Societies, Artifacts and Bloodlines

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Hi everyone,

Maybe I missed something, but has any dev so far mentioned if societies, artifacts and bloodlines will be part of CK3?

Those three mechanics are among my favorite additions towards the end of CK2's development process, because they gave you something to work towards other than just acquiring land - societies became a major factor in the development of single characters, artifacts were a method of slowly increasing the power of the head of the house (although effects like +15 learning for a multi-generational dynasty if hermits may be a bit over the top) and bloodlines became a reason for careful breeding apart from political marriages.

I have seen bloodlines being mentioned in the decision screen, but I don't remember anyone ever elaborating on it. Societies and artifacts on the other hand were not mentioned at all if I remember correctly.

I guess they may come with a later update or DLC if they aren't present at launch, but does anyone know any specifics?

 

[Cronus865]

Societies and artifacts aren't, but bloodlines are kind of back in a different form with "dynasty legacies" you can read about in the first dev diary.

CK3 Dev Diary #1 - Dynasties & Houses

Greetings, and welcome to the first CK3 Feature Dev Diary! As this is the first DD we want it to be extra juicy, and showcase something that we’re excited about - namely what we’re doing with Dynasties! Dynasties are immaterial yet fundamentally...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[GingerContingent]

Hi everyone,

Maybe I missed something, but has any dev so far mentioned if societies, artifacts and bloodlines will be part of CK3?

Those three mechanics are among my favorite additions towards the end of CK2's development process, because they gave you something to work towards other than just acquiring land - societies became a major factor in the development of single characters, artifacts were a method of slowly increasing the power of the head of the house (although effects like +15 learning for a multi-generational dynasty if hermits may be a bit over the top) and bloodlines became a reason for careful breeding apart from political marriages.

I have seen bloodlines being mentioned in the decision screen, but I don't remember anyone ever elaborating on it. Societies and artifacts on the other hand were not mentioned at all if I remember correctly.

I guess they may come with a later update or DLC if they aren't present at launch, but does anyone know any specifics?

Bloodlines are replaced by dynasty legacies, as Cronus above mentioned, which are more of a gradual process of accumulating bonuses that takes place over the course of the game than in CK2, where you just have a certain bloodline or don't.

Artifacts are gone, likely because they were nearly impossible to balance and would turn players into godkings with 50 personal combat despite being a wounded 57 year old. I do hope they return in some form though.

Societies are also not in at launch. I wouldn't worry about missing their effect on your character however, as the lifestyle system and its events are way more involved in this game than in CK2.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Societies and artifacts aren't, but bloodlines are kind of back in a different form with "dynasty legacies" you can read about in the first dev diary.

CK3 Dev Diary #1 - Dynasties & Houses

Greetings, and welcome to the first CK3 Feature Dev Diary! As this is the first DD we want it to be extra juicy, and showcase something that we’re excited about - namely what we’re doing with Dynasties! Dynasties are immaterial yet fundamentally...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Yes, I'm aware of the renown mechanics which sounds interesting enough that I won't be miffed if it outright replaces the bloodline mechanic, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for. While it does feel bloodlines-y from an RP standpoint, in terms of gameplay effect it's closer to artifacts, i.e. the renown perks are persistent bonuses you slowly accumulate throughout the centuries. The main difference is that all members of the house (or dynasty? I might have to reread the dev diary after all) have access to the bonuses as opposed to only a single character, but since the player only ever plays a single character at any given time, this only makes a small to moderate difference to the player.
Also, artifacts are more interactive while renown is just a ticking number. I have fond memories of my revocation-invitation-assassination spree to wrest control of the Ark of the Covenant away from a vassal dynasty.

Bloodlines, on the other hand, are modifiers that can be obtained by completing challenges as a character, or by careful breeding programs. The renown mechanic, again, is less interactive and only depends on time and some land distribution mechanics by the player.

(The last part, by the way, is a very good thing because it gives the player a reason to not just conquer everything. That's the main reason why I actually like the renown mechanic, even if it doesn't sound that way in the preceding paragraphs)

Edit: I just came up with a potentially WAY more fun of revamping the hermetic artifacts, especially the books:

Instead of giving the books +4 total stats on the highest level, have them work like this:
Level 1: A small amount of piety (theurgy tomes) or prestige (other tomes)
Level 2: Another small amount of prestige on top
Level 3: Additionally, +1 stewardship (alchemy tome), +0.5 health (panacea tome) or +1 learning (all the other tomes)
Level 4: Additionally, a minor decision to actually apply the knowledge. For example for the alchemy tome:

Transmute metal - actually try to transmute a metal by doing some chemistry. Can result in some extra cash (you actually transmute that lump of lead into gold... or something vaguely golden looking that you can sell to a gullible trader as a gold nugget), a loss of cash (you lose the ingredients and your left eyebrow in a small fire) or some tech progress (You fail to create gold, but you accidentally discover something that's useful, like a method to produce a fertilizer, gunpowder or something similar to an actual law of modern chemistry)

Just a random thought, that's probably a bit beyond the scope of this thread

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Artifacts are gone, likely because they were nearly impossible to balance and would turn players into godkings with 50 personal combat despite being a wounded 57 year old. I do hope they return in some form though.

