Status Report - and a call for your input

[unmerged(6777)]

Hi folks.

As many of you know, I've been away from the forums for the past few months on an extended leave. While some very good work has been done in my absense, there hasn't been as much activity in terms of concrete changes to the game. Now that I am back, I've taken up the reins once more and want to help drive the beta process to a finished official patch version in the not-too-distant future. What this will entail is a new set of beta patches, lots more testing, and quite a lot of hard work from all of those involved.

Patch adjustments take roughly two forms: those things that betas can do (and, by extension, so can the public) that don't involve changes to the exe file; and changes that only Johan can do since they involve adding or editting the source code. I am sure that it will come as no surprise that the time allotment for the former is considerably greater than for the latter.

However, Johan expects to be able to allocate a limited amount of time to CK code work in the near future, so the purpose of this thread is to collect your thoughts on what you think the priorities should be for the upcoming patches. We will sift through your requests, looking at feasibility and impact, and then establish an action plan for ourselves and a suggested list for Johan.

So what I would ask each of you to do is to make one (and only one!) post that clearly identifies the THREE things that you would most like to see addressed with the next patch. Make sure you give sufficient detail about what you perceive as the problem, any solution you envision for it, and the impact that your solution might have on the rest of the game. Where possible, provide a link to a thread(s) that discusses the issue in greater detail. If such a thread doesn't exist, start a new one.

This thread IS NOT for discussing the ideas. Limit your post here to a synopsis of the issue and use the separate threads for discussion. If someone posts an idea that you agree with and is in your own top-3 list then you can indicate in your post that you support it. If you disagree with a previous poster's idea, or want to add more thoughts on it, do so in the linked thread, not here. I would like this thread to be as "clean" and free of discussion as possible, and act somewhat more like an informal poll.

Things that you don't need to include in your top-3 are:

• The sound bug. We believe that it has now been tracked down and removed. It should be resolved in the next beta patch. (ETA a week or so)
• The virtual call CTD bug. We think we've tracked that bug down and squished it.
• Requests for a ledger or bridefinder utility. Johan doesn't have the time to create something of that scope, to create new interfaces, etc.
• Any seriously graphics-intensive stuff. It is unlikely that any artwork can be done and added to the game. Dick is otherwise preoccupied.

Asking for the massive overhaul of something is also a lot less likely to happen, particularly if it's related to source code. Event tweaks, data table tweaks and such are possible, but not a complete revamp of the tech system.

Here's your chance to have some input. Use it wisely.

Cheers!
(note that I will post my own top 3 in due course)

 

[unmerged(18148)]

1-Private wars between vassals. Otherwise, playing as a count or small duchies is plain boring. If targeted crusades were coded, this can too.
2-More events.
3-Some kind of score table that records your dinasty's total Prestige and Piety, for God's sake!

 

[Duuk]

1) Bar military access to armies that you are not at war with. Exception: Christians who are at war with muslims (crusading) should be able to pass through non-allied christian nations.

2) Increase birth rate of males/random appearance of male courtiers. Perhaps if random courtiers were 80/20? The AI doesn't generally marry courtiers off, so this wouldn't negatively affect the player too greatly.

3) Vastly vastly VASTLY increase mortality rates for negative traits (illness, serious wound, leper, etc). Also, greatly increase loyalty effects of traits. With the new AI-pledging/accepting vassalage code, a civil war is not the end of the world and merely represents a dynastic struggle. Ergo, the crazed leper excommunicated Robert of Normandie will destroy "england", but "england" will reform under the next person to claim the throne.

 

[Duuk]

PS -- When you declare war on a liege, you should be considered to be at war with all his vassals. This would allow you to raise your warscore against the liege so he'll know he's losing the war, and also allow the liege to know that just because he only has 1 demense province and loses it he shouldn't give up his claim to King of Germany.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

The following are all somewhat related:

1. Something needs to be done with Mongol vs. Non-mongol same religion warfare. This isn't fun to see your land gobbled up and because your the same religion, you can't do much about it as you haveto sue for peace like normal.
   I've posted my thoughts, mainly that all conquests you still haveto sue for peace to get the land, but you don't haveto have any claims on different religion lands. This still gives mongols the edge because they don't haveto spend prestige to aquire titles for anyone. I've also stated that if he wants to keep the marshal conquers an area and becomes its ruler that can happen automatically (thus the only way to get around those areas the AI won't let go of would be to use your marshal) or can be stored in the savefile for when making peace.
2. Something needs to be done to keep the leige from forcing peace upon all their vassals when at war. This is because the leige is free to jump in on any war, deffensive or offenisve, and is able to force peace without the vassal. I know why this was done, but it was really done as a quick-fix and even when it was being discuessed in the bug forum their was discent about this because of the very issues that now occur.
3. There really needs to be a way to have internal conflict under certain laws without involing the leige or declaring independance. This really makes the Elective Law far more of an exploit, which i don't think it was intended to be so much. The effects though of having a law set that doesn't allow internal conflict should be balanced with some severe penalties as otherwise it will be the obvious choice for humans.

