[Sub-Mod] Court Assistant (Court AI) - Less micromanage [v1.12]

[Cody Spring]

Link to original mod by WKIII. His work was the framework for this port and continuation. The 'Minor Titles' function was coded by him and updated by me for expansions, CK2Plus, and somewhat smarter AI. The 'Educate Children' module was created entirely by him, and slightly modified by myself. The 'Demand Gavelkind' and 'Stop Backing Plots' modules were created entirely by him. The rest are my creations.

Court Assistant 1.11​

When right-clicking the shield/Coat of Arms of your primary title, you will see the option to summon a Court Assistant. The assistant will handle things that I personally find to be tedious, things that you should almost never not be doing. You can turn the modules on and off as you please.

Modules​

Call for Assistant: This summons the assistant. Without the assistant, all modules will be turned off. You may dismiss the assistant at any time.

Minor Titles: The assistant will give out minor titles to vassals whose opinion of you is between -10 and 50. Prioritizes higher ranking vassals. Important titles such as Designated Regent, Despot, etc. will not be effected. Court Physician will only be given out if someone in your court has 22 or higher learning, and 60 or above opinion of you. If you are in the Hermetic society, the Apprentice title will be given to either your Court Physician or your Heir if they are under age 40, prioritizing your heir.

Demand Gavelkind: The assistant will demand vassals take Gavelkind, if they are eligible to do so and you are eligible to make the demand.

Discourage Plotters: The assistant will send Cease and Desist letters to all backers of discovered plots. This leaves the head of the plot still plotting with low plot power, so that you may still have the option of imprisoning them.

Stargazing: The assistant will arrange stargazing dates between you and your apprentice whenever eligible.

Carousing: The assistant will send invitations to all of your Vassals to go Carousing with you, whenever eligible. It does not send an invitation to those who are already your Friend.

Ransom Prisoners: The assistant will automatically ransom foreign prisoners whom you are not at war with. So you don't have to keep checking back to see when that random duke you captured in battle 12 years ago can finally afford his ransom.

Seduction Targets: The assistant will look out for characters in your realm not likely to resist your sexual advances. As of now, only targets unmarried characters. The assistant will present you with the one it found, and you have the choice of further pursuing or declining the character presented.

Educate Children: See original mod. Only changes are, you now have 1 year to manually assign education, before an education is automatically assigned, and Thrift is given a higher priority for your children specifically.

Notes​

You will only see options which you may make use of; for example, only those in the Hermetic Society will see the Stargazing module, and only those with the Carousing Focus or one of the traits will see the Carousing module.

Planned Features: Spy On targets. Whatever you guys can think of adding to it.

Steam Workshop Link​

 

[edgemaster_x]

thanks for the work, I haven't tested it myself yet but this is something I've always thought about while playing long games. furthermore, it makes sense that a ruler would delegate some of the tasks to vassals or other servants and focus only on "high level" decisions.

the problem-ish about this particular type of assistant is that the assistant is fully automated, 100% accurate and efficient which is not really reasonable from a gameplay-balance viewpoint. it's a great convenience but you become much more potent as a ruler as a result . ideally, the assistant is an appointed position(s) and the actions and competency of the assistant would be affected by his stewardship, personality and his opinion of the liege.

i realize this level of detail is impossible to achieve with such limited tools and i would not ask of you something so demanding but i sometimes think about it at night in bed (lol). again, thanks for the mod

 

[OdinX]

thanks for the work, I haven't tested it myself yet but this is something I've always thought about while playing long games. furthermore, it makes sense that a ruler would delegate some of the tasks to vassals or other servants and focus only on "high level" decisions.

the problem-ish about this particular type of assistant is that the assistant is fully automated, 100% accurate and efficient which is not really reasonable from a gameplay-balance viewpoint.

I disagree; from what I see, the mod simply does as described, lessens the amount of micromanaging you would do. It's not like it has omnipotence over the game world, simply put, the court assistant just does what you, as a player, would without you having to constantly go about doing or remembering to do it.

 

[StormySkies]

Nice to see a Plus version of this. I look forward to using it and seeing what gets added to it. I notice you didn't mention a court AI module. Is appointing and assigning chaplains etc. not included?