I disagree on this one... artifact based combat skill almost exclusively came from armor and weapons, which were limited to 1 each per character and only gave +15 combat skill at the highest level (excluding special religious weapons which reached +20). That could be amended by reducing the bonus to, say, +10 and by giving most AI counts and above relatively easy access to +5 combat skill weapons and armor as some sort of baseline equipment like a standard mail shirt and a good quality, but unspectacular sword/lance/axe.

What made artifacts potentially OP in CK2 was generations of hermetic artifacts. That could potentially be balanced by having a single invention and a single magnum opus slot rather than stacking half a dozen inventions and up to four magna opera.

The OP godlike warrior kings with 100+ combat skill were usually the product of dozens of bloodlines, most of which gave +5 to +10 combat skill.

Societies are also not in at launch. I wouldn't worry about missing their effect on your character however, as the lifestyle system and its events are way more involved in this game than in CK2.

Well, the lifestyle perks certainly are... I'm not so sure about the events, though. So far I've mostly seen a few "exchange one resource for 50 progress towards the next perk" events. There's likely more to the system than what we've seen in the two feature streams so far, but at this point I wouldn't call the system particularly involved yet.

 

[Riamus]

I liked having artifacts. If balancing is an issue, it really isn't hard at all to adjust the stat bonuses for the artifacts rather than not having them at all. I posted about improvements to it awhile back here. I think making use of some or all of these ideas could greatly improve artifacts and also help to balance them, though balancing wasn't specifically what my post was about.

Multiple bloodlines were definitely where most of your combat skills came from. Still, I liked the ability to breed the bloodlines into my line and then try to keep it there. They could definitely be balanced better, but I don't really like losing them entirely even with the dynasty legacies, though I'll see how those play out in my own games before deciding if it's an okay replacement or not.

I also liked societies a lot and would like to see them return in some form, though preferably with more variety between what they offer.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'm sure artifacts/items will return in some form and to be better balanced - it's too much of an RPG staple to miss out on and adds a lot of flavor.

I also liked societies a lot and would like to see them return in some form, though preferably with more variety between what they offer.

The lack of variety with much of the flavor concentrated on some societies but not others was a turn off for me (yes, I could disable the edgy satanic cults, but it would've been nice for there to be more variety between the actual realistic normal religious societies for example). But I hope to see stuff like Sufi Orders, different schools of learning or monastic traditions, that kind of thing in the future in some form.

 

[Aquamancer]

Artifacts are gone, likely because they were nearly impossible to balance and would turn players into godkings with 50 personal combat despite being a wounded 57 year old. I do hope they return in some form though.

Agreed: since one was able to collect massive treasuries of artefacts in CK2, the resulting boosts to stats, piety, prestige, opinion and other modifiers made the game much easier and several early-game challenges trivial later on. Besides, if artefacts are reimplemented, I'd rather want the game to prioritize the implementation of historical artifacts (namely religiously significant relics, crown jewels and ceremonial swords), and for the game to encourage less artifact hoarding.

Societies are also not in at launch. I wouldn't worry about missing their effect on your character however, as the lifestyle system and its events are way more involved in this game than in CK2.

Given that societies in CK2 provided very powerful perks (like giving good traits for monastic orders, martial perks for warrior lodges, and amazing artifacts for the Hermetics), it's perfectly understandable why they weren't implemented in CK3: balancing their implementation would've taken way too much time. That said, I do miss the representation of Christian and Indian monastic orders and the Hashashin that the societies provided. In my opinion, the re-implementation of societies should focus on the representation of unplayable groups that historical monarchs interacted with, with their basic gameplay shifting from being an active member of a society to being a sponsor and supporter of the society, like monastic orders and the Hashashin, but also more general groups like bards and other artists.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

I also liked societies a lot and would like to see them return in some form, though preferably with more variety between what they offer.

Now that you mention it... the new, dynamic religion system should make societies both more challenging to implement and more rewarding once they're implemented, since all societies were gated behind religions in CK2. Maybe that's why they aren't available at launch, but I bet you could make that work well together with the religious paradigms.

Like, most religions will have a basic monastic society of some description which gives some extra learning. But all gnostics, for example, may share a gnostic monastic order, while religions where greed is a virtue will have a monastic society which gives extra stewardship instead, or a more political religion may favor diplomacy instead.