 

[ulmont]

1. The CTD I reported here (no doubt related to having lots of titles): http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=191556
2. I'd like to see the cultural change events fixed.
3. I'd like to see some way of keeping the number of claims from growing exponentially, like it does now.

-Richard Campbell.
[EDIT: swapped #2 from a 'random courtier' button to 'fix cultural change events']

 

[Erufailon]

1, Internal wars between vassals without declaring independece or getting attacked by your liege (of course under certain situations the liege should support his loyal people).
2, Related to 1, relationships between people should be shown, I want to see who likes and who hates me, and want to be able to influence that either way.(For example if I want someone to hate me I would call him a monkey, so maybe he would attack me ).
3, More extensive diplomacy. I know this is not too specific, but there are too many things.

BTW, #1 is a game breaker for me as without it, playing as a count is basicly pointless in the game, and Duchies are also affected, so it's 2/3 of the whole game that is useless (exaggerating a bit here.

 

[Duuk]

3. I'd like to see some way of keeping the number of claims from growing exponentially, like it does now.

I think claims should die with the claim holder. Prestige is fairly easy to come by, so being able to "reclaim" the claim later is fairly easy.

 

[ulmont]

I think claims should die with the claim holder. Prestige is fairly easy to come by, so being able to "reclaim" the claim later is fairly easy.

But ahistorical. Wasn't the 100 years war about 3 generations away from where the claim arose?

-Richard Campbell.

 

[unmerged(31117)]

Things I want done in this order

1. Muslims and Pagans should have the same abilities as christians to release vassals and create titles, with a small loyalty penalty to conpensate for muslim and Pagan leaders not bieng excommunicatable.

2. Militery access should be regulated to within the borders of the same realm, allies and those which an Mil. Alliance or access treaty has been negotiated unless you are at war with that country or have negotiated a special militery access treaty, and are on Crusade and the target country is Catholic (Orthodox still need militery access to be negotiated, but it can be negotiated a lot easier when on Crusade).

3.Succesion laws should be modified to allow women to inherit in some curcumstances (such as lack of direct male heirs), female rulers should be able to marry and should be allowed to pass on dynasty name as long as their husband is of a lower fuedal rank than them.

 

[unmerged(37774)]

My top three more or less in order;

1) The ability to set any message as a message notifier or plain turn it off, as opposed to a pop up , a la every other Paradox game. And I would say with the endless pop-ups this is critical.

2)Allow one to open up the character screen from the grant title screen, so you can peruse important things like successor for your selection of who to give land to.

3) Add some way to track disloyal vassals, or those becoming disloyal. Perhaps as simple as displaying vassals in order of loyalty in the character screen of your ruler - that way you could generally just keep an eye on the last in the list.

 

[Duuk]

But ahistorical. Wasn't the 100 years war about 3 generations away from where the claim arose?

-Richard Campbell.

He saved up some prestige and bought a claim that was vaguely his through a distaff line of relatives.

Sounds fine to me.

Why should Real History be assumed to be different than game mechanics?

 

[madogvelkor]

1. fix the culture change events.
2. allow wars between counts that don't awlays turn into kingdom vs kingdom battles.
3. create events or mechanisms for new pagan/muslim groups to spring up the way the mongols do. If you start in 1066 you'll never see the Ottomans or any other muslim group that was formed after that date. At least with Christians their kindoms and duchies can be reformed if they collapse, or created from scratch (like Ireland, Wales, and Rus).

 

[unmerged(28966)]

Great that you're back MrT...

Three requests:

1. Muslim and Pagan vassal release
2. Reduce/remove Mongol and Byzantine demesne bonus
3. Improve further vassal management

I'll squeeze in two others that would be good:

- revolts more effective, spawn new dynasties of province culture & religion - make holding diff religion land far from home harder to do...
- increase male coutiers...


I'm looking forward to the new Beta, particularly good to hear the Virtual Call thingy has been identified and corrected. It was the bane of my life.

 

[Frontenac]

Hello, MrT, glad to see you alive and kicking! And with good news, too, just as I was losing hope on this game. CK 1.04a doesn't work too well for me, but with the job already dones on the patches, 1.05 will finally turn this into a playable game.

My top three priorities:

1. Allowing forced vassalization as a peace result. Revolting vassals were almost never removed from office or executed when defeated, they were just asked to pledge alliegeance again. Their families were too powerful to be removed.