 

[edgemaster_x]

I disagree; from what I see, the mod simply does as described, lessens the amount of micromanaging you would do. It's not like it has omnipotence over the game world, simply put, the court assistant just does what you, as a player, would without you having to constantly go about doing or remembering to do it.

yes but you wouldn't achieve the efficiency of the auto-assistant; the fact that you may not remember to do something is part of the "human error" and as a side note i think it's what makes it fun. idk about anyone else but i dont personally check on my 50+ vassals, plots, minor titles, court physician, etc. at every possible game instant. i personally just check randomly every several days or sometimes every several weeks, and even then i don't bother to check them as thoroughly as would an automated machine. you "could" do this but ofc a regular player wouldn't, and realistically a real ruler would not be so diligent either (even if he did have near-omniscient power that we do as a player). we could debate about whether this sort of thing is part of game difficulty but we can't argue how more effective you are as a ruler without having to do the mundane tasks. effectively, i think this is a powergame vs. regular game issue.

for ex. in my case there may be a period of say a week that i miss without realizing my previous physician died, or perhaps i was too preoccupied with my war and put it off. where the assistant would be able to instantly appoint an eligible physician, the week may cause me or my heir to die of fatigue or something. this is a bit of an extreme case but over long games the assistant causes a big difference in how effective you are as a ruler

 

[Cody Spring]

thanks for the work, I haven't tested it myself yet but this is something I've always thought about while playing long games. furthermore, it makes sense that a ruler would delegate some of the tasks to vassals or other servants and focus only on "high level" decisions.

the problem-ish about this particular type of assistant is that the assistant is fully automated, 100% accurate and efficient which is not really reasonable from a gameplay-balance viewpoint. it's a great convenience but you become much more potent as a ruler as a result . ideally, the assistant is an appointed position(s) and the actions and competency of the assistant would be affected by his stewardship, personality and his opinion of the liege.

i realize this level of detail is impossible to achieve with such limited tools and i would not ask of you something so demanding but i sometimes think about it at night in bed (lol). again, thanks for the mod

I see what you mean! No one is going to pause their game every 90 days and invite all of their vassals carousing. I actually thought of something like this but it probably won't be a thing, at least not in the near future at all. I'm not losing too much sleep over it, like others said, it's not doing anything you technically can't do (even though you wouldn't )

Nice to see a Plus version of this. I look forward to using it and seeing what gets added to it. I notice you didn't mention a court AI module. Is appointing and assigning chaplains etc. not included?

As of now no, it required more work to port over because of the very different council mechanics for CK2Plus and Monks and Mystics (compared to PreMnM Vanilla), so I focused on other aspects that I felt more tedious than managing the council. I plan on getting to it though!

 

[Numberfour]

Letting you know, you forgot to put .zip on path for MOD file for 1.1

 

[james24eagle]

This mod looks great... I'm going to give it a try!

 

[GreatAlucard]

So this looks pretty interesting but I have 2 questions about some features.

Ransom Prisoners: The assistant will automatically ransom foreign prisoners whom you are not at war with. So you don't have to keep checking back to see when that random duke you captured in battle 12 years ago can finally afford his ransom.

Does this include independent rulers or other landed vassals under the same liege as you? Because if that is the case I would rather not have this specific part on, even though I like pretty much all the others.

Demand Gavelkind: The assistant will demand vassals take Gavelkind, if they are eligible to do so and you are eligible to make the demand.

Does this include characters with multiple same tier titles without a higher title? (as in more than one duchy and no king title) because if that is the case I would also rather have this off, as it would create a higher number of vassals and probably create problems in the longer run with carefully distributed titles.

On the second one I might be wrong though because I don't really see the benefit in "demanding gavelkind".

The first one is a problem though, as an independent ruler, having another independent ruler in prison is extremely valuable, as it causes a free win on a war, with vassals under the same liege there is a similar problem.


I personally think that separating the buttons would create too much clutter on the intrigue screen, but the ability to either disable those two options (which are apparently sometimes bad) is interesting. I understand that it is possible to only enable the whole set of things when needed but while most others are reversible, these two are not, so it creates an issue.

 

[Cody Spring]

So this looks pretty interesting but I have 2 questions about some features.

Ransom Prisoners: The assistant will automatically ransom foreign prisoners whom you are not at war with. So you don't have to keep checking back to see when that random duke you captured in battle 12 years ago can finally afford his ransom.

Does this include independent rulers or other landed vassals under the same liege as you? Because if that is the case I would rather not have this specific part on, even though I like pretty much all the others.

Demand Gavelkind: The assistant will demand vassals take Gavelkind, if they are eligible to do so and you are eligible to make the demand.

Does this include characters with multiple same tier titles without a higher title? (as in more than one duchy and no king title) because if that is the case I would also rather have this off, as it would create a higher number of vassals and probably create problems in the longer run with carefully distributed titles.

On the second one I might be wrong though because I don't really see the benefit in "demanding gavelkind".

The first one is a problem though, as an independent ruler, having another independent ruler in prison is extremely valuable, as it causes a free win on a war, with vassals under the same liege there is a similar problem.

Ransom Prisoner does include independent rulers, but not landed vassals or anyone else for that matter under the same liege as you. It only effects rulers/courtiers from other realms. I went back and forth between letting it handle Independent Rulers from other realms or not, but in the end I decided to let it, because AFAIK there's no way to declare war or really do much with independent rulers who are in your prison, and they can't declare war or do much with you.

As for Demand Gavelkind, the reasoning behind that (and the addition of it to the game with Reaper's Due) is to keep vassals under you from centralizing too much power. If they have Gavelkind, the realm splits on their death causing more but less powerful vassals, which can potentially be easier to manage than one rather strong vassal.

