practice if any AI could favor your high-skill courtiers away without your say, like you can to them. (Edit: again, assuming you can.)
(...I don't actually know, does the AI have favors to play with? Can they in fact already do that? Phew, really should've looked up at least that one beforehand)


...Although... I suppose with way of life, even if one had a full cabinet of jobbers, one could go through all of the stats one ruler at a time (give or take), taking a corresponding focus and leveling the ruler up to 4 stars (while presumably trying to also pick up traits that make for a good councillor), then educate prospective councillors until one has a good candidate to serve and to teach the next generation and so on, then move onto the next stat, etc.

That sounds friggin rad, actually. No idea how close it would actually be to historic, but it'd be a hell of a narrative, sure. Albeit a lot of work, especially for challenging starts whose survival is so uncertain that they need all the advantages they can get.

Then again, though, part of your original concern was that the AI didn't seem to be availing itself of the same options available to the player. If the AI has trouble with finding/poaching councillors as potent as the player can (and also, presumably, with educating its future councillors to an equal standard), would it be reasonable to expect them to go through all of ^that? The gap between most AI courts and that of a savvy player might grow even wider.

I guess that's another root question: is the AI really that bad at assembling/growing a court? Personally I think a player ought to be able to outdo the AI enough to at least have something of an edge on them just on principle, but in practice is the AI so bad at it that it's not even a contest? I haven't actually looked at enough AI courts to know very well, but I can't say I've noticed the AI having, like, invariably dismal councils even in larger realms well into the game or anything.

(Sorry about the rambling post)

 

[Pode]

It's countered by the new council dynamics. A -40 malus to your 3 or 4 most powerful vassals is a pretty steep price to pay to staff your council with landless 20somethings. Especially right after a succession when they can faction even if the council is content. Or if any other vassal can afford to use a favor on them to force them into his faction. Even if they behave, that's a lot of taxes and/or troops that you're giving up in exchange for the councilor stats

 

[Bernard95]

What I used to do was just look at claimants for land in neighboring realms if I was at least a king. If someone had high stats, I'd invite them over regardless if I planned on pressing their claim or not. Typically I'd be looking at claimants regardless since I'm a fan of the marriage game, so it worked out if I ever needed an extra commander or councillor. That and I would sometimes roleplay it a bit and look at it as "rewarding them for their service".

 

[mr_asdfg]

It was an exploit in Vanilla when there was no diplomatic range limit and you could marry anyone in the world.

If I'm lacking suitable people in my court I sometimes do search for characters based on their stats, only as an alternative to generating new characters via the intrigue menu because those guys usually suck.

 

[tului]

It was a much beloved feature of CK original and Deus Vult I think also.