And that's just the beginning: There could be christian warrior lodges which aren't particularly liked even by its own clergy because they have a tendency to go on uncontrolled murder rampages which is not okay because uncontrolled murder rampages are only fine if they're called by the pope, there could be assassin style societies in religions which don't shun violence, fertility cults, debauchery sects which are nearly immune to stress, dedicated star watchers for religions with astrology, crazy cannibalistic human sacrifice cults for crazy cannibalistic human sacrificey religions...

Oh wow, I really want to see where the game will be going over the course of the next couple of years.

I guess we will need a craziness slider in the game options for the purists who don't want to deviate further from reality than Cathars as a mainstream religion

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

Societies were imo the best part of CKII. Even if they are not included at launch I still hope to see them added in a patch or DLC.

 

[Hroppa]

I do miss the representation of Christian and Indian monastic orders and the Hashashin that the societies provided. In my opinion, the re-implementation of societies should focus on the representation of unplayable groups that historical monarchs interacted with, with their basic gameplay shifting from being an active member of a society to being a sponsor and supporter of the society, like monastic orders and the Hashashin, but also more general groups like bards and other artists.

I'd love to see a more historically accurate version of the monastic orders. The Societies system wasn't a good fit, imo - you shouldn't be accumulating points within a network of like-minded peers. You should be patronising major monastic institutions (with specific local landholdings), and leveraging them to improve your realm (eg landing them to colonise land, which was historically quite common). I may well create a mod for this myself (I tried modding better monks in CK2, but the modding capability wasn't quite flexible enough for me).

 

[Zhetone]

I thought societies were boring and repetitive, and they were just vehicles for further metagaming your character's traits, at least as far as religious societies go. Secret societies were just stupid and unbalanced. The only redeemable one was the alchemist one that I'm forgetting the name of

Also why would a king become a Franciscan while somehow remaining on the throne and rise through the ranks? It's just nonsensical

 

[Lordy's]

Another way to rethink artifacts could be to make their bonuses relative:
If you have the largest and most beautiful collection of crown jewels, you get X prestige. Rank 2 gets a little bit less, etc. Below a certain threshold the bonus is marginal. Of course this makes it hard for say counts to get any bonus, one could counter that with a seperate ranking for each rank (higher ranks get more but the competition is tougher).
For jewelry, this could go hand in hand with an upgrade system. Instead of throwing away your old crown, you add additional elements - ornaments and jewels. That would also make it so that your crown is not so generic.
A similar approach could be taken for weapons and armour: Over time they get outdated and you need new ones. Also armour should not give combat skill but should rather only increase your survival chances in battle. Or just split up combat skill into skill, weapon damage and armour. That way when you're outside of a battle your fancy armour won't protect you.

And others already said it but skills from books are OP and don't even make a lot of sense: Being a character that reads a lot is better represented as a trait than by having a collection of books in your treasury.

Not making sense also holds for societies, as already discussed here and they were just a power creep element. The only good part that societies offer (to a very limited degree) is interaction with other characters in the society, but to be honest that's almost nonexistant (for example becoming the leader of a society doesn't require any character interactions and doesn't rely on opinions).
Instead of adding CK2 societies they could rather add something inspired by the various court factions from HIP.

 

[generalis Julius Caesar]

If you have the largest and most beautiful collection of crown jewels, you get X prestige. Rank 2 gets a little bit less, etc. Below a certain threshold the bonus is marginal. Of course this makes it hard for say counts to get any bonus, one could counter that with a separate ranking for each rank (higher ranks get more but the competition is tougher).

This is a great idea. It would fix most of the problems with the crown jewel artifacts.

 

[Olden Weiss]

Perhaps it's just me, but I always felt artifacts were a bit much. I understand that they had a degree of presence in history, but their impact on the grand scheme of things was so small that I never felt they warranted a game mechanic. It felt more like something that belonged in Age of Wonders, to me.

 

[vyshan]

I'd love to see a more historically accurate version of the monastic orders. The Societies system wasn't a good fit, imo - you shouldn't be accumulating points within a network of like-minded peers. You should be patronising major monastic institutions (with specific local landholdings), and leveraging them to improve your realm (eg landing them to colonise land, which was historically quite common). I may well create a mod for this myself (I tried modding better monks in CK2, but the modding capability wasn't quite flexible enough for me).

Yea this.

In regards to artifacts, particularly religious artificats they should be tied to locations not people. This could be similar to how Imperator handles treasury stuff for holy sites. It also could mean that you have plots of stealing them from locations, say your archbishop wants the bones of a particular saint that he doesn't own. So a plot is now underway to steal them and bring them back.

 

[DaJay42]

I'll be honest, I mostly just want the inventory system back so that mods can use it. The vanilla artifacts just never felt quite right.