2. Restrict movement of armies to: same realm, allies, enemies, open seas. Perhaps the trait "Crusader" could also grant access to lands of the same religion. One sure thing is that the game should no longer allow Egypt to invade Poland and to freely pass through Croatia. Also, there should be NO naval moves for the Muslims outside of the Mediterranean and only short range moves in it (2 zones maximum). The Mediterranean was a Christian "pond" for a the period considered and was not seriously contested by the Muslims again before the 1460-1570 period.

3. Cultural conversion. I love it and it should be fixed. Culture should only be allowed to spread to neighbouring provinces, however (connected land) and only rarely, if ever, over the sea.

Also worth consideration:
(Some fine suggestions from the others that I suspect, however, of being too complicated to implement 1. Allow muslim states to make vassals (many are too big to create income and eventually collapse). 2. Allow private wars (might be even harder to code, though). 3. Getting rid of the pop up fest - allowing all the normal Paradox display options.


Some of the best beta ideas that need tweaking:

1. Though Pagans! I love them. They could even be a bit tougher. But Cumans shouldn't marry Balts and Mongols shouldnt'd marry Pechnegs - leave each nation or cultural grouping to its own gods and own nubile courtiers...

2. Kingdoms recovering lost areas. This shouldn't be as easy and as automatic and it currently is, however. Chances of a former liege coming back should be relatively low - it will happen on the long run and should depend a lot on the personnality of the King. Nobody will join a weak King. But many will be tempted to join a highly regarded lord.

3. During Crusades, allowing land belonging to several Christian Kingdoms to claim independance and emerge as a new Latin states - K. of Jerusalem or D. of Tripoli, for instance - using the mechanics that lead to the creation of the Templar and Teutonic Knights. Thre is no logicial reason why the KOJ should belong to some western Europe King.

 

[Duuk]

OH! Just hit me!

Pledging allegiance, while great, needs tweaks.

Counts should first attempt to pledge to Dukes before Kings. (Count of York pledging to King of England before Duke of York is annoying.)

You should not be able to pledge allegiance to anyone with whom you are in a possible war with.

IE: Count of York revolts from Duchy of York. Many, many times the Count of York will pledge allegiance to the King of England (see above) while still at war with the Duchy of York.

 

[von Murrin]

1. Allow counts and dukes to war amongst themselves without involving their leige.
2. Something, anything, to give AI kingdoms a reason to take back Muslim European counties. The Emirates of Geneva, Orleans, and Kent existing for 100 years is really bizarre.
3. Working culture change events.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

There were some minor stuff i wanted and since in my statement above if #2 can be done it will effectively allow #3 as well..

1. The ability to continue a savegame even if you become a non-christian. This one is doubtful, but hey it'd be nice.
2. Now for my serious one (not saying the last one isn't something i'd like, just not something i think Johan will go for).
   Adding a command to place people into a position in your court. If this were added half the critism of the "I could be a better..." events would fade away.
3. Upping the posibility of getting inbred trait perhaps making it even more likely based on the number of grandparents above 1 with the same name you have.
4. A command to change player's sirname. Its kinda surreal to see half of Europe (or more) with the same last name as you. Surely somewhere within 400 years for some reason one of them would have changed their last name...

Also some stuff you can do MrT:
Killing off Exess courtiers!!! Events basically to simply purge massive courts of useless courtiers and the lag time they bring, both to humans and AI, for the events they cause to fire.
More court intrigue events.

 

[Carmagnola]

top 3 priorities for exe file changes

1) Restrict armies movements to: a) same realm b) allies c) enemies d) seas. Crusade Exception: during a crusade only, catholics at war against non-christians can cross any christian land.

No more sheikdom islands in the heart of Europe and isolated counts of Baghdad.

2) Allow force-vassalization as a peace option, in general.
Ideally, make Mongols likely (75%?) to offer it at war start, but not later. AI should decide response based on army strength (simpler) and/or traits (better, but more complex to code).

This would simplify keeping kingdoms together, alleviate the problem of lack of courtiers to appoint in newly conquered lands, make mongols more realistic (e.g. Russian vassals) while no less scary and solve a number of issues with them.

3) Allow internal wars without always involving liege. One way to do it is to make the AI liege have a 50% chance of doing nothing. If he does intervene, he will side with the more loyal vassal with odds proportional to vassal loyalty, ie equal loyalty, odds 1:1; loyalty 100% and 67%, odds 3:2.

Even just the first part (less than automatic intervention) would add to the enjoyment of playing counts and add realism.

 

[unmerged(27106)]

In order, I would suggest:

1) Army Movement: Military Access like in EU II needs to be instituted, and the ability to move by sea needs to be curtailed, either by not permitting it from a province has less than a Naval Shipyard, or by only allowing a ship to go up to three sea spaces.

2) Groups such as the papacy, the knightly orders, and republics should be rendered incapable of auto-offering fealty to other rulers.

3) Diplomacy: More options ideally would be developed, such as Military Access agreements, and alliances should only be allowed to be offered when you marry a member of your court to another court.