I personally think that separating the buttons would create too much clutter on the intrigue screen, but the ability to either disable those two options (which are apparently sometimes bad) is interesting. I understand that it is possible to only enable the whole set of things when needed but while most others are reversible, these two are not, so it creates an issue.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, the way the mod works is by default all options are disabled, and you can access them by the Coat of Arms of your primary title, rather than the intrigue screen. Then you turn on the options you want to enable, while leaving disabled all options you don't want. As far as reversible, you can turn them on and off whenever you want. Please let me know if I am misunderstanding your statement.

 

[Numberfour]

As for Demand Gavelkind, the reasoning behind that (and the addition of it to the game with Reaper's Due) is to keep vassals under you from centralizing too much power. If they have Gavelkind, the realm splits on their death causing more but less powerful vassals, which can potentially be easier to manage than one rather strong vassal

Yep. Last night play through I became king of aquitaine and I had a vassal who was duke of Barcelona, Toulouse, Upper Pryenees and lands of Auvergne from marriage. This vassal was giving me some problems with factions with each heir. Luckily, I crushed each revolt because of this mod carousing with vassals, which were loyal for each revolt. And because of demand gravelkind, I was able to reduce them to counts. Haven't had a problem with that one dynasty again, but OFC another takes it's place.

 

[LordDamien]

Yep. Last night play through I became king of aquitaine and I had a vassal who was duke of Barcelona, Toulouse, Upper Pryenees and lands of Auvergne from marriage. This vassal was giving me some problems with factions with each heir. Luckily, I crushed each revolt because of this mod carousing with vassals, which were loyal for each revolt. And because of demand gravelkind, I was able to reduce them to counts. Haven't had a problem with that one dynasty again, but OFC another takes it's place.

That is quite a story and has convinced me to get this Sub mod .I can see a Role play reason to make that family split the tites up because they are giving you some trouble and you punished them for it . So curious can you at will turn off options in the sub mod..For one ruler you decided to use the Assistant for everything ( Slothful ) and the next you turned it off because the guy was Diligent ?.

 

[Cody Spring]

That is quite a story and has convinced me to get this Sub mod .I can see a Role play reason to make that family split the tites up because they are giving you some trouble and you punished them for it . So curious can you at will turn off options in the sub mod..For one ruler you decided to use the Assistant for everything ( Slothful ) and the next you turned it off because the guy was Diligent ?.

Yes, you can turn the options on or off at will. You can also turn off the entire mod with the single option of dismissing the Court Assistant (and then you may bring the assistant back whenever you feel like using it again)

 

[GreatAlucard]

Ransom Prisoner does include independent rulers, but not landed vassals or anyone else for that matter under the same liege as you. It only effects rulers/courtiers from other realms. I went back and forth between letting it handle Independent Rulers from other realms or not, but in the end I decided to let it, because AFAIK there's no way to declare war or really do much with independent rulers who are in your prison, and they can't declare war or do much with you.

As for Demand Gavelkind, the reasoning behind that (and the addition of it to the game with Reaper's Due) is to keep vassals under you from centralizing too much power. If they have Gavelkind, the realm splits on their death causing more but less powerful vassals, which can potentially be easier to manage than one rather strong vassal.



I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, the way the mod works is by default all options are disabled, and you can access them by the Coat of Arms of your primary title, rather than the intrigue screen. Then you turn on the options you want to enable, while leaving disabled all options you don't want. As far as reversible, you can turn them on and off whenever you want. Please let me know if I am misunderstanding your statement.

No, you got it right, I'm the one who was under the impression that the mod didn't had the option to turn specific parts of it off. (I mentioned the intrigue screen because that's where I thought such a thing would be if it existed)

With the way I manage things gavelkind is actually detrimental (at least most of the time), so it's a good thing to know it can be turned off by itself.

Good to know though, great job on the mod

 

[james24eagle]

This is an awesome mod - great work!

Have you considered integrating the court assistant functions into the gameplay more, where either laws can be passed to enable these modules or that powerful counselors can request that you grant these functions to them?

 

[Cody Spring]

This is an awesome mod - great work!

Have you considered integrating the court assistant functions into the gameplay more, where either laws can be passed to enable these modules or that powerful counselors can request that you grant these functions to them?

I was considering making 'Court Assistant' a minor title and tying it to that, and possibly tying the efficiency to their attributes, but as of now that would require a little too much programming what the AI's goal would be, as to what exactly they would do other than the current "Handle these events at maximum efficiency." When it comes to making it an actual gameplay mechanic where you give counselors more power/they demand it, through laws or otherwise, is a little out of scope of what I had planned for this mod, just because of the amount of code I would have to write in order to do it right alongside the fact that it would be adding in more things to manage in a mod that's goal is to cut down on the amount of things you have